• Ten Word Wiki – The Express Till For The Internet
  "The Encyclopedia for the ADD generation"
  Thanks, Jason.
  Tags: wikipedia wiki brevity
• Why are you an independent consultant? | IT Consultant | TechRepublic.com
  It beats being a dependent consultant.
  Tags: consulting techrepublic
• Eunoia : Stu Savory’s Blog – Cancer
  Get tested, early and often!
  Tags: cancer stusavory

• OpenOfficeMouse: more options for the keyboard-impaired
  Mouse magnifique?
  Tags: geeksaresexy mouse openoffice
• Vim Tips Wiki
  Good resource.
  Tags: vim tutorial wiki
• BBC NEWS | Health | Feeling grumpy ‘is good for you’
  Now I know where my analytical skills come from.
  Tags: grumpy emotion research psychology mood

• Main Page – IE6: Do NOT want!
  "This is all about the campaign to rid the WWW of Internet Explorer 6 that has devastated web developers and held back the evolution of everything that blocks the tubes for far too long. This can not go on any longer! Off with its head!"
  Tags: microsoft ie6 browser standards wiki
• Avoid the interrupt-driven model of time management
  I don't know about you, but my brain only has one IRQ channel.
  Tags: consulting techrepublic interrupts timemanagement
• Rough Type: Nicholas Carr’s Blog: The artificial morality of the robot …
  And what about that "slave morality?" Is anyone else thinking of Nietzsche's concept of resentiment?
  Tags: programming ai military learning robots nickcarr

I work remotely 98% of the time.  Most of the communications, materials, and products are transported over email.  It’s pretty easy and handy, but fragile.  It’s the Internet equivalent of passing notes with paper airplanes.   I’ve looked into a lot of alternatives (corporate wiki/blog or online groups come about the closest), but none of them seem quite sufficient.  So I’m thinking of building something myself.  Following is an informal first stab at a list of my requirements.  Maybe someone can guide me to something that already exists?

1. Conversation-oriented.  Automatic threading of conversations.
2. Privacy must be tunable.  Whoever starts a conversation automatically becomes its moderator, and then invites participants.  The author may then designate other moderators as well.  Moderators may invite individual users or pre-defined groups of people, and grant them rights to the conversation.  Rights include (at minimum) the ability to read a conversation, the ability to respond, the ability to add tags, and the ability to moderate.  Two special groups receive no notifications but can be granted rights:  “All registered users” and “Anonymous users”.  The latter group may only be granted “read” privileges.  Default privileges for new conversations must be user-configurable.
3. Only registered users may start a conversation or define a group.  The registration process has to be just painful enough to prevent automated registration.
4. Moderators may ban users from a conversation, or any future conversations they moderate.  Registered users may “Mark as spam” or “Flag inappropriate” to provide input to the moderator and the site host.  Moderators may establish automated rules for expulsion from conversations based on that input (including the rights granted to the users who provided it), and site hosts may establish automated rules for deletion of accounts (with tunable warnings in both cases).
5. A node in a conversation may be linked to other conversations by moderators or users with “respond” access – each link will only be visible to a user if they have read rights to the other conversation.
6. Moderators may select portions of an existing conversation to designate as a separate conversation, optionally linked from the original.  New moderator(s) may then be designated for the new conversation, and rights and membership may be independently assigned.  Moderators may relinquish their moderator status, if at least one other moderator exists for the conversation.
7. Moderators may delete conversations, remove participants, or remove/edit individual responses.
8. A user may be a member of any number of groups, at the discretion of the group’s moderator and the consent of the user.  A user may request to be added to a group (if the moderator makes it visible to them), or the moderator may invite the user.  Groups have the following rights:  users/groups who can see that the group exists, users/groups who can see the list of the group’s members, users/groups who are members of the group, and users/groups who can moderate the group.  Any registered user may create a new group, and they become its moderator by default.  The fact that a group is a member of another group will only be visible to users who have visibility rights to both groups.  Moderators may rename or delete groups, or delete members from a group.  Any user may copy any group to which they have full visibility (becoming the new group’s moderator), but any users who do not accept the invitation to the new group will not be included.
9. Users may elect to receive group/conversation invitations from anyone, only specific users/groups, or nobody.  Users may elect to auto-accept invitations in the same manner.  Any invitation that is excluded from being received is automatically rejected.
10. Users may elect to receive notifications of responses to each conversation in which they are participants, with a tunable user-defined default.  Some rules for determining the default might include the conversation’s author, moderator(s), groups, tags and individual respondents.
11. Users may configure visibility of each piece of information in their personal profile for groups or individual users.
12. Must be able to attach any file type to a message.  HTML or plain text  formatting for content.  (Perhaps stick with MIME here).  Provide hook for server to scan for malware and remove.  Attached images and videos can optionally be retrieved in situ as part of the message.  Any file type can be downloaded via a URL provided.
13. Implement a RESTful API for client/server interaction (over a secure connection).  This allows users to access via either a shared web site or a desktop client.
14. Each conversation and each response must have a unique permanent URL, both for the API and for the web client.  This allows easy linkage from outside.  Naturally, if the data isn’t readable anonymously and the incoming user is not logged in then the API will respond accordingly, and the web client will prompt for a login.  If a logged-in user does not have rights to view the content, then an appropriate response will be returned instead.
15. Open-source, with the expectation that multiple conversation servers could spring up.  Anticipate interaction between multiple servers:  for instance, provide the ability for user profiles and group memberships to be shared between servers.

