Ruminate

Clay Shirky laments the state of the browser as text editor because it doesn’t save information being entered in textareas on forms. He comments:

“until the browser can be instructed not to destroy my work by accident, it’s not a writing tool.”

Well, OK. And until my toaster oven grows a bigger belly and learns some physics, it’s not a microwave (nor, for that matter, a tool for a professional chef).

If you want to edit more than a few paragraphs, there are better tools than the browser. They’re called text editors… you might have heard of them! But I shouldn’t mock the desire for convergence. It is this kind of enterprising spirit, using a screwdriver and hammer in one’s hand instead of waiting for the new, soon-to-be-released super wrench that makes the web really work. It’s the whole “small parts loosely joined” idea of bringing all these tools together.

So, while Shirky admits to being monomaniacal about it, I also have some sympathy. But is it really that hard to perform the 3-5 keystrokes necessary to cut and paste from a real editor that already does all the things he wants? I mean, we are talking less effort than it takes to write just about any word. Like, say, “utility” or “purpose” or even “help.” In this sentence alone I could have cut and pasted a dozen articles…

A compendium of common Logical Fallacies. Appeal to Authority, Ad Hominem, The Gambler’s Fallacy– you’ll find them all here.

relatively speaking, but still scores of people have time to argue about tipping baristas at your local coffee shop. For the record, I’m far from rich and I always tip (assuming the service is good). It’s a service job, the work isn’t performed by committee, and I appreciate the work being done right.

I have returned. After doing battle with the fearsome creatures of course development and class prep I should now have time to return to regular blogging. I know how much you all missed me.

In the meantime, here is a link to a cool bookmarklet tool all serious surfers should have urlinfo — get a WHOLE lot of information about any page you happen to be on, from whois information to links, validation to feeds… very slick.

And Peter Merholz has some good discussion about social tagging applications like del.icio.us and flickr… surely you’ve noticed how much press these two great applications are getting?