I don’t remember ever spelling this out, so:

• Any posting that adds to the discussion shall be accepted
• Any posting by a spammer/robot/pay-per-post flunkie shall be rejected
• Any posting that would offend my grandma shall be rejected
• Any posting that takes too long for me to categorize per above MAY be rejected

These aren’t hard-and-fast rules. It’s getting increasingly difficult to discern postings that come from actual personalities. As a general rule, you should include a link back to your personal site, which should present itself in a way that makes it obvious that it’s not put together by some toxic SEO-gaming, advert-farming, internet-poisoning aggregation program.

But that’s just good advice no matter which blogs you comment on. -m

Today Yahoo! launched oneSearch on their other front page, m.yahoo.com. OneSearch has been available for a while, but only from within Yahoo! Go. Now it’s available to millions of mobile devices equipped with a data connection and XHTML browser.

The basic premise behind oneSearch is to replace the tri-modal search box, where you have to say whether you are searching the web, local, or images, with a single all-knowing search box. Available context information, such as your zip code, is used to guide the search. Internally, the application is smart about figuring out what kind of things you might be looking for. For example, someone searching for “pizza” in a mobile context is probably more interested in a list of restaurants (with reviews) than in a list of hyperlinks. Behind the simplicity of a single search box, there is a great deal of work going on to make your life easier.
Ever since Yahoo! Go betas (and gammas) started coming out, folks have been asking me how else they could get access to this application. Now it’s easy.

Not too long ago, the front page relaunched simultaneously in 19 countries. The new design was simple, and based on a new platform called Sushi, as mentioned in published sources. OneSearch shows off the power of this approach, even though this launch didn’t cover 19 countries…yet. (Getting access to local data for movies, restaurants, sporting events, and so on is no small feat.)

As I said before, this is only a small part of an overall strategy that has been years in the making. Much more to come. Watch this space. -m

Go read it for yourself. Unfortunately, this kind of thinking is all too widespread in the industry. -m

Last week I did something pretty foolish: I placed an order with Amazon. A few days later six new books arrived–two on math, two on brewing, Dreaming in Code, and one on guitar playing. All of these went directly to my toread list, a huge library of books that probably wouldn’t remain standing if I put them in one pile.

If you look at the sidebar on my site, you can see my “What I’m Reading” list. It hasn’t been updated in a while,  but sadly it’s mostly accurate. And not because I’ve stopped reading–I still read small amounts every day. It’s just that I haven’t been finishing many.

The author of the music book likes to use the phrase “Personal Everest” to refer to a goal set too high. But this isn’t an Everest situation. More like a personal peanut butter manefesto. -m

ERH’s comments on XForms, as part of his predictions for 2007. Worth a read. -m

A few more tidbits on the Softbank Mobile turnaround, for which helped architect the mobile platform.

SoftBank phones have a “Y!”-button which links to Yahoo!-keitai. Yahoo-Keitai! offers a list of official sites, new services (e.g. a new communicator service), and also access to free mobile internet sites through the YAHOO directory, as well as access to YAHOO services, such as YAHOO-auctions.

-m

my new publishing technique is unstoppable - but why limit to blog posts?

GET Introspection URI
   scan the list of workspaces for the collection you want to post to
GET to Collection URI
   read the nice [atom] feed 
POST to the collection URI
   push an item formatted as [a nice atom entry]
GET or HEAD to item URI
   grab the item
PUT or DELETE to item URI
   change or delete the  item

-m

Congrats to Opera Mini on its first anniversary. I just installed it on my new SLVR, and the download is an astounding 98k. Why can’t more software be this lean? And yes, Y! search came as the default. -m

The nofollow setting on an outbound link should be a user-editable option, subject to the same community process that all other content on wikipedia already is. (Site guidelines, dispute resolution, restricted editing on certain articles for unregistered users, etc.) By default, links would get nofollow, but over time, they could be ‘blessed’, perhaps after a certain amount of time or human review. Wasn’t this how nofollow was supposed to work in the first place?
The community process works. Why maneuver around it? -m

And a few not so open…

Q: Does the iPhone (or specifically the desktop-grade Safari browser) make the “mobile web” obsolete?

A: The “mobile web”, as we know it today, will become obsolete without any help. Things change. Devices improve. That said, the context in which one uses the web is different, and there will always be a need for some sites to have mobile-specific versions, even after the day every mobile browser is desktop-grade.

