WiredPen

Firefox 1.5.0.3 - PC. Cannot annotate a bookmark. Tried highlighting “notes” and typing - does not work. Tried putting cursor to the right of Note: and still cannot type anything. VERY disappointed - since I was going to use this to set up chapter links … since the TOC page is not hyperlinked to chapters (this is lame, guys!).

Ditto annotating a highlight — the text box has no visible spot to indicate the start of the text field and clicking around in the window has proven useless.

There is no “go back to the page that I was just on” option either. The incredibily one-page-at-a-time linearity is frustrating.

On the plus side, the “go to page number” feature actually goes to the printed page number. Good for you!

My kludge at the moment is to highlight a chapter title — that is giving me links to each “start” page. But I shouldn’t have to do this! These links should be pre-populated!

Crooked Timber has started an online seminar (think of it as a non-geographically or time-based book club discussion) of Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom. You can download PDFs of the book or order it from Amazon.

Notes: Presentation to UW Senate.
The Washington State Department of Transportation (WashDOT) will release the SR
520 project Environmental Impact Statement (EIS) mid-summer. Because
there is only a 60-day comment period, this meeting is the last
opportunity for the Senate to hear about the
proposed expansion of SR 520.

WashDOT is evaluating a six lane alternative, which would add two dedicated HOV lanes. The Pacific Street Interchange — which was part of a proposal by BetterBridge.org — has gained traction with WashDOT as an addition/change to the original six lane proposal. Arial View.

This Pacific Street Interchange would result in the closure of the current Montlake exit/onramp at Shelby-Hamlin.  WashDOT would build a new offramp that terminates in the Husky Stadium Parking Lot. [Note: WashDot has rejected the suspension bridge portion of the Better Bridge proposal.]

These links show WashDOT’s latest interpretation of the Pacific Street
Interchange. (very large,
cropped) Note the "lid" over the interchange, which appears to be
larger than Husky Stadium football field.
The offramp is eight lanes; Montlake would be six lanes north to 45th.

This proposal:

1. Has a negative impact on the Washington Park Arboretum.
2. Increases traffic volumes on neighborhood streets around the
   University.
3. Has a significant and negative impact on the long term development capacity of
   the University.

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This afternoon, I’ll be interviewed on KUOW on the Communications Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006 (COPE) in general and network neutrality (I prefer to call it network discrimination) in particular.

To be honest, I had not fully investigated the bill before now — I had focused only on net neutrality. That attitude has now changed, big time. From the CBO analysis of fiscal impacts:

• It would set up a national franchise for cable companies,
  replacing the current
  system of locally negotiated contracts.

• The bill would preempt state and local consumer
  protection laws; preempt local government authority over municipal
  rights of way; and preempt state laws prohibiting local governments
  from offering certain services to provide Internet access.

Whoa! That’s a bigger challenge, in my opinion, than waffling on net neutrality (the bill "waffles" because it doesn’t protect neutrality: something the telecos/cable companies don’t want).

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On Saturday, I was a participant in the PRSA Career Jumpstart — one of the "Day In The Life" professionals. Since I no longer practice PR, I talked to students and junior PR folk about new media and its impact on the profession. Amazingly, the first student to come to my round table was a fellow graduate of the University of Georgia Grady School (now the Grady College of Communication).

Karen Rathe asked me to talk briefly to her design class about interactivity and online news.

The first thing we have to do, of course, is define what we mean by "interactivity." Is just merely clicking a link or triggering an action (a technologist view of interaction between humans and computers) or does it involve the possibility of one or both parties being changed as a result of the "dialog." Depending on which side of this divide you find yourself on … you will have a different concept of what constitutes good interaction.

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Gizmodo says that’s the word from Gartner. How long has it been, now? 2003? I truly forget.

In a way, the hoopla over Harvard sophomore Kaavya Viswanathan, 19, is testimony to the power of "open source" philosophy. We’re not talking about software — Viswanathan’s product was a novel — and the community is loosely defined as "readers connected with Internet technology." But the result is not unlike what happens when a jointly developed program has a bug: the community points out the error. Usually without such glea and malevolence, however.

In this case, the "error" is alleged similiarities between Viswanathan’s novel, How Opal Mehta Got Kissed, Got Wild, and Got a Life, and four others of like genre: Can You Keep a Secret?,   The Princess Diaries,  Second Helpings and Sloppy Firsts. Let’s be clear: the plots are reportedly  different; the similarities arise in a few scenes, character descriptions.

Jimmy Wales (founder of Wikipedia) must be feeling vindicated. But perhaps he shouldn’t be. You see, that wasn’t the only high profile case of plagiarism to hit the streets two weeks ago. But there’s next to nothing written about the other one. You know. The $7 million contract to a CEO for yet another pithy business book? From the Boston Globe: (tip)

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The NY Times reports that Google is protesting a move by Microsoft to try to boost MSN search by making it the default search tool in the upcoming version of Internet Explorer. IE 7 has a search box in the upper right corner — a feature incorporated into the open source browser, Firefox. Firefox  search faults to Google but comes with other search sites "built in." Firefox consumers can easily add other search vehicles.

Is Microsoft using its monopoly position (Windows) to extend market share in an unrelated product (search) by using this tactic? That’s the 64-dollar question. And even if the answer were to be "yes," at the rate Washington acts on anti-trust matters, the question would be moot were it to act. Like it was with Netscape.