Indonesia pushes Wordpress for blogger's identity; Canadians beat up redheads

Indonesia pushes Wordpress for blogger's identity; Canadians beat up redheads
Via the Jakarta Post: Govt to pressurize Wordpress into disclosing blogger's ID. The Department of Communication and Information has sent a formal request to blog hosting site Wordpress to cooperate in the investigation of a blogger allegedly behind a blog containing a comic of Prophet Muhammad. Telecommunication Technology director general Cahyana Ahmadjayadi said legal processing was to continue regardless of the blog's shutdown. "This is considered as a cybercrime," Ahmadjayadi...

Via the Jakarta Post: Govt to pressurize Wordpress into disclosing blogger's ID.

The Department of Communication and Information has sent a formal request to blog hosting site Wordpress to cooperate in the investigation of a blogger allegedly behind a blog containing a comic of Prophet Muhammad.

Telecommunication Technology director general Cahyana Ahmadjayadi said legal processing was to continue regardless of the blog's shutdown.

"This is considered as a cybercrime," Ahmadjayadi said, as quoted by tempointeraktif.com.

"Even in its terms of services it's clear that hate speech isn't allowed," he said, adding that he is confident the identity of the blogger would eventually surface.

"If Wordpress declines to disclose the blog owner's identity, we will trace the person ourself," said Ahmadjayadi, referring in particular to the National Police's digital forensic lab.

But it's not a simple issue of repressive Indonesians versus free-spirited bloggers. What happens if such a post leads to someone's being hurt or killed?

It's just happened here in British Columbia thanks to Kick a Ginger Day, a half-witted online prank that led to some redheaded kids being assaulted by their classmates. The BC Teachers' Federation is highly angry, and I don't blame them.

BEA Book Expo America: Smart Strategies for Independent Publishers


The planetary (and interplanetary) internet
Via The Guardian, an optimistic argument by Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the original internet: A founding father of the web says it's come a long way, but its potential for worldwide change can and will be greater still. Excerpt: It's amazing how quickly those of us with internet access have come to take for granted the remarkable amounts of information we have at our disposal, but we're...

Via The Guardian, an optimistic argument by Vint Cerf, one of the architects of the original internet: A founding father of the web says it's come a long way, but its potential for worldwide change can and will be greater still. Excerpt:

It's amazing how quickly those of us with internet access have come to take for granted the remarkable amounts of information we have at our disposal, but we're only seeing the beginnings. The bulk of human knowledge remains offline. As more of us get access to the internet, more of the world's information will find its way online.

The web is already making strides toward becoming truly global. While I was chairman of ICANN, one of the organisations that helps ensure that the internet works uniformly around the world, we adopted rules to allow the system of domain names to accommodate non-Roman characters, making the web more accessible to people whose languages use other scripts, such as Arabic, Korean or Cyrillic.

There are improvements in automatic language translation tools and, in particular, the field that we call machine learning. It is already possible to do a Google search and explore the results in English across web content in 23 different languages, from Czech to Hindi to Korean. Speakers of any of those languages can now explore content on the web written in any of the others.

The technology isn't perfect yet, but it's rapidly improving. Even in its present form, it's easy to imagine a not-too-distant future in which automatic translation will allow two people in the world to message one another in real time, each experiencing the chat in his or her tongue. Just imagine what a significant step that will be.

Cerf predicts that even space probes will be built to use the internet. I predict that such probes will need major spam filters.

More seriously, webwriters should begin to think about writing effectively in more languages than just English. Some languages are "wordier" than English; others are more concise. Do readers of Chinese or Arabic scan a computer screen the way English readers do? I wish I knew.

Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages
Via the December 30 New York Times: Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages. Excerpt:The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.The globalization of the Web...

Via the December 30 New York Times: Writing the Web’s Future in Many Languages. Excerpt:

The next chapter of the World Wide Web will not be written in English alone. Asia already has twice as many Internet users as North America, and by 2012 it will have three times as many. 

