Ask-Steve.com

Irony around Adobe Contribute 4

I just spent about 20 minutes editing a piece on how great Adobe Contribute 4 is as an offline blog authoring and editing application—when it crashed, losing everything I'd written.

On the realness of blogging

I ran into a friend yesterday and she commented on how I haven't posted anything new to my blog in a while. I'm always a bit stunned when that happens. I see my site visitor statistics so I know that there are many people from all over the world visiting my blog everyday, but for some reason it's easy to lose sight of the fact that there are real people behind those numbers. So it's a little humbling—almost embarrassing—when someone I run into comments on my blog. But more than anything, it's inspiring. It reminds me why I started blogging in the first place and makes me want to post more frequently and write the best stuff I can muster.

Thanks, Miss E, for your comments yesterday. I needed that! :-)

And thanks to everyone who drops by for the occasional read!

[Edited April 19, 2007 @ 10:38 AM to remove bits that made me sound like a blithering dolt. I've reached my quota on that for the current quarter.]

Sexist remark from an anti-sexism campaign

Did you know that yesterday was Blog Against Sexism Day? Neither did I. I learned of it from a post on Eric Stoller's blog.

I consider myself a strong advocate for social justice and decided to learn more about this event. I clicked from Eric's post over to the official Blog Against Sexism Day site, planning to learn a bit more and then grab a graphic that I could include in a post here. I was disappointed to find a completely sexist remark in the opening paragraph of the site! (See the screen grab with the highlighted text)

Whether this is a Freudian slip on the part of the author or simply an innocent mistake, it's a good reminder that even those with the best of intentions and convictions can screw up. In this case, they managed to insult men in the same sentence in which they were asking for their support. Why is it more of a challenge for men to write about this topic than women? I know a lot of men who are as passionate feminists as any women I know. And that's saying something.

I think Blog Against Sexism Day, which falls on International Women’s Day, is a great idea. It's also a good time to remember that it's not all black and white, and that none of us is perfect. We're all works in progress and need to remember that change happens in steps.

Technorati Tags: gender discrimination, sexism, social justice

There are many paths to wit and wisdom

I like to post occasionally on the the words and phrases that people are plugging in to the search engines to arrive at Ask-Steve.com. Here are a few of the phrases that have brought people here in February. Interesting how search works. I can assure you—I've never written a word about cat enemas or a girl exploding from diet coke and mentos.

things to ask your military recruiter
ban smoking in workplace oregon
broken window policing
spamming your friends
mother cigarette breatfeeding
ask steve
iraq friendly fire video clip
fred meyers, 39th and hawthorne
good coffee shops for studying portland, or
statistics how many licensed drivers in usa
cussing satire
cat enemas
oregon ban smoking stats
dominoes right wing
smoking in oregon
coffee shops that serve stumptown
rude neighbors portland
portland, oregon smoking restrictions
mattress + portland
peets coffee internet access
coffee shop owners forum
diet coke and mentos girl explodes

Freedom of the press doesn't include bloggers

The headline of the article says it all: Blogger Josh Wolf Behind Bars 171 Days and Counting. The subtitle reads: Josh Wolf, who refused to hand over footage of a protest, is the longest-incarcerated journalist in modern U.S. history.

The 24 year old San Franciscan is a freelance videographer. He shot footage of a July 2005 anti-globalization protest during which a police officer was injured. The crux of the prosecution's case is their contention that protesters tried to set fire to a police vehicle.

Prosecutors argue that because federal money helped pay for the police car, the matter should be heard in federal court. Ryan spokesman Luke Macaulay said the grand jury needed the video to "determine what, if any, crimes were committed."

Wolf refuses to surrender the video.

In a statement posted on his blog Tuesday, Wolf—who sold some of his footage to San Francisco television stations—explained his decision not to comply with the grand jury's request.

"If the U.S. attorney can compel journalists to testify about what they've learned through their work and to force them to turn over their unpublished materials, then not only will the public be unable to trust reporters, but journalists themselves will become de facto deputies and investigators," read the message attributed to Wolf at joshwolf.net.

Blogger Josh Wolf Behind Bars 171 Days and Counting

Smile--you're on...YouTube! The shift to shame.

Last month, Eva Burgess was eating breakfast at the Rose Cafe in Venice, Calif., when she remembered she needed to make an appointment with her eye doctor. So the New York theater director got on her cellphone and booked a date.

Almost immediately, she started receiving "weird and creepy" calls directing her to a blog. There, under the posting "Eva Burgess Is Getting Glasses!" her name, cellphone number and other details mentioned in her call to the doctor's office were posted, along with the admonition, "next time, you might take your business outside." The offended blogger had been sitting next to Ms. Burgess in the cafe.

This is taken from an article in the Wall Street Journal today entitled, The Snoop Next Door. Stories like the one above are sprouting up all over the Web. They've become so popular that there are an increasing number of sites dedicated to them, along with dedicated groups showing up on such sites as Flickr (photos) and YouTube (video). More specialized sites featured in the article include PlateWire.com for shaming bad drivers and HollaBackNYC.com for reporting incidents of men leering, whistling at or otherwise harassing women.

