Chris Boese's Weblog

Identity theft through large job boards?

CNN.com - Latest ID theft scam: Fake job listings - Feb. 28, 2003

Isn't this the most peculiar thing? I mean, yes, I know spam harvesters stop at nothing and pick up email addys from job boards by the millions, and that most of the listings sent by "agents" on job boards are little more than get rich quick schemes and work from home scams.

I disguise email addresses now most everywhere from mechanical spam harvesting, especially on all my web sites.

But this issue may spell the end for these sites, sites that now overwhelm employers with so many "click" applications as to be useless for both employers and job seekers.

And worse is the economic message being sent by this story: that our names and identities are worth more to those bizarre mass marketing and fraud businesses than anything else.

It is sort of like discovering the chemical elements that make up our bodies are worth more than our net worth is alive. As if there is no value-added in my brain, but my name is valuable to someone at least, someone willing to make a sizable investment in capital to get it.

It reminds me of these new RFID radio transmitter chips that are going to be put in ALL consumer products, we are told, from books to tubes of toothpaste, transmitting info for the complete life of the product, not just for inventory control when it is in the store.

It is for inventory control and surveillance when it is in your house!

Now think of the cost of such a massive project, the chipping of every package of paper plates, every package of tissues so some big beacon catcher somewhere can know how much you sneeze, how little you wash your dishes.

I guess it is cheaper than going through each person's garbage, and if that is the investment it ic compared against, then...

But REALLY, what all these tracking chips focused on ME are saying is that my every drop of SNOT is VALUABLE to someone somewhere! I'm not valuable to anyone, except as an identity worthy of stealing and manipulating, but my snot is!

Or, coming back around to job search issues, we might say that given the heroic effort being expended to find out so much information on ME, rather than being flattering, making me feel important, instead treats human subjects as natural resources and the endeavor of compiling information like a mining operation.

We are all of us worth more as idle ooze in a tar pit like Monster.com (so sticky it could catch anyone?), worth more vapid and drooling, consuming and throwing away toothpaste, than we are worth to employers who could potentially extract some greater value-added from our brains, initiative, force of will, and creativity.

Now doesn't that make you feel special?

CNET interview with Dave Winer [Scripting News] on his Harvard Weblog Project

I've got a good deal to say about Dave Winer [Scripting News] at Harvard, the subject of this interview on CNET from which I've quoted just a bit here. Look to the MORE link for commentary.

Chris

CNET News.com

What impact has the blog had on the way information is shared, particularly with respect to journalism?

In some areas, like tech reporting, the Web logs have largely replaced the professionals.

Journalism is a high calling, but it's really no more than points of view on what's taking place.

Hey, wait a minute.

News.com might be the exception. Think about what the landscape looked like five or 10 years ago, with just a handful of publications instead of a whole industry. People now get the information from each other and for each other using Web logs. There are still professional journalists writing, but a lot less. Web logs are journalism. Have they had a big impact? Absolutely. When a big story hits, I don't necessarily trust the professional journalists to tell me what's going on. If I can get the Web logs from the people who were actually involved, I'll take that.

A really remarkable thing came out from the BBC, where they asked amateur photographers to send them pictures. So they're jumping onto the trend that's going to grow and grow and grow. With the Columbia disaster, where did the pictures come from? Not from professional journalists.

So you're saying that professional journalists don't provide any value, any context, any background that helps make sense of the news?

The typical news article consists of quotes from interviews and a little bit of connective stuff and some facts, or whatever. Mostly it's quotes from people. If I can get the quotes with no middleman in between--what exactly did CNN add to all the pictures? Maybe they earned their salaries a little bit, but Web logs have become journalism, and it's much richer. Journalism is a high calling, but it's really no more than points of view on what's taking place. I think the pros are going to use this tech, and they are doing it more and more.

There is an object lesson in this story

Unfortunately, I don't believe I am wise enough to discern it. Therefore I record a few salient points here for future reference, hoping one day I may figure it out. As Martin Luther might say, "What does this mean?"

BBC NEWS | Asia-Pacific | Nauru loses contact with the world

The tiny Pacific island of Nauru has spent weeks completely cut off from the outside world after its telecommunications network collapsed.

Its isolation is so complete that no one is even sure who the country's president is any more.

Nauru, an isolated speck in the southwest Pacific with a population of 12,000, is in a "critical situation", according to the last message received by the outside world.

Question: Will Nauru teach us about the sort of anarchy other places in the world may face--high tech dependent, with a disabled system?

Salon considers the industry co-opting of movie blogging

Salon.com Technology | Hollyblog

Yeager could easily be mistaken for a film buff with a weakness for German indie actresses, but the 27-year-old graphic designer is actually the latest incarnation of Hollywood's P.R. machine -- the official movie blogger. Part journalist, part copywriter, Yeager is finding out that being a pioneer movie weblogger presents myriad challenges, not the least of which is how to stay true to the form.

Yeager's gig is a clear sign that blogging is becoming more mainstream than ever. Software such as Blogger (purchased by Google in February), Movable Type and UserLand has given anyone with a dogged interest in anything -- from Iraq to Britney Spears -- a soapbox from which to broadcast his or her thoughts. Communities of webloggers, dashing off ideas and sharing links, can spring up overnight and grow with just a double mouse click on the Respond button.

But is blogging ready for its close-up?

[...]

Blogger Peter Merholz, who has also been online at PeterMe.com since 1999, takes a more purist perspective. "It sounds to me like Hollywood trying to co-opt what those kids are doing," he said. "And we all point and laugh because they don't get it."

So what kind of weblog can come out of an industry notorious for controlling, packaging and airbrushing every ounce of information fed to the public? By definition, weblogs are immediate, honest and unfiltered. The question is: Can Hollywood blog?

