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So it’s been a week or so since the friendfeed-facebook news, and lots of folks have been chewing on it. Including me. I’ve spent a lot of time and effort commenting, liking, and interacting on Friendfeed since Twitter went sour for me; where will that be reflected if FF’s feeds go dark at some point? When a service you don’t control is where you spend your social time and effort, what does that mean?

For me, it means take back my voice. Like some other folks, I’m making the decision to locate my voice back here. (here, being relative to their one’s own domain space; kenzoid.com for me.) This doesn’t mean that I’m not going to post at Facebook, Friendfeed, etc. at all…but I am going to reset the focus.

Of course, there are issues no matter how you slice this. Even if I was popular enough to have an entire site of loyal fans, they would have the same issue if I ever lost interest and dropped my domain. Ideally, this stuff is distributed, decentralized, federated, and never disappears…but that’s hard. In the meantime, WordPress has a lot of plugins and tools that let me post the same sorts of things directly to my blog that I would to Friendfeed. Not as many people may see them directly (though they still show up at FF eventually), but that’s ok.

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Wow. In a quick 48 hours or so, the Interwebs have dealt a double whammy. First, the closure of the url shortener tr.im has highlighted the danger of the url proxy…without some carefully built safeguards, the loss of a shortening site means the loss of lots and lots of lookups. And with Friendfeed purchased by Facebook out of the blue, I expect an aggressive attempt to merge my two accounts and social networks coming…an attempt that I will absolutely rebuff. If necessary, I’ll remove or freeze my friendfeed account; I simply have very little overlap in the two networks, and I don’t WANT them merged. As I’ve said before, the constant online push to merge every type of friendship, acquaintance, co-worker, and family member into one or two buckets is completely unacceptable to me. When faced with no way to avoid it other than account deletion, I’ll delete the account. (I certainly hope it won’t come to that in this instance, and I expect that we’ll be able to leave legacy FF accounts around for some time. *fingers crossed*)

What have we learned? *sigh* Well…as sources as diverse as Dave Winer and autonomo.us have declared, we need decentralized services that allow personal control over our data. We need the ability to pick up and move our network information, our saved preferences, and our corpus of shared status, comments, and conversations. There may be disagreements on the exact best way to accomplish this (community-owned sites, Free and Open Network Services, or even a plain ol’ market-based service ala Jon Udell’s hosted lifebits concept), but there’s growing agreement that it’s a good idea. It’s our data.

I like the idea of ‘Free Services’ (as is usual with me, that’s free as in speech, not [necessarily] free as in beer). Although I’m not going to limit myself to GNU Affero GPL choices while I’m exploring, but I hope to be able to settle on a open tool in the end. In addition, I dig federation…the ability to avoid a centralized authority, yet allow separate instances of a service (or related services sharing an API) to communicate, authenticate, and pass information back and forth.

For purposes of Friendfeed replacement, I’m currently interested in identi.ca (where I already have an account), as well as laconi.ca (the F/OSS software behind identi.ca, which can be set up and used in a federated microblogging network), Google Friend Connect, Ning, the DiSo Project, and perhaps some WordPress plugins. At a minimum. We’ll see what shakes out once I start playing around.

URL shortening is a little trickier…it’s a dangerous proposition however you do it. If the service goes down, you’re pretty much out of luck. The best safeguard I’ve seen is that used by ur1.ca (a service by the same company that runs identi.ca…see a pattern here?). ur1.ca provides a safeguard by enabling a download of the entire shortened database of links directly from the site at any time. This is a powerful backup, allowing the data to be safeguarded in multiple places, and the links to be rehydrated by almost anyone, if need be. Great idea!

Even though I’m open during this experimentation phase, it’s notable that two of the most promising tools I’m looking at (identi.ca and ur1.ca) are both services of a company (Control Yourself) that espouses the concept of Open Network Services – sites that use Open Source software to create and distribute Open Content. That resonates with me.

