From: Gleanings
To: e.people
Subject: Gleanings: Funny Friday
OPENING THANG
It’s Friday, so I’ll start with a laugh: Interface Humor…
http://www.oasisproductions.net/jake/fear/
Everybody’s favorite whipping boy is back.
“Just in time for Halloween, online fashion e-retailer Boo.com is being
resurrected from the ashes of its spectacular flame-out earlier this
year.’
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19358,00.html?nl=shg
Shouldn’t they say, just in time for April Fool’s?
I can’t help but wonder, will Boo learn from the tons of articles pointing to bad usability as a partial cause for their failure, or will they just continue their merry way?
USABILITY MATTERS
New Alertbox…
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20001015.html
“The Web requires us to reverse the traditional direction of marketing.
Instead of messages that a company generates when it wants to reach its
customers, request marketing establishes a connection when the users
ask for it. Request marketing is especially suited for the
mobile Internet where intrusive messages are especially aggravating.
Permission marketing is no longer enough to satisfy customers:
request marketing is the next wave.”
NEWS
From Tomalak, the Standard
Salon: SDMI cracked!
All of the Secure Digital Music Initiative’s watermarks — its much ballyhooed
music protection scheme — have been broken. According to off-the-record
sources, the results of the Hack SDMI contest are in and not one single
watermark resisted attack.
http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2000/10/12/sdmi_hacked/index.html?CP=SAL&DN=110
News.Com: RIAA to develop “digital bar code” for online music.
The record industry’s trade association said Thursday that it will develop a
system for identifying digital music, an effort that could help it protect
downloads from labels and find songs posted illegally online.
http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-3174453.html
Guardian Unlimited: Kerbango tango.
“It looks and works like a radio, but it’s an internet radio, so instead of
picking up just 20 stations, it could pick up 20,000,” says James Gable, the
president of Kerbango. “And it does it without using a personal computer!”
http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,380866,00.html
“Pure-plays are dead” was the rallying cry of e-retail beat writers
this week, judging from the number who, encouraged perhaps by a market
sell-off, flocked to debunk the dot-com “myth” of the first-mover
advantage.
http://www.thestandard.com/article/display/0,1151,19357,00.html?nl=shg
Why Wine Exports Need the Net
http://www.thestandard.com/newsletters/NLdisplay/0,2936,115-2185,00.html
TECH MATTERS
Found a cool new tool… really only good if you have a personal site built the old fashioned way http://www.freefind.com/ gives you a search engine and a site map. Look for it on EH shortly…
Also, cool link checker here http://www.watchfire.com/
APROPOS OF NOTHING
Webmonkey is all about mars… and so am I
Mars’ First Colonists: Roaches?
http://go.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,39389,00.html/eg20001012
The Physics and Biology of Making Mars Habitable Conference
http://web.mit.edu/mmm/www/terraforming.html
is E.piphany not one of the worst names ever? Why did they take a perfectly good work like epiphany and dotcom it in such a brutal fashion? And there URL doesn’t even reflect the goofy spelling…www.e.piphany.com breaks, as does http://e.piphany.com/ but www.epiphany.com works. Bah. Off to F*cked Company…