Ma chatte Zoé, qui a été dans ma vie pendant 22 ans. Elle nous a quittés à la fête des chats et des Acadiens (15 août, la mi-août), l’été dernier.
Fichier PDF de 800k avec des photos de Zoé, prises par notre amie Gaëlle, qui a gardé Zoé en pension à Québec pendant plusieurs de nos absences de Montréal.
Bien hâte d’avoir un autre chat.
Pour l’oreille ravagée de Zoé, c’était un hématome qui avait éclaté.
No, I don’t mean “classified information” as in “restricted access.” I mean, ways to classify data, content, pieces of information, books, tracks…
Listened, a few days ago, to two podcasts in a row which gave special attention to information processing in relationship with library systems. The more I learn about them, the more librarians fascinate me.
The first podcast was a ROS episode similar in insight to Foucault’s The Order of Things (Les mots et les choses). Less historical emphasis, but some look into classifier authority. Lydon seemed surprised by the concept of “folksonomy,” which came to refer to community-based taxonomies during the “Web 2.0” era.
In the second podcast, Jon Udell’s Interviews with Innovators, Art Rhyno was reestablishing information-based authority, to a certain extent. Thanks in part to this show, I now have a better grasp of my own attitude toward authority in information and knowledge management (the description of which will have to wait for another post).
“The State of Our OA Is Strong”
Peter Suber, SPARC Open Access Newsletter, 5/2/07
Apparently caused by a fire, caused by homeless man.
wbztv.com – Fire Shuts Down Longfellow Bridge For Hours
Yet another reason not to smoke!
Of course, the very idea of the Internet is based on the idea that even if some connections don’t work, the rest of the system can work. Even though the downtime happened in a hub of Internet activity and Internet2 is an important part of the overall network, the problem was still circumscribed.
Still, it does sound weird that Internet2 connections should be so susceptible to disruption. One would think that all care would be taken to make sure that Cambridge and Boston are constantly connected through many routes, in case some connections drops. After all, it’s a lot of lost productivity for a fairly localised issue.
Of course, I know nothing of network engineering. It just seems strange to me.
At least, from beer waste water.
This one has been making the rounds, on diverse brewclubs. We can certainly insert jokes about Aussie beer, as this is a project with Foster’s.
But it might also be good news for environmental reasons.
From pizza orders to baby showers.
Army Squeezes Soldier Blogs, Maybe to Death –
The new regulations (and their author) take an unusually expansive view of what kind of unclassified information a foe might find useful.
Now that Valenti is gone, will the MPAA finally get a clue?
MPAA: We are committed to fair use, interoperability, and DRM
Come on, gang! Give this a little bit more thought! You can do it!
Can’t find more information just now but on the latest episode of ScienceTalk (SciAm‘s weekly podcast)
Scientific American editor-in-chief John Rennie discusse[d] peer review of scientific literature, the subject of a panel he recently served on at the World Conference of Science Journalists
I hope there will be more openly available information about this panel and other discussions of the peer-review process.
Though I do consider the peer-review process extremely important for academia in general, I personally think that it could serve us more if it were rethought. Learning that such a panel was held and hearing about some of the comments made there is providing me with some satisfaction. In fact, I’m quite glad that the discussion is, apparently, thoughtful and respectful instead of causing the kind of knee-jerk reaction which makes many a discussion inefficient (including in academic contexts).
No, I don’t mean TV ads…
This one certainly made the rounds among observers of online activities, but I only just got the link through a comment by Martin Lessard, the insight-savvy YulBlogger and “Internet culture” describer.
The Groundswell (Incorporating Charlene Li’s Blog): Forrester’s new Social Technographics report
Many companies approach social computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed – a blog here, a podcast there – to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for.
Sounds obvious, doesn’t it? I get from it the same reaction as from effective ethnography. Not really a “Eureka!” moment. More of a “Doh!” moment, when you suddenly realise what was really happening around you.
This ethnography-like insight is even more obvious in the report itself (a review copy of which I got through email, thanks to Forrester’s excellent policy for content use). In that report, Li et al. define different user types in a manner not incompatible with our tendency to classify, in ethnography as in cultural life. Like ethnography, the report is showing the relationships between those different profiles (instead of stereotyping or “profiling”).
Sure, the proportion of creators is an important factor for Old School market research. But, what’s more important, is that different people adopt different behaviours in different contexts. Obvious, but important.
The report talks about age and gender differences, provides evidence for the changes in the Internet 6 ecology, and manages to treat Internet users as human beings. “All in fifteen pages or less!”
Again, this report isn’t groundbreaking. But it can be really useful as a representation of cultural patterns for technological adoption (MS Word document). (As it turns out, this issue came up in an exam I gave today… Wish I could share the textbook page on early-adopters in cultural change.)
There are other blog posts about this report, including some advice for marketers:
Companies seeking to engage customers with these new tools need to understand where their audiences are with this categorisation and then create bespoke programmes for them.
As per Larry Wall’s ethnographic training, diagonal thinking. “There’s More Than One Way to Do It.”