Q: Does the advent of desktop-grade mobile browsers mean that today’s mobile development is meaningless?

A: No. The race is on today, and the winners will be those who can make the most users happy. That includes users who–for several more years–won’t own hardware capable of desktop-grade browsers. The winner on this playing field will have any easy momentum play to carry over to the next one.
Q: Will the iPhone “cannabalize” iPod sales?

A: Goodness, no. People who buy one will be either 1) buying it instead of an iPod, or 2) not. The Cingular CEO said it was a “multi-year exclusive” deal, signed sight unseen. In other words, Apple had incredible leverage to get a good deal. Their subsidy on the 2-year contract is probably significant, maybe in the $300 range, possibly a lot more. So would you call selling a $800-900 device instead of a $200 one cannabalization?

Q: What does this mean for XHTML-MP and XHTML Basic?

A: That’s a tough question. In the end, it will boil down to momentum. Today’s successful mobile development necessarily involves XHTML. Once browsers get better, nobody is going to re-write their sites in worse markup, though some might attempt to merge with the main site. (Another open User Experience Design question is the degree to which it will be possible for one site to work in a different, mobile, context.)

Q: What does this mean for Mobile Web Best Practice and mobileOK?
A: Like the “mobile web” both of these specs-in-progress will become obsolete without help. But now they are going to look increasingly obsolete at an accerated rate.

-m

(Press release) Starting today, Y! is the exclusive search partner for Opera Mini across more than 100 countries. The release also names “oneSearch”, going live later in Q1–definitely something to keep an eye on. -m

I don’t.

If you resolve to do something, don’t wait for a certain calendar date–just do it. -m

This “click-through” license on an Edison-style phonograph cylinder has been making the rounds. But don’t miss the front side: a giant photo of Edison himself, and his name in the largest font possible. As the photo caption says:

They really weren’t concerned with artist promotion, I guess.

From day one, the record companies have been more concerned about their own well-being than artists, it seems. -m

ZDNet Asia offers a rare glimpse inside Yahoo! Mobile, including the code name for a current project I’m involved with. Read on to get an idea why I keep saying to expect big things soon in this space. -m

A brief nod to the east: now Japanese mobile users have the option to switch carriers while keeping their existing number. This development is triggering a new round of competition among the carriers and bringing in a new era of free content, something we take for granted in the U.S. -m

Check out this site from Dreamhost: Files Forever. All files are DRM-free and can be re-downloaded at any time. Expect to see more of this from an unhealthy market that wants to break free from artificial constraints. Currenly in beta and open only to Dreamhost customers. -m

Today Softbank Mobile launched a new mobile service, delivering tons of Yahoo! Japan content, powered by Yahoo! US technology, to Softbank Mobile phones. This is notable for a few reasons:

• In the past, content of this caliber been inside paid walled gardens in Japan. Opening this up could be the tipping point for a shake-up in one of the most amazing mobile markets.
• This is the first time a carrier has been in so close with a content provider. If this works out (and leading signs are very good), it could be a model for the rest of the world.
• I’ve seen some of the new hardware from SoftBank Mobile. The phones are great and–through tight Y! integration–go a long way toward solving longstanding UI problems related to the mobile web.
• Number portability is coming to Japan, I believe beginning today on October 24. Once this gets momentum, user bases could shift rapidly. Today is the ideal time to be playing a strong card.
• Apple rumors continue to swirl around SoftBank. I’m giddy at the thought of iPods accessing the web through my code. :-)

So, watch this space. More good things are coming. -m

Another example of a small, useful spec defined in a language humans can actually read and understand. It also seems incredibly useful to be able to print basic things without going through the multi-megabyte printer driver madness that everyone else seems to be going for. -m

Another cool thing on the way: this Friday is the first public Yahoo! Hack Day. I’ll be out on the lawn for sure. If you’ll be there–look me up. Since the presentations come rapid-fire at the end, here Chad Dickerson has some tips on presenting in 90 seconds. -m

Spotted via Weinberger. Hiawatha Bray of The Boston Globe writes about Yahoo’s continuing foray against DRM, led by David Goldberg. -m

For the first time today, I momentarily wished that jEdit had a particular Emacs key binding, not the other way around. -m

A must-read posting from Mark Birbeck, who knows a few things about XForms and Web Forms 2.0.

