Where's Wil?

A fantastically interesting article about just what I've been moaning about at Wikipedia:

Digital Maoism: The Hazards of the New Online Collectivism by Jaron Lanier.

This guy puts it succinctly and likens the progress towards ever more 'meta' sources of information as analagous to the ultimate stupidy of the ultimate hive mind. Fascinating.

In my bid to get the Terry Shannon Wikipedia up to the standard of the asshole nazis who seem to be lurking on its discussion page, I'm finding more sources to reference. Here's the problem - much of what Terry did was in the pre-net days - all his columns in Digital Review, for example, are nowhere to be found on the internet. No hope of finding his book on Search Inside The Book on Amazon.

So, in a move that is actually kinda weird for me in research terms, I'm resorting back to paper. Having been to Oxford, I am fortunate enough to hold a reader's card for the Bodleian library, which happens to be one of the biggest copyright libraries in the world. Pretty much everything that gets published, ever, has to have a copy here. With that knowledge, I'm ordering up the first edition of the Introduction to VAX/VMS book to glean for bio data, as well as the sum total of the library's collection of Digital Review copies. If anyone has any suggestions for paper publications that Terry's been in, if they can let me know ASAP, I can get the Bod to sort them out for me.

Also, if anyone has any copies of anything Terry's been in that they might like to scan and post, that would be awesome.

Yes! Not only did I hit 239 yesterday, I hit 238 this morning. I'm fully expecting to hit 240 tomorrow, due to the cyclical nature of water retention etc, but it was damn good to see that number on the scales this morning. 246-239 was the first half-stone of weightloss; 238-231 is the next. Bring it on.

I've discovered that the key to not feeling hungry is to be busy. Like, super-busy, meaning you don't have time to think about food. This is hard in an office, as I am in, where everyone eats microwave meals for lunch followed by donuts and chocolate. I'm trying to tune out and just focus on the work to avoid the general food-centricness. My colleague across from me is eating a double chocolate cookie right now. Dammit.

Does anyone have some suggestions for as-close-to-zero-calories-as-possible snacks that can be my reserve in times of need? I know fruit is always the obvious choice, but it doesn't always cut it in the satisfaction stakes.

So, after a couple of days of non-movement, I tipped the scales at 239 today. Rock on! That's officially half a stone down since I started this, which rocks out.

I went paintballing over the weekend, which I think killed a good few calories - three hours of that and you're pretty knackered. It's also burned my thighs - my quads feel like they're about to collapse, but I guess that's a good thing.

I didn't go running over the weekend, just made sure to walk a lot. However, I did keep to a pretty strict diet. I'm eating muesli in the mornings, which is kinda carby, but gives me enough get up and go to get on with the day. Lunch is a very plain salad, with a bit of plain meat, and dinner is a nice cut of meat with some veg - no potatos, no pasta, no bread. I am, however, taking a bit of a dessert, to take the edge off - last night I had poached plums with just a couple of spoonfuls of ice cream, which really helps you to not feel deprived.

Today I'll be sticking to the same regime, and going out for a run in the evening. I'm hoping I can hit 238 by Friday - fingers crossed. Right now, 210 - my goal weight - seems a long way off, but there's no hurry - if I can drop just a couple of pounds a week, I'll be there in a couple of months.

What I am pleased about is that I think I'm changing my eating habits, permanently, for the better, rather than sticking to a fad diet for just a few weeks or a couple of months. I think this will be a good thing for me in general.

Around the FatBlogging network: Jason is focusing on training, and is having some troubles with high intensity stuff. I've never been a fan of HIIT - I prefer to go steady enough to keep your heartbeat raised, but not so fast that you can't hold a beleagured conversation with someone. My girlfriend, who is super fit, has always said that fitness is about carrying your weight across a distance, and that how fast you carry that weight isn't as big a deal, and I'm sticking to that.

Hugh of Gaping Void fame has also joined the movement, so good luck to Hugh in achieving his goals. I look forward to seeing what he manages over the coming months.

Terry Shannon in Wikipedia.

I went through, edited, stripped, expanded and added citations. I think it's looking like a pretty good page right now. Hopefully some others from the community can add to it.

>_<

Today's going to be a tough day. After expecting to tip in at 239, to hit 241 is a bit of a bloody downer, especially after going running yesterday and eating right. Motivation's going to be a bit in short supply, methinks, today.

Terry Shannon stays. This has been a fascinating few hours that has revealed a lot about Wikipedia culture. I'm going to be writing this up, I think, more fully.

Some interesting Wikipedia stuff today which intersects a few things I'm interested in.