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The story about Amazon deleting George Orwell’s ‘1984’ off of Kindles due to (apparently) a licensing issue is all the rage today. It’s an interesting issue…I don’t agree with everyone’s take on it (“stolen property” questions vs. copyright licensing issues, etc.), but I do think that having the discussion is good. If it takes this sort of event to enliven debate over the issues with intellectual property sales, the public domain, licensing vs. renting, etc., then so be it. (and the irony of ‘1984’ being the subject of the deletion is certainly giving the story legs!)

But the heartbreaking portion of the story to me was a quote from the NYT article:

Justin Gawronski, a 17-year-old from the Detroit area, was reading “1984” on his Kindle for a summer assignment and lost all his notes and annotations when the file vanished. “They didn’t just take a book back, they stole my work,” he said.

Losing notes, especially for an assignment…well, it sucks. I certainly hope Justin was able to save his work. If he wasn’t, and he’s still looking for help, please forward this along if you happen to know him. Regardless, I decided to type up some info on this for anyone else caught in this situation.

There’s no way to know for sure, but there’s a pretty good chance (IMO) that the notes are still available. And even (tragically) if they aren’t, there are some simple steps one can take to ensure that they ARE kept safe.

1) Backup the “My Clippings.txt” file offline, on your computer. This is the file where all your highlights and notes are stored on the Kindle as you make them. It’s a basic text file, and as near as I can tell, it’s just appended to…no deletions. So hopefully, Justin’s notes are still in this file, on his Kindle, and available once he copies the file off. And if they aren’t, then at least for future assignments, the process for taking a backup will be known.

(note: I only have a Kindle 2, so any differences between it and the Kindle 1 I wouldn’t be aware of. IIRC, the Kindle 1 has a card reader, though, so it should be a similar process. I’m guessing the clippings file is on the card.)

To copy the file off, connect your Kindle to a computer (PC, Mac, Linux…shouldn’t matter) with the provided power/USB cable. The power plug end of the power cable comes off, and allows to connect the Kindle to a computer via USB (it will charge from this connection as well). Once it’s connected to the computer, a drive or device should show up representing the Kindle (this depends on what operating system you’re using, but in all cases it should work).

Open that drive/device, and you should see the “root directory” of the Kindle, which for me only has three directories: “Audible”, “music”, and “documents”. Select the “documents” directory. You’ll see all your books and periodicals (which you can also backup, and I’d encourage you to do so), plus a few other files, one of which is called “My Clippings.txt”. This is it. Your highlights, notes, and bookmarks are kept in this file in this format:

The Iron Heel (Jack, 1876-1916 London)
– Highlight Loc. 1230 | Added on Friday, April 03, 2009, 08:38 AM

You are piggish and acquisitive, but the magic of your phrases leads you to believe that you are patriotic.
==========
The Iron Heel (Jack, 1876-1916 London)
– Note Loc. 1637 | Added on Friday, April 03, 2009, 05:45 PM

Followup
==========
The Iron Heel (Jack, 1876-1916 London)
– Bookmark Loc. 1674 | Added on Friday, April 03, 2009, 05:50 PM

It’s just a text file, and the Kindle appears to only append to it. I suppose it’s possible that the removal process for ‘1984’ removed all references to the book from this file as well (hello, Winston Smith!), but I’d be surprised if that were the case. Hopefully, Justin will find his notes and highlights here. Drag this file to somewhere on your local machine (I have a “kindlebackup” directory), and you should be back in book report business! I try to do this every couple of weeks, just to be on the safe side.

I tested a similar scenario by downloading a new book, making some notes and highlights, and then deleting the book…at least in that standard case, my notes remain. It’s possible that Amazon’s uber-delete powers go further and edit the clippings file, but I can’t really test that.

2) There’s actually another place to try, though I’d say of the two, this one’s more likely to have been adjusted by Amazon, since it’s in their cloud. Your notes and highlights are actually also backed up and available online if you keep WhisperNet on (even occasionally). Open a browser, go to http://kindle.amazon.com, and login. You’ll be presented with a Reading List from the Kindle that includes links to your notes and highlights. I wish the formatting here was a little more capable (you could d/l the info directly, or there was a private RSS feed or something), but still, the info is at least available.