Already, more than half of the search queries on Google come from outside the United States.

The globalization of the Web has inspired entrepreneurs like Ram Prakash Hanumanthappa, an engineer from outside Bangalore, India. Mr. Ram Prakash learned English as a teenager, but he still prefers to express himself to friends and family members in his native Kannada. But using Kannada on the Web involves computer keyboard maps that even Mr. Ram Prakash finds challenging to learn. 

So in 2006 he developed Quillpad, an online service for typing in 10 South Asian languages. Users spell out words of local languages phonetically in Roman letters, and Quillpad’s predictive engine converts them into local-language script. Bloggers and authors rave about the service, which has attracted interest from the cellphone maker Nokia and the attention of Google Inc., which has since introduced its own transliteration tool. 

Mr. Ram Prakash said Western technology companies have misunderstood the linguistic landscape of India, where English is spoken proficiently by only about a tenth of the population and even many college-educated Indians prefer the contours of their native tongues for everyday speech. 

“You’ve got to give them an opportunity to express themselves correctly, rather than make a fool out of themselves and forcing them to use English,” he said.

It's a fascinating article about an important development. I've added a link to Quillpad in the Webwriting Resources list.

Get aboard the Cluetrain again
Via Inspecht, an Australian blog: The Cluetrain rides again. Excerpt: Almost 10 years ago Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine published a book that was going to change the way we saw the world, The Cluetrain Manifesto. The basic premise in the book is that markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, and honest, sometimes even direct. Basically you can’t fake it....

Via Inspecht, an Australian blog: The Cluetrain rides again. Excerpt:

Almost 10 years ago Chris Locke, Doc Searls, David Weinberger and Rick Levine published a book that was going to change the way we saw the world, The Cluetrain Manifesto.

The basic premise in the book is that markets are conversations. Their members communicate in language that is natural, open, and honest, sometimes even direct. Basically you can’t fake it.

Most corporations, on the other hand, only know how to engage in a corporate monotone of mission statements, product strategies and , marketing brochures.

However everything is now changing. People are connecting, and working together. The Internet is enabling these conversations and there is nothing corporations can do to stop it.

The blog post contain a slide show of the Cluetrain Manifesto's key points. Very much worth reviewing (for the old-timers) and discovering (for the newbies).

Thanks to Amy Gahran for the link.

Avoid cliché like the plague? Never
Robert Fisk is best known as a journalist specializing in the Middle East. But today he turns his attention to another chronic problem. Via The Independent: Avoid cliché like the plague? Never. Excerpt: Opposite my apartment in Beirut there used to live an American-born English teacher called Marion Lanson. When she departed Lebanon, I inherited her 1949 Random House American College Dictionary, edited by one Clarence L Barnhart "with the...

Robert Fisk is best known as a journalist specializing in the Middle East. But today he turns his attention to another chronic problem. Via The Independent: Avoid cliché like the plague? Never. Excerpt:

Opposite my apartment in Beirut there used to live an American-born English teacher called Marion Lanson. When she departed Lebanon, I inherited her 1949 Random House American College Dictionary, edited by one Clarence L Barnhart "with the Assistance of 355 Authorities and Specialists". I like "authorities" and "specialists" very much because we have largely abandoned such words.

I was keen to look up Mr Barnhart's definition of that plague of modern journalism, the cliché. "A trite, stereotyped expression, idea, practice, etc, as 'sadder but wiser', 'strong as an ox'."

Alas, I fear these are imaginative expressions compared with the stuff we now consume. Mr. Barnhart's German translation of cliché – "klitsch" or "doughy mass" – seems more appropriate for the assaults on literacy that we commit today.

All this came to mind when I learned this week of the coup in Mauretania, where the army took power after President Sidi Ould Cheikh Abdallahi unwisely tried to fire some of his senior officers.