Recently, Jason Calacanis has been beating the drum of contribution to Wikipedia. The site, he says, he run by a coral of fanatic moderators who aren't interested in the 'community' of Wikipedia, insofar as it goes beyond their 'inner circle'. Wikipedia is kept difficult - difficult to edit, contribute, discuss - to preserve the power base of these moderators. If 'everyone' was able/allowed to contribute to Wikipedia, the whole thing would fall down. Or, at least, that's the theory.

Today, there's a post on the Inquirer - my old stomping ground - noting that the Bio of Terry Shannon has been nominated for deletion.

Quite why it's suddenly been picked up, who knows. But the Wikipedia community - of readers, not editors, note - have been vocal in opposing the deletion. The number of votes for keeping the page outweigh those calling for deletion by 10-1. The Wiki 'in crowd' are standing resolute in their belief in the WP:BIO guidelines, which they say don't allow for Shannon to be there.

Shannon wrote some of the most comprehensive and respected journals, news pieces and newsletters in the HPC and HP/Compaq markets, and was often quoted as an analyst source, as well as being invited to speak at conferences and events the world over. The first edition of his book sold 100,000 copies and went for 6 editions.

Will he be preserved in Wikipedia? Does he meet the guidelines? If he doesn't, will the guidelines be altered? Will Wiki's moderator crowd listen to the overwhelming voice of the readership? I look forward to finding out. There's a lot of noise in the web space at the moment about the direction the site is taking, and this incident could be seen as a defining moment in the history of the encyclopaedia.

Why have an encyclopaedia that deletes useful information?

Dammit, I thought the 24x barrier was dropping today. I jumped on the scales and watched it hit 239, then nudge over into a smidgen of 240. Tomorrow is going to be 239, I can feel it, which will have netted me a half-stone drop since I began this enterprise. That will rock big bells.

Here's my technique at the moment. I'm avoiding pasta and potatos like the plague. Breakfast is a big bowl of muesli, lunch is a couple of slices of multi-grain bread, some nice ham/turkey and a butt-load of salad. Dinner is meat + lots of veg, with a small dessert (couple scoops ice cream for the satisfaction). I'm snacking on just a handful of dried nuts/berries, and drinking lots of water, earl grey and decaf coffee.

I'm also trying to run 3/4 times a week and walk every day. Exercise is tough for me, since I have a two hour commute each day, on top of actually trying to work, so fitting it in is tough. But I'm getting there.

Half a stone drop would be massive for me, and is purely a result of getting into the fatblogging movement with Calacanis et al. Support - like Weight Watchers, I guess - is a big, big helper, educator and motivator.

Kevin Rose gave a great speech at FoWA, and whilst he didn't have too much to announce - aside from the fact that Digg will be supporting OpenID - I wanted to just extract a few quotes from his speech that I think were fairly interesting.

Why come to Digg?
"I talked about this with Commander Taco, the guy that runs Slashdot. I was like, why do people submit these stories to you? Why do they send this stuff in? He told me that people want to share with the community what they believe to be important. What they think should be heard amongst the world. They want to see their name in lights, in our case, their little icon on the front page, so that everyone else can see it."

"On Digg, I love the fact there can be some really big tech story on the front page, then next to it there's going to be a story about a monkey with 12 nipples. I love that. They know thatcCNN isn't going to have the monkey with 12 nipples, they come back for the crazy mix of stories here."

"People make a big deal out of gaming on Digg. Alright, if you have a hundred user acounts digging something then it's going to make the front page, that's the way the system works - but if it sucks, it's going to get buried really quickly. Seo's have been tring to do this with Google and Yahoo all the time, and so now it's just a division of our company, something that we have to continue to grow."

The Community
"Look, any time you throw 900,000 people into a room they're not all going to get along, they're not all going to behave. What we have to work on, is how can you create tools to enable the community to moderate this amount of users?"

"It's important to allow the community to do this stuff, because paid people don't scale. What, are you going to employ 50 people, then 100 people, then 150? Netscape has this model, and Calacanis, and... whatever."

The Future
"We want to allow the community to attach things to a story, so that if someone marks it as lame, or inaccurate, we can really start a debate. Attach related links, tags, we want to allow people to swarm around the story and discuss it."

"It's important to us to get to the place where we can make recommendations - not just about stories, but about true friends that you can hook up with. You don't realise how many people you're agreeing with on a regular basis."

"We're working on a flash toolkit that ties into our API, so that publishers can use this toolkit to see what people are doing with your stories. If you want a swarm for your own particular website, that's something we'll be releasing soon."

Kevin also noted that Digg is working on allowing you to export your friends networks and your attention data, as well as ways for the site to play nicely with Delicious, Reddit, Newsvine and other similar sites.

Good stuff!

Here's a few of my notes from the Future of Web Apps conference yesterday.

Mike Arrington, blogger supreme at TechCrunch.com, spoke about startup culture, the keys for successful new web applications - and his 'magic formula' for success.