Hopefully, between these two methods, people who have issues with notes and highlight loss can mitigate the effects. There are lots of reasons beyond Amazon reaching down from the sky that could cause an issue: Kindles can break, be stolen, get lost, etc. Knowing how to backup the personal annotations that you’ve made to your library is always a good idea, IMO. As I get more and more into using the Kindle, I find I annotate a LOT more than I do in physical books and periodicals…I think comes from the don’t write in the book mom-voice in my head. I like knowing that I can make notes w/o marking up the work, and I can also backup my notes in multiple ways. Hopefully this post can help someone else as well!

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So, I may have smoked my last clove cigarette, and not even known it? How did THAT happen?

Honestly, that’s not completely true…but the clock is at three months and ticking, thanks to the recently passed Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act:

“Beginning 3 months after the date of enactment of the Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act, a cigarette or any of its component parts (including the tobacco, filter, or paper) shall not contain, as a constituent (including a smoke constituent) or additive, an artificial or natural flavor (other than tobacco or menthol) or an herb or spice, including strawberry, grape, orange, clove, cinnamon, pineapple, vanilla, coconut, licorice, cocoa, chocolate, cherry, or coffee, that is a characterizing flavor of the tobacco product or tobacco smoke.”

Nice job, Philip Morris. Note a couple of things here. 1) I kept a certain level of attention on this legislation, and I was aware that packaging rules were being severely changed, the FDA was being given new powers, etc.

But I had NO clue that clove (and most other flavored cigarettes) were being permanently banned. There doesn’t seem to be much (domestic – more on this later) news talking about this; the focus is on the other aspects of the bill. Admittedly, I’m not a big clove smoker by any means…on the order of a handful a month, at most. But I checked around, and people I thought would be aware, aren’t. This may not have been stealth legislation, but it certainly wasn’t highlighted.

And 2)…note the exemption. Menthol. The flavoring ban is “for the children”, of course…but exempting menthol is a pretty big hole in that, unless you’re simply trying to get Philip Morris to drop their objections. Which Congress was, and Philip Morris did. Gak.

While the flavoring ban has flown under our radar, Indonesia, OTOH, is more than a little pissed. Cloves are a fairly niche product in the US, but there are a lot of fans, both native-borne and immigrants (these cigarettes, known generally as kreteks, are of Indonesian origin). Jakarta is threatening WTO action based on the menthol exemption (favoring a domestic product over an import).

That could be a monkey wrench for the ban, but who knows how far that will go. The only thing more confusing and uglier under the covers than domestic law-making is international legal action.

I could just stop being naive, and accept that this is the way the world works (which is, to a certain extent, absolutely true). But in the spirit of Shaw’s unreasonable man quote, you have to stand up at times for progress to occur. This is one of those times. This law, as passed, is really just execrable.

We’ve banned flavored cigarettes, arguably (one might say) as a first step to banning them all. Except we’ve exempted the largest domestic flavoring, and there’s not even a hint of banning tobacco PRODUCTION. But why would we continue to grow a crop we can’t sell?? Because we’re selling it abroad. A crop too dangerous to sell here is returning to it’s former status as a premier cash crop for export. That’s low. That’s truly low.

For more background on the bill (and the previous one in 2004, which seems to have been “Part 1”), this article is well worth reading: “Lost In The Weed“.

What do we do? The damn thing’s already passed, so I don’t know. But we certainly don’t have to be quiet about it, and maybe, just maybe, a little sunlight can still make a difference.

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I just received an new action alert from the ACLU regarding the debate over ‘indefinite detention’ that’s going on in Washington right now. Apparently, it’s not so much over whether or not we SHOULD do it…rather, should it be by executive order, or legislation? I can hardly believe it.

I’m sending an action alert email thingie, from the ACLU’s website. I decided to copy the text here…I’m proud to send it. Note: this IS based on “suggested text”, but I’ve personalized it. I can provide a diff on request. *grin*

—BEGIN EMAIL—

It saddens me greatly that I have to send this email.

