Looks like YouTube is down…
Yes, YouTube appears to be down currently. Looks like it’s down at least 30 minutes now (as of 12:45pm Eastern) based on Corsin’s note. I’ve received nine emails and a batch of Twitter messages asking if it’s down so here is my confirmation that it’s down for me as well.
Try out Magnify.net.
It’s back 🙂
I’m not a “video person” but I am liking Seesmic a great deal these days…
Mary Hudson says hello to Seesmic:
If Mark Cuban were to hypothetically run for president in 2008, he might want to consider Ted “Series of Tubes” Stevens for his running mate based on these types of sentiments…
In an open letter to Internet service providers published earlier this week, billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban calls for telecoms to put an end to peer-to-peer (P2P) filesharing. Cuban expresses concerns that P2P “freeloaders” are clogging the tubes with commercial content. His letter doesn’t focus on piracy, however, and instead primarily attacks companies that use P2P for legitimate commercial applications. We’re always interested to read the musings of Mr. Cuban, but this time we’re pretty sure he’s missed the point…
This argument comes from the man who funded Grokster’s legal defense back in the day and invested approximately $1.7 million in P2P company Red Swoosh. Cuban has been focused on the problems of bandwidth to the home for some time, however, telling Ars in 2006 that he is in favor of a tiered Internet.
Seriously, how out of touch is Mark Cuban?
Mark Cuban to ISP’s: block all P2P traffic; Ars to Cuban: um, no
Great study on the alarming declines in reading by young adults and college educated adults from the National Endowment for the Arts:
The story the data tell is simple, consistent, and alarming. Although there has been
measurable progress in recent years in reading ability at the elementary school level,
all progress appears to halt as children enter their teenage years. There is a general
decline in reading among teenage and adult Americans. Most alarming, both reading
ability and the habit of regular reading have greatly declined among college graduates.
These negative trends have more than literary importance. As this report makes clear,
the declines have demonstrable social, economic, cultural, and civic implications.
Dave Winer writes today regarding TinyURL’s recent downtime and what it means for the web:
Now that URL length has become an issue for users, it might be even better for designers to view URLs as part of site design. Look at the address for the page for the Wii at Amazon. Wouldn’t it be easier to find if the address were:
Try clicking on it — it actually works!
Why should a user ever see the longer crappy url?
In other words, url-shortening isn’t just for Twitter users, it’s for everyone. Maybe most people don’t look at the urls, but some do, and maybe more would if they made more sense?
Imagine if web developers would start taking link optimization into account along with search engine optimization. As Winer points out, long link strands are increasingly becoming irrelevant as most people just go to Google if they need a link they can’t remember and click from there.
However, if you’re selling a product or a service, how valuable is it that the link to that product or service have an increasingly easy format and structure for users or customers to remember? Perhaps not valuable for all merchants or advertisers… but potentially very valuable for many.
Expect to hear more about link optimization as the web grows up and grows out to mobile.
We should be listening to what the kids are saying and watching what they are doing as we endeavor to create a better web. Otherwise, we’ll continue to fill the role of typical adults and muck the web up:
Rather than a teacher creating class blogs, and registering all the students one by one, and creating a single feed of their posts, it’s the students who are doing this around their friendship or collaborative work groups. Since the content and mechanism are in the hands of the students we see the same exponential growth in content and delivery that we have seen in the real world net, but have really struggled to harness for education. I’d argue that with increased flexibility in the means of delivery we’d also see increased content creation to mould around all these different media.
Imagine if Facebook took that to heart! There’s wisdom in youth.
Given eBooks or the real thing, I’ll gladly take my 1.0 paper books…
“If you would know how a man treats his wife and his children, see how he treats his books.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
Having become a father just six weeks ago, I’m already recognizing the patterns of behavior that my daughter and I share. While she’s not playing with Barbie’s yet, she’s becoming very tactile as she continues to try and figure out this strange new world that she’s joined.
I love my toys. My toys these days are phones and laptops and all sorts of geeky gizmo’s. This week, I got my first Macbook Pro and I’m using it for productivity reasons while also treating it like a toy. I’m sure Mary Hudson will do the same as she grows and starts to put the toys she enjoys playing with to use as learning tools.
So, my question… is there a difference between toys and tools? Can a hammer be both an instrument of creativity and enjoyment as well as a way to get things done?
Personally, I don’t see a difference between the two. Hopefully my experience as a father will either confirm or prove wrong my theory.