My first thought on this was to feel that it's definitely not a good idea. Our society is becoming ever more permissive of the seemingly ubiquitous surveillance by government, law agencies, private security companies, corporations and so forth. The last thing we need to do is turn the Internet into one big network of tattletales. But then I started visiting some of these sites and was forced to rethink my initial reaction.

This is especially interesting to me in light of the recent stir caused by my Portland Hall of Shame series of posts wherein I call out local businesses who are being bad neighbors by not keeping their storefronts and sidewalks clean and in good repair. I feel that this is a completely innocuous thing to do and, indeed, it is already producing positive results and generating expressions of gratitude from neighbors who have suffered from the effects of these bad-neighbor businesses over the years.

But taking it to a personal level is another matter entirely. When you publish a person's photo, phone number, license plate number or other 'unique identifier' for the world to see, you're potentially putting them in harm's way. At the very least, you're setting them up for some embarrassment—if not harassment. Is that ever a good thing? I would say that in some cases it is, but determining where to draw the line is something so subjective that it may be impossible to define what those cases are.

The photo at the top of this article shows a huge pickup truck spanning two compact car parking spaces. And the California license plate number is visible for all to see. Few people would argue that this guy is being a complete jerk, but does that mean this photo should be posted in the Jerks photo group on Flickr? I'm guessing that if all my readers were to weigh in, there would be a fifty-fifty split in opinion.

But what about the photo of this guy on a NYC bus? It appears on Holla Back New York City where the tagline reads, If you can't slap 'em, snap 'em! The site gives women a place to post photos and reports of guys who harass them. This photo is accompanied by this story:

This guy kept his leg wide open the whole time on the Q14 bus tonight. He kept putting his hand between his legs and massaged the area like he's in a porn movie. He kept eyeballing me and staring at me until I took out my camera phone and snapped this nasty pervert's face. As soon as he got off the bus, he just stared right at me through the window and I just flipped him my middle finger. Dirty pervert.

Other posts on the site tell of women receiving threats, being followed by men, etc. Many, if not most, of these incidents wouldn't be touched by the police. Even if they had the resources to do anything about it, they typically can't until a crime has been committed. So aren't sites like this a viable way for victims of harassment to defend themselves and warn others of the threat? Of course, you have to take into consideration the potential for lies, slander and blackmail. Say an angry ex lover or employee trying to exact revenge by posting a photo along with a fabricated story...

I'm still looking into this, but thought it worth sharing.

Check out the full article here:

The Snoop Next Door - The Wall Street Journal - January 12, 2007
Bad parking, loud talking -- no transgression is too trivial to document online. Our reporter on new Web sites for outing fellow citizens.

The joy of mobile Web access

My Comcast Internet connection went down again today. It's enough to make me want to switch back to DSL. The great thing, though, is that I can surf the Web, do e-mail and blog using my BlackBerry Pearl 8100. Which is what I'm doing right now.

2006 Weblog Awards winners announced

The winners of the 2006 Weblog Awards have been announced. Categories include Best Blog, Best New Blog, Best Individual Blog, etc.

Check out the winners here:

http://2006.weblogawards.org/2006/12/the_2006_weblog_award_winners.php

Posting from Windows Live Writer (Beta)

Ecto beware. Microsoft is at it again and there may be a new king of the hill in offline blog authoring tools. I discovered a little application put out by Microsoft, still in beta (although the version number is 1.0...), called Windows Live Writer. It was a very quick and easy install. All I had to do was put in my blog URL, username and password and it pretty much did the rest. It even detects and downloads my blog style sheet so that my entry appears in the application exactly as it'll look on my blog—as I'm typing it. You can configure Ecto to do that, but the fact that Live Writer does it automatically is great.

One thing missing is the ability to insert special characters—like the em dash. Ecto lets you add HTML code to a dropdown for easy entry. In Live Writer I have to switch to the HTML code view and enter it manually. It does include toolbar buttons, though, for most things you'd want: bold, italics, underline, font color, bullets, blockquote, hyperlink, picture, etc.

The interface is far prettier than anything I've seen—no doubt in line with the Windows Vista interface. It also accepts plugins, so I'm sure we'll be seeing all kinds of new functionality coming out.

It doesn't have all the functionality of Ecto, but it's free, easy to use, and pretty to look at. Definitely worth a look.

Writer Zone - The Live Writer Team Blog

Outstanding Neil Gaiman interview

I had the great pleasure of seeing Neil Gaiman speak here in Portland just over a year ago. If you have the chance to see him, don't miss it.

I have a lot of friends who follow his work closely, so I want to let everyone know that there is a great interview with him on Bookslut.

Read the interview now and hear from Neil about:

The stupidity of signing for everyone.
The loveliness of Brazilians.
His open relationship (with his fans).
Avoiding cat enemas.
The effectiveness of cat pheromones.
His odd relationship with Kathy Acker.

And that's just the beginning...

An Interview with Neil Gaiman | Bookslut