Wow, this is growing more complex the longer I think about it.  But I want to have a way to converse online that’s reliable, as private as I want it to be, and defeats spam.  If I could get everything I’m asking for here, it sounds like it could replace much of the use for email, chat, Twitter, Facebook, and even blogging.  Do I have delusions of grandeur?  What are your thoughts?

• Synergy-e-Quiz answers >> what’s the fastest Synergy/DE switch statement?
  goto (programming_school, employment_office, hell), if_you_use_it
  (tags: programming synergyde goto switch performance)
• FAQ: How to dump Vista SP1
  “Dear SP1, it was only a one-night stand, and I felt horrible the next morning. Get over yourself.”
  (tags: windows vista)
• Eating Just One Sausage a Day Raises Your Cancer Risk By 20 Percent – Articles
  Meats to die for.
  (tags: cancer processedfood health diet)
• Blogroll | Eastwood Zhao dot COM
  Thanks for the link-love, Eastwood!
  (tags: linklove)
• Coding Horror: Introducing Stackoverflow.com
  I really liked “privatevoid.com”, but this could prove interesting.
  (tags: programming reference software development coding wiki)
• Happy B-Day to My One-Year-and-a-Bit-Old Blog! | Eastwood Zhao dot COM
  Happy blog day to you…
  (tags: blogging anniversary)
• Put a Copyright Notice in Your RSS Feed « // Internet Duct Tape
  Good tip — I adapted it to add a link to the CCD CopyWrite license instead.
  (tags: tips feedburner wordpress feed copyright rss)
• Dwindling In Unbelief: The Bible’s greatest massacres
  God forgot to add “except when I say so” to the sixth commandment. Thanks, Jason.
  (tags: religion bible violence atheism)
• McSweeney’s Internet Tendency: Cookie Monster Searches Deep Within Himself and Asks: Is Me Really Monster?
  Finally, McSweeney have feed — me subscribed!
  (tags: humor cookiemonster psychology mcsweeneys sesamestreet parody addiction diet cookies)
• CodeClimber: “All I need is a Programmer”
  And all I need is a million bucks. Thanks, Reg.
  (tags: programming business agile development software startup)
• Web Worker Daily » Archive Procrastination Can Be Your Ally «
  Some interesting insights into what procrastination means. Read it now — don’t put it off!
  Thanks, Arjan.
  (tags: procrastination productivity inspiration lifehacks creativity)
• OPML Blogroll widget 1.3 for WordPress adds tooltips — Chip’s Tips for Developers
  Because you can never annoy users too much with helpful popups.
  (tags: php javascript wordpress opml rss tooltips IE firefox safari opera widgets blogroll)

• Middle Zone Musings » What Do YOU Do With an Overloaded RSS Reader?
  Read my lips: Mark Feed Read
  (tags: rss feeds timemanagement)
• Meeting Frustration, Chaos and Despair Head On. And loving it.
  Twisting the toga of Marcus Aurelius
  (tags: philosophy)
• Coding Horror: I {entity} Unicode
  Because this has happened to every programmer at some point — most likely on a public web page.
  (tags: unicode humor)
• Main Page – WikiVS – the one stop for up-to-date comparisons
  Vim vs Emacs, Python vs Ruby, Vista vs XP, Firefox vs Safari… another place to burn a ton of time. Thanks, apotheon.
  (tags: comparison wiki reference)

Steven Streight, aka Vaspers the Grate, has started a new, um, undertaking: a wiki on dead blogs. A social media mausoleum. Collaborative columbarium.

The site contains lists of abandoned or semi-abandoned blogs, along with several related topics such as reasons to quit blogging, how to properly abandon your blog, and my favorite: aliens encourage personal blogging.

As a wiki, the site is by definition a work in progress. You can therefore contribute your own stories of blogging companions who suddenly vanished. Place a headstone on their blograve by linking to their sites. Perhaps pouring out a Google-juice libation offering will conjure their spirits and restore them to blife.

• Sparkplug 9 >> bizhack » SLOB hall of fame
  You’ve got a pretty nice blog yourself, there, John. Subscribed.
  (tags: linklove awards)
• Away With Words: Finally: An Award That Really Speaks to Me
  Thanks for the “hallelujah”, Nancy — subscribed.
  (tags: linklove awards)
• [Geeks are Sexy] technology news: [GAS] Results for the Win a Book and Free Logo Contest
  Congratulations, Tracy, on winning the viral book contest. Hyperspace does indeed look interesting — I’m adding it to my Amazon wish list.
  (tags: books contest amazon)
• the show with zefrank – 08-08-06
  ze’s 100th show waxes wistful and philosophical
  (tags: zefrank philosophy)
• Openpedia.org: Do you need Dictionary.com on one tab and Wikipedia on another in order to read this site?
  They found me right away, but it took a while for me to find them
  (tags: linklove wiki)

Chip’s Quips experienced a temporary outage this morning, reporting a MySQL error 28. That seems to have righted itself now, and I’m working with my ISP to try to figure out why it happened.

I found this helpful entry in the WordPress Wiki, if any other WordPress users ever suffer from the same symptom.

I’m guessing that maybe the volume where the tmp directory is located got temporarily full, but my ISP has not yet confirmed.

Thanks to Randy Charles Morin, [Geeks are Sexy], and my sister for the heads-up.

We now resume our regularly scheduled program.

I usually keep about the same distance from anything resembling an MLM scheme that I give to bears and Jehovah’s Witnesses — but this affiliate program for JotSpot is so easy that even if I don’t make any money at it, nothing’s lost except a little real estate on my blog.

Thanks Randy Charles Morin