What are friends for?

Those wanting to link to this site can now simply use whuffie.com (redirect) thanks to Josh. This wins him points since he has not yet contributed to this blog as he claimed he would. I also have to give him a break as he is busy taking care of that expecting wife. That and he said he is on chapter 4 of Doctorow's 'Down and Out.

Crack Light

Recent Movies like Phillip K. Dicks Minority Report featuring hearthtrob heros like Tom Cruise abusing modern urban crack, and Cory Doctorow's sci-fi book which has the fashionable smoking legal crack light make me wonder if they are subtly suggesting a new world that is more lax on drugs would be a better world, or is the direction authors sense we are going. Articles like this one on cocaine candy make me wonder. Coffee and wine and I think that is all we need... in moderation. All things in moderation.

Segway Guy and drinking water?

Dean Kamen inventor of the Segway transport has set his sites on creating a water purifier. Claiming he is not interested in the profits as much as truly helping those with unclean drinking water. If the Segway doesn't take off, at least he has a new Whuffie growing endevour. Could this be a new trend in tech for the under priveledged?Full Story

In follow up to rating your links, there is a post at Nathan's blog about the need for descriptions that accompany links. The suggestion of color added color codes seems to be a designer's nightmare, and smacks of the not so popular homeland security system. While rethinking some original standards cannot be bad, aren't the existing "title" tags applicable? example: Whuffie (mouse over link)
Those of you looking for other "rate your page" have likely seen bloghop.com color bar.

Hidden Whuffie in your HTML tagz'?

Kevin Marks and Rainer Brokerhoff blogs are 'abuzz with talk of adding a value system to your html links. That way when you create a link you can assign a value to it to show how much you "approve" or "disapprove" of what you are linking to. While this seems to create a quick and easy Whuffie like system, it is not at all comprehensive, and I have to question if it would really be worth the trouble. Why not just put a header above the link: "I hate this blog, I don't trust them, they suck, but check them out to mock their very existance" Same effect, no? But I do like quick,easy, cheap as the mantra for good web development. Boris at Rowboat has his own PHP powered system that is under development that reminds me of the Google pagerank system. It is for rating the posts rather than the outgoing links. (Do we really wanna go nuts and rate everything on a page?) Now if we take Boris' post rating and use the code to force the most well voted post to the top of the page that would allow visitors to "control" the topic to some degree, which in some cases might be useful. But it would seem to strip control from the actual author. I would point out the obvious that there is a difference between rating someone's page or post and rating them entirely. A blogger may be a total geek and have a page that sucks, however, they also might be a prolific athelete or historian. So while bloggers haggle over who has the best blog, reputation economics solves that problem. For example the standalone "reader" on this page from netmood (Working again, woohoo!) could be configured to give ratings on a number of things. Which is the heart of Doctorowian whuffie doctrine. The other key principle, is motivation. Why should someone bother to rate your site, your post, or you? In a way the second time I visit anyones website I just cast my vote, when I place a comment it also casts a vote on that post. So while coding affords us the ability to rank these things, I have to question the value. If I visit a blog, and am somewhat interested in it, and I could "ping" their Whuffie and have a whole mini database of achievements and interests that validate my own, that would be truly useful. See thread about this at Joi Ito's page here | note this comment in that thread from micheal that shares my opinion

Inspect 'theya 'gadgutz

Check out the made up list of future gadgets from Wired. My favorite is the scrolled TV screen. (After all did not the Romans and Greeks start with the scroll? I guess good design sticks.)