blogged up

So, the single post on the eyebeam reBlog unleashed a wave of attention to red | blue -- and while getting slashdotted didn't knock over the server, a little mention from Wonkette clocked the most traffic on Tuesday. Since then, it's nice to see the reaction, and especially nice to see all the people installing and running the app. In case you're wondering, the servers generating the most references as of today are from the United States Congress (for obvious reasons), and Sun's proxy servers (probably from this little mention in Jonathan's blog).

An article in C-Net is here (note to others -- avoid embarrasment, don't confuse C-Net and C-SPAN when someone calls), and I've talked to other journalists, too. Unfortunately, I feel like a stumbling...well, I guess, uhhm....geek, when talking about this stuff. Luckily there are people a lot more eloquent explaining why it's so fascinating (from v-2):

Most even mildly attentive people have considered, from time to time, the fact that we're continually bathed in latent data about place. Any given point on Earth you should happen to visit has an all-but-infinite series of correlated facts by which it can be characterized. We're literally living in a sea of ambient information.

All kinds of ambient information: facts about climate, about geological history and composition, and so forth. Some of the most interesting stuff is, of course, about the human makeup of a given point on the map: who lives here? What do they do? What do they believe? For the most part, though, this data is difficult or impossible to access, least of all when you're actually at the place in question.

Go read the rest of it here, Adam does a wonderful job explaining some whats and whys I have barely been able to mumble. I'll be updating download information as the days go on, and I plan on releasing source once the election is over. Let me know if you run into problems -- I *think* there are at least 500 users out there, so there are solutions to most issues.

Posted by juechi at October 8, 2004 05:19 PM