Joel Patrick

Bnetd v. Blizzard

There was a new DMCA related case that came to my attention today. It is a decision in Missouri in a litigation between Blizzard and a group known as bnetd which reverse engineered the Blizzard communication protocol. In a case that will be appealed, the ruling found that pretty much everything in the click-through End User License Agreements is fully binding. If I understood the commentators on ITConversations, it strikes many in the legal field as wrong since there is no opportunity for counter proposal in this process.

Hear about it on IT Conversations or check out the extensive dossier at Ferrago or EFF

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E-Mail Marketing

I have a longish post in the Forums on e-mail marketing. This is my response to a grad from 2002 who is working on helping the Methodist church leverage the web.

Jock power

I heard a funny example today of the way technology evolves through public hooking and jabbing (between technology pioneers). Adam Curry uses his disc jockey wit to tweak Chris Pirillo over his opposition to the word podcast. The excerpt here is from the broadcast I point to below.  Adam talks over a replay of part of a podcast from Chris. Chris is talking with his girlfriend about how to stop the word "podcast". Curry is not convinced.  Have a listen.

Maybe a month away from the evening news...

Adam Curry's quest to put podcasting on the map has made substantial headway within the last week. His latest series of Daily Source Code Broadcasts continues his promotion. His latest edition of Trade Secrets with Dave Winer covers the use of OPML to federate the directories of podcasts. In the meantime the podcast directory at ipodder.org is growing geometrically. The other directory on production tools and software is filling out as well.

Other CICS Collaborative Sites

There are a number of on-line CICS resources. The purpose of this document is to list as many of them as we can:

• CICS 2000 has a Yahoo Group.
• Another Yahoo group: CICS-BSU
• A website that has been active during the past year but which seems to be on holiday for security update is: CICS Alumni
• We have started an Orkut Group to investigate aspects of social networking. We are not so sure it is that wonderful, but if you want an invite send an e-mail.
• And there is, of course this website and groupware system.
• The Class of 2004 has its own recent addition to the Yahoo! groups: New Keuterville with City Manager William "Billie" Vaughn

If you have any others please write and we will list them here.

Later in the day...

When I checked my BSU email today I found a nice note and job posting from a CICS alumnus. (I created a few new forums as well.) Since this morning a post on Engadget explains how to get and create podcasts. How far behind before there is something like the iPod for video?

Before a trend is a trend

Ever wonder what a trend looks like at before it is really established? At some point the Web was not on every computer, only a few "lunatics" had cell phones, a few edgy people bought faxes before pizza restaurants got them.

There is a phenomenon happening today with the iPod and RSS that is allowing people to download Internet audio programming for listening off-line. Adam Curry, already a pioneer in Internet radio programming about information technology, has created a program called Ipodder (originally for MacOS, now for everything) that allows you to download RSS feeds to your Ipod for later listening. This has facilitated an unprecedented wealth of new programming that is satisfying what appears to be substantial demand: it's taking off fast. I have mentioned IT Conversations produced by Doug Kaye. Today there is already so much new and interesting Internet-based programming on Information and Communication Technology that one must choose carefully to keep from running out of time. Ipodder allows you to subscribe to feeds and receive a selection of webcasts while you sleep or catch up on your Jedi arts for Dr. Jones. Then you can listen to the programs on your iPod later maybe even like this.

The latest episode of the Gilmour Gang has a lot about this emerging technology. The program starts a little slowly, but if you are interested in where this technology is headed, it is definitely worth a listen.

Kodak looking to sues its way back to greatness?

Groklaw is telling the story of the latest in the narrowing of the future of software and perhaps even of collaborations. Stories like this make Open Source more attractive.

In an entirely different bit of news, the judicial system made its first adjustment of the sweeping Patriot act. Tom Spring of PC World seeks to clarify where the candidates stand on Patriot.

Das EverybodySmushedTogether Megablog

Well, I am going to abandon my idea of trying to keep up with the bloggers here with some sort of cute little digest like the ones I did last year. I am really very impressed by the quality of the posts here and I doubt I can get my "arms" around this bigger 2005 class 602 thing enough to repackage this into a summary post each week.  I am going to be satisfied with mentioning some of the things that impress me the most knowing full well that I am not necessarily going to read to everything.  In the meantime, there is a CICS Megablog with everybody mixed together.

Volcano Cam

We may be about to see live coverage of a volcano. There is a webcam trained on Mount Saint Helens. The image is a nearly live feed (updated every five minutes) from Mount Saint-Helens. It is not very esxciting now, but the news is that we might see an eruption soon that will rival the event of 1980. That one was pretty memorable. There are, of course, sites devoted to Mount Saint Helens. They may be a bit slow right now because of the latest activity.