Author Archives: Karl

An EditThisPage anniversary

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Thanks for wishing us a happy five years blogging Mr. PapaScott 🙂 Sorry for missing yours. Happy belated five years for you too.

It’s getting real close to my own 5 year EditThisPage anniversary. It’s a good opportunity for me elaborate on my own personal history a bit:

Back then, I was already a blogger, maintaining my personal site using a free version of Frontier for Windows, amongst other hand built tools of my own. Blogging was so new, I was, in fact, the only known blogger in all of Knight Ridder, the company I was working for. Additionally, I was publishing a RSS feed on the Kosovo war that was being aggregated by My.Userland and My.Netscape. These efforts brought me some visibility in the company, and more than a little notoriety with some folks there. Many thought I should not be doing what I was, and should stop. A good thing I didn’t.

When Dan Gillmor was exploring options to run his weblog, word had reached him about me, and he asked for my opinion. Whether Dan using Manila (DaveNet: Oct. 25, 1999) was influenced by me, or the other way around – I have no idea anymore – but one thing was for sure, I had to have a way to experiment outside the confines of work. I didn’t want simply extend my ego online with a new blog about myself, hense PhillyFuture was born.

Happy anniversary to you, to us, to Manila and to its gone, but not forgotten hosting environment EditThisPage.

EditThisPage and Blogger.com (Blogger.com preceded EditThisPage (DaveNet: Dec. 08, 1999) by a couple months I think, while Manila, the software behind EditThisPage, came out almost simultaneously with it) provided models that it seems all other blogging tools and environments have looked to for inspiration and have striven to improve upon.

One thing I need to add: I miss working with Dan and the folks at KR. Being surrounded by journalists and their idealism during that time was something special. Especially Dan. Our talks about technology were just terrific.

All of us were kinda like homesteaders back then. But in my humble opinion ? it’s now when things get interesting. After all ? you need to have paved roads to have a Mustang, and our roads aren’t all the way there yet, but are getting close. And the Lord knows ? I want a Mustang!

deli.icio.us stuff

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After reading that Rafe was using it, I thought I’d give it a try. You’ll never go back to managing bookmarks entirely with your browser again. I’m using its output to help build my Links page on this site.

The following are some links for my own reference:

XML.com: Introducing del.icio.us.

Manageability: Groovy and Del.icio.us.

Jeffrey Veen: Publishing Links With Perl.

Roger L. Costello: Building Web Services the REST Way.

Jon Udell: del.icio.us.

The Pennsylvania Telco bill gets signed

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The Register: Philly sells Pennsylvania to Verizon.

TechDirt: Rendell Signs No Muni Bill Into Law.

Engadget: Verizon and Philly cut deal on citywide WiFi, basically shaft rest of Pennsylvania.

Slashdot: Verizon-Pushed WiFi Bill Becomes Law in PA.

Free Press: Pennsylvania citizens get a raw deal from Rendell on broadband bill.

John Sundman and Friends: PA HB 30 Now Law *sigh*.

Give us your students or you lose your funding

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Sharon Shea-Keneally, principal of Mount Anthony Union High School in Bennington, Vermont, was shocked when she received a letter in May from military recruiters demanding a list of all her students, including names, addresses, and phone numbers. The school invites recruiters to participate in career days and job fairs, but like most school districts, it keeps student information strictly confidential. “We don’t give out a list of names of our kids to anybody,” says Shea-Keneally, “not to colleges, churches, employers — nobody.”

But when Shea-Keneally insisted on an explanation, she was in for an even bigger surprise: The recruiters cited the No Child Left Behind Act, President Bush’s sweeping new education law passed earlier this year. There, buried deep within the law’s 670 pages, is a provision requiring public secondary schools to provide military recruiters not only with access to facilities, but also with contact information for every student — or face a cutoff of all federal aid.

Mother Jones: No Child Unrecruited: 12/1/2002

“This is what democracy looks like”

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Blackbox voting files lawsuit and serves papers in dramatic way. I can’t wait to see the video from this. Great work Blackbox voting!

I keep saying this, but a few people I know just don’t get it: if you want to make a difference, if something is bothering you and you want to see it change: you need to do it by donating and volunteering your time. Get involved. Step up. Rock on. Just don’t sit there and bitch.