Idea: Socially constructed interfaces. Cool! I'd prefer to restrict it to te creation of items/object that are little packages of functionality (rather than pieces of UI) but it is part of the dream nonetheless.
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Jon Udell quoted me today on javascript and sucking or not sucking. What I should have added was that people like Scott Andrew Lepera, Milo Vermeulen, Q42 , Chris Nott, Aaron Boodman (and many others who I am not in the loop enough to know about) produce kick ass javascript/DHTML all the time. (And, speaking of Q42, check out their amazing Good Old Adventures; also Q42er Sjoerd Visscher has a blog now.)
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Playing Six Degrees: anyone know Whit Alexander and Richard Tait from Cranium? If so, write me at stewart (at) sylloge (dot) com. Thanks!
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A belated wedding gift from Scott is no. 1 of Circular Breathing — “a personal breath recorder”. In our house! It's wonderful (and it's funny how much more I like art that I'm allowed to 'get').
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New(ish): Waggish. If I had to do a AM radio ad for it, I'd use that generic ol' home place-type strumming music in the background (Motel 6 in late nineties) and “Just good philosophical posts.” tagline (assuming that the AM radio audience would be sophisticated enough to understand “philosophical” in the broadest sense, encompassing literature, the arts and other matters of humane interest).

And via Waggish, via Magnificent Melting Object, this graphic score.
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Jason writes in to point out that the Metafilter post I liked got a couple of moronic comments on it and then Michael Neutze writes to point out that, hey, have I never read Tufte or something? And was my mindset not similar, as Kottke's would be? I will admit, red-faced, I had just discovered Excel's 3d charting capabilities and thought it worked better when I did the first one (the data seemed to only really work as a chart). The second I did unthinkingly, to match the first (upon reflection, it is really quite bad and hard to make out). And, me + charts + Kottke + Metafilter = Kottke ego chart, posted on Metafilter, by me.
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Metafilter is still capable of a great thread now and again.
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Neato internet backbone pipe visualization applet (to see the really big nets you have to set it to “commercial backbones”) from the Cooperative Association for Internet Data Analysis who have lots of other visualizations available, like these beautiful examples from the Walrus project.

See also WorldCom's (UUNet) IP maps (and latency statistics).
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When the Cat's away, the mice do stay up until 6:15AM glued to their computers. Oh, the work I get done at night! Oh, the way I feel in the morning ...
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(I can't remember if I ever actually did, but) now I can't make fun of the Webbys.
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Finding lots of good things from Reputations Research Network. Interestingly, it lead me to a Interdisciplinary Symposium on Reputation Mechanisms in Online Communities (Google cache), scheduled for Cambrdige this April — or is it? The site is down but the description in the Google's cache lives on. Looking for more details, I found that Sébastien Paquet had already noted both at Seb's Open Research. Guess I have to read more blogs.
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Looking for an old sent email, I came across a very old sent email which contained the phrase “Rare! Rare! Rare! The genius in the world”. I could quite place it, but thanks to Google and web.archive.org, this classic was preserved:

• It's hard to believe when you hear
  
• It's unimaginable when you see
  
• Rare! Rare! Rare! The genius in the world
  
• Best! Best! Best! The Best in the world

Rare person who nibbles glass cups
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Re Justin's smart friends not playing video games, I can't even follow what the players of GNE talk about sometimes. (Also, a new fan site whose header includes a teddy bear of violence, a spaceman robot, a bottle of vague booze and a few other game objects together in an unsavory way.)
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Was quite boggled last night by the idea of all the turbines at the bottoms of dams all around the province generating electricity and that I can call up just so much heat with a dial on the wall. The lights have dimmers as well. It's truly fantastic. We really, as a species, know how to modify the surface of a planet!
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You'd be something of a puckfist to not sign up for the cfjz-producted Eat More Words wordnerd club. With access to pb's BookApp (especially good if you can find an old :Cue:C.A.T. (heh, those were the days!)) and the O.E.D. Online for less than $1/mo it is the best deal since everyone got free TiVos (those were also the days).
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Partial description of a good-sounding game of Nomic.
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I enjoyed skimming Breyer's dissention to the bad thing that happened, particularly the parts about protection from monopolies, since I am currently reading Theodore Rex, a very good biography of Theodore Roosevelt (exclusively his time as president, from McKinley's assassination onwards) and monopolies (“trusts” or “combinations”) are the major theme of his first term in office.

