I woke up yesterday with these thought.

Blogs will fade away within two years.  What we know now as blogs will not be recognized by web users of tommorrow, not as blogs, but as websites.  Website technologies and blogging technologies will converge into one.  People take it for granted that webpages can be edited using their browser.  People will also take it for granted that any webpages can be subscribed to with a single-click.  Web browsers will be changed to support all this and more like highlighting of changes.

My family went for a little boat ride in the Bay today with my son's Weblos pack (Weblos is sort of like Boy Scout).  Great weather, a bit windy, short of sleep, and in need of a shave.  Here are some pictures from the trip.  The shot of Golden Gate Bridge from below was the best one of the bunch.  Pretty, eh?

Update: Dave was apparently taking pictures on shore as I was in the Bay waters.  BTW, I was in a powered boat named SSS Intrepid (I think SSS stands for Sea Scout Something) which was built for the Korean War.  I wasn't really sailing, but my hair was.

Just thinking out loud.

There is an interesting constraint inherent in the Newspaper UI (NUI) metaphor.  Newspapers are things where blogs are places.  Location of things are usually either temporary (camera in my office) or relative (camera in my pocket).  With personalized newspaper, it is difficult to talk to my friend over the phone about an interesting article on the frontpage of today's Just for Don Morning News if the content of the article (blog posts) has been taken out of its context (blog itself) in order to weave together a story out of multiple posts from multiple blogs.  Hmm.

My Mark Pilgrim Stalks Dave Winer post generated heated arguments over wide range including copyright, de-publishing, and morals.  While they are all good arguments, only Aaron Swartz bothered to asked me to clarify why I think what Mark is doing is so bad.  Thanks, Aaron.

From FAQ about Cyberstalking:

"Many states' anti-stalking criminal codes provide that someone is a stalker if he willfully and repeatedly, communicates, or harasses another and/or makes a credible threat to place the victim or the victim's immediate family in fear for their safety."

"In many states, the behavior must be "repeated," meaning it has to happen more than once either to constitute criminal harassment or behavior which the civil courts can address. Many states provide, however, that if the stalker is prowling a place where you live, work, or visit, then one stalking instance may be sufficient to commence criminal or civil proceedings."

"In some states, like California, you need not prove your stalker had the intent to carry out his threat. In Canada, you need not prove your stalker meant to scare you, only that you were scared. You do, however, need to prove your fear is reasonable."

First, I assumed that the intent of Winer Watch was to catch Dave editing or deleting controversial posts and then denying it later.  I maybe completely wrong and, if I am, I will apologize to Mark fully and as often as he wants.  Most people who responded to my post seem to agree with my assumption though.

Second, I feel that my blog is a place where part of me live.  Dave spends enough time with his blog that it is not unreasonable to think of his blog as a place where Dave lives and work.  If defacement of websites can be considered legally as destruction of property, the idea of a blog as a place of living and/or working is not crazy.

Being exposed as a lier can damage a person's life or career.  Sustained fear of being exposed and destruction of one's life or career is traumatizing.  Winer Watcher prowls in a place where the intended victim live and work.  The person who set these types of bots on a specific victim is a stalker.

For more information about Cyberstalking, go here.

New issues are starting to surface with newspaper UI.  Most immediate one has to do with link-happy nature of blog posts.  Newspaper user experience is modal and sequential in nature.  While you may jump from one article to next, you are within the newspaper and reading them in sequence.  Mapping blogs to that model requires a lot of design work.

Recent posts referenced by an article is easiest to handle since they are likely to be in the same edition as the referencing article by embedding or by forward pointers.  References to articles in past editions is manageable if the referenced edition is in is saved somewhere — remote repository design discourages personal editions.  If it is not, then it can be treated like new posts.

Beside using a few key smilies to express likes and dislikes, a newshound icon could be used to allow readers to ask for more information on a particular story in future editions.  I thought about new pages being added to the back of an edition while it is being read, but I concluded that readers will get confused or tired — not being able to turn the last page sucks like watching inbox grow as you work through it.  One issue here is that some bloggers write about multiple unrelated stories in a single post.

These are just some of the issues I am dealing with these days.  What I strive to do in these sort of design situations is to find issues that cancel each other out.  For example, people want more control over how much time they spend reading blogs, so not being able to read referenced articles immediately helps in that regard.

In a way, I am weaving a bamboo basket, working the strands against each other in a pattern that creates a stable shape.

Mark has a stalker bot that monitors "Dave"'s blog for changes every five minutes and list detected changes using color-coded difference report.  Called Winer Watcher, it is an interesting experiment from an engineer's point of view, but I think it is stalking and suspect the motivations behind it.

I frequently edit my recent posts for various reasons and would feel offended if someone did a Don Park Watcher.  Regardless of copyright issues, I think it is stalking, stalking to catch embarrasing mistakes and show them to the world.

While I enjoy reading Mark's blog post most of the time, I have noticed that he has a mean childish streak that calmly surfaces occasionally.  Usually, they are harmless and even understandable.  Winer Watcher, on the other hand, is truely awful, a demonstration of how technology can be used to abuse bloggers.

Mark, STOP IT!  If this is an earnest experiment, use your blog or at least ask for permissions before putting a microscope on other people's blog.  Having a blog is not an invitation for abuse.

I wrote about how gender differences, specifically gender-specific intellectual blindness, might affect UI design and asked how it might affect new breed of file system designs like Longhorn's.  Scoble, Longhorn evangelist, didn't see what I was talking about.  So I explained in a comment:

"The difference is in how strong the association between information and surrounding context is.

My theory is that men tend to remember more accurately how, when, and where they last saw or interacted with what or who regardless of whether it makes sense.