He started out with an apology to readers of the TechCruch UK blog, which Arrington shut down last year amid controversy and sniping. "I want to apologise to all of you," he told the hundreds of assembled, "And I want to cover this stuff on TechCrunch until I work out what to do with the UK site."

Arrington has notoriously avoided using the word 'journalist' to describe himself - preferring, in the main, 'analyst', handily avoiding conflict of interest conversation given his personal investments. However, this morning he embraced his writing roots, claiming that "I'm a journalist - I am paid to express opinions early and often," adding as a warning: "Sometimes people take those opinions and start companies based on them. That isn't always the best thing to do."

Throughout his talk, Mike appeared keen to rubbish the role of marketing in building a startup. Buzz, he thought, was king, and buzz doesn't come through marketing, it comes through product. "If nobody is writing about you, if bloggers aren't writing about you, don't look at your marketing - look at your product." Spending money on PR firms, managers and the like wasn't a good move for a startup, we were told, especially when trying to avoid a high burn rate.

Why are there so many Web 2.0 startups, and why is there so much more of an entrepreneur spirit in the Silicon Valley than, perhaps, over here in the UK? "In England, starting a company doesn't get you chicks. That's not the case in Silicon Valley, you get kudos and support for starting a company. Actually, it's getting a bit ridiculous in the Valley - there's a feeling that if you don't leave a great job and start a new company, you're an idiot."

How about tips for the future? Arrington was upbeat about Adobe Apollo, a new framework that allows the creation of hybrid online/offline apps using HTML and AJAX, as well as online video, doing something around the intersection of DRM, TV, IPTV and YouTube. But isn't the future about user generated media, not TV-esque accommodations? "YouTube is nothing to do with user generated media," we're told.

But are we in a bubble, and is Web 2.0 about to fall down around out feet? Not according to our speaker. "This is the portion of the presentation when I try to convince you that we're not in a bubble. The public markets won't put up with unprofitable startups, as they would years ago. We're also seeing companies failing, and that's a really good thing. It means they're not been rolled into other companies, in the hopes that two rocks will float. This is a good thing." If we're not bubbling, are we peaking, at least? "Absolutely not. Digg, YouTube, Flickr - these are not the epitome of Web 2.0. They're not the best we're going to see. We're just getting started."

My buddy Alex Watson, tech and lifestyle writer extraordinaire, has responded to my rant against email earlier this week. He's written a post titled Inbox of Awesomeness +1. which lays out some of the better points of email - namely, how great it is for old-school newsletters. He's got 5 email newsletters you should be subscribed to, and I tend to agree. Good work my man!

w00t. After my weekend glitch, a day of starvation yesterday at the Future of Web Apps conference, topped up with an evening run, sees me back down at 240. With another two runs planned this week and some more starvation today, I'll try and hit 238 by Friday. w00p!

This week I've been looking at the best webmail aplications on the net - Gmail, Yahoo, .Mac, Hushmail, Windows Live and SpamCop. It's taken me quite a while to spend time playing, experimenting with the spam filters, etc - but in the end, I came to the conclusion that, for all its interface shortfalls, Gmail is still the best webmail client. .Mac is the ultimate in fancy interfaces, but, amazingly, lacks webmail Junk filtering support. SpamCop is an awesomely effectively spam filter, but has horrendous webmail interface, making SpamCop + Gmail the most awesome combination of webmail for those looking to eschew ISP mail.

Dammit, two pounds up on Friday - must have been the Chinese New Year celebrations over the weekend :o(

Back at the running today, and the moderate starvation. I am newly invigorated by a) the fatblogging challenge and b) the realisation that a steady weightloss for the next six months will see me hitting Italy in August super-buff. And I likes me some Italy.

Thanks to the wonderful Hugh at Gaping Void, I was hooked up with a free ticket to a preview of 300, the new film from director Zac Snyder. Zac was in attendance, having flown in from the Berlin film festival. What a fun night!

The small theatre was packed with journalists, film industry types and, amazingly, a 'reserved' area just for invited bloggers. Thanks to Hugh, then, for sharing the love with the Brit Blogerati.

The film itself was cracking. I found it very hard to get into, since the start is very slow and, shot as it is entirely against green screen a la Sin City, it was stylised to within an inch of its life. However, as the battles kicked off the movie started to get into full flow, and there was some fantastic action. It stayed that way until the end of the film, as the story reaches it inevitable, yet satisfying conclusion.

I actually had a debate with another blogger about the aesthetic and its relevance to the film. Blogger A said that she thought that the aesthetic was so heavy that it almost obscured the point of the film and our understanding of its message. I said that this was a handy parallel with the plot, where Leonidas' rose-tinted vision of war and death almost obscures his understand of the world around him, and suggested it was merely another of the tools in the director's toolbox.

