Epistemographer

I’ve been meaning to post something about Movable Type for a while – especially since I realized that people actually read this blog (when I actually post to it regularly), and that my words occasionally have an impact beyond what I’d expect.

Back when everyone went bonkers over Six Apart’s licensing scheme for Movable Type 3.0 (myself included), it looked like people would be fleeing MT in droves. My worries at the time centered mainly on the fact that as a developer, especially one who tends to take on underfunded projects, I was at the mercy of Six Apart if they started aiming for the corporate market and priced people like me out of using their software. “Geez,” said I, “maybe I’d better just switch over to open source stuff, ‘cause then I’ll always be free.”

The lesson of the past five months has essentially been: um nope. Two main reasons for this…

First, I actually tried using WordPress for a freelance blog project, and realized that it was more than worth paying for the polished backend and database schema of MT if I’m designing for less computer-literate users.

Secondly, Six Apart sprang into action like no company I’ve ever seen. I’d mostly just like to echo Brad Choate’s thoughts on the matter:

Say what you will about the whole MT 3.0D licensing debacle, Six Apart is an awesome company.


They’ve really worked hard to resolve the public relations nightmare they found themselves in last month. And they’ve made changes which should appeal to most everyone. Sure, they made some mistakes. What company doesn’t?


What they continue to get right is that they listen and respond. And it perfectly demonstrates the power of the software they produce. Especially when it comes to corporate-to-user communications.


…


I tell you, this is lightning fast response. And unheard-of behavior for a corporation. Typically, a corporation sets pricing for their products and customers just have to deal. The level of outrage from Movable Type users is proof positive that Movable Type is a product that is dear to many. The swift and gracious response on the part of Six Apart shows their commitment to their users and to the MT community.

In the months since, I’ve interacted personally with people on the Six Apart sales team regarding multiple projects, and I’ve been quite impressed with how responsive and willing to work with customers they’ve been. In sum, please consider my “sky is falling” panic retracted, and my faith in Six Apart and their software fully restored.

You might recall the moment from last week’s vice-presidential debate when Vice President Cheney mistakenly referred viewers to factcheck.com instead of factcheck.org, as well as the ensuing debacle when, for days afterward, factcheck.com redirected to georgesoros.com. Conspiracy theories abounded, and I personally was left grinning in bemusement at the cosmic irony of it all.

Now, the true story comes out from the owners of factcheck.com, and it’s a beauty:

The website “factcheck.com” is operated by Name Administration Inc., a privately held company based in the Cayman Islands. Traditionally, internet addresses ending in “.com” have been intended for commercial purposes, while “.org” has been intended for use by non-profit organizations, such as the “factcheck.org” website operated by the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania.


Name Administration Inc. is a leading domain name administrator, website developer and internet traffic syndicator. Name Administration Inc. utilizes a portfolio of generic domain names, such as antarctica.com, lipbalm.com, and others as stand alone websites which collectively form an integrated advertising network offering users relevant paid search advertisements and information. “Factcheck.com” was registered by Name Administration long before the U.S. vice presidential debate for use in providing a directory of commercial providers of information resources relevant to the generic term “fact check”.


When Mr. Cheney mis-spoke, viewers heeded his advice and visited factcheck.com in staggeringly large numbers. Name Administration re-directed this traffic for several reasons – to protect our servers from the potential for damage caused by Mr. Cheney’s error, and as a service to our advertisers. Our advertisers intend to pay for potential customers to their websites instead of observers of political current events.


Name Administration re-directed those visitors to a website relevant to U.S. politics. Name Administration chose the website of investor, philanthropist, and political activist Mr. George Soros, because his website is well-funded, does not seek to raise funds from visitors, and had greater capacity to absorb the load of visitors, reaching over 100 visitors per second during peak times after the debate. An administrator for the Annenberg Public Policy Center has since informed us that their web server system would have been severely crippled by the load, had we directed the traffic to them. Contrary to some imaginative rumors spun by some, our action was undertaken on a voluntary and emergency basis, with no prior communication or consultation with the Soros organization. As confirmed by our legal counsel in response to media inquiries, Name Administration Inc. has not been offered, and has not sought, any inducement, compensation, or other consideration from any individual or organization for re-directed the resulting web traffic.


Traffic to factcheck.com has begun to return to normal levels, and Name Administration Inc. has restored the website to its original and intended use. Name Administration Inc. wishes the citizens of the United States well in the selection of their leaders, whose actions can sometimes have unintended consequences beyond the borders of the United States.

The last paragraph just makes me chuckle…

No, literally. David Foster Wallace met George Saunders tonight at the Public Theater for a several-hour discussion of fiction, writing and teaching sponsored by HousingWorks.¹

I decided to go (and convinced Jenny to come with me) based on my appreciation for Wallace’s prose – he’s one of my favorite writers, and reading A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again was a revelation to me as I realized that his writing sounded like the inside of my 20 year-old head (an experience that’s only happened a few other times, most notably when I read Douglas Coupland for the first time). In person, he didn’t disappoint, seeming just funny and genuine and like the sort of guy I’d have hung out with a lot in college.

As much as I enjoyed DFW’s end of the conversation, I have to say that George Saunders more than held his own, and I can’t believe that a writer who’s this smart and funny hasn’t crossed my radar. Like, ever. I left with the desire to go buy a few of his books and if he’s anywhere near as engaging in print as he is in person, I’ll be a happy reader.

