“I am terrified at the thought that so much hideous and bad music will be put on records forever” Arthur Sullivan

I know I don’t usually have a book recommendation but this one sounds great. I heard an interview with Rolling Stone contributing editor Steve Knopper on NPR’s Fresh Air. They were discussing the downfall of the record industry and his new book Appetite For Self-Destruction. I plan to pick this one up. Essentially it is the history of the industry from the early times when they produced a strange flat disc with grooves. I believe some refer to this an album or record. Hmmm strange looking things. Anyway the book takes you from there to the super powerful and money making times of the 70’s and 80’s to the beginning of the end in the mid nineties. It truly sounded fascinating. You can read an excerpt listen to the interview here. If you plan to take a pass on the book at least listen to the interview. It fills in a lot of historical gaps and really explains the mess that the recording industry it currently in. Give it a try.

“That some achieve great success, is proof to all that others can achieve it as well.” Abraham Lincoln

On January 20th two things will happen our new president will be inaugurated and I will be freezing in DC. Many people who are at work, school, or just don’t have TV have asked me where they can watch the inauguration. To this point I have put together a list of sites and places where you can watch it. Also I will try to do a bit of live blogging from the National Mall. If I have time and inclination I will put up some photos from the action on the ground. Did I mention freezing? On to the list.

All the major channels will stream it live.

• CNN
• MSNBC
• ABC
• C-Span
• Hulu. This one is also embeddable for any site or blog.
  

Also some Starbucks coffee houses will have it on. My personal favorite so far is the movie theater. The idea of watching it on a giant screen with popcorn. It is after all political history but also political theater. The tickets are free but first come first serve. They are being shown at Providence Place Mall Cinema. That is all the info I could get without signing up.

NPR will be streaming so you can get that radio by the fireside in a darkened room sort of deal going (during the day).

Finally to put this all in perspective give this site a chance for some great histiry. They have Kennedy's and Reagan's inaugural. Really fascinating stuff.

Hope this helps.
Note: The photo is of Lincoln’s first inauguration.

"It's not true that life is one damn thing after another; it is one damn thing over and over."Edna St. Vincent Millay

Stunning! That’s all you can really say. Google in partnership with Life Magazine has released images starting in 1750 to the present day. Some are prints and some are photos but all are exquisite. It really is the cheapest and easiest museum to get to. Last night I spent a lot of time just browsing through time. The site is comprised of two main features: images categorized into decades that you can browse through and a search bar. I found you got a lot better results with the search bar then just a simple browse. Just a quick list of what you will see. Disney World Opening, Civil War images, Queen Victoria, trains, goggles, and space photos..... Holy Moly! So many wonderful early NASA images, even the building of the Apollo. All of the photos can be clicked on giving you a description and a magnified view. Seriously these are all magnificent and so easy to see. Do yourself a favor and give these a try.

"What, me worry?" Alfred E. Neuman

OK the year was 1984 and a young would be computer teacher was introduced to his first Mad Magazine by his father. It was the summer 84 super extra violence issue and I was absolutely delighted. My mother was happy I was reading anything. One of the best and most enigmatic parts of the magazine was the back inside cover. Al Jaffee's fold-ins for Mad Magazine are little artistic puzzle pieces. For those not in the know there would be an unusual page of art with some strange riddle. Then you have the pleasure of folding the page so that two sets of arrows would meet. The picture would suddenly stand changed and the little dialogue at the bottom would spell out what you were looking at. Sometimes they were political and sometimes just cuttingly funny. Ok you must be wondering what the tech angle is. Well a while back the NY Times did a retrospective of these back covers. They show the original and then with a click of the mouse button it will fold it for you. Also they give you some history and context. I was fascinated to find out that every single one was hand painted and no computer was ever used to help the process. Seriously this is awesomely wonderful. I always had the hardest time getting those things to line up. I am bad at origami too. So if you want to walk back in time from the 1960s to the present give this one a try.

