27 MetaFilter comments by adam

Le réseau - Starting in the late 19th century, Belgian Paul Otlet envisioned the basics of a human powered Wikipedia and Google. He created a 12 million item database on index cards and accepted queries via mail or telegraph. The article describes his work and the Mundaneum museum in his honor. Be sure to watch the video. There is a full documentary on Otlet as well.
comment posted at 9:46 PM on Jun-17-08

Gmail: Google's newest service. They're claiming 1Gb of free email, killer spam filters, and a great new webmail interface. They'll likely have Google ads attached to your messages, but I can't wait to see it tomorrow (hopefully it's not just an April Fools prank).
comment posted at 9:21 PM on Mar-31-04

Exhibit A: An unattributed article on Google Bombing posted last month on the Web site of Glenn Beck, a radio talk show guy. Exhibit B: An article on Google Bombing from 2001 on Uber.nu, attributed to Adam Mathes. Compare and contrast. It's possible Beck purchased the article for reprint, but the lack of attribution, either to Mathes or So New Media, suggests against it. Assuming plagiarism, two questions: 1. After a decade of the existence of the Web, how is it that people still don't get the concept that content plagiarized from the Web is easily discoverable, particularly when posted on the Web? 2. Honestly, now, is it really that hard to rewrite? Unrelated article on the Glenn Beck site: The Death of Shame. (via Oliver Willis)
comment posted at 11:08 AM on Jan-9-04

google meme du jour. Browse to google and type "weapons of mass destruction" WITHOUT the quotation marks. Do NOT click Google Search. Instead, click "I'm Feeling Lucky." An error message will appear. Read it.
comment posted at 12:45 PM on Jul-4-03

If you want something done, do it yourself; tired of the browser timeout that came when he mis-spelled the domain name of one of his favorite (and most-visited) sites, this enterprising young man took matters into his own hands. But I encourage you to take his advice and not mess with him while looking for backdoors.
comment posted at 1:42 AM on Jul-4-03

0
comment posted at 4:27 PM on Jul-3-03

Google hiccup? In a Google search for "salvia divinorum" (a psychoactive drug), why the devil is the first result a link to a company that sells biofeedback devices? It smells like a paid position, but I thought Google was above that...
comment posted at 6:20 PM on Mar-29-02

Lance gets into the act, feigning humor, just grazing bitterness on the way to the kitchen. Wouldn't we all like to be bloggered?
comment posted at 3:10 PM on Jan-15-01

Organizine Closing Doors already? Organizine is shutting down services at 5pm PST. Well, at least I found out with a few hours to go (!)... time to move all content out then.
comment posted at 12:40 PM on Jan-9-01

A new concept in blogging: Can't think of anything to say? What the hell, just borrow someone else's life.
comment posted at 11:48 PM on Oct-25-00

Reading, 'Riting, 'Rithmetic Jakob Nielsen says "to take the Internet to the next level, users must begin posting their own material ... the vast wasteland of Geocities confirms this. Giving users a home-page editing program does not turn them into good writers." Meg takes Nielsen to task: "his recommended approach is crazy ...Why bog kids down with HTML?" Blogs, of course, are her solution. But for some folks this simply doesn't add up. Saying kids shouldn't learn HTML because Blogger exists is like saying they shouldn't learn to add because calculators exist.
comment posted at 11:08 PM on Sep-30-00

Star Wars Episode II Trailer/Teaser Theforce.com has posted what is sapose to be the Episode II teaser, I haven't seen it yet buts its still unknown if it is the real thing.
comment posted at 9:16 PM on Jul-24-00

Deepleap have undergone a much-anticipated revision. You can now make your information available, just like this wishlist, or these bookmarks.
comment posted at 8:20 PM on Jun-21-00


Watch Jason Win Live! Which acceptance speech is he going to use? My bet is on "I'm too drunk to cry..."
The awards are being given now... right now... go... quickly!
comment posted at 10:03 PM on May-11-00

Uhoh! Leggo my napster! So I just tried to load up Napster, and it told me that my connection to the server was refused. None of the people I've talked to have been able to get on either. Could this be the end of Napster? Killed in the night while nobody was watching? The site doesn't say anything, but grrrr, I want my pirated music!
comment posted at 7:09 PM on May-6-00

Panty Raiders: Humorous CD-ROM or the objectification of women? Have you ever heard of any other game referred to as a comedy? I find it particularly offensive and demeaning when a game that involves stripping women is passed off as something funny and entertaining, especially when targeted at young boys. Is this something we should be concerned about, or is it just a game? Are people overreacting?
comment posted at 2:51 PM on May-5-00

