Internet – john paganetti

Paying Nothing

There was a very long discussion on a website I read about whether or not “Pay what you want” for music included “nothing.” It was an interesting back and forth, but there was this one little gem that popped out in the discussion.

God I hate modern consumers like you. “I’m going to take this apple, vendor. IF I like it, and I have some extra money, and I don’t have anything else I want to spend it on, and I’m feeling generous, I might pay you some amount that may or may not meet or exceed your asking price. But only if I feel like you’re making exactly what it cost to produce that apple, and not a cent more, because then you’re a greedy 1% asshole.”

It’s more like “You’re a convenient apple cart and I like you so I’ll buy an apple for $1 from you on the way to work even though apples are theoretically freely available from trees.”

The corollary being “And boy I’m glad you’re not a dick who goes around through the countryside chopping down and burning every wild apple tree you see to ‘protect your livelihood’ and ordering every kid you see picking free apples shot.”

Designer

Apparently I’m a web designer now. I guess it’s not really a new thing, it’s all over my resume – designed and built the website, designed and built the website, etc. It’s something I always seem to end up doing, in part because I’m asked, in part because I volunteer, but mostly because web designers charge so damn much. I’m not a good web designer, as proud as I am of my website I can’t claim that. Regardless, it seems like I’m doing it more and more. I made the website for Nishi’s business, which she has started up again, and I made a redesign for Connecticut BioFuels, though it’s unclear if/when it will be implemented. Now I’m involved in a start-up of a friend of mine, and it looks like I’m their man on the web. I’m not complaining, I just find it funny that I keep drifting towards something I consciously avoided.

I have no desire to be a web designer and nothing else. It isn’t a full time job that would work for me. I don’t think I have a good aesthetic eye, for one, and I’ve never been especially handy with graphic design. I love the initial part of designing a website, planning and troubleshooting. The fine-tuning bugs me a bit more, often because it consists of a thousand tiny changes that I largely disagree with. I think to really make a good website you need to be both involved in the project and tweak it as it is used. Being a professional web designer precludes all of that. But I’m not a web designer, and shouldn’t be looked at as an authority about what makes a good website. In that way I’m thankful for the middle road I’ve paved.

One of these things is just like the others

Have you seen that video? Where she whips her hair back and forth? Or that video where we learn the days of the week? Or…this? Yikes.

Here’s what I don’t get: Rebecca Black, age 13 and Eden Wood, age 6, sing songs not written by them to music not arranged by them, appear in videos not directed or produced by them, and motivations are questioned. Willow Smith, age 10, does the same thing, gets reviewed by legitimate music critics, and even receives radio play. I’m not confused about why one song/video/whatever is more popular than the others, but I am confused about why they’re seen as different. Complaints and accusations of abuse and exploitation leveled against both Ms. Black and Ms. Wood are just as valid against Willow Smith. Being the daughter of a musician does not give her a free pass.

While it’s true that we police social deviance among adults, it’s also true that children are held to completely different standards, and plenty of actions that are socially acceptable among adults are not among children.

Business Idea

Inspired by a recent xkcd, I figured I’d post some ideas I’ve had that have come to life (though not by my hands).

My decentralized web idea is beginning to take shape in a big way – decentralized DNS. Though under this method, content would still be centralized, it’s only a small step from one to the other, and arguably DNS is the only part of the idea not yet implemented in one way or another.

Between the Bars is a website that has successfully executed my Prison Blog idea, and I’m so incredibly glad. This was a project I kept wanting to get around to, but haven’t had a stable enough address to do so. Suffice to say, I’m helping out as much as I can.

Oh, and then there’s the oh-so-close-but-not-quite Eee Keyboard which I wanted to see as a smartphone dock instead of the underpowered overpriced mistake in stores today.

Free Domain

I bought something on buy.com recently, and there was a GoDaddy promotion going on at the same time, so I now have a free domain at my disposal. I tried to give it to a few people I thought could use it, but no luck. I have no practical use for it, but I need to redeem it by April 1st or I lose it.
Any ideas, suggestions, or silly projects that need a home?

The Subjective Web

I’ve been reading a lot of gloom and doom posts regarding the internet. I’m not sure what internet these people are on, but it’s not mine. The internet is redefining its purpose in our lives, and this is scaring some people. I think some of these people may be from the old internet – before and during the bubble. That is a little before my time, but during my time on the net, it has still changed a good deal. We have to change with it.

In a post about the results of releasing a book in print and online (for free) at the same time, Chris Kelty writes, “The Internet is dead.” Ok, that’s a bit out of context, but what he does mean is that anything on the internet is not instantly special anymore. Yes, there was a time when something gained a certain amount of prestige and attention for being on the web, but that time has long past. But that doesn’t mean the internet has nothing to offer books. I only read Kelty’s post because it was quoted on a blog about an upcoming book. That gift of exposure is something huge that the internet has to offer us. Things posted online do not automatically garner attention, but they have the potential to. I certainly would have never heard about either book (Siva’s or Kelty’s) without their respective websites. This post (or any blog post for that matter) is a perfect example of that potential: I don’t expect many people to read it, but they could…which actually brings me to my next point.