Their conversation ranged across the landscape of writing, and I wouldn’t be able to do it justice here because I was so enthralled that it didn’t occur to me to take notes until about halfway through, at which point I realized that I didn’t have any paper on me anyways (and wasn’t feeling nearly dorky enough to crack open the laptop and start typing away). One thing that particularly struck me, however, was the fact that both of these guys have teaching gigs, Wallace at Pomona and Saunders at Syracuse, and they kept referring to their students and seminars throughout the two hours. It’s clear that teaching isn’t just a day job to either of them, but at the same time it wasn’t obvious exactly how central being a teacher was to either of their identities. Regardless, I have to admit that I’m thoroughly envious of any student who gets to take a seminar from either writer.

All in all, this was the best Q&A I’ve been to in years, on a par with the
Evening with Kevin Smith that I went to at Cornell. While both events suffered from the unavoidable “poser-who-wants-the-validation-of-the-famous-guy(s)” sort of questions, in both cases the sheer coolness of the people on stage triumphed in the end. Without a doubt, this was the best two hours waiting in line that I’ve spent in some time.²

———
¹ This may be the most hyperlink-rich sentence I’ve ever written.
² Speaking of which, here’s an interesting question – I show up at 5:15 and there’s no line, just a bunch of people milling around in the lobby of the Public Theater. I walk up to the table that’s obviously set up to dispense tickets, and ask the two guys standing in front of it whether they’re in line for the Q&A. “Nope,” one says. Immediately, a woman nearby walks over, asks us if we’re in line. “Sure, why not?” says the other guy. “Yup, we’re the line, I guess,” I add. The woman stands behind us, and within ten seconds, the entire population of the lobby (maybe 30 people or so) has coalesced into a line behind her. Hence the question – at an event like this where free tickets are being given out, how many people does it take to form the nucleus for a line, tipping the crowd from chaos into order?

Via Lessig: It seems that bloggers are organizing a free audio version of his new book, Free Culture. A list of who’s recording what is up at AKMA (with several chapters already available for download), and if I could spare the time from dissertation writing, I’d haul out my microphone and pitch in.

Today, I went to an Information Law Institute lunch at NYU. The lunches, coordinated by Helen Nissenbaum, bring together an interdisciplinary crowd of people from NYU and elsewhere in the greater New York City area, including one or two of us from Cornell when we can be in town.

The speakers were Anil Dash, of Six Apart fame, Michael Weiksner of E the People and Jay Rosen of the NYU Department of Journalism. Jeff Jarvis was on the side of the room and did a good job of blogging the whole thing, so I won’t bother recounting the details (if I’d known that there was a live wifi connection there, I’d have brought my laptop and done the same).

I also managed to get in one of the only questions/comments, about the difficulty doing the day-to-day identity management that’s part and parcel of being an interdisciplinary scholar while maintaining a blog (sort of a variation on the necessity of envisioning your audience and writing for them). Sadly, there was little time whatsoever to actually discuss these and other issues – the speakers ran a good hour and a half, and barely managed to get ideas on the table, much less have a discussion to chew them over. Someday, it’ll be really fascinating to teach a semester-long seminar on blogging (which apparently is happening at NYU in the immediate future).

I walked away with the same thought that seems to pop up whenever there are a bunch of people talking about blogs in one room: everybody seems to agree that blogs are interesting, and most agree that they’re a Big Deal, but the “blog” as a technology seems to mean different things to different people. For Dash, blogs are fundamentally an outgrowth of the personal journal, while for Weiksner they’re a tool to organize activism and for Rosen they’re essentially another medium for thinking and teaching. I’m not saying that these different meanings don’t overlap in all sorts of Venn-diagramy ways, but there’s still an awful lot of interpretive flexibility around the blog as a technology (as opposed to its technical details).

Via Wired News:

WASHINGTON — A federal appeals court on Friday rejected efforts by the recording industry to compel the nation’s Internet providers to turn over names of subscribers suspected of illegally swapping music online.

The ruling from a three-judge panel from the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia was a dramatic setback for the industry’s controversial anti-piracy campaign. It overturned the trial judge’s decision to enforce a type of copyright subpoena from a law that predates the music downloading trend.

The appeals court said the 1998 law doesn’t cover the popular file-sharing networks currently used by tens of millions of Americans to download songs.

Via Shay (who’ll hopefully get a blog of his own up one of these days), here’s one of those things that’s been buzzing around the ‘Net for the past few weeks. I hadn’t seen it until tonight, and it’s definitely worth a few minutes of your time…just stunning…

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~thon/SiCAF_Seoul_2003.wmv

Wow…these are great. Really really great. Just go see for yourself.

(My favorite is “goals“)

Hey, everyone – so Jenny and I wound up with two extra tickets for today’s taping of The Daily Show. We’ll be getting in line around 4:30-ish, and the studio is on 54th St. between 10th and 11th Aves, so you’d need to meet us there (they hand out numbers around then, so we couldn’t just save more places until the doors open at 5:30)…

If you’re interested, send me an email or instant message (STSJosh via aol) before 3 pm – that’s when we’ll be heading out. Or, you can try my cell phone…the number’s on my cv, linked on the right.

Oh, and the guest seems to be Will Farrell, though I’m not sure if it’s a live or taped interview (we got suckered on that count last week)…

Saw The Matrix:Revolutions last Wednesday with Dave, Nina and Randy (check out Dave’s thoughts here, though you might need to scroll a bit). The theater was packed – there was a line to get up the escalator, so you could give your ticket to an usher and wait in another line, to get up to the theater and finally find seats. Thankfully, we’d bought tickets on Fandango beforehand, because there was no line at all for tickets – they’d sold out well before we got to the theater.

My short take on the movie: liked it quite a bit. I had also really liked the second one (even more than I’d liked the first), so you should probably take my thoughts on the film with a grain of salt.

[spoilers below – if you keep reading, consider yourself warned] (more…)