He talks about the respective approaches embodied in XForms and Web Forms 2.0, and concludes that the primary difference between them has little to do with simplicity. He goes on to analyze differences in how developers and users view browsers. Go read it, it’s worth it. -m

Most of the censorship stories you hear on the news involve public libraries, but right now I’m writing this from a hospital, which has free wi-fi. Someone providing a service like this has latitude to do pretty much as they please, including censorship, but is it a good idea?

The system here evidently consists of a monitor observing every HTTP access, either forwarding it on or bouncing to another server, one that seems to be down. That second server, referred to only by numeric IP, has yet to ever actually respond, so trying to load any page with a blocked site requres a lengthy timeout of about two minutes before landing on a browser error page with a URL something like this:

http://10.226.37.60:9014/actionpage?basictype=block&epochseconds=1157135546&
requestedurl=http%3A%2F%2Fbriefcase.yahoo.com%2F&categorylist=170&
categorydescriptionlist=Personal%20Network%20Storage&useripaddress=172.26.0.95&
username=&actiontaken=block&actionreason=by-category&actionreasondata=170&
replayhash=oBvk1MZaKDcrs6zo2FyPDg%3D%3D

Let’s take a look at what kind of sites this inane system prevents hospital visotors from viewing directly:

• flickr.com (”Personal Pages”) — because honestly, who in a maternity ward would ever need to upload pictures of something?
• 360.yahoo.com (”Dating&Personal”) — because who in a maternity ward would consider posting to a blog?
• my.yahoo.com as a (”Portal Site”) — because who, away from home for a few days, might want to check up on news of the world around them?
• thinkbabynames.com (”Personal Pages”) — thankfully, this dangerous and immoral content too has been shielded from the eyes of maternity ward visitors.

At some point, somebody must have pointed out a flaw in their system–that any named site can also be viewed through a numeric IP. Instead of actually thinking about the problem, they also banned all numeric IPs, even for sites that would otherwise work.
The upside to retarded filtering is that it’s easy to get around. Techniques that work here include using a search engine cached page, Coral Cache (.nyud.net:8080), SSH tunneling, VPN, and adding a new entry to hosts to access the same site under a different name. The access is so slow, however (hmm… in a way another form of censorship) that the strain of the additional measures often leads to timeouts and various other errors.
Fortunately, the filtermasters haven’t caught on to dubinko.info yet, thus allowing this post to appear. I hear that site is pretty subversive.

What’s the net?

1. It’s obvious their list of sites to filter is woefully generic, not at all adjusted to the environment in which people will be actually using the system. And still, I’d wager they’re paying someone fistfuls of cash to keep updating the generic list.
2. I can imagine there are a few sites on the internets that wouldn’t be appropriate in this environment.  The majority of well-adjusted adults are perfectly capable of choosing not to visit those sites.
3. In cases where supervision is needed, it is effective on a one-on-one basis, often parent-to-child. Witness how many ways there are to easily bypass the filters: software, particularly bad software, isn’t clever enough to replace human judgement.
4. Yay for the mobile web, which allowed me to upload my pictures anyway.

-m

Interesting, but not surprising. The source article talks about revenue share unhappiness, but that seems like a bit of a stretch for a deal only inked six months ago. There’s some more interesting analysis in there as well.

It was the open secret in the industry that both Voda and T-Mobile were beginning to have their doubts about their marriage with Google. Now the honeymoon is over rumors are mounting that both operators are ripe for a new union with Yahoo or a white-label solution – or both.

My opinion is that folks are starting to realize that there’s a lot more to life than being really, really ridiculously good at search. -m

This is excellent: a Python Developer Center at Yahoo!. -m

Hmm, this seems like a new feature, auto-installed after my last mail client restart. Unfortunately, there’s no “what’s this?” link for further information.

I find it interesting that the scam message wasn’t also labeled as “Junk”. Also, for some reason, the word ’scam’ feels unexpectedly slangy in this setting. Great feature, I just wish I was a little more transparent. -m

A few pics up on Flickr. Still recovering from travel, more soon. -m

Yes, the devastating two-pronged attack is in full swing. Link. -m

Write up by Duncan Cragg. More and more momentum is building for this meme. -m

According to the authoratative site. Looks like the virtualization markup is getting interesting. -m