PSoTD

I see another blog that I have blogrolled and visit from time to time is slowly biting the dust...

I'm just waiting for the robot invasion

People get busy, get less satisfaction out of their blogs, and move on. But I wonder how much readership plays into the satisfaction. IJWFTRI is averaging 31 visits per day at this point. Spending time determining conversation points, then writing them, posting them, checking them, for 31 readers a day probably starts getting somewhat... uninteresting. Of course, if the 31 readers were decisionmakers, maybe... but most decisionmakers follow the crowds, and if the crowds aren't at your blog, neither are they.

If your blog was down to 31 readers per day, would you continue? And if you are below 31 readers per day, do you expect to increase visits? We're not all activists or newsmakers or top-echelon analysts or satirists. Some of us are just regular people with jobs and families and a multitude of interests but still feel passionately about things and want to find a way to be heard, if only by some others in the same boat. But... how many people make it worthwhile? Will we all eventually get to a point where we decide there isn't enough to continue? Is blogging a stage, to be outgrown? Is it a niche in which eventually only the most talented or resourced will survive, and all others will fade from Google's memory? I've seen a LOT of bloggers quit in the past six months or so, and I wonder if we're all on similar plotlines, just at different points and ranges, and eventually almost all of us are destined to find ourselves at 31 readers a day, and ready to hang it up.

It was only a matter of time. So long, billboards...

Internet advertising is the fastest-growing segment of the Canadian ad industry and, for the first time, Web-based commercials are raking in more dollars than billboards.

The out-of-home advertising category, which includes everything from billboards and bus-stop signs to video screens in food courts and elevators, was surpassed last year by on-line ads, which are now a $347-million (U.S.) industry in Canada.

When I travel I often find myself in a position to blog from other people's computers. I do not have a laptop nor do I really want one, but it is hard for me to go anywhere for a long time without checking in on the business, and since I'm on the computer anyway, I do a little blogging from elsewhere as well, too.

This means I use someone else's computer. One of the things that I've noticed about doing that is the difference in "comfort levels" about blogging from someone else's computer. I just can't get to the same frame of mind that I can at my own computer, basically because the environmental interruptions and distractions are new and therefore not easily ignorable. Plus, the obvious lack of my trusty bookmarks...

There's also a "broken in" quality about computers that actually can be a distraction in blogging. We all become accustomed to the minute quirks of our own computers - how easily the keyboard depresses, the speed of the mouse's track, the brightness of the monitor, etc., and when you move on to a different computer, these items become noticeable again. And in the noticing, it becomes just another tiny distraction from blogging.

Still, I don't want to drag a laptop around.

One of the reasons that NIMBY activity occurs is that government isn't very proactive - and often intentionally so - on what are perceived to be controversial issues. At least, not proactive in communicating and educating the public. Instead, a lot of times there's an effort to move an issue through the pipeline as legally quiet as possible, and then, of course, when the public finds out about it, there's a public squall and for some reason it's the opposition voices fault that they're opposed to something ugly being built in their backyard and they're derided as NIMBY.

It's illuminating how citizens - the folks that businesses are counting on as marketplace to make them profitable - are treated with disdain when they question or oppose a marketplace plan based on their personal or community standards. We're all NIMBYs about something. Apparently we're all local morons, too.

We use Dotster for domain registrations, and love the quality of service. But it appears they've run into a bit of legal trouble...

A new federal lawsuit charges that Dotster, one of the largest domain name registrars, has unlawfully participated in a massive cybersquatting campaign targeting companies such as Cingular Wireless, Disney, Ikea, Google, Neiman Marcus, Playboy and Verizon.

The lawsuit, filed Thursday by high-end retailers Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman, alleges that Dotster abused its status as a registrar by "checking out" hundreds of domain names that closely resemble the correct ones--and then keeping only the ones that were visited by Web users who couldn't spell very well.

The misspelled domain name NeimuMarcus.com, when visited by CNET News.com on Thursday evening, included code in its Web page that references Dotster and its subsidiary RevenueDirect.com--and featured advertisements for Neiman Marcus rivals such as Bloomingdales and JCrew. By early Friday, however, that Web site and dozens more had been taken offline.

Cybersquatting, the practice of registering domain names that may violate a company's trademark, is hardly new--it's been around for more than a decade. Also called typosquatting, it's led to high-profile spats such as Apple Computer's successful attempt to claim iTunes.co.uk and Canadian teenager Mike Rowe's registration of MikeRoweSoft.com.

But this Dotster lawsuit involves allegations of a new twist on the concept: a registrar using its special status with the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers to secure misspelled domains temporarily for a few days, measure the traffic, and then pay for only the ones that would be lucrative in terms of advertising.

I wonder if the log analysis information - the web site traffic reports - for the official White House web site are available to the public. I've sent an email to the web team for the White House to find out. I suspect there are real nuggets of information, both political and technology-oriented, in such reports. Shouldn't that be public information?

A few days ago, I emailed the White House tech department about this, but haven't heard back...

From Pravda:

Japan's Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry is working on a new set of safety guidelines for next-generation robots. This set of regulations would constitute a first attempt at a formal version of the first of Asimov's science-fictional Laws of Robotics, or at least the portion that states that humans shall not be harmed by robots.

The first law of robotics, as set forth in 1940 by writer Isaac Asimov, states: A robot may not injure a human being, or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

Japan's ministry guidelines will require manufacturers to install a sufficient number of sensors to keep robots from running into people. Lighter or softer materials will be preferred, to further prevent injury.

Emergency shut-off buttons will also be required. Science fiction heroes in stories and movies have spent an inordinate amount of time trying to find the shut-off button for various out-of-control machines, so there is a hope that these buttons will be prominently placed for easy access by concerned humans.

People in Japan are particularly concerned about this problem, due to the accelerating efforts to create robots that will address the coming labor shortage in Japan's elder care industry.

Somehow, it just feels like the horses are already out of the barn on this one, also...