Commentator Andrei Codrescu muses on the appeal by friends to 'plug' their new books. He says there was a time when such a plea would have seemed uncivil. Now, the world has changed and publicity wins over decorum.

When it Comes to Publicity, Authors Have No Shame

TextSpresso is an easy to use, professional level text editor and cleaner. TextSpresso includes over 250 filters and can:

* Clean up Internet text, including E-mails and downloaded web pages.
* Prepare text for Internet transport, HTML publishing, and print publishing.
* Perform fast, multi-pattern data extraction, such as extracting web page URLs.
* Sort text according to user defined sections and keys.
* Convert text files between Mac and PC with highly accurate character preservation.
* Filter the selected text in virtually any Mac application.
* Batch filter text files with a fast, multi-threaded batch processor.
* Let you create filters for your own text filtering needs using any of 11 filter types including MultiFilter, pattern matching, and BASIC Scripts.

TextSpresso

WebDesktop layers a web browser over your Mac OS X desktop.

Any standard web page can be displayed. WebDesktop uses WebKit, Apple's HTML rendering engine from Safari, so web pages should appear exactly as they do in Safari, including such advanced features as CSS and Flash. But on your desktop.

Bringing WebDesktop to the front allows full interaction with the page, including scrolling, navigation, and form input.

In WebDesktop's preferences, you can specify an automatic refresh interval so that the page on your desktop is reloaded every minute, every 5 minutes, every hour, etc... This is useful for keeping up to date with pages that update frequently.

WebDesktop

Human beings have always had a capacity to attend to several things at once. Mothers have done it since the hunter-gatherer era -- picking berries while suckling an infant, stirring the pot with one eye on the toddler.

Nor is electronic multitasking entirely new: We've been driving while listening to car radios since they became popular in the 1930s.

But there is no doubt that the phenomenon has reached a kind of warp speed in the era of Web-enabled computers, when it has become routine to conduct six IM conversations, watch American Idol on TV and Google the names of last season's finalists all at once.

But what's the impact of this media consumption? And how are these multitasking devices changing how kids learn, reason and interact with one another?

Social scientists and educators are just beginning to tackle these questions, but the researchers already have some strong opinions.

Are kids too plugged in?

I get some fabulous and informative email.

This one was from someone who was wondering about why they should follow my longer term calls if I missed the last short term move:

if i shouldn't take your word on a short term trade, how is it that i should believe your long-term outlook?

The Big Picture: Who do you trust?

Rockbox is an open source replacement firmware for mp3 players. It runs on a number of different models:

* Archos: Jukebox 5000, 6000, Studio, Recorder, FM Recorder, Recorder V2 and Ondio
* iRiver: H100 and H300 series
* Apple: iPod 4G (grayscale and color), 5G (Video) and Nano
* Additional models are in development

Rockbox is a complete rewrite and uses no fragments of any original firmwares.

Rockbox - Open Source Jukebox Firmware

There are new and exciting opportunities to engage citizens by informing, consulting, involving, and collaborating with them through a number of techniques; for example, the use of online surveys and peer-to-peer communication tools such as blogs and wikis. Many of these are now being piloted and used by states, localities, and nonprofits. There is also an increased interest by federal agencies. But the challenge of reaching those who don’t already participate as activists or interest group members remains.

This report documents a spectrum of tools and techniques developed largely in the nonprofit world in recent years to increase citizens’ involvement in their communities and government. It also highlights ways in which public managers can develop an active approach to increasing citizens’ involvement in government at all levels. This report will be useful and informative to managers across the nation seeking new, innovative ways to engage citizens.

Public Deliberation: A Manager’s Guide to Citizen Engagement

Any time a new technology comes along, an implicit cost-benefit analysis gets made. The trouble with the current debate about Generation M is that we have a phalanx of experts lined up to measure the costs but only a vague, intuitive sense of the benefits.

Don't Fear the Digital

For months and months I've been wanting to write an essay about some thoughts on the Long Tail. I've finally had the time. (The material was part of the talk I gave for TTI/Vanguard and I had time on the plane to turn the slides into an essay.)

The basic idea is that the value of the Long Tail isn't just that you make money selling an awful lot of unpopular things. The value comes from the fact that the long tail is the reason many people will choose one tool or system over another. I give some theory and examples to show why.

Starting January 12, 2006

The amount of scientific data is doubling every year. Alexander Szalay and Jim Gray analyse how scientific methods are evolving from paper notebooks to huge online databases.

Science in an exponential world