How would Adobe Photoshop Album upstage Photoshop?

I don't know. Here's a few things I could figure out.

Adobe Photoshop Album released: Digital Photography Review

Press Release from Adobe on the new product at the URL above. Promo blurb:

Pre-PMA 2003: Adobe also yesterday announced the release of its Photoshop Album software which we reviewed last month. "Photoshop Album takes digital photography far beyond film. It makes it easier and more fun to do what users want to do today with pictures," said Alexis Gerard, president of Future Image Inc. "Since the product thinks the way picture takers do, users will appreciate unprecedented control and access to their entire lifetime of photos, along with sharing options that enable visual communication with loved ones around the world."

More on the beta review from Digital Photography Review below.

Earthviewer 3D: Stunningly visual version of space

Or is it a precursor to the total collective panopticon I first predicted HERE in an April Fools' essay 1995 in CMC Magazine?

Wish I could sample some of the visuals here. Here is a flash demo: http://www.earthviewer.com/demo/demo.html. Too bad it only runs on PCs right now. Also, thinking of what it might be like in the hands of the

Earthviewer 3D.  Very cool download.  Make sure you turn on "streets" preference and put in your address and let it seek your home. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

From the Earthviewer site:

Keyhole's EarthViewer3D™ harnesses the power of NVIDIA GPUs. Fusing high-resolution satellite and aerial imagery, elevation data, GPS coordinates, and overlay information about cities and businesses, EarthViewer3D delivers a streaming, 3D map of the entire globe to PCs powered with NVIDIA GPUs.

The result is a whole new way of looking at your world - reach out and "grab" the earth with your mouse, pan quickly to your area of interest (or select it from a placemark) and then zoom smoothly down to an individual building. Click the "terrain" button, tilt the viewpoint and see the earth's hills, mountains and valleys rendered in full 3D.

A new Terror Alert Icon Gauge

Thanks for the public service, wackyneighbor.com!

Has blogging changed journalism?

Or is this another case of grand overstatement, like back in 1996 when overly huge claims were made about the Web, when actually, there is enough happening that IS extraordinary without all the overblown hype. This article seems well tempered in that respect, more tempered than most bloggers, who often are busy overhyping themselves.

Chris

Forum: How blogging changed journalism -- almost

Forum: How blogging changed journalism -- almost

Chris Mooney examines how Weblogs have altered the balance of power in media and created ripples through society

"Will the blogs kill old media?" asked Newsweek, and at the very least, bloggers have taught mainstream reporters a lesson or two. Blogging played a pivotal role, for example, in the downfall of Trent Lott as Senate majority leader. The mainstream media might have missed Lott's remarks at Sen. Strom Thurmond's 100th birthday party, but outrage in the ever-growing "blogosphere" fanned the flames until newspapers and cable news took up the story.

Some of the Web's best known political bloggers -- Glenn Reynolds (www.instapundit.com), Joshua Micah Marshall (www.talkingpointsmemo.com), Andrew Sullivan (www.andrewsullivan.com) and Slate magazine's Mickey Kaus (www.kausfiles.com) have become veritable journalistic power brokers due to their large online followings. A link on one of these bloggers' sites can catapult a previously unknown Web writer into fame, or notoriety, or both.

Bloggers have been compared to 19th-century pamphleteers and to the 17th-century British diarist Samuel Pepys. They've been slammed and sneered at by mainstream news columnists like the Boston Globe's Alex Beam, and they've gotten their revenge by picking their critics apart online. The Godfather of present day blogging, it's generally agreed, is the Internet gossip Matt Drudge, whose role in the Lewinsky saga resembles the role of today's bloggers in Lott's demise.

[...]

nickdenton.org: America's bloated newspapers

This is a much longer article and definitely worth reading or printing out. I don't necessarily agree with everything Nick says, cuz there are a few hasty generalizations that people outside big media often make (and that I've made a time or two in my life as well). This dude might be a Fox Network fan (ach!), but no accounting for taste. But food for thought.

nickdenton.org: America's bloated newspapers

We assume that the US media is as vibrant as the society on which it reports. That's a myth: America's newspapers in particular are lazy monopolies. Fortunately, that's about to change. Here's a contrarian take on the US media industry for the State of the Union column in Management Today, the UK business magazine.

[...]

In Hollywood’s imagination, American journalists may be boisterous, impassioned and fearless. But, even by the loose standards of Hollywood mythmaking, this reputation does not stand up. The humdrum reality: most newspapers in the US are lazy local monopolies; the television networks underbid eachother for the lowest common denominator; and they all commit the cardinal sin of journalism, boring the audience.

The evidence?

Newspapers design headlines to bury the story. They are so laden with abstract nouns or the passive voice they could be spoofs. Try this: “Anger Raises Concern About Bush Run in '04”. And that was from the New York Times, widely thought the best of the broadsheets.

[...]

All these criticisms beg the question: given that the US media market is the most lucrative in the world, why is the journalism not more vigorous? It depends whom you ask. The shrivelled intelligentsia bemoans the poverty of public-service broadcasting; liberals cite ownership by media conglomerates; conservatives blame consistent liberal bias, and suffocating political correctness; and hard-scrabble reporters the pernicious effects of ethics courses at modern journalism schools.

Newspaper Calls in Readers, and They Repond

Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Newspaper Calls in Readers, and They Repond Silicon Valley - Dan Gillmor's eJournal - Newspaper Calls in Readers, and They Repond

The Dallas Morning News did a smart thing when the shuttle Columbia went down. It gave readers a way to submit what they were seeing to a central site, then published readers' pictures and commentary online, creating a database that let other readers search by keyword and community, among things.

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dallas/specialreports/2003/columbia/accounts.html