The Eldred case certainly had my support, though I know maybe 1% of the amount I would need to know to come up with an informed opinion about the constitutionality of the act in question. However, I am a little nonplussed about the reactions, particularly Lessig's apparent belief that the next move (and perhaps only option) is amending the constitution. Congress has the power here and it seems obvious to me that that is where we should go if we want changes to the copyright laws. Going up against big money-backed lobbying power for the purpose of passing a bill seems a lot easier than going up against big money-backed lobbying power for the purpose of amending the constitution.
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Is it good or bad for us that everyone is now noticing that the Sims Online kind of, well, sucks? See this game girl advance thread and the Amazon reviews (now at 2.3 or so stars).

Update: I should disclaim that in some senses The Sims Online is a competitor to the project I am currently working on. However, in a more important sense, it was to be the genre-creating, market-expanding supergame that would help us immensely by bringing a whole new audience to what is a pretty cool idea: interacting with other people inside of the context of a game and thereby collectively generating emergent structures which provide an endless and fascinating non-deterministic participatory higher-level “simulation”. Though future improvements might redeem it, their current product just does not pull it off. And that sucks, because I was really looking forward to it.
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This post by Christina Wodtke on the AIGA Experience Design list caught my eye:

IMO ... drawing is a basic communication skill that can be taught, just as reading and writing can be taught (though like writing, being great takes a few more factors). People who can't draw are victims of a system that doesn't teach it because it foolishly doesn't value it. Like illiterates late in life, they will have to struggle to learn it. Which is a shame — if you've ever jumped up to the white board to sketch an explanation, you know how incredibly useful and pleasurable drawing can be.

I've taught a number of folks to draw (usually using Drawing from the Right Side of the Brain as a text) and it is as satisfying as experience as teaching someone to read. A world opens up. If you can't draw, do yourself the favor of acquiring this incredibly useful skill. No matter what your profession.

This makes me want to learn to draw!
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Everyone knows that the O'Reilly Emerging Technology Conference is the bomb. But, in 2003 it will either more the bomb or less the bomb because I'll present in the social software track. Here's the long description:

There are two problems facing the implementation and adoption of the most interesting dreams of the social software designers: (1) the critical mass issue -- if too few people are participating in the system, the network effect does not obtain and participation has little value, and (2) social relationships are based on personal identities and unless "the system" can be trusted absolutely, no-one will want to participate -- our reputations, relationships and privacy are too important.

On the other hand, people flock to play massively multiplayer games and the implementation of what would might seem too risky for our "real life" identities and relationships can be played out inside of a virtual world. While any given game might have critical mass issues of its own, inside the game world everyone participates in the social software systems since that is part of the game. And the trust issues instead become game design issues since "trust" in the system reduces to appreciation or enthusiasm for the rules of the game.

The session examines the implementation of social software in the context of games and the lessons learned in the design and development of the Game Neverending in particular. By looking at how virtual worlds' model actors and interactions in the formation of economies, societies and political systems, valuable lessons can be brought back to the design or "real life" systems.

I am really excited about being there.
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Games Magazine's (no site!) game of the year for 2003 is Dvonn which is part of the GIPF Project.

The GIPF Project concerns a system that makes it possible to combine games - not only the games of the project itself, but literally any game or challenge. This system is based upon the use of "potentials". Each game of the project introduces its own new potential into GIPF.

I have no idea how that actually works in practice (and we have two of the four published GIPF games; there will be six in total), but Dvonn is fantastic — please do your part and write to Caterina to convince her to play it with me more.
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Since the blogstorm has calmed a little, I feel I can link to Cory's book: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, completely free to download in various formats (and, of course, you can also buy it). I read it a few months ago and that whole whuffie thing will figure big in the GNE (Cory is one of our advisors). And speaking of the game, I'd be remiss not to mention that current prototype testers can now buy pioneer accounts (and they should, and they are!)
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Reader Michael Neutze, sends in a wonderful pile of London population data and analysis. In short,

London has been losing population between 1939 and 1991 and it is not due to boundaries changes (sorry for my prior mail suggesting otherwise). Some people suggested congestion and environmental problems as a cause but i did no further research on that.

“Persons Present” (thousands) Greater London
1901	6,510
1939	8,615 (estimate)
1991	6,394

Here also is nice chart showing london population growth, decline and shifting from 1801 to 1991. Thanks Michael!
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Alice, dreaming:

...this is an improvement on my last dream, which entailed driving a car without a steering wheel. Like my brain is nudging and winking, "Get it??" Yeah, thanks a lot, brain! Thanks for the vote of confidence on my symbolism-deciphering abilities.

@ 50cups.
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foafnaut: Cool SVG app for browsing FOAF (friend of a friend) connections. Nice use of SVG, but damn that stuff is slow!
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I went away for New Years (posts below were stuck in editing for the last two weeks) and I did not check mail or net vitals for 72 hours! For the first time in I-don't-know-how-long! And I wasn't even anxious about it! Wow!
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