Would tanks "roll" into the capital, I asked myself? Tanks always "roll", don't they? I have never actually seen a tank perform this extraordinary act but, clichés being what they are, my eye sped down the Mauretania story for my friendly "roll". And sure enough – perhaps because Mauretania doesn't have a lot of tanks – there it was. The president, said the agency report, "was arrested after military convoys rolled through the capital Nouakchott".

Why do we use these dead words? There is a dictionary of clichés on my desktop in Beirut and I heartily recommend Watson's Dictionary of Weasel Words by the Australian Don Watson.

It contains one of my most hated clichés: core. As in "core issues", "core business" or "core learning outcomes". Rather like "key speakers" – of which I always refuse to be a member – these clichés attempt to smother idiocy with deep learning (or "core" learning, perhaps).

What is this fascination with stale language? Let me rage. I hate all reports about wars where "the guns fall silent"; the retirement period for artillery being rather short, it's only a matter of time before the "clouds of war" begin to gather once more, when opponents are "pitted" against each other, when guns "soften up" their targets, and national governments complain about "terrorists" crossing (ergo: Iraq, Syria, Iran, Afghanistan) "porous borders". In Iraq, we may experience a "spike" of violence, followed – of course – by a successful "surge".

By all means read the whole thing.

A Handy Reference
I recently ran across a useful little book, The Elements of Visual Style: The Basics of Print Design for Every PC and Mac User, by Robert W. Harris. While it's aimed at print-based writing, webwriters can also draw some lessons from it. Harris gives us a quick guide to typography, layout, and the use of art in print documents. The illustrations show bad and good examples, and the book itself...

I recently ran across a useful little book, The Elements of Visual Style: The Basics of Print Design for Every PC and Mac User, by Robert W. Harris. While it's aimed at print-based writing, webwriters can also draw some lessons from it.

Harris gives us a quick guide to typography, layout, and the use of art in print documents. The illustrations show bad and good examples, and the book itself is pretty well designed. I wish it were more "hypertextual": We get no references to other books on document design, and no links to sites dealing with this and related issues.

Still, it's a compact, concise, and inexpensive handbook. Even if you find most of the advice very familiar, the book could help you back up the points you're trying to make to your clients.

How we read online
Via Slate: Lazy Bastards: How we read online.. It's based on Jakob Nielsen's principles, and it's old stuff to veteran webwriters, but it could be useful in explaining to others why some webtext succeeds and other webtext fails. In this connection, see also Is Google Making Us Stupid? in the July/August 2008 Atlantic.

Via Slate: Lazy Bastards: How we read online.. It's based on Jakob Nielsen's principles, and it's old stuff to veteran webwriters, but it could be useful in explaining to others why some webtext succeeds and other webtext fails.

In this connection, see also Is Google Making Us Stupid? in the July/August 2008 Atlantic.

A promising new search engine (updated)
I can still recall the day I first logged on to Google, then just the latest of a host of search engines. This morning I heard a news item about a new search engine: Cuil. After a very quick inspection, I'm impressed. It's fast and it's pretty—you get graphics as well as links. I'd welcome your comments about it and how well it meets your needs. Update, July 30: David...

I can still recall the day I first logged on to Google, then just the latest of a host of search engines. This morning I heard a news item about a new search engine: Cuil.

After a very quick inspection, I'm impressed. It's fast and it's pretty—you get graphics as well as links. I'd welcome your comments about it and how well it meets your needs.

Update, July 30: David Olive, a columnist for The Star in Toronto, is not impressed.

Reading speed on computer screens
As I'm pulling together materials for the fourth edition of Writing for the Web, I'm finding it hard to update one important issue. For decades, it's been a given that reading text on a computer screen is harder than reading it on paper. The effect is that we read online text 25% more slowly than text on paper. Jakob Nielsen made that critical point back in the 1990s, and said...

As I'm pulling together materials for the fourth edition of Writing for the Web, I'm finding it hard to update one important issue.

