Election Day: Hive Mind Politics

by Steven Garrity

Having voted earlier this evening for the Green Party in the Canadian federal election, I left the poling station with a strange sensation.

Given all the talk (some of it my own voice) of how little a vote counts, and how ineffectual a partisan political system can be, it is easy to be cynical (and I am) about the value of voting. For example, tonight I voted for a candidate and party who have virtually no chance of winning in my riding.

That said, there is something remarkable about participating in a collective decision with tens of millions of others.

Voting makes me feel small, insignificant, and powerful.

Update: Again doing something in common with tens of millions of others, I’ve turned on the TV to watch some election coverage. I’m back to feeling cynical.

 

CNN/Netscape Synergies

by Steven Garrity

I’ve long found CNN.com to be at least as funny as The Onion. The robots that control their homepage “top stories” have a knack for ironic juxtaposition, amusing corrections, and being just plain wacky.

All along, though, there was been an odd little blob of pixels floating in the top right-hand corner of the CNN.com homepage that has remained throughout their various design changes. The Netscape logo/wordmark lives up there, taking up what expect would be some of the most valuable “real-estate” on the web.

CNN.com composite image

Netscape lives on as a “brand” at AOL, but seems to have been diluted from having been one of the most powerful company/product names in the history of technology to being a second-rate dial-up provider and 1999-style web-portal. Today, for example, the Netscape.com homepage includes such scintillating stories as “10 Things Credit Card Companies Don’t Tell You”, “The World’s Top Topless Beaches”, and my favourite, “Sexy Pix: 10 Best Rear Views”. Of course, the “news” on Netscape.com is supplied by CNN. It’s synergastic.

What misguided cross-pollinating-eyeball-stickyfication-content deal led to this prominent positioning of the Netscape logo on CNN.com? I can only imagine that some starry-eyed marketing folk signed a 28-year agreement back in 2001 and thought it was the deal of the century.

 

by Steven Garrity

There’s a sweet new captcha WebTwenny.com

 

by Steven Garrity

Daniel, my brotha’ here at silverorange has a good post about web-twenny “clouds”

 

by Steven Garrity

Google Talk is now open to communicate with other Jabber servers (like the one I use at silverorange) – awesome

 

by Steven Garrity

Dan James (The president of the internet) on web twenny

 

by Steven Garrity

This music video created on an old Apple II is strangely beautiful (found via Digg)

 

by Steven Garrity

David Holtzman, former CTO of Network Solutions has a summer home on Prince Edward Island, a great weblog called GlobalPOV, and is a fine lunch date.

 

SVG in the Browser

by Steven Garrity

For any interested web-geeks, I’ve posted a brief tutorial (a micro-tutorial, perhaps) about How to Include Scalable Vector Graphics (SVG) In-line over at the silverorange labs weblog. Exciting stuff.

 

by Steven Garrity

Wikipedia needs some money