Inside View

Harry Potter e-book

DARKNET -- According to #pottermania and #potterwork, the complete electronic version of Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince is now available for download. It took less than 22 hours to scan, proofread and stitch the book together. As JD Lasica is quick to point out in Darknet, studios and publishers can encourage piracy by restricting usage.

Where are mid-career IT women

TIPPINST -- When I attend an IT event in Ireland, it's unusual to find more than 40% of the audience comprised of women. If it's an event involving security, data storage or crypto, the percentage of women drops below 20%.  In Ireland, we often explain away the steady decline of women in IT by pointing to the "protections" women receive in the form of maternity leave allowances and family time off. But some analysts point to a bigger problem: the IT job environment isn't a rosy place for women. In Where have all the women gone? Roy Mark highlights evidence presented in various studies that women are leaving tech jobs en masse.

This is happening at a time when Bill Gates, Craig Barrett and John Chambers, et al., are trooping to Capitol Hill to decry the declining American IT talent pool. They want relaxed immigration rules. They want more tax dollars invested in science and technology. They want outsourcing.

Perhaps they should also call for an equal playing field among the sexes.

The IT industry prides itself as a working model for the new global economy, blind to everything but talent and hard work. Tech, though, is taking a big hike on walking the walk when it comes to women.

"Women don't feel valued by IT. They are forced into being a certain type of person, i.e. a white male model: linear, analytical, 24/7, in-your-face, your-job-is-your life," says Barbara Annis, author of Same Words, Different Language. "Women don't see a future for themselves [in IT] as they are."

Sunday papers on blogging

Besides the normal extracts from the blogosphere by the Sunday Tribune, several other newspapers at Irish newsagents cover blogging today.

Search engine for blogs

WHOIS IRELAND -- John McCormac points to several items on search engines for blogs. We need a strong one for Planet of the Blogs too--one that provides relevance, date and popularity ratings. Yahoo pulled their new blog and RSS search tool so Steve Rubel offered some screenshots. 

Bob Moog Hospitalised

CARING BRIDGE -- Bob Moog, creator of the synthesizer that bears his name and major developer of the Theremin, is being treated for a brain tumor. He and his family are blogging from the Duke University Hospital by using CaringBridge. You can see his progress and send your thoughts.

---

Caring Bridge guestbook for Bob Moog.

x_ref125ws

Smoking Manners

A civic tip taken from a collection of Japanese "Smoking Manners" advertisements involving people with giant cigarettes. Dozens more here and a Dublin perspective here.

Google Earth Movies

RANDOM ACCESS -- I like Google Earth best when it lets you zoom around. So does Brian Jepson. He "hacked ... the .kml file in WordPad ... (and) produced some stunning tour animations on-screen". He wanted to save his work as a movie but you normally have to buy the $400 Pro version of Google Earth, plus the optional Movie Maker. Jepson figured a work-around that uses FRAPS, DirectX, VirtualDub, and Divx AVI. He explains:

Flowerbed Wi-Fi

CASHEL -- I have a new home under construction and it promises to light the outside with Wi-Fi as much as the street lamps spill light on the inside of the place. I think it's just as natural to share broadband connectivity as it is to share the fragrance from my flowerbeds. That's a point made by Doc Searls and JD Lasica in California. Like-minded Steven Levy rows in from his technologist perch in Newsweek magazine.

Jihadists in Iraq getting selective about foreign recruits

JAMESTOWN FOUNDATION -- Following the London bombings, I started looking at items on websites that point to the need for recruits. If the rambling post on a jihadi web site is to be believed, the insurgents in Iraq don't need any more mules. However they still need technical specialists. From the website:

‘Advice to Brothers Seeking Jihad in Iraq'

"First of all the brothers should know that the situation of the mujahideen in Iraq is entirely stable, and that they are not suffering at all from any shortfall in mujahideen. After more than two years the mujahideen have passed the preparatory phase and consequently they no longer need more numbers, rather they are in need of clearly defined specializations that will be of use to them … and does not constitute a burden upon them.

So what is required at present is above all material support, and high military and jihadist expertise. Very young [volunteers] who have no significant material resources are an additional burden on the mujahideen and present good fodder for the Tyrants, either as victims or as prisoners.

Time Names Best Blogs

TIME -- One of the things you can tell about the "best blogs" cited by Time Magazine is that many of them share common linkbacks. I listed the best blogs cited by Time and then I used Alexa to determine the ten most common related sites for all the blogs cited by Time. You can draw interesting results from the "related sites" summation. Specificially, many of the related sites are first-generation blogging sites that featured in "best blogs" listings as far back as 2001. Many of today's "best blogs" have another thing in common--they pimp products more blatantly than ever before but some readers might not know the blog entries are actually product promotions.