Technology

Short form of the controversy: Dave Winer and Harvard are throwing a one-day blogging convention at Harvard. The entry fee is $500; $250 if you’re a Harvard affiliate. This strikes some people as too high. Today, Dave explained why the fee was $500, as follows: 1. It’s absolutely non-profit. OK, good. Irrelevant to why the cost is so high, though. bq. 2. We will use the money to pay expenses for speakers and students who will get in for free, some of whom will have their expenses paid. ...

Boston’s doing pretty well in the community wireless sphere, although perhaps not as well as Portland (original). Now Somerville is talking about business-based free community wireless networks. Not only is this fun times for me, it’s got cool potential as a prototype that could easily catch on elsewhere. Michael Oh is thinking of each network he builds as an instance of a larger concept, rather than building one-offs, which is the kind of thinking that makes a difference in the long term. ...

I am currently in possession of 20 discount codes for TypePad, the new weblog hosting service/software from Six Apart. (They wrote Movable Type.) If you’re looking for someplace to host your weblog, TypePad is so much superior to Blogger that it isn’t even funny; it’s the perfect place for the non-techie to go. The discount codes give 20% off the usual prices for life. The prices are pretty reasonable. If you actually know me and you want to start a blog with minimal effort, drop me a line and I’ll shoot you a discount code.

Now, that’s a job posting (original). Pity it was taken down, but luckily someone saved it from obscurity. Since I stole the link from Phil Ringalda, I’m sure it’ll be all over the Internet by Monday at the latest. It opens like this: “So you were a top Web Developer, once, many years ago, until the ‘correction’. Now nobody cares and you are shunned in public, much as lepers were in the fifteenth century.” From there on in, it’s all uphill.

That’s interesting. The pricing on CafePress books just dropped to 4.5 cents a page for wire-o and saddle stitch and 3 cents a page for perfect bound. The base price for wire-o stayed at five bucks, saddle stich base pricing dropped to four bucks, and perfect bound went up to seven bucks. So the hypothetical 32 page comic book now costs, um, $5.44. The 250 page paperback costs $14.50. Now we’re talking.

Wal-Mart took a step away from RFID by cancelling a consumer-level trial of the technology, but their other RFID plans seem to still be in place. I’d say that’s a victory for privacy concerns. Whether or not it’s a major one remains to be seen.

Dave’s shut it down. So I’m shutting down Scripting News now, to give me some time to think, and to give you all a demo of what it would be like if it weren’t here. These last few days have been really awful. You can’t imagine what it’s like to have so many people screaming at you. It’s inhuman, especially considering that my health isn’t that good. The only conclusion I can come to is that I shouldn’t be doing this. ...

T-Mobile is removing the games from the color Sidekick (via Boing Boing). That’s pretty much the suck. I don’t know that I like having a provider who removes functionality from my cell phone. Apparently it was a licensing issue, but guys — suck it up and pay for the license. Hrm. Palm Tungsten? Treo? I have a portable cell phone number now, so I can switch when my current plan expires.

CafePress sez: Books are closer than ever to completion! We are currently running a beta test to make sure that we present the best product possible. As soon as we tally the results and make improvements where necessary, books will go live! For our first release we will be offering the following size and binding combinations. Wire-O binding (like a journal): 4.18” × 6.88” mass trade paperback 5” × 8” tradeback ...

After my RSS rant, I’m glad to see Sam Ruby trying to solve the problem. For what my voice is worth, I support this effort.