To Those Who Surf: Time Salutes You
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NEW YORK -- Congratulations! You are the Time magazine "Person of the Year."
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I just woke up in Paris, it's 5:34AM here, but back in California, it still never ceases to amaze me, the day hasn't yet flipped. You guys haven't even gone to bed yet! Now that's amazing to me. What perseverence! Keep up the good work everybody.  I just started posting a couple of twits that really should be a blog post, so let's get started. First at some point, after a suitable period of mourning, I'd like to rasie the issue of what's to happen with Marc Orchant's web presence. Which of course is a way of focusing attention on all of our web presences.  None of us like to think of it, but truth is none of us are going to live forever. Yet if you read this, it's likely that you're creating a digital body that can and imho should continue to exist even after your physical body stops existing. People are humble, no one wants to come out and say their work has any value that's worth preserving past their death, but come on, we know that's not true. If Shakespeare were alive today, he'd be writing on the web. As would Hemingway or Faulkner, Vonnegut or Mailer, John Lennon or Dylan Thomas, Carl Sandberg or Robert Frost. Mozart, Bach and Beethoven. You think there isn't any great literature out there on the web? I wouldn't be so sure about that. What if there is? And what if a baby born today becomes a great creative force? Or what if there's a social disaster like the Holocaust? Did you know that there are preserved diaries from pre-revolutionary America? Writings of ordinary people can be of enormous help to historians. And if we believe in citizen journalism (I do) why not citizen historians? Shouldn't we be thinking out into the future? We should! With all possible humility, I'd like to tell you that a few days after I die my entire web presence will likely disappear. My servers require some attention from me from time to time. The first time that happens, poof, there goes 10-plus years of Scripting News, and all the docs for the OPML Editor and the OPML spec, the XML-RPC site, to name just a few. Anyway, within a couple of months it will all certainly disappear, unless someone pays my hosting and DSL bills. Maybe someone will, but isn't it ridiculous that that's what it depends on? And when my sites disappear so will my uncle's. He died in 2003. His site is still accessible because I keep it that way. When I die, who will will take over for me? I'm sure the world will survive without his writing, but why? If I love the memory of my uncle, and I do, what can I do to reserve a place for him in the archive of the future. It seems such a small thing, but it's most of what remains of his life.  And what of academics, Nobel Laureates and others? I know for a fact that a great university (Harvard) has no plan to protect their web-based work after they pass. It's so ironic that the web offers an archival solution for non-digital work, yet the web information is more fragile than the physical stuff. Preserving our digital heritage is going to require some foresight, some planning, but it seems possible and we surely can do much better. Marc's fate awaits us all. While we're still alive, there's still time to solve this problem. When we're gone, it will be too late. Part of his legacy can be that he helped focus us on this issue, and his life work could be a great test case. Do we want to see his work preserved? And if so, how will it be done? PS: The RSS 2.0 site will likely persist, because I gave it to Berkman, and then used it as a test case to learn about future-safing. It seems likely to continue to exist, knock wood, praise Murphy, as long as Harvard exists.
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By Nicole C. Wong, San Jose Mercury News, Calif.  Mar.
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Rest in peace, Netscape. Your story lives on.
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Weekly unique recordings by artists you love put Daytrotter on the short list of good sonic sites. By Eric Steuer from Wired magazine. Plus: Music reviews.
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As does HP's new snowballing habit. Ew Letters Take a deep breath in. Breathe out and congratulate yourself. You have made it to Friday, and are soon to be rewarded with a weekend (unless you work on Saturdays or something).â¦
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By STANLEY MILLER II, MILWAUKEE JOURNAL SENTINEL  With the summer season over, it's natural to reflect on the trips you've taken, the new people you've met and the goals you've accomplished.
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Just add the Disappointment Widget Several times a year I receive emails congratulating me on my age from websites. It's very thoughtful of them to do this - but then it's not often they get the opportunity to market to a genuine silver surfer, like me. You see, I'm actually 112 years old. Or 103. Or 107. And several ages in-between.â¦
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I'm starting to realize that my blog is a bit of a time machine.  For example I can create a blog entry to warn myself about something that WILL happen in the future.    My current NTP  blog entry is a good example.  I wrote this for myself as much as for the people who read my blog (or find me via Google).  I know for sure that NTP on Debian is going to bite me sometime in the future and I'm going to forget WHY.  Then I'm going to (of course) go to Google or my aggregator and search for NTP and then find my blog post.    I've done this about a dozen times now and its saved me a TON of time!
