Hack the world and the pages will happen: On the Clue Trail at Comdex 99: Day Two.

Care about instant messaging? Want to put your fingerprints on the development of an instant messaging system that works for you because it's by you? Check out Jabber. The longer story is here, and it's deep. We got both these items from one of Jabber's involvees, Perry Evans, who is perhaps best known for bringing Mapquest to the world.

Doc's first day at Comdex: On the Clue Trail at Comdex 99: Day One.

Drinking, kindness and rock & Roll. Check out Chris Locke's latest EGR — Entropy Gradient Reversals.

Branding (ouch!) standards (zzz...) and why everyone hates marketing (grrr), among other incendiary observations — all in David Weinberger's latest JOHO (Journal of the Hyperlinked Organization).

Controlled Study Department — The Cluetrain Manifesto, due out in February, 2000, is available for purchase at both Amazon.com and barnesandnoble.com. We won't prejudice you, but check out the differences, starting with the lengths of those URLs.

Red Herring has hacked Transmeta, the super-silent company that famously employs Linus Torvalds, the alpha author of Linux. Supposedly we'll learn something at Comdex on Monday when Linus Himself will let us in on... whatever. Doc Searls will be there, so look for news from The Front. For his contrarian thoughts about the Silence Issue, read Cheap Talk: Why Open Source and Silence Don't Mix, from the June 1999 issue of Linux Journal.

Is there room for an Open Source conversation that isn't about Microsoft vs. Linux? Or about the free software religion? That's the idea behind LinuxForSuits.com. Check it out, and let Doc Searls know what you think.

Deeper conversations — an old friend of Doc's just turned him on to The Leadership Circle, which has on its faculty David Whyte, the poet and writer who is a favorite both of Doc and Rick Levine. David's home page is here.

Clues are personal — and Personalization is the new discipline concentrating exclusively on that principle. The Personalization Summit starts on November 15 in San Francisco. As you may know, Chris Locke is the editor of Personalization.com.

Dilbertian corrolaries — Despair, Inc., with its "Demotivators," may be the funniest site on the Web, at least from a Cluetrainian perspective. Best new pessimistic nostrum: "It's always darkest before it goes pitch black."

discuss

• Good news: The site looks great.
• Bad news: my Web reading time just went through the roof. ;-)

PS. You can expand your controlled study with Chapters.Ca if you like:

http://www.chapters.ca/books/details/default.asp?ISBN=0738202444&UID=3329A1A493D111D39B7000805FADF738&WSID=111152CBEA6B9B3811D39C2800508B62&AFFID=104244

discuss

"Clean" links to The Cluetrain Manifesto:

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0738202444

B&N: http://shop.barnesandnoble.com/booksearch/isbnInquiry.asp?isbn=0738202444

Since their servers transparently handle the extra info in a link, it's only a pain for long-suffering web writers, copying and pasting these longs strings of gobbledygook.

It's a shame neither site has figured out a way for web writers to link to a book in a simple, easy-to-write way, eg:

www.bookseller.com?ISBN=0738202444

or even:

www.bookseller.com?title=The Cluetrain Manifesto

discuss

There's no way to comment, even by email, without subscribing?

I can't comment on the DF on only one item, I have to comment on the entire stream, apparently.

The little Frontier icon as a pointer to the discussion group is a touch elitist. I know about Frontier, but not everyone does.

Part of being clued is making sure you cut the right line between expecting from and leading your audience. Tune that a bit, 'eh?

Ask Jakob; I'm sure he could suggest...

Oh; a fourth: Just like DaveNet, these pages are slightly too wide to fit my 640x480 screen. Note: "get a bigger monitor" isn't an acceptable answer, nor an option; my lunchbox portable has a custom Cirrus 6235 card to drive it's LCD that _is not upgradeable_. Oops.

Now, my _actual_ comment:

Jabber. "Your contact list is kept on the server".

And you're _plugging_ this? Privacy is no longer a concern, is that it? Information about me, and whom I know, should only be being released when I tell it to.

Yes, traffic analysis, logging, and false senses of security; I know. But, still... such obvious breaches of privacy are pushing things a touch, I think. I don't mind the idea of one client to deal with all the protocols, but who caused the Jabber team to think they're not going to play armor-and-armament with AOL and MS? It's not really in those companies commercial best interest for their protocols to hit a proxy server...

Cheers, -- jra

discuss

discuss

http://weblogs.userland.com/cluetrain/discuss/theleadershipcircle.com should be http://theleadershipcircle.com.

dws.

discuss

I'd be happy to invite Lauren Weinstein, of the Privacy Forum, and Peter Neumann, of RISKS, to comment on my reply, if you'd like.

_I'm_ not at all afraid of the opinions they might evince on my thoughts.

You have a good day now.

Cheers, - jra

discuss

And I would think that Amazon, BN and the rest would like to make linking as easy as possible. Anyway, that was my point. Or one of them. And I think that was yours as well, no?

discuss

And I would think that Amazon, BN and the rest would like to make linking as easy as possible. Anyway, that was my point. Or one of them. And I think that was yours as well, no?

discuss

FWIW, JRA's post came across to me as a series of suggestions posed in somewhat negative terms (e.g. "a touch elitist"). Not as complaints. But you're right: they are complaints as well as suggestions.

Labeling JRA as a person "with pain," however, escalates matters by making them personal. This yields responses like JRA's next post, where he says "I'd be happy to invite Lauren Weinstein, of the Privacy Forum, and Peter Neumann, of RISKS, to comment on my reply, if you'd like." I guess he's asking you to step outside. Whatever, he's lost me here. I have no idea what he's talking about. Suddenly we're among stuff that belongs in email — and therefore helps make your case against discussion groups.

The bottom line for me is that negative shit in discussion groups degenerates into flame wars, which become very, very time-consuming.

Like: here I am, consuming time. And reminding myself that I've gotta get back to the last Comdex piece.

Peace, gentlemen.

discuss

"Internetanvändarna tittar inte på reklamen" (Search engine gibberish URL)

The best link I came up was to a page at Lund University (English):

Eye tracking at LUCS

discuss