Baby nerds, evil URL shorteners, reasoned discussion, and the Government straps its Web 2.0 on:
- Books for Wee Nerds — Forget Pat the Bunny — your baby wants to Pat Schrodinger’s Kitty! Help baby search for subatomic particles and explore the universe. (via Tim’s tweets)
- On URL Shorteners — Joshua Schachter and Maciej Ceglowski on the downsides of URL shortening services like bit.ly et al.
- Mending The Bitter Absence of Reasoned Technical Discussion (Alex Payne) — We’ve come to accept that trying to have a reasonable discussion on the Internet is like insert any number of increasingly offensive metaphors here. Usenet, IRC, forums, blogs, and now media like Twitter have all been black-marked as houses unfit for reason to dwell within. And so we roll our eyes, sigh, and quietly accept the idiocy, the opportunism, and the utter disrespect for our peers and ourselves that is technical discussion on the Internet. This need not be the case. It is possible to have a reasoned technical discussion on the Internet. People do it every day, particularly in smaller online communities where social norms are easier to enforce. We can do it. (via SarahM
- GSA signs agreements with Web 2.0 providers — Flickr, YouTube, Vimeo, and blip.tv get agreements that make it legal for federal agencies to use those tools. Followup to my earlier cite of roadblocks to Web 2.0 tools for government use. (via Fiona’s delicious links)