bitdepth

irrepressible.info

The web is an amazing way to share things, connect and find information. But the unlimited freedom of expression is threatened when technology and politics collide. Amnesty International along with The Observer have launched the irrepressible.info campaign to raise awareness of web censorship to lead up to a November 2006 United Nations conference on the future of the internet. It’s important that freedom online is preserved and by signing the pledge you can help defend internet freedom and add your voice to those who fight repression.

June 11, 2006 amnestyinternational, freedom, humanrights

Bitdepth is Four

bitdepth is four Looking at the date I realize that I’ve had this blog up and running for four years now. It’s the beginning of year five and I looked back over some of what I had written. I tended to ramble more in the past, but the focus more recently on this site has been on films. My posting times tend to be variable, but I’m still using the same tools. The site is served up with the same Blosxom script by Rael Dornfest that I’ve been running for a few years and I still write the posts in BBEdit. I am planning to move over to Typo, which I like very much, but I have to import all of the entries first, so I’m waiting until I have time to do that.
What has changed is that I’m posting more online in other places. Flickr has added a whole visual dimension to what I do online and the Blogger-hosted Bitdepth Digest is a place to post shorter things. A more frequent presence is also maintained through 43 Things, and then 43 Places, and 43 People and especially All Consuming, where I now keep track of (mainly) the films that I consume. The other big change is the podcast that my son John and I do at Bad Metaphor. Podcasting didn’t exist when I started this, but it’s definitely around now.
Thanks for reading, stay in touch, and I’ll write more soon.

May 10, 2006 43things, allconsuming, badmetaphor, bitdepth, blogger, blogging, blosxom, flickr, writing

Presence and Absence

I haven’t been here for a long time. My plan was to write a lot during the Atlantic Film Festival, but I didn’t. I wrote more in my Moleskine than online, and I’m thinking that in the long run it will be better, since I’ll have more thoughtful writing here than rushing to put something up quickly.
It’s interesting that I was able to keep posting a bit on 43things and 43places, and Flickr which have lower barriers to contribute. So I haven’t disappeared online completely, but just changed where I am. Maybe podcasting will make it easier or posting from a cell phone… maybe next year, but now I’m still text and image based, so I’ll keep doing that. So things will start up here again soon and I’ll go back to my notebook and start posting more here. There’s a lot to write about and many great films to see, so thanks for reading this and see you all soon.

October 9, 2005 bitdepth, blogging

Technorati Tags

One of the signs that things are maturing with information on the Web is that things are becoming much more closely linked together. A few days ago I was thinking that Technorati‘s watchlists were cool and today they unleashed their tags. I’m very impressed. One of the things that I’ve been wanting for a little while is a way to tag blog entries. Categories are good, but after using del.icio.us and Flickr I’ve started to realize that having more than one way to classify is a good thing. But having multiple tags doesn’t really do a lot for you unless you can do something with it and now you can. I’m sure that blogging systems will quickly evolve and you’ll choose tags and categories (there are already plugins), but it’s fascinating to watch the development of folksonomy happen so rapidly. It was neat when I was able to see my Flickr photos show up beside my things on 43 things. But that’s nothing compared to looking at Flickr photos, blog entries and del.icio.us links all together on the same page. I really fell in love with tags when I looked at the view of tags on Flickr where the font size of the tags reflect their popularity. Technorati has the same thing and as more people tag stuff it will be a great way to visualize what people are talking about. It’s developing so rapidly that Technorati Tags have rolled out before it was completely done, so there aren’t RSS feeds yet.
Another example of how fast things happen now: from the time the first notice I saw in my feeds (on Joho) to the afternoon, Matt from Oddiophile whipped up a bookmarklet to create tags (and I have to change my stylesheet to incorporate this new class). I used it for my first tagged post over at bitdepth digest and I’ll use it to paste the code in this entry as well (which I’m writing in BBEdit). Tags and Technorati – this rocks so hard.
technorati: tags, folksonomy, web, blog, technorati

January 14, 2005 43things, blog, del.icio.us, flickr, folksonomy, tags, technorati, web

Weaving a Web

One thing that I’ve noticed is that I’m increasing my presence online. I don’t know if the quality is increasing or if it is just more stuff, but I think that one of the reasons that I’m more prolific now is that is easier. I love using Blosxom to blog because I can create the entries with any text editor, but I always use BBEdit to write for bitdepth. But the bitdepth entries aren’t as frequent as I wanted them to be, but now with my increased use of Blogger for Screen Arts and now bitdepth digest, I blog more often using Blogger. The other things that I use often are Flickr and, increasingly, 43 Things. One thing that all these sites have in common are their fairly flexible and open APIs, which allows the information and the sites to interact with other applications and sites. What it means practically is that I now am able to blog using Flickr and 43 Things and to have Flickr images automatically show up on my 43things page as well as here on bitdepth.
Very exciting things are also happening with Technorati adding watchlists where you can follow discussions in the blogosphere based on keywords. I keep track of just about all of this stuff using NetNewsWire as if there isn’t an RSS feed, I’m not as interested in it as I don’t want to spend the time looking around to see if anything has changed. While Flickr and 43things are very fun and aren’t technically oriented, Technorati is a geeky data-rich backend that is starting to have some very cool applications built on their API.
So the exciting thing now is that we’re moving away from needing to use one application to view and share and just find and create and share. It’s exciting when you don’t have to code or understand how to code to use things (but if you can, it’s even more exciting now as you have a lot more to play with).

January 8, 2005 43things, bbedit, bitdepth, blogger, blosxom, flickr, netnewswire, screenarts, technorati

One Thousand Photos

I just uploaded a photo to Flickr that brings the size of my archive to one thousand photos. That’s a lot and it confirms my belief that Flickr is a killer app. It’s actually changed the way that I think about photos and I’m taking a lot more. There are many ways to upload and share photos, but what makes Flickr great is the social component. When I started uploading pictures I was thinking that it was a great way to share photos with my family as it just didn’t make any more sense to keep emailing the same photos around all of the time. The other thing is that I didn’t want to upload photos of the kids and family events for the world. Sharing pictures with the family worked great, but it wasn’t until I started getting comments on my public photos and started participating in groups that I really started to get more heavily addicted.
What is wonderful about Flickr is that you can connect with people from around the world and communicate visually. You find people who have a similar visual sensibility to you. Now if someone adds me as a contact I look at their photos to try and figure out why. Usually it only takes a few images to figure out what you share in common, whether it is an interest in things that are rusting, similar framing or topics. I look forward to seeing the images that my contacts have uploaded and I want to share more.
The other thing that this sharing has encouraged me to do is more fully embrace Creative Commons licensing as all of my public photos have an “attribution-NonCommercial” license. I love being part of a community that communicates through images.

December 18, 2004 creativecommons, flickr, photos

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