Read Write Web posted about how the social web is changing things. Except that isn’t how they’re phrasing it – the title of the article is “The Unforeseen Consequences of the Social Web.” They share Kelty’s sentiments that the internet is getting crowded, pointing to the popularity of some social sites. They also talk about privacy issues with the social web. I remember hearing a lot of this when facebook created their news feed. No new information was shared – people had access to exactly the same information as they had before, but it became more visible. The same problem is true of the social web: tweets are inherently public, but the social web makes it so they could gain attention quickly, and often create mirrors of that information elsewhere (that you cannot control).

All of these problems seem to stem from the same thing: what people expect from the web, and what they actually get. In the first case, Kelty was surprised to find that popularity of a work on the internet takes as much effort as popularity in the ‘real world.’ This does not mean the internet has failed him. In the second, people are upset about their lack of privacy on the web. This does not mean the internet is too intrusive. What this does mean is that people need to reevaluate their relationship with the web, and better understand what it is, and what it is not. The web can be a lot of things, but treating it like something it is not will always let you down.

New Blog

Cool. I’ve been playing around with the layout of this site for a while now, and I’m really enjoying it. It is based on the zenburn color scheme, because it is really nice to look at. And I had a lot of fun making the little menu up top, and there will be more like that elsewhere about the site when I get time. I realize that anyone who reads this site reads it through an rss feed, but the site design is still worth noting. On that topic: update your rss feed.

Uh, what else? The main reason I switched domains is so I can make a site that is meant to be outward facing, as opposed to my previous site which was meant to be a bit more private. But I’ve gone back and tagged the archives, and things are a little more discoverable. There were some weird trends that emerged as I went through the posts. I tagged a lot more posts “sleep” than I had figured I would. That is all.

jQuery

So I’m beginning to mess around with the jQuery javascript library. It has taken me a while, but I finally have free time. This thing can do everything. I have a feeling my blog is going to become a lot prettier. I have a little test on the site right now that you can see – its just a simple stylesheet switcher. It is incredible how easy it was to implement. If you want to play with it, look at the bottom part of the sidebar for the ‘Style’ menu, and you can toggle between the default, and a zenburn-like design I’ve been playing with. It is mostly just a proof of concept for me, and I don’t intend to leave it there forever. I think eventually I’ll have it set up to change automatically depending on the time of day (really white webpages are brutal in a dark room).

The Open and Social Web

There is a certain kind of technology gaining popularity on the web. Most of it has been around for a little while now (a year or so), and is just gaining popularity and traction now. The idea behind this technology is that you’ll define something in one place, and it will follow you around the web, ideally making your life simpler.

First, and probably most prevalent, are Gravatars. The idea is that you set an avatar on the gravatar website, and any website you post to that is gravatar-enabled will automatically display your avatar based on your email address. So this way, on any website you post, your avatar will be there with you, and you won’t need to upload it to each site you post on.

Next are social commenting systems. I’ve just started looking into these recently, and I’m not really sure about them yet. The idea is similar to Gravatars, but takes it a step further and lets you post on any social commenting [Disqus or IntenseDebate] enabled comment system with a single user id. So you don’t need to sign up on new sites, and your comment history is associated with you. There are some other little features, but that is the main idea, and what is important to this post.

Lastly there is OpenID, which looks to do what the social comment systems are doing, but with everything (sort of). The idea behind OpenID is that you can sign into any OpenID enabled site with a single user, and access whatever it is that site is offering (this extends beyond comments). Oddly enough, both of the main social commenting systems support OpenID.

The way OpenID works is fairly simple – when you go to log in to a website that supports OpenID, you enter a URL specific to you. You’re then bounced over to whoever is authenticating you (likely whoever owns that URL) and log in. Then, you bounce back to the original site you were on, all logged in (and optionally some other information filled in for you).

I like OpenID more than either of the above systems, but not just because it has the potential to encompass both of them. OpenID is actually open. The other two systems are on centralized servers that are out of your control. Anyone can make an OpenID authentication server. Tonight I set up my own OpenID server just to test it, and it works. There are tools out there that make setting up a server trivial (I’m serious, you can and should do this). All of my information is completely under my control, and I am able to log into thousands of websites across the internet.

I don’t really have a conclusion, but the idea behind these services is interesting and worth paying attention to, and OpenID is pretty awesome.

Myth and the Information Age

Myth has its roots in poor access to information. There are loads of myths from ancient times, though as time goes on, the myths get fewer and fewer. In fact, there is a inverse correlation between the amount of recorded information and the amount of myths circulating. Looking at the history of the United States, there were many myths and folktales in the colonies, and as time went on and newspapers grew and people began to write, they became fewer. In the West, there was a strong frontier myth until the West became Urbanized.

But today, we’re looking at an unprecedented amount of information. The internet has made it so that anyone can contribute to the available pool of information, and anyone else can easily access it. What will happen to myth? We know more about celebrity and events than we ever have before in history. As hard as the National Enquirer tries, its not easy to make credible things up.

Myth’s best chance seems to be the purposeful dissemination of bad information, but the internet has already dealt with that. I’ve seen many many cases of “Breaking News” that over the course of a day is quickly revealed as fake. When everyone who reads a story can easily check its validity, it is near impossible to pass any wooden nickels. The future won’t have any cowboys, or Paul Bunyan, or Johnny Appleseed.

I think what I’m getting at is the death of private life. We volunteer so much information that private life no longer exists. I’m certainly guilty of this. But there is loads of talk of that elsewhere, so I’ll stick to myth. It seems that someone would have to go out of their way to create any myth. Artists who don’t give interviews are good examples here. I think I’ll miss myth.