Ape::Tracks

B(ack)logging

There a few things less interesting than bloggers blogging about their blogging. Stop reading now.

Well, you were warned...

I'm building up a new collection of unpublished blog entries again, although it's nowhere close to the previous queue of over 700 abandoned items. I'll often quickly write a few hundred words about something and then abandon the item.

It's hard to believe there's anything close to quality control going on here, but I only seem to publish about one eighth of the items I type into Ecto. Writing something is easy, editing something is much more time consuming. If the item is trivial then it's easy to post, but if the item's got actual content then I feel uneasy publishing it and tend to leave it in limbo until it's too late to be of use.

Most of the best things in the backlog are related to my day job and overlap with a great deal of the links I add to Del.icio.us each day. I've been toying with the idea of starting a second weblog for a while now, and I think I might as well have a go. I'll keep Apetracks as a relatively useless personal writing exercise while also posting to a blog dedicated to identity and directory tech. I'm already amassing a lot of information on this topic for my own use so sharing any gems I come across may be of use to other people. I'm not an IDM guru but I am rather active at the 'coal face'; there are plenty of blogs written by IDM consultants but few written by people who deal with real IDM issues day-to-day.

I'll have a go at actually publishing some content to the new blog before announcing it.

I'm also going to try posting some of the backlog this time rather than just deleting it.

While Apetracks isn't often updated my Flickr photostream gets updates almost every week, and my Del.icio.us feed at least once a day.

Ecto and Wordpress 2.1

Ecto looks like a convenient way to update weblogs, so I'm giving it a try. (If you can't get Ecto working with Wordpress 2.1, try upgrading to Wordpress 2.1.1, which fixes xmlrpc problems fetching categories for entries - Ecto would hang with 2.1)

On the other hand Ecto seems unable to save any of my settings at the moment, which diminishes the convenience somewhat...  Update: It saved settings after I posted this.

The H Word

Since the Cooperative Bank didn't answer my email questioning their Ethical Policy I've resorted to sending an actual letter:

Chris Mills Corporate Affairs The Cooperative Bank 1 Balloon Street Manchester M4 9HA Dear Mr Mills, I have been a Cooperative Bank customer for many years and I have generally been very happy with the quality of service I have received, but one of the main reasons I have stayed with the Cooperative Bank is its Ethical Policy. Unfortunately the events of recent years have caused me to wonder just how real the Cooperative Bank's much advertised Ethical Policy really is. The Cooperative Bank provides extensive banking facilities to The Labour Party. The Cooperative Bank has also provided a large, favourable loan (around £10,000,000 I believe) to the Labour Party. The Labour Government has been involved in numerous highly unethical activities, notably: Supporting kidnap and imprisonment without trial Direct involvement in an illegal war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths and social collapse Permitting the supply of cluster bombs to Israel with the knowledge that such weapons were already being used in civilian areas The supply of weapons to oppressive dictatorships Refusing to investigate bribery and fraud cases Pro-Trident and Pro-Nuclear programs Anti-organic farming, pro-GM food policies Restrictions on liberty within the UK These activities would be entirely incompatible with your published Ethical Policy if not for the loophole: The Cooperative Bank does not apply ethical considerations to The Labour Party. You cannot argue that the Government and The Labour Party are two unrelated entities: the membership of the Labour Party select those currently in government and are responsible for their actions. You cannot argue that The Cooperative Bank is politically neutral: you would not allow other political parties guilty of this behaviour to open accounts. Would you accept the National Front or Uzbekistan's government as customers? You cannot claim that your special treatment of the Labour Party is supported by your customers: most customers do not realise that the Labour Party is exempt from your ethical policy. At present I feel that the Cooperative Bank's Ethical Policy has become little more than a 'greenwash' in the same manner as BP's new 'green' image or the reinvention of the Conservative Party. Ideally I would like the Cooperative Bank to immediately call in its loans to the Labour Party and close the national Labour Party account. I realise that this is highly unlikely. Instead I request that The Cooperative Bank is true to its word and directly survey its customers on whether or not the Labour Party should be exempt from the Ethical Policy. Secondly I request that advertising for The Cooperative Bank's Ethical Policy makes it very clear that governments are exempt, and that although the Cooperative Bank will not permit its business customers to supply cluster bombs, it will allow The Labour Party to do so. The current advertising is misleading. Your sincerely, Peter Birkinshaw

Bridging the bubbles + lazyweb

Fits in perfectly with the LazyWeb and RSS article, and my "many lazywebs" ponderings.

Link: Bridging the bubbles

Clay Shirky’s article on Lazywebs

In LazyWeb and RSS: Given Enough Eyeballs, Are Features Shallow Too? , Clay Shirky writes about how developers could take advantage of the lazyweb by using sites like lazyweb.org to learn what people want.

Early in the article he writes: "The original formulation was "If you wait long enough, someone will write/build/design what you were thinking about." But it is coming to mean "I describe a feature I think should exist in hopes that someone else will code it.""

I have to admit I'm more interested in the original lazyweb idea, but both perspectives are perfectly valid. Clay Shirky's article has focused on the second formulation, on deliberately using what I refer to as "public invocation" in my personal take on the lazyweb idea.

In my post 'Defining The Lazyweb' I theorised that there are many separate lazywebs, each one forming around a particular subculture of Internet users. Normally the only people likely to notice a public invocation are those inside the same lazyweb as the invoker. This narrows the focus of the lazyweb, and it will produce products that closely match it's member's interests.

This is good for the lazyweb's members, but it can often lead to products that may not meet the needs of the general public very well. The open source community is the obvious example, I suppose.

Clay Shirky believes that a system like lazyweb.org has the potential to bridge the gaps between different lazywebs by sharing information between communities, and more importantly, sharing information between the productive lazyweb and the general public. It would act as a source of both inspiration and feedback. The main point of Clay Shirky's article is that this could bring the same benifits to open development as the "many eyes make bugs shallow" mass debugging principle.

Well worth a read, and there's a Slashdot discussion too.

Updated: I managed to chop out the middle of this post while trying to get it finished during my lunch break, so if you read the earlier version of this and it made no sense, well, it didn't. I've now just cut out the really wibbly bit.

Defining The Lazyweb

I must emphasise that this is only my take on the lazyweb concept. The lazyweb is something I've been interested in for years, long before it had a name, and it's about time I write something about it, even if it ends up as nonsense.

If you're completely unfamiliar with lazyweb, you can read this earlier post about the origins of the word and lazyweb.org.