cloudsoup

W a-s-h i-n-g t-o-n, baby, D.C.!
W a-s-h i-n-g t-o-n, baby, D.C.!

Washington, D.C.
It's paradise to me
It's not because it is the grand old seat
Of precious freedom and democracy
No, no, no
It's not the greenery turning gold in fall
The scenery circling the Mall
It's just that's where my baby lives
That's all.

Washington D.C.!
It's the greatest place to be
It's not the cherries everywhere in bloom
It's not the way they put folks on the moon
No, no, no
It's not the spectacles and pagaentry
The thousand things you've got to see
It's just that's where my baby waits for me
W a-s-h i-n-g t-o-n, baby D.C.!
W a-s-h i-n-g t-o-n, baby D.C.!

Washington, D.C.!
It fits me to a T
It's not the people doing something real
It's not the way the springtime makes you feel
No, no, no
It ain't no famous name on a golden plaque
That keeps me that makes me ride that railroad track
It's my baby's kiss that keeps me coming back
It's my baby's kiss that keeps me coming back

The Magnetic Fields, Washington DC

Tom Coates writes a damaging critique of the BBC’s New Media restructuring. Damaging, specific and – who knows – maybe libellous.

Coates points out the BBC’s all-mouth-no-trousers promises that fill conference schedules but which result, practically, in nothing. He says,

there’s nothing here that’s even vaguely persuasive compared to Yahoo!, Amazon or Google. Flickr – a company that I don’t think got into double figures of staff before acquisition – has more public APIs than the BBC, who have roughly five thousand times as many staff

and then he goes on to blame an individual, someone called Ashley Highfield. It might be true, though, that the promotion of Highfield and the lack of production of stuff from the BBC compared to the tremendous work done by Yahoo, Google, Flickr et al stems from the same sclerotic, publicly-funded nature of the BBC. No customers to answer to, in effect, and no proper measure of success or failure other than the way their schemes are talked about and written about in conferences, meetings, trade journals and tame newspapers.

Remember, the BBC is funded through the most regressive tax you could imagine, it’s mandatory, non-payment is punishable by imprisonment and the guy in charge of New Media apparently can’t rotate a photo.

Tim O’Reilly’s business associates, CMP, applied for a servicemark on the phrase ‘Web 2.0′ in the context of conferences, including education conferences, and other live events.

The O’Reilly Web 2.0 conference website seems to misapply the servicemark in the title graphic, where the TM appears as a superscript after the word ‘conference’, clearly implying that a trademark is held for the phrase Web 2.0 Conference.

I had an email exchange with Tim O’Reilly about this:

Me: How long does it take to change a logo on a website? Why was it misapplied in the first place?

TO’R: Over the weekend, fwiw

Me: CMP is still misapplying the trademark symbol on the conference website.

TOR : Actually, it’s as simple as the fact that MediaLive applied for the trademark and O’Reilly didn’t know about it, and we were responsible for the web site.

So this seems pretty clear, doesn’t it? It seems that Tim O’Reilly is saying the TM is misapplied (which is true) and that it’ll take a weekend to fix.

However, in a later email, O’Reilly wrote:

I think is legitimate, for someone who originates a concept (especially in a particular context) to protect it. Hence, O’Reilly’s use of the TM symbol after The Web 2.0 Conference title on our web site

Which now seems to be suggesting the misuse of the TM was intentional. Which makes one wonder if Tim O’Reilly knows what the hell Tim O’Reilly is up to.

Updating one of my websites, I notice, according to the site admin area:

Cron is running. The last cron job ran 36 years 29 weeks ago.

Hmm… must get in touch with The Long Now

Did you hear about the homeopathic doctor who forgot to take his pills? Died of an overdose.

Tim Worstall,Homeopathic Malaria Treatment

Saw Simon Singh on Newsnight last evening, reporting on an investigation into homeopaths merrily touting their magic water as a malaria prophylactic. This is no longer just fleecing the gullible, this is criminal. Time to ban ‘em, i say.

On a more positive note, after the Newsnight report the Beeb showed a concert from Dakar to promote the Roll Back Malaria campaign. Highlights were Angélique Kidjo beautifully singing Malaika and Tinariwen performing Tis Metten.

Can we afford to miss this when we’re in the States in a couple of weeks?

If this town were a haircut, it would be a mullet … a strip consisting of commercial carbuncle of hucksterism and garish shops whose merchandise is so tasteless that it would shame Homer Simpson

Moon Handbooks, Tennessee

This photo Helen took in Parma, Italy has rapidly become the most viewed on one of her Flickr accounts:

No idea why.

My iPod Nano has completely changed my relationship to broadcast radio, as I’ve already mentioned. I’m not big on always-on music, although the handiness of carrying around your entire musical collection can’t be denied. It’s voice I listen to; MSM, in Radio 4 podcasts and the Australian ABC, and enthusiasts, hobbyists, cranks, geeks, lectures and others.

Out of the box the Nano is beautiful but it scratches, badly. So mine’s permanently in an an increasingly grubby rubbery sleeve. So it looks like crap. So much for Apple’s much-vaunted product design.

Next MP3 player I buy, then, won’t be from Apple and I don’t much care what it looks like. I’ll go for pure functionality and price. I’ll be using it in conjunction with Ubuntu and whatever iTunes/iPodder alternative software I find useful for catching up to date with podcasts. If anyone has any suggestions, let me know.