“After a year in therapy my psychiatrist said to me, "Maybe life isn't for everyone"” Larry Brown

Yesterday I was listening to NPR and they mentioned Weizenbaum the creator of one of my favorite applications. When I first got my own computer I loaded all sorts of applications that I could find experimenting and playing with everything. One of them was a lot older than I had ever known and that was Eliza. This program as I learned on NPR was an experiment into the world of AI (Artificial Intelligence). It looked kind of like the old style chat windows and you would type in your problems. It was set to answer back all kind of prompts. Its speech was right out of a psychologist chair. Lots of phrases like go on and tell me more. Of course at that time I would spend hours trying different combinations to see what else it had to say. It was a ton of very strange fun. You can still give it a try today. Also I recommend listening to the NPR piece. It fills you in on the history and is really interesting. So if you are feeling a bit down and want to explore some of those feelings give this one a whirl.

This post will be my last for a bit. I am going to be away for a couple of weeks but I shall post again as soon as I get back.

"Vote or Die!" P. Diddy

Today is the real big game. Super duper Tsunami Tuesday is here with over 20 states voting for in a primary for a presidential candidate. This is the largest primary in US history. However you amazingly have made it through still undecided. How does one pick if you are out of tea leaves? Well there is a lovely little vote choosing site called appropriately enough VoteChooser. It is simple (possibly too simple) to use. Just answer the questions and click submit. This will give you a breakdown of who you are most aligned with. Is this a perfect system? Most likely not but it is interesting to see which issues align you with which candidate. Even if you do not vote today give this one a try and see who is in you voting sphere.

“The dead being the majority, it is natural that we should have more friends among them than among the living.”

As of next month we bury an old friend. When I got my own personal computer there were only a couple of browsers on the market after Mosaic became insufficient. Netscape Navigator was one of the coolest and best browsers at that point and continued to be a success for many years. I stopped using it at the 4.7 version. It was fast and with the introduction of Netscape Communicator easy to get things done like email and an address book. This was a big deal then! Unfortunately they decided to keep adding to it and it became bulky and unusable. Many people turned to other faster slimmer browsers that offered a lot more. America Online bought it several years back and as of February will no longer be supporting it. In the computer world no support is a death sentence. So today we sing your praises for your historical value and wish you well in software heaven. To read a well written history of an old friend check out this BBC article.

“I don't have a photograph, but you can have my footprints. They're upstairs in my socks.”

I have written of the wonders of Flickr many times before and it seems I am not the only one to find it useful. The Library of Congress has released 3000 photos onto the site. The idea is brilliant, harness the Web 2.0 communities to identify, categorize, and just enjoy these works of photographic art. When I checked this out it seemed that every photo had at least 50 comments with full discussions ranging from fashion to propaganda. I will say if you do go onto this site make sure you have nothing to do because it is quite extensive and addictive. You just want to keep walking through out the archives that have remained unseen by the general public for so long. (Selfish plug coming up) For the same reasons I have been really enjoying Rick Ring’s blog about Providence Public Library’s special collections. These places that take care of our histories are our time machines to the past. Sometimes they are the way back and amazingly others show a way forward. I recommend giving both a try.

“I've a grand memory for forgetting.” Robert Louis Stevenson

Things are forgotten and misremembered. Some people keep diaries to help them remember the succession of events. The problem that I have eternally is I remember the big items but all the small stories of my life get thrown into a big junk drawer of my history. I saw a site that attempts to start getting all this a bit straight. DandeLife is devoted to pulling all the online strings of your life together. If you are blogging, videoing, and part of social networks it tries to put all those into some sort of order. However this is not why I am excited by this site. I have no real interest in being that organized but memory is a tricky thing. One event leads to another and I cannot seem to untangle the Gordian Knot of what came first. It would be so much easier if I had a timeline. Seems so simple, just a matter of ,lets say once a month, putting down some of the months important events on this easy to use timeline. You can add a one line description or on another page fill it with a real description. Just think of a page that contains a small list of the important stuff, or at least the important at that moment stuff. At anytime you could go back and review events that led to some major crisis or superior epiphany. Now this is all cool and neat-o but why would you want to do this? Well New Years Eve got me thinking of well meaning and well forgotten resolutions. For some people this might be the extra bit that helps them keep it all going or maybe they rediscover this in April and see what they said they would be doing in the future. There is an old school method that is similar to this that my wife reminded me of recently. The practice of writing yourself a letter to be mailed by a friend at some future date. This holiday you may want to give one of these a try because who knows what you will have to say in the future.

