I mentioned the Mini-Microsoft anonymous employee blog a little while back in my sidebar, but it’s worth mentioning again because it works on so many levels.

• The very organizational issues that it complains forces the greivances publicly because the corporate culture is built in a way that makes it actually harder/riskier to complain internally!
• The blog seems to actually be effecting change!
• The pure gossip factor is better than reading the tabloids!
• Oh, and learning things like that messenger has 42 program managers? Priceless!
• And either way, you know this is going to end in people being fired!

To browse in future:

• Distributed Information Management: Information Representation, Presentation, and Interoperation
• SIMS 247: Information Visualization and Presentation
• IS290 > The Quality of Information
• 296A-2 : Open Source Development and Distribution of Digital Information: Economic, Legal, and Social Perspectives
• INFOSYS 290: Special Topics in Information Management and Systems
• INFOSYS 296A: Seminar

I’ve become more and more convinced, that whatever the question, drop-down select boxes is never the answer. If it’s a large list it should be an combobox/livesearch box (select box alternate OK for accessibility), and, for what is more often the case, if it’s a small number of options, it should just be listed, or otherwise expandoed. No muss, no fuss, no crazy key selection, z-index and styling problems, and a more humane user experience overall.

I was hoping to get back on a regular schedule with the posting, but this whole unemployment thing is harder work than it seems… With all the buzz and hype on Web 2.0, it’s sort of been harder to find real insight online, but recently I’ve spotted some particularly interesting bits:

• Designing for the Sandbox – this is peterme’s new blog (dealing with Web 2.0, and issues of openness, control, trust, authencity, and whatever else deemed relevant), spurred by his recent writing and tracking a more interesting angle than the regular biz boosterism
• Abstract Dynamics: Web 2.0 – Abe Burmeister’s recent critical essay that gives valuable context and perspective to some of the more exhuberant claims (peter responded and Abe responded back)
• Why Web2.0 Matters: Preparing for Glocalization – probably the most interesting Web 2.0 essay I’ve seen recently, connecting many different disparate threads into a very cohesive thesis, while being appropriately self-reflexive (looks like all that schooling coming in handy)

What’s interesting is that Danah’s primary point, emphasizing social context, is something that she’s been saying for quite a while (but perhaps still not being giving appropriate attention to by developers? to be fair, it is a fairly hard property to quantify). What did strike as particularly interesting from my perspective is the emphasis on articulating scope. For Upcoming.org, the glocalization is rather literal, with local social proximity mapped against geography (and friends) and across interests with tags, and now groups.

While I can’t claim the rigor that others have for creating extended, focused essays, I do want to try to touch on a point that has so far, I think, been underexplored: how these social contexts (communities) relate to identity.

At the strategic level, there seems to be a big push for “identity” which seems to translate, loosely coded, as a person GUID. Beyond the general misguidedness of monolothic identity at a philosophical level, this seems to miss the point (and indeed, work at odds) with where the actual value lies: that identity functions in the context its relationships, and that context is generated primarily by activity.

Related to that line of thought, what we’ve seen in these Web 2.0 is creation of platforms and services, but it seems there’s been a blind-spot to how these services can fit within existing community infrastructure. We’re still seeing “Sign-up for XYZ new site, (re)create social context!” instead of an “Augment an existing community, leverage existing social context!” — and there’s a tangible downside to this blindness that extends beyond the inefficiency, or the “fuck it up” factor of trying to re-articulate what already implicitly exists: the additional friction and artificial infrastructure segmentation is going to ultimately limit your growth.

That could probably do with some unpacking and concrete examples, but it’s getting late.

In general, I don’t consider myself too much of a sysadmin dummy, but it seems that getting my mail set up was much more complex than it should have been for what seems to be a fairly common set up. You’d think that this type of thing would be automated… but, you’d be wrong.

• Virtual mail – this setup guide worked perfectly (I picked this data-model over the rest I reviewed since it seemed simple and made sense). As long as you tail your mail logs to see what’s going wrong, this shouldn’t be much of an issue.
• SASL – Using libpam-mysql for SASL? Not a good idea. Here’s a much easier way, install libsasl2-modules-sql and use the auxprop set up as specified. Easy breezy. Be sure to enable TLS in Postfix’s master.cf properly and check if there aren’t MySQL connection problems (enable local TCP/IP if it can’t reach the socket)
• TLS – use stunnel to connect into/test your SMTP-AUTH

OK, once you’ve found the right guides, it doesn’t seem so hard, but damn if it didn’t take me a whole lot of searching, trial and error, and log debugging to get there.

• Paris Expo Keynote (cancelled)
• MOTO ROKR (released)
• Mac Mini 30 Day Trial (cancelled)
• new Switch Campaign (cancelled)
• Compelling Macs released in past year (none)

Umm, that being said, the iPod nano if friggin’ sweet and I’m going to try to pick one up tomorrow. So there’s that.

Wee…