Unbelievably, there appears to be a debate over indefinite detention heating up in Washington, and I want you to know of my concerns. A debate. Over holding people without trial. Indefinitely. Some of whom we KNOW are not guilty of anything other than being in the wrong place at the wrong time. Indefinitely. Some of whom we have strong evidence against (which could be used, in perhaps…a trial). Some of whom we’ve tortured. (I say that without the ‘allegedly’ weasel word, because we’ve admitted we did so.)

I believe with all my heart that the administration is going down the wrong path in even considering a policy which would indefinitely imprison individuals without charge or the chance of a trial, beginning with the detainees at Guantánamo Bay. It’s wrong, plain and simple.

Indefinite detention is a violation of due process and the American principles of justice and fairness. It strikes at the heart of what makes us a great nation, and sets a terrible, terrible precedent.

Therefore, I urge you to reject any policy or proposal that would indefinitely imprison individuals without charge or the chance of a trial.

Those who disagree with me on this have every right to do so, though it concerns me greatly that it’s even an arguable point. I have little but contempt, however, for individuals that take this stance out of political expediency. There ARE things worth fighting for, and this is one of them. We are better than this. We have to be.

I realize the issues surrounding the closing of Guantánamo are difficult and complex, but we cannot afford to go down a path that violates our own Constitution. We simply cannot. If we do, we’ve done the terrorist’s job FOR them. Surely you understand that.

I respectfully ask that you do what is in your power to reject indefinite detention — whether through legislation or executive order.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

—END EMAIL—

Everyone should make their own decision on this, and I realize not everyone agrees with me. (It boggles my mind, but I accept it.) If you do agree, however, I encourage you to also share your views via this action alert form. If you disagree, I also encourage you to share your views, but I’d use a different form…you can’t change the subject line.

You can find your Senators and Representatives via this lookup form on the OpenCongress website, and the White House contact form is here. Whatever your opinion, communication with your elected representatives is a critical aspect of our form of government. Please reach out.

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Whether or not the point makes it across, it’s good to see articles like this one at The Atlantic, or Stiglitz’ Vanity Fair piece getting some attention. They highlight the fact that our current dire economic situation isn’t all that novel; we’ve been playing a game that many other nations do, just with more chips and for higher stakes. When you’ve got a bigger bankroll, it’s certainly harder to fail; but when it happens it’s a loonnngg way down the well if you’re not careful.

The Quiet Zone:

Emerging-market governments and their private-sector allies commonly form a tight-knit—and, most of the time, genteel—oligarchy, running the country rather like a profit-seeking company in which they are the controlling shareholders. When a country like Indonesia or South Korea or Russia grows, so do the ambitions of its captains of industry. As masters of their mini-universe, these people make some investments that clearly benefit the broader economy, but they also start making bigger and riskier bets. They reckon—correctly, in most cases—that their political connections will allow them to push onto the government any substantial problems that arise.

Sound familiar? That’s why I’ve always hated terms like “America’s CEO”. America is not a freakin’ corporation; The United States doesn’t have shareholders, employees, and management. It’s better than that. Or should be.

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Atlanta is now a beta site at EveryBlock!

I’ve been a huge fan of EveryBlock since…well, since before they were EveryBlock. The site grew out of Adrian Holovaty’s original local info mashup, chicagocrime.org. Chicagocrime was one of the original Google Maps mashups, and not only showed off the power of map APIs, it provided a huge amount of useful data in a immediately useful visualization, at a very granular level. It was a huge hit, winning awards and immediate acclaim.

In early 2008, Adrian stepped up to the next level, and expanded outward with EveryBlock; a site designed to do what Chicagocrime did (and more), but for more cities.  EveryBlock started in Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, with the intent of expanding as data feeds became available in other cities.

Atlanta has gotten a lot of interest through their polling app, and it’s just been released in beta this week. “Beta” isn’t an indicator of the flakiness of the site, as much as the availability of data…the site is the same (Python-powered!) code that runs all the city-sites. But much of the challenge is actually getting good data feeds from city governments and civic organizations, so that screen-scraping is kept to a minimum.