“Keep up appearances whatever you do.”Charles Dickens

On the same subject of Photoshop and its ability to alter our reality is a fantastic timeline of forgeries. A professor at Dartmouth College, named Hany Farid, has put together a list of examples of how photos have been altered to highlight an element or just to deceive the viewer. The list is quite amazing. It ranges from 1860 to the present. It shows off some of the most famous and popular pictures we take for granted as real. He has links comparing the original to the altered when possible. Since the invention of Photoshop, it seems the original unaltered photo must become a thing of the past. If you have a love of history or photos give this one a try.

Note: When I teach Photoshop Elements this is what I use in class. Many Thanks to Professor Farid.

“All religions must be tolerated... for... every man must get to heaven in his own way.” Epictetus

Religion can be tricky to write about on a blog like this and I have avoided it until this point. Unfortunately religion on the web breaks down into the two usual camps: a glorification of one’s own religion and bashing of another’s. This is too bad because it kills discussion and understanding. However, there is a site that is really trying to make a difference in the religious information realm. Beliefnet has information on most religions. Now when I say information I do not mean a quick definition. I mean a real investigation that allows the user to really explore different religions. They use things like audio visual tours and interesting news stories to round off the information. They even have cooking recipes for each faith and holiday that it is associated with. There are discussion forums for every belief from Atheism to Zoroastrianism and everything in between. My favorite part has to be the Belief-o-Matic. Don’t be fooled by the name. It is a fill in survey that shows you which faith is in line with your thinking. I found it to be right on the mark. Faith is part of out society and makes its way to technology just like any part of our social makeup. So if you are interested give it a try.

“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.” Napoleon Bonaparte

Not too long ago I listened to an On The Media radio broadcast about posting on the Internet. It was about a 17 year old girl who had voiced her opinion on the Iraq war. That alone does not seem to be very important. I mean we all take stands or have opinions on tons of subjects. However the difference was she posted her feelings in a comment field on a website. Years later she wanted to take that post down because when a possible employer did a search to see who she was and what she had written on the Internet using Google or Yahoo this comment came at the top of the list. She asked the site to remove her post and they said they never remove anything. Even if the site had complied it would not matter because search engines cache or store all this information in case the site disappears. So what does this tell us? When you post or add your name to a list or create a page in a social networking site like MySpace it stays out there even if you remove it. Many a teen writing now may reap the benefits or losses in the future because something said during younger days. It did occur to me that the girl could have started a blog or a site with enough information to reduce the impact of that one post. There is a flip side to this as well. The next generation emerging is not as concerned with privacy or wrongs done in other times. For them it is what they do now and not who or what they were five years ago. I know I am stereotyping here but generations do have certain major characteristics even if they are not shared by every single person.

So the main theme here is everything posted is permanent and not private so think before you post. To get the word out many Public Service Announcements have been created to get people to consider this phenomenon. I believe they are a little heavy handed but they do a nice job. Click on the video and you decide.

"Set the WABAC Machine to 1895" Mr. Peabody to Sherman

When you look at some websites do you ever wonder what they looked like years ago, maybe when they first started? EBay is a good example. It started in 1997 and has gone through change after change. They added new features, changed their logo and adapted new practices as the Internet grew. What watch need is a way to see what it was like at that point. The Wayback Machine has been archiving the Internet since 1996 and almost has 2 billion pages. You can search for any site and if it has it archive it will be broken up by year and certain archiving dates through that year. It is a very interesting reference to see how much it has changed. it gives some real perspective and helps out the student or researcher to find information that may have been removed years ago. Also they feature categories like how web pages were reacting to the election of 2000 or any other large event. Give it a try to see the past of the net.