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Response to plane crash incredible  A note of gratitude to the officers of the Long Beach Harbor Police, Cabrillo Beach lifeguard, Fire Department guys, paramedics, L.A.
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Proof that there still is more to do. On Saturday I got an email from Sylvia saying that a friend of mine had bought her first iPod. It took me a few minutes to figure out that she was talking about herself. Funny, I had never thought about whether she had an iPod or not, but I have been on her case to get a digital camera. So she brought her iPod over, it's one of the new "fatty" nanos with video. It was so funny to see it through her eyes, and even cooler to read her story. I didn't realize that there was a reason she had never gotten an iPod. Sylvia: Sliding into song. I seek out experiences like this. Stones I can turn over that reveal a rich experience, an eye-opener, a bright horizon that doesn't take much time or effort to achieve.
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We should all be thankful for the army of volunteers who turned out to clean up Saltburn beach.   This is exactly the sort of public-spirited action we need if we are to make the most of our area.
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If you've been around the net for a while you've been subscribed to a few thousand mailing lists.  I'm on a few big mailing lists now that host more than a few thousand users.  Sooner or later some guy on the list will go on vacation and instead of just letting email sit in their inbox he's nice enough to respond to all his email - with a form letter!  Usually in the shape of:  "I'm on vacation.  I'll be back in January."  Of course they're stupid enough to apply this to *every* folder in their inbox and so everytime someone posts or replies to the list this message is sent out to one of every three thousand posters.  We don't care if you're on vacation.  We don't care when you get back and  ...
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The most painful kind of generosity are the promises you cannot fulfill. The people who were once so grateful then turn on you, and your self-esteem is sure to take a beating.  Many years ago, in a fit of generosity, Dave Winer offered to host all early-bird adopters of editthispage.com free hosting of their weblogs. This included php.weblogs.com. Well Dave Winer recently announced that he was closing down the weblogs.com and editthispage.com websites. He no longer runs a company that can support these sites and they are a personal and financial strain on him.   I was disappointed, but I had no expectations that Dave would do this in perpetuity.  My momma taught me to keep my expectations low when it comes to free things. After all, Dave and I have never met, and I've only exchanged a couple of emails with him.   I had a feeling that something like this was going to happen because the site has suffering from poor performance this past month. So my contingency plan was to ship the weblog to a commercial hosting service like weblogger if need be. During the weekend, just before the site was cut off, and before any announcement by Dave, I moved my most important open source project to sourceforge, to http://adodb.sourceforge.net/.  Today I got an email from Lawrence, Userland's webmaster:  Subject:   php.weblogs.com  From:      "Lawrence Lee" deleted#userland.com Date:      Wed, June 16, 2004 1:46 am  To:        jlim#natsoft.com Priority:  Normal  Mailer:    Microsoft Office Outlook, Build 11.0.5510   We'll be continuing to host php.weblogs.com, we made special arrangements with Dave to keep it running.  Lawrence   I didn't ask for special treatment, so this is a pleasant surprise. Apparently the people at Userland decided to host this weblog and Dave emailed me, saying he had nothing to do with this decision. Of course I don't expect this offer to be permanent either, and I will deal with that when the time comes. The website's performance is still terrible though, and I have no expectations about this either.  For those who ever wondered what the icon below each post means, it's a graphic emoticon of how i feel. I think the jazz singer Billie Holiday is an appropriate image for this post; her songs are always bitter-sweet. It sure feels like Stormy Weather or Come Rain or Shine.  I would also like to thank those of you who emailed me privately about this issue. RSS seems the best  way to access this web-site at the moment, as it continues to go down at random times.
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By Dnichols@recordnet.Com, The Record, Stockton, Calif.  Sep.
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By Laura Capitano  FERNANDINA BEACH -- Other people's boats are so great. Someone else takes care of the cost, maintenance, storage, insurance, repairs -- even the driving. All you have to do is waltz aboard, sit back and enjoy the fruits of another person's labors.
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At first, American tourist Matthew O'Connell thought the rising sea was the sign of a good day's surfing ahead.