EveryBlock is a great example of a Web 2.0 style tool. It’s far more than a static site; info can be customized by location (zip code, neighborhood, address, etc.), by type (crime types, gov’t info [building permit requests, for example], local news mentions, etc.), pushed into RSS feeds, generated as email summaries, provided on great map mashups…it’s a little overwhelming. But it’s great stuff, and I’m looking forward to using the hell out of it. Thanks, EveryBlock, and welcome to Atlanta.

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Jay Rosen is a journalism professor at NYU who has been watching and thinking about the Web and its impact on the press for years now. He blogs actively at PressThink (among other places), and is a champion of the growing citizen journalism movement. I’ve been following his blog for a while now, but I recently subscribed to his FriendFeed, and the interaction has become that much easier, and much more participatory.

Jay deeply groks the Web; reading his articles on the challenges of journalism, or listening to him speak, provides a look into the growth of collaborative journalism, the art of participatory newsgathering, and future of media itself. He also practices what he preaches; he uses Twitter and FriendFeed not only as webs of potential contacts for stories, but also as a place to develop an insight that may eventually become a blog post (he refers to the process as mindcasting).

One of his recent FriendFeed posts prompted this writeup: as his network on FriendFeed and Twitter continues to grow out from his original niche (news, media and Web geeks like myself), he thought it worthwhile to point out a Rosen primer of sorts. This short (10-minute) panel talk that he gave recently (Feb. 2009) really distills a lot of his Web philosophy down. It’s fantastic! It also reminds me of the themes of Clay Shirky’s “Here Comes Everybody”; it’s a worthwhile cribsheet for either. We’re in the middle of a sea change, and it’s rare to get such a quick but thorough overview. Recommended.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/eDeaAOqagww" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

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In one of those weird twists, I somehow got on the topic of talking about my hot food addiction earlier today on Facebook. I like VERY hot food; habaneros, capsaicin extract sauces, the works. Flavor plus heat is great, but OTOH, sometimes you’re just looking for the 100,000+ Scoville unit hit. Today turned out to be one of those days. *grin*

Dinner was casual tonight, so I ended up at (irk!) McDonald’s (but hey, it’s been awhile). I ordered McNuggets and fries and brought them home, along with honey mustard sauce. But as I sat down at the kitchen table I remembered the conversation from earlier, and realized I simply HAD to toss these down with some fire.

Luckily, I received some high-quality goods (Dave’s Insanity Sauces; several flavors) as a gift this past Christmas…I have a fresh supply. (Extract sauces are so hot that even I take some time to get through a full-sized bottle, and often it’s kind of stale before I’m finished.) I started with the Dave’s Total Insanity, which I hadn’t tasted before. It’s not top of the line, heat-wise, but it has a bit more flavor than the strongest sauces, which tend to taste like dirt (fiery hell-dirt, but dirt) to me.

Total Insanity has a nice hint of garlic to it, and I made quick work of about half a dozen McNuggets, with a generous dollop of sauce smeared on each. There’s no WEAK Dave’s sauce, so the heat quickly kicked in, and I sat back for a moment to enjoy it. The sweat, the eye-watering buzz, the tongue-searing heat. Ah.

But Total Insanity is definitely the light end of the Dave’s Gourmet line, so I switched to a bottle of regular ol’ Dave’s Insanity Sauce to finish off the nuggets. I then proceeded to dip my fries down the neck of the bottle, coating them in the powerful gunk. Yowza! THAT kicked it in…the brain stepped up another level as a rush of endorphins hit to try and save what was left of my mouth, lips, and tongue. I’m on fire!! LOL

I’d gotten out of the habit of eating hot sauces regularly; I handle our pet hairless rats daily, and they have both sensitive skin and a habit of licking the tips of your fingers, which wouldn’t be a good idea tonight. I need to remember that, and be a bit more careful…use a BBQ brush or something, I guess. But I’ve still got my tolerance, which is good, and I definitely enjoyed the meal. I finished things off with a crisp Granny Smith apple; the tart fruit was a wonderful change, as I let the remnants of the pepper ebb away.

Thanks to Barry for reminding me what a great idea McNuggets and habaneros can be!