David Weinberger's Blog, page 10

“Just fucking blog”

This title is the last line of a post from Bix. Here is the post’s opening: So, this research from Orbit Media (via Andy McIlwain) should actually be read as a list of all the things we should ignore if we truly want to revive the blogosphere. Bix’s post is correct.

Early animation

Here are links to the earliest cartoons in Riochard Brody’s excellent article, “Draw Stars,” in the Dec. 30, 2019 New Yorker. (Note: Racist and other stereotypes below.) Emile Cole, Fantasmagorie, 1908, restored. (Original) Winsor McCay, Little Nemo, 1911: McCay, Gertie the Dinosaur, 1914: Max and Dave Fleischer, Out of the Inkwell: The Tantalizing Fly, 1919 […]

It’s official

I did an image search on this photo to see whether it’s openly licensed. Google couldn’t find it, but here’s what it told me: Nailed it.

It’s official: You MUST read Everyday Chaos

Inc. magazine has named Everyday Chaos as one of its 11 “must read” books for entrepreneurs. “For product makers, industry shakers, and folks who want to be their best selves, these are the titles to read now.” The article’s author, Leigh Buchanan, does an excellent job encapsulating the book: Weinberger, for decades one of the […]

Late, breaking Android app news: transcription

Note that this is not late-breaking news. It’s breaking news brought to you late: Android contains a really great Google transcription tool. Live Transcribe transcribes spoken text in real time. So far, it seems pretty awesome at it. And its machine learning model is loaded on your device, so it works even when you’re offline […]

Making the Web kid-readable

Of the 4.67 gazillion pages on the Web, exactly 1.87 nano-bazillion are understandable by children. Suppose there were a convention and a service for making child-friendly versions of any site that wanted to increase its presence and value? That was the basic idea behind our project at the MindCET Hackathon in the Desert a couple […]

Rebranding Holland

Upset that Holland has become associated with legalized drugs and sex work, the nation has decided to rebrand itself as The Netherlands. Yet “Netherlands” has a history of bawdy associations that goes back far further than Holland’s.  For example, in Shakespeare’s Comedy of Errors (Act III Scene 2), Dromio is comparing an obese woman to […]

Two bloggers meet again

I met Brad Turcotte, who goes by the professional name Brad Sucks, back in the Age of the Blogosphere. He was, and is, an indie musician who embodies the spirit of the open Web. He’s also an awesome song writer, singer, producer, and one man band. Weirdly, we have been friends since way back then, […]

Http or WWW? Top Ten Reasons

A geeky mailing list I’m the least geeky person on has been discussing whether https://yoursite.com is preferable to www.yoursite.com. I have no pony in this race, and am in fact against pony racing if only because it requires impossibly small jockeys, but here are my: Top Ten Reasons to prefer www to https:// Easier to […]

Hillary-Trump Debates: The Audition Tapes

This is a re-play of something I wrote during the 2016 election. The premise is that the Clinton campaign is auditioning stand-ins for Trump to rehearse the 2016 debates with. Note that Louis CK not yet disgraced, and in any case I the last paragraph of that one is really unclear. You see, he’s snapping […]