“We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly.”

Quote comes from Martin Luther King, Jr

Yesterdays post was long but I realized I did not get to really complete the it. These Web 2.0 services are about socializing but I personally do not think of them in this manner or at least I do not use them in their intended manner. Even as a kid, I was always connected whether it was, a book, tape player or a radio. The feeling for me was if I had a question I wanted to know how to access the information immediately because I might forget the thought two seconds later. Web 2.0 has become an extension of this and better than any tool I had before. I think of it more like a network of contacts you can use to address any issue. Some people will have the information you need at that second. I had a baseball question and I went into my manager's office to get this answered because just like Bo, Dorey Knows baseball. 2.0 can be used in this same manner. Instead of just going to Google to answer my questions I am more likely to head to a 2.0 service like Youtube. It seems everything ends up there first nowadays. Recently I wanted to hear some commencement speeches. I tried Youtube first because I did not want to read the text but I wanted to experience the speeches. Because Youtube is made up of everyone who can upload a video I found speeches of every type ranging from Seth Macfarlane's speech at Harvard (creator of Family Guy) to the Vice President's speech at Brigham Young University. My point here is that Web 2.0 is a social community and this can be used to say hi to an old friend or to find and discuss the best ways to make Hollandaise sauce. It has as many possibilities and uses that you can come up with. Give it a try.

“A myth is a religion in which no one any longer believes.” James Feibleman

I have always been fascinated by mythology. Unfortunately when I use the word mythology it is relegated to the stories from the Greeks. Every culture has spawned some sort of story to explain away the mysteries of life. Encyclopedia Mythica began to help identify the characters and the stories. I have enjoyed this site immensely. It does not cover all the mythologies on the planet but it has a fair start. It covers Greek, Norse, Roman and Celtic mythos. They also have a fun Mythquiz to test your knowledge. Grab some wax wings and give it a try.

“My father gave me these hints on speech-making: "Be sincere... be brief... be seated."” James Roosevelt

Occasionally you would like to reference a famous speech. This is where the convenience of the Internet has taken over. A wonderful site called American Rhetoric has most of the famous speeches that are looked for. They even have some I wish I knew of like Ursula Le Guin's speech on being left handed. The great thing I love here is that they have the text, photos from the speech, and then you can listen to it or download it for later listening. This link is for what they consider the 100 best speeches. Also they do not just reference actual real speeches they have a source of must see movie speeches too. If you are looking for something to say maybe give this a try.

“People always ask me, "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" Well, I don't have an alibi.” Emo Phillips

For years the film of JFK driving through Dealey Plaza has been reviewed and reviewed. Unfortunately without new information or images or video, this research can stagnate. That is why it is such large news when new films emerge. For those interested in JFK or a possible new piece in the puzzle of that day, there is a site connected to the Sixth Floor Museum. They have on their main page the newly found Jefferies' Film. It has all the information you could want on this incident, from oral histories to current exhibits. You can also watch other films of that day. If you have trouble with the film check the alternate site for the video. See a slice of history and give it a try.

As the car nears 88 miles per hour, the light of the flux capacitor pulses

One statement I have heard repeatedly in class is that computers and technology are moving too fast. This is true. When you have the computing power to come up with faster ways to compute, it gets faster and faster. However, it has been a long time when you actually look at the early computers. So take a step back with a website called Obsolete Technology. Their site explains its existence by saying “Early personal computers were nothing like present day computers, they had personality!” Walk through time viewing pics and descriptions of the way it started. I found my first computer, an Atari from the mid eighties. But if this is too static for you, try this article by PC World. It is A Brief History of Computers, as Seen in Old TV Ads. If it does not work you will need the Flash Plug-in to view the commercials. (it is free) So start the Delorean and drive into the past. Give it a try.