Then we realised the conversation was getting a little heavy.

If you can stomach / enjoy the massive amounts of blood, decapitation and gratuitous nudity, you'll have a great evening checking this out.

It was also fun to meet the man behind the cartoons on my business cards, and it's clear that he's quite a personality. I look forward to more blogger outings in the future.

I actually have a friend that greets me on MSN every morning with just this turn of phrase. It invariably prompts me to check my email.

I'm actually not a stunning fan of email, because I think too many people use it as a productivity drain. I don't have a Blackberry (yet), and I've found that this keeps me productive, keeps me working and stops me getting distracted.

Jimmy Wales was on Net at Night this week, talking to Leo and Amber about how bad the spam problem is getting. I know - I get a lot of spam. The great thing is that I just don't see it. Like Dvorak, I get (almost) no spam. What's the system? Well, bit-tech has an Exchange server which has custom rules set up to filter mail by score, using Spirius. This also incorporates Spam Assassin. This then gets forwarded to my Apple Mail client, which also has junk filtering enabled. Whilst my address receives a few hundred junk mails every day, I actually only see less than ten, which is totally manageable in the course of a work day.

I've had friends that say they have even more success using SpamCop. It's an email service with a yearly charge, but consensus seems to be that it's the best personal email service on the net when it comes to dealing with spam. My beef with it is that it's a bit Web 1.0 - it needs an interface upgrade!

Looks like Jason and I are brothers in blogging our weightloss. I actually went and bought fatblogging.com just in case we actualy manage to get a decent sized movement behind this!

Today's weigh-in was the same as yesterday's. My car got a puncture in the middle of the countryside last night, and it took the repair dude about 1.5 hours just to get to me. By the time I got home it was 10PM and I really wasn't in the mood to run.

It's going to be tough to stick to my diet today. I have a bunch of meetings in town (fast food or no food) and then I'm meeting a friend for drinks in the evening. Need to stick me to the soda water.

Thanks to the guys in the comments that suggested various online weight loss tools - I'm looking them up as we speak.

Since the gauntlet has been thrown down to update this blog every day with my weight, it looks like I might try and get a daily update thing going on non-weight stuff. Let's see how long that resolution lasts.

Jason Calacanis, who I had the pleasure of meeting in LA at the beginning of the year, is blogging his new year weightloss plan.

What a rocking idea. Support, friendship (and a bit of pressure) are what keep people on the straight and narrow. Following his call for more fatbloggers to join the conversation, I'm saying - heck, why not!

My girlfriend is a super-fit sports freak, and she's doing a full-on trialthlon in the summer. As part of her morale support, and for my own good, I'm excercising and eating healithy along with her, especially since I wouldn't mind getting back down to my 'dating weight' from a couple of years ago.

So we started at the beginning of February, and I weighed 248 pounds. Last Monday's weigh-in was 244. This Monday's was 240. I want to get down to 210, which was where I was at when I was at college. Damn desk-work and 2-hour commutes have killed me the last 18 months.

In the spirit of starting a conversation about this, can anyone recommend a good Web 2.0-esque service for tracking your weight and competing against your friends? The Nike+iPod site is awesome, but requires the little Nike attachment which I don't really need/want.

Jason - c'mon man, let's get our treadmill on!

My tip for the week - when you're craving carbs, a baked sweet potato, rather than baked potato, has less carbs. Try it with ultra-light cream cheese and baby spinach leaves for a simple, quick lunch.

Much of England is covered in snow today, and Oxford was no exception. Since there was no hope of me getting into the office today, with the roads being particularly treacherous, Alex and I woke up at 6am and ran into Oxford to explore in the snow.

By 8am we'd made this awesome snowman, and by 9am I was back at home writing up news for bit-tech. A pretty productive morning, I think!

So I announced on the site today that I'm leaving bit-tech. Yup, it's true, as of March 31 I will no longer be Editor in Chief of the site.

I've had a bloody awesome run at it - six years in and the site, and the business, is doing incredibly well. We have an incredible team working at bit and Trusted Reviews, and I'm proud of the work that I've done to assemble that.

The site and the business will go from strength to strength in 2007. However, like all things, the time comes when it's right to move on, and I'm looking forward to getting my teeth into something new, whilst looking backwards and being sad at leaving behind such a major part of my life. I love that site, and I love my job, but it's right to move on.

My other current committments - TWiT, Engadget - won't be changing, assuming the guys there are still happy to have me!

So what will be my new full time gig? That is not something I can talk about just at the moment, but I'll be sure to let you guys know when I can. For now, I'll be on TWiT this week (taping Friday night) and maybe blogging a bit more where I can. Stay tuned.