Methinks Netflix needs to work on their recommendation algorithms a bit more.

LibriVox attempts to do for audiobooks what Project Gutenberg has for printed ones. They take public domain works and have volunteers read them. Once the files are assembled (for example, chapters of a book, or multiple readers on a single short poem), they are placed in the public domain in turn.

A while ago, I did my first LibriVox upload, reading Edward Bulwer-Lytton’s (yes, that Bulwer-Lytton) “When Stars Are In The Quiet Skies” as part of their weekly short poem series, where they ask as many readers as possible to do each poem. I was one of 17 readers that week: you can hear the results on Archive.org.

Or at least, pre-Flickr. :-)

I just posted to Flickr a bunch of pictures I took before I started using Flickr regularly. Nothing particularly interesting, except maybe my pictures of the Seattle Central Library, taken the weekend after it opened, and some shots of Snoqualmie Falls from the top and bottom.

I just tried out Microsoft’s new Live Search Cashback: a search for “TabletPC” brought back 8 hits, all RAM cards. I had to search for “Tablet PC” to find what I wanted.

Ars Technica points at MusOpen.com, which is dedicated to public domain classical music. Besides scores, they take bids on performances: when the performance is fully funded, they record the piece and release it into the public domain.

Neat concept, but there are other places like Mutopia, which have much larger collections of sheet music, along with the Lilypond source files, so you can format them any way you want. There are also sites like the Wikimedia Commons, which have their own music libraries. We’ll have to see how this plays out.

Dave Winer recently added Firefly to his site: it’s a web app that lets you see who’s on the web page with you. You can track cursors, and chat back and forth. I’ve added it to blog.donnael.com as well: drop in and chat if you like. :-)

There’s further discussion about it at AlleyInsider and Bub.blicio.us.

George Oates, one of the people behind Flickr, tells what you need to do for your online community to actually work.

It’s the sheer breadth of places like Flickr that keep people coming back, and keep people participating. There’s no way to design all things for all people. When you’re dealing with The Masses, it’s best to try to facilitate behavior, rather than to predict it. Design, in this context, becomes more about showing what’s possible than showing what’s there. Imagine your site as a “Game for the Masses” where you don’t make the rules. Leave your members to negotiate and communicate and you’ll get a much richer result.

Cringely had a recent discussion with Bob Frankston, the developer of VisiCalc, about why arguing about Net Neutrality is missing the point.

To Bob the issues surrounding Net Neutrality come down to billability and infrastructure. While saying they are doing us favors, ISPs are really offering us services they can bill for. Nothing is aimed at helping us, while everything is aimed at creating a billable event. Take WiFi hotspots, for example. Why should the telephone or cable company care about who connects to my WiFi access point? They are my bits, not the ISP’s. I paid for them. If I can download gigabytes of pornography why can’t I share my hotspot with someone walking down the street wanting to check his e-mail? Frankston’s analogy for this is accusing someone of stealing your porch light by using it to read a street sign.

Sam Purtill has some thoughts about how a church can get its word out on the net without paying an arm and a leg for it.

You can no longer press 7 to hear a duck quack: National Discount Brokers was bought by Ameritrade in 2001, whose voice mail has a much-reduced sense of humor.