I’ve been babbling at techie co-workers about the need for accountability in comments. It’s depressing to read an interesting article and note that the comments have devolved into some PS3 fanboy flame war. I wish people felt more personal involvement in their comments, so they’d be less likely to crap them out or laugh them off. well, here’s one solution:
Facebook invades your blog, rest of Web with new Comment Box (@ ars technica)
Ironically, it does not use the facebook plugin it describes, so i can’t comment there. The less-mentioned loveable-feature is : not having to sign up for accounts at every &$%^@ing website you visit, just so you can post a quick thought on the article.
But i am seeing the facebook comment box at more and more websites. using it. and “I’M LOVING IT” ™
I alsooOOOOooo wish i could filter comments based on age, profanity, racism, and interests. And I’d like to be able to rate comments everywhere (like the thumbs up/down at youtube). but these are not features. yet…
It’s potentially negative to make people afraid to say what they’re thinking. but, in reality, this is what “culture” is. isn’t it? i don’t say random insane offensive things to the guy next to me, because i don’t want to get stabbed. or, more mildly, i might want to do business with them some day.
Some friends think it’d be a tragedy if the perceived internet community was whittled down from millions to a just a few hundred that seem to fit your filters. but. i think this would be far more beneficial than many realize. Aside from lowering your stress level, it could also lead to more focused and useful connections with strangers worldwide who would have been lost in the noise. hmm. or so i think.
I’ve been reading 1984 again recently, and there are scary implications all over the place (with regard to our fears, and mechanisms, for fitting in with our fellow man).
Apparently there’s a big to-do over letting people listen to e-books they’ve purchased. Witness Engadget’s tacky coverage. A few days ago, Ars Technica wrote a lengthy, but excellent, article concerning the book publishing industry’s incredibly stupid approach to “modern technologeez” (ebooks in particular). And this speech outcry seems sadly in line.
I love the e-book potential. In this case, i’d love to flip my ebook from text to speech while driving, just by touching my place and a sound button, and thus keep the data gorge going, non-stop, throughout my day. Ie, i’d be happy to suffer a generic text-to-speech robot voice. annnnnd i might pay extra, for audio of some celebrity reading it. or the author. I might buy audio readings MULTIPLE TIMES, if I loved the book. I hope the audio clip they’ve posted in their forums indicates the creation of a phenomic markup language, so that the robot can properly emphasize the presentation. And could be easily swapped out for different robot voices. wee.
