Welcome to The Heterotopia Report for December 20, 2005 - a new semi-regular feature here at this site, where I spend the day simply pointing out other interesting things found elsewhere on the internet. It's worth remembering, by the way, that I do not accept compensation in return for a product or company being mentioned in this report (barring the occasional review copy of a product being reviewed), and that I disclose any personal relationship I might have with a person or group being mentioned, whenever appropriate.

--Good news for cellphone owners: Google has just released a stripped-down xHTML interface for its popular Gmail service. Of course, much like other so-called "mobile" sites, this is kinda sucky news for all us owners of wireless PDAs, like Palms, PocketPCs, Blackberries, Sidekicks, PSPs and others; because in their obsession with making the portal accessible for low-end cellphones, they've skipped most of the features us PDA owners could've tapped into with our own higher-end devices. Unlike most of these other sites, however, Google still offers a dHTML version of their full desktop interface; simply point your PDA's mobile browser to the main Gmail login page, and it should detect that you're on a mobile device and send you the dHTML version automatically. That static version gives you almost all the options of the interactive desktop version, including the ability to add and remove labels, archive old entries, manipulate your Contacts list and more; it omits, however, all the fancy-schmancy AJAX real-time-updating bells and whistles of the desktop version, which usually make mobile browsers crash.

And speaking of which, when are more of you companies going to start acknowledging the difference between simple cellphones and wireless PDAs, and make versions of your sites that are distinct for both? I can't tell you how frustrating it is to have spent all this money on a high-end mobile device, specifically so I could mimic many of the powers of a full laptop computer, and then have none of you damn companies give me a way to actually tap into these powers! Those crappy little WAP versions that most sites have (you know, with the white screen and blue underlined text and almost no options at all) may be great for simple cellphones, but is entirely ignoring the needs of a huge and rapidly growing minority of high-end mobile-device owners; and I just wish more companies would be like Google and actually acknowledge this, and build two mobile versions to cater to both types of customers.

Oh, and speaking of Gmail, Google has added two new features to the full bells-and-whistles desktop version as well this week - the ability to create group address lists in your Contacts (finally, assholes), and the ability to set up an automatic vacation response. Lifehacker has a nice blog entry explaining the details, right here.

--And then the other big news in the Heterotopia recently, of course, is of Yahoo purchasing the social bookmarking site del.icio.us for around $30 million (or about $100 a user, to look at it from an interesting perspective); and this comes on the heels of all kinds of interesting post-Dot-Com activity for Yahoo in the last six months, including purchasing the social photo site Flickr, adding all kinds of new social-networking capabilities to their 360 service, opening a new service where members answer each other's unusual questions using a social-networking interface, and partnering with Six Apart in order to offer Movable Type to all Yahoo small-business customers. (Still don't know what exactly del.icio.us is yet, by the way? Brendon Connelly, author of the blog "Slacker Manager," has a great tutorial up right now for social-bookmarking newbies.)

All this would be big enough news on its own; but then consider that they are the first major company from the Dot Com Era to start embracing such so-called "Web 2.0" social technology, the first to abandon the '90s mentality of proprietary formats and "all-in-one" closed content packages. So why now? Why Yahoo and not, say, MSN or AOL? The London newspaper The Guardian has an intriguing article up right now, interviewing some of the Yahoo employees in charge of these recent decisions, and asking them why they made them; and it seems that the answer, simply enough, is that Yahoo is just the first Dot Com Era company to actually hire a bunch of new blood, and to really understand the way the Heterotopia is changing in a post-Dot-Com world.

That article brings up an interesting side note as well, about the recent wave of people who are becoming famous in the Heterotopia for no other reason than the unusually high quality of material they link to; it made me think of Steve Rubel (for business people) and Cory Doctorow (for slackers), which made me laugh and laugh and laugh. Ladies and gentlemen, the Web 2.0 rockstars! Shall we call them 'linkstars,' just to give everyone a hot new bullshit buzzword that they can repeat to death? And I also admit, I laughed at the term the Yahoo staff uses for such acquisitions - "buying mojo." Plus there's this interesting fact that the article points out - that of the last 25 or so startups to be bought by either Yahoo, Google or MSN, almost every single one of them reached a user base on their own of about 300,000 people, right at the moment the bigger company originally got interested in them. Hmm, is there maybe a secret "adoption quota for acquisition" with these companies that none of them talk about in public? Hmm!

Oh, and speaking of del.icio.us, how's this