"you know..."

A few weeks ago I transcribed an interview with a local policy maker. If you've never done it, try it. IT is a very "interesting" task and it makes you paying attention to various details of the language a person uses. I was surprised by the amount of times my participants used the phrase "you know".

Since then, i keep on noticing that many people are using it excessively and do not really pay attention to it. Very different people too. Have you ever noticed that? I hear my fellow students using it and today a professor in class also used it all the time. I wonder if i am using it all the time now too, you know...

Shut down day

This is basically a free advertisement for an initiative promoting a day-long abstention from computers. Unfortunately, the organizers do not provide any explanations for why they suggest shutting the computers down for a day. This, and the negative tone of the call for action, may be the reason behind quite a sound opposition to this initiative.

However, i would suggest examining it with a calm head and thinking about this day as a day of re-examining the priorities and proportions in our lives. When i say proportion, i mean proportions of both the great contribution of technology to our lives and at the same time, our growing dependency on it. I will write more on the subject and suggest a little bit different way to approach this issue soon, but in the meantime, please mark you calendars and try making it. You will be surprised to discover that it can be actually nice.

So, here is the date: Saturday, 24 March 2007.
Event's website

And here is a funny video for you to watch, just before you use the "turn off" button:

Light at the end of the storage

A positive sign from Google. They just posted in the company blog that they are not going to save our search history forever... well maybe... unless we ask... or unless the law changes and the big brother asks them... and in general they are going to store the search history forever, but they will blur the personally identifiable information after a couple of years.

I think this is good that the issue is now on the public agenda, though there are still unanswered questions (like why the identifiable information is stored in the first place, unless i asked for that? what is the nature of my relationship with google - am i selling the eyeballs for advertisers, or i am selling information about my behavior?). But it seems like a move in the right direction.

Any thoughts?

Firfox profile

I think it's been over half a year since i completely switched to Firefox and, frankly, do not have any desire of getting back to IE (except for the rare occasions when the site doesn't come up right). Particularly i like it because of all the add-ons. I got this small weather bar at the bottom of the window, which is extremely helpful in the erratic Ithaca weather. I love BugMeNot plug-in and DownThemAll is also very handy. I am checking out a citation add-on from Zotero and am about to switch to del.ish.us as the main favorites manager. And there are more which i don't have the time to look up. I can feel the program getting more and more customized to my needs and it nice.

But there is also a concern. I am still using windows. So eventually i will have to re-install the computer. What will happen to all the personalization i have done to Firefix when i re-install it? The beauty of these add-ons is that they become so "transparent" that you just use them without thinking: "here i am going to use DownThemAll", or "i am checking weather with Forecastfox" (I actually had to look up the name of the add-on, to write about it here). You simply use it.

So here is the idea, and my guts' feeling is that it has been implemented already, but if not, i hope someone with enough coding skills will pick the challenge up. What if we could save a profile of our Firefox? Kind of an image that we could put at a newly installed machine, and it would have all the features we got used to? Such an image could be stored at a third party server, or you could just make it locally and back it up. But the main pint is that you personalized configuration of Firefox would be backed up.

What do you think?

Musical opium for masses?

What is an international cultural event without some drama? What is that drama without Israel being involved in it? So, keeping up with the tradition, the upcoming Eurovision is supplying us with the current drama starring the Israeli entry. It looks like the Israeli song is facing a potential disqualification for containing a political message (more articles here).

Keeping my Israeli identity aside, what is the message conveyed by the Eurovision organizers? Is it that music (or art for this matter) cannot be political? Is the pop culture only about entertaining and once it is getting any message beyond fun and consumerism, it is no longer allowed? Is public forbidden to think while having fun? Is the mainstream musical culture simply opium for masses blocking them from critical thinking?

Documentary on Google

Thanks to Tarleton for this one.

It is a bit long (47 minutes), but i think it is interesting even though i did not form a strong opinion about it. If i had to provide a short synopsis of the movie then it would be that:

- watch the first 15 minutes to see what a cool and fun company Google is
- watch the next 15 minutes to see the great scope of google's activity worldwide
- keep on watching to the next 15 minutes to hear the difficult and interesting questions google's activity rises (my favorite part).

Particularly interesting are the words of Brewster Kahle, the founder and digital librarian for the Internet Archive, reacting to the "Hole in the wall" project usage of google. If you really have no time to watch the whole thing, just listen to this around minute 37:40.



Here us a link to the page on the original website. Ironically enough it is available through google video :)