On the other hand, women tend to be better at remember structure that makes sense to them and is likely to shuffle things around until it does and do so again when it doesn't.

Could be total bullshit, but could have a huge impact on file system design if true. Frankly, I would be surprised if Longhorn UI team didn't consider the differences between men and women even though I have yet to come across any extensive research on the subject in respect to HCI design."

Marc Canter then picked up the thread, detailed and expanded the meme to include age differences with a liberal amount of chest thumping:

"You're kidding right Robert?  What's the difference between men and women?  I would have thought your many wives would have taught you that already.

How 'bout color, shape, sound, smell, attitude, aesthetics, family approach – just about everything that makes someone a human.  In fact the ONLY thing men and women have in common – is that we both eat, shit and breath.

So what does that have to do with user experiences (which include UI, built-in content, web services, community, context, etc.) ? Well that's ONE of the things we've been working on – going on 11 years now. 

Soft, pastel, intuitive, friendly = female

Hard, primary, intellectual, comradery = male

The best Microsoft ever got to was long and short menus.  What?  You're not spending enough on R&D?  Where's the innovation?  Where's Nathan Myrvold when you need him?  Isn't that what .Net is about?  Can I hear you say "Hailstorm?"

Well now you have a reason to tell them (that's YOU) to invest in us – and we'll answer all your questions…..

We've been doing the R&D Microsoft, Xerox, MIT, Interval Research – SHOULD have been doing. Now it's time to productize.

Don Park has it right – there WILL be deifferent version of Longhorn for men and women. But also for young and old.  Left and Right.  Up and down."

Right on, Marc.  Scoble then took the ball and ran in the direction of his interest:

"Marc Canter is always a fun read. He's the guy who started Macromedia. Yes, they did kick Microsoft's behind. Let's see, Microsoft tried to lock in developers into our own proprietary DHTML tags and failed, but Macromedia's Flash format is all over the place. Who won that battle? What caught my eye about Marc's weblog today? Where he exclaims that there is money in tools. Damn straight there is. Let's see, Adobe makes money off of Acrobat. About a billion a year (Acrobat is funding an entire additional Silicon Valley skyscraper, Adobe's CEO said in a recent magazine article I read). Macromedia makes money off of Flash. Borland makes money off of tools. One of Microsoft's biggest buildings (#42) is full of guys writing tools.

Then Marc talks about the gender of Longhorn. Awesome stuff. Yeah, my wife is different than me. Thankfully!

What does Longhorn need more than anything else? Tools!

Why? Well, as an evangelist, I want tons of great apps for my wife to use on Longhorn (Longhorn is the code name for the next version of Windows). How is she gonna get those great apps? Developers are gonna have to create them. How are devs and artists gonna create apps for the operating system most of us will use in 2005 and beyond? Tools!

Translation: Marc, we gotta get you to sing at the PDC.

Deep translation: Marc, if you can't get funding with such an opportunity ahead of you, the valley must really be messed up. Here's your chance to kick our behinds again!"

Tools?  He wants people to write unique tools for Longhorn.  I say give people like me more power to change the OS.  From what I have seen of Longhorn, it doesn't go deep nor wide enough.  Today, Open/Save File Dialog, dialogs everyone must use, are like a couple of neanderthals wearing lipsticks and I doubt Longhorn improved on them significantly.

Meanwhile, Marc gives Scoble a chase and a tackle with his own:

"We'd love to work with Microsoft to get our tools running with Longhorn – just as long as they understand that they have to work with OPEN standards, on all browsers, across all platforms and connect everyone together.  Not just Microsoft/Longhorn communities."

and performs a dance for the crowd:

"In fact here's a funny story.  Back in '86 – I ran into Bill Gates at some conference where he told me that he'd wanted a chance to publish VideoWorks – but got 'left' out of the bidding. I told him we offered the original VideoWorks/MusicWorks to them (via our Wm. Morris agent) – back in '84 – but we never made it past the front-guy.  He was pissed."

Hey, I love stories like that.  I remember being at a Dvorak/Hearst Comdex party ages ago where I saw Bill Gates dancing with a Marilyn Monroe-impersonator oozing sexily nearby.  Since then, I have a strong mental association between Bill Gates and Marilyn Monroe.  Too bad Comdex parties went down hill from there.  Oops.  Where is the ball now?

[ed: I am not sure if most of embedding contents of referenced posts is my style, but it does save you the trouble of jumping back and forth to get the whole picture.  I would appreciate it if you could give me feedback.  Frankly, I like to write just my thoughts without much references.]

I saw Hayao Miyazaki's anime Spirited Away last night.  Fantastic!  Great story and impressive graphical style using a fine mix of traditional cartoon, oil painting, filtered digital imagery, and photorealistic 3D rendering.

Character drawings looked as simple as Saturday morning cartoons, but body expressions and motions for Chihiro was really good.  They must have studied how young teenage girls behave very carefully.   Same amount of detail wasn't apparent in rest of the cast, but I was too busy looking at the background scenery to mind.

My favorite character was No Face, a masked ghost that starts eery and then shift your emotions through friendly, suspicious, disgusting, pitiful, and finally content as the movie progresses.  Witch's baby brat was funny when it turned into a fat rat, but not understandable.  So, No Face Rules!  I recommend Spirited Away strongly.

A revolution is in the making in Iran tonight organized by young Iranians fighting for freedom.  Tommorrow, July 9th, is going to be a date to remember in Iranian history, hopefully start of the path to freedom.

• Tommorrow…
• This just in from Iran…

Tommorrow, we'll find out if those ellipses are blood drops for young Iranians and tear drops for rest of the world.