For decades, it's been a given that reading text on a computer screen is harder than reading it on paper. The effect is that we read online text 25% more slowly than text on paper.

Jakob Nielsen made that critical point back in the 1990s, and said it was a problem with screen resolution. By 2009, he predicted, resolution would be equivalent to print on paper.

But Nielsen hasn't addressed the issue recently, and when I search for other studies, I find little or nothing published since about 2003. Can anyone point me to recent studies that indicate how quickly people read onscreen, using recent computers, compared to reading text on print?

PhpBay 3.0.7 Available for Download
Another phpBay update. PhpBay 3.0.7 is released today and it’s available for download in your member’s area. It is a maintenance release so unless you need to use the new features, you don’t need to upgrade. phpBay 3.0.7 release includes: 1) Fix on items displayed by country. 2) Added “free shipping” as a parameter. 3) Fixes a [...]

Another phpBay update. PhpBay 3.0.7 is released today and it’s available for download in your member’s area. It is a maintenance release so unless you need to use the new features, you don’t need to upgrade.

phpBay 3.0.7 release includes:

1) Fix on items displayed by country.
2) Added “free shipping” as a parameter.
3) Fixes a minor issue with the sidebar widget where the closing tag was not working correctly.

To update, upload all files and overwrite all existing files. Auction.php is not affected by this update.

Cartooning for the web
In his Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw argues that News websites should make more use of cartoons (and infographics). He describes how a cartoon on OJR got 40,000 hits from around the world. The cartoon was also widely translated. It's a point worth considering, especially for webwriters and bloggers who deal with worldwide audiences.

In his Online Journalism Blog, Paul Bradshaw argues that News websites should make more use of cartoons (and infographics). He describes how a cartoon on OJR got 40,000 hits from around the world. The cartoon was also widely translated.

It's a point worth considering, especially for webwriters and bloggers who deal with worldwide audiences.

Personalize Your Blog with .ME Domain Name
As of today, .ME domains are open for public registrations.  .ME has been the talk of the town because of its potential for internet users.  .ME domains are just perfect for blogs.   Just think about it, with a  .ME domain you can register YOURNAME.ME. .ME domains are not just limited to personal websites.  It can be used as a catchy [...]

As of today, .ME domains are open for public registrations.  .ME has been the talk of the town because of its potential for internet users.  .ME domains are just perfect for blogs.   Just think about it, with a  .ME domain you can register YOURNAME.ME.

.ME domains are not just limited to personal websites.  It can be used as a catchy marketing tool.  For example, verb-oriented domain names such as Contact.me, Drive.me, Date.me, Help.me, Love.me make perfect sense to visitors.

Well, you can purchase those premium domains only through the auction that’s coming up, but you can still get good .ME domain names if you hurry up.

It is little bit expensive and requires 2 years of contract, but it will be well worth your investment.  I was going to register “Prayfor.me” but as I thought.. it’s gone.  But I’ve found a couple of really nice domain names already.  So register a .ME domain name now!

Register a .ME Domain Here

Blogging the Internet Marketing Conference
This morning I took part in a panel on webwriting, part of the Internet Marketing Conference. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. One thing I learned: Miss 604, also known as Rebecca Bollwitt, is a very speedy blogger. She summed up my presentation (on concise text) with admirable concision and accuracy.

This morning I took part in a panel on webwriting, part of the Internet Marketing Conference. It was a lot of fun, and I learned a lot. One thing I learned: Miss 604, also known as Rebecca Bollwitt, is a very speedy blogger. She summed up my presentation (on concise text) with admirable concision and accuracy.

The Global Language Monitor
Here's a site I've just discovered: The Global Language Monitor. It deals, among many other topics, with the language of the US presidential campaign just concluded. For webwriters, this looks like an important site.

Here's a site I've just discovered: The Global Language Monitor. It deals, among many other topics, with the language of the US presidential campaign just concluded.

For webwriters, this looks like an important site.

Getting Your Book on National TV - 8 Tips