DeapLeap, Flyswat, Octopus, Backflip, and Clip2 have all been out for a little while now. Personally I've checked each of them out, even used them for a day or two, but none stuck with me. Am I just old fashioned? Will these tools/sites catch on?
comment posted at 3:08 PM on May-5-00

Autobloggatio I had a good laugh not once but twice at the bitch-slapping I underwent for the putative sin of blogging myself on Metafilter. I had a laugh even though I thought the intent was to ridicule, slag, and deride. En tout cas, I blogged myself two different ways. On a couple of occasions, I pointed to pages I'd developed as a service to netters and bloggers Xenoblogs (list of un-American blogs) and the Buyer's Guide to Alternadomains. One makes no apologies for providing pages as a public service and making them known to the public. The other case involved ruminations on love at first sight. Lacking a discussion mechanism at my blog and knowing that people would have knowledge on the topic I had no access to (breeders, for example), I posted on Metafilter. IMHO this reveals an unserved need: Blogger et al. may make it possible to update your Weblog from any browser, but what we need is a way to automate discussion on topics blogged on individual pages. As it stands, bloggers are like home-office workers who have to meet clients at cafés: They have to go out of house. Is it possible that, for blogging to work at a level beyond howling at the moon or a tree falling in the wilderness, we need automated tools for dialogue at our own sites? Should Metafilter and (to a lesser degree) Webqueeries be the only collaborative Weblogs? Clearly this would blur the distinction between blogs and mailing lists, but so what? Among mailing lists, blogs, Yahoo clubs, and instant messaging, we already have a fractured set of media of two-way and multi-way communication. A bit more fracturing ain't gonna hurt; the horse has long since bolted from the stable. (Aside: Guestbooks work poorly in my experience. Even Zeldman's. Mine is a joke. In the immortal words of Bad Religion, there's no substance. A blog gives visitors something to talk about beyond "How do you like my page?")
comment posted at 5:10 PM on May-2-00

Pyra's killer app isn't Blogger, says Michael Sippey in the most recent Stating the Obvious. The Pyramaniacs started out to build a robust project-management tool, and got sucked into the swirling vortex that is weblog-world along the way.

"Pyra's killer app isn't Blogger, it's Pyra. Of course, that's mostly semantics, since Blogger's an application built on top of the Pyra framework. Which means that Pyra could not only be your next project management app, but your next content publishing platform as well. An integrated content, template, task, issue, and discussion database? Sounds like a killer app to me. Now they just need to figure out the business model..."

I would have thought the business model was obvious. Isn't it?


comment posted at 11:53 PM on Apr-30-00

Maybe John McCain will get elected president after all, even though he's 'not running anymore'...
comment posted at 6:22 PM on Apr-21-00

deepleap has launched.
comment posted at 2:55 PM on Apr-14-00

Love that Blogger redesign. Normally I wouldn't blog about this here, but they leave me little choice. (Other than jumping ship and kludging some scripts together). I want my free service that I pay nothing for and should be grateful just to have now!

On a serious note, I love Blogger, think it's great, and use it myself, but is it bad to become dependant on a third party tool? You've basically placed the life of your site at the whim of the tool provider. Granted, Ev, Meg, PB, [that fourth guy], Matt, and now Jack seem like pretty nice people to be at the whim of, but wouldn't it be better to do it 'on your own?'

Just thinking out loud, as soon as it's back up I'll go to my little traveled corner of the web and stay there.
comment posted at 7:19 PM on Apr-11-00

Now this is something I just don't get. Getting worked up because some people are posting longer entries? Can someone explain this to me? So Ben Brown mentioned that he prefers longer posts, and a few people responded to the idea favorably. But then there's backlash to this idea? Can someone please explain to me how someone writing long posts is somehow wrong? Is anyone holding a gun to your head making you read anything on the web? If Ben Brown's posts are too long, don't read them. If Jack's or Brig's are too long, don't read them. If I'm wrong here, please set me straight. I must not have read the weblog rulebook that states posts should be short and snarky, if anyone has a hyperlink to said rule book, please post that too.
comment posted at 9:39 PM on Mar-28-00
comment posted at 9:53 PM on Mar-28-00
comment posted at 2:50 AM on May-26-00

Is Webloglog trying to snake m3tacubed's niche? Will I be forced to create a site that cherrypicks the best links from sites like weblognation just to stay ahead of the crowd at staying away from the content? Meta-Meta-Meta-Comedy is hard enough, I'm afraid that if I go one more level out I'll end up screwing up time-space continuum... Tacky-on.net? No? Trust me, you loved it next month.
comment posted at 3:28 PM on Mar-8-00