overstated

While the title is misleading, “Microsoft to keep track of instant messages” might be one of the biggest advancements in communication technology in a long while. Email gave us access to an archive of past communications, but having a record of all informal messaging is like a complete memory prosthesis. The thought of having a corpus of informal dialog like that makes a thousand simple projects spring to mind.

Of course the security implications are huge. I’m pretty sure I don’t want anyone to have access to the hundreds upon hundreds of “HI HONEY.” messages I get from my mom. Especially the ones where I reply, “mom.. i’m giving a talk. i’ll chat to you later.”

my friend dan put up a page about his experience with a mullet. to our collective dismay, it’s gone.

Intellect thrives on sleep, but oversleepers die early. Does that mean that academics die early? I’m in the wrong business.

NYTimes: Is weblog technology here to stay or just another fad? Yet another weblog analysis focusing on the financial sustainability of weblog software companies. Weblogs are not a technology trend, they are a social phenomenon, and as such are not controlled by the state of the economy. As long as people feel the need to express themselves, and weblogs provide that outlet, they won’t have a problem affording the technology.

The verdict: monster trux. but only when the birthday boy cuts his hair to have an ironic mullet for the occasion. I guess that if Ming Tsai had grown a mullet, or even worn a mullet wig while cooking our dinner, it would have been a more contentious battle.

Researchers map the social network of comic book characters: “A closer look reveals the Marvel Universe’s artificiality… The Marvel network is only very weakly clustered – about 1.5 times more than a random network.”

Who’s the most central hero in comic book history? Captain America.

A source that I often cite for statistics about information overload is the How Much Information? survey which was completed two years ago at the School of Information Management and Systems at Berkeley. If you’re looking for proof that we’re headed for a Borgesian end, look no further than these scary stats.

Perusing the executive summary today, I noticed a number that hadn’t caught my eye before: in 2000, about 11,285 terabytes of email were created. That’s 500 times the amount of static HTML pages that were generated in the same time period.

Of all digital media that we are manufacturing, email consumes most of our time. Yet the tools that I use to write and consume email haven’t changed much since I came onto the internet in 1994. There are a number of research projects that I have seen, each addressing the email task from various perspectives and disciplines, but industry doesn’t seem to be listening. When will someone come out with a revolutionary email client? I don’t think it would be hard to compete, considering every client I have used tends to crash on the order of 10 times per day.. just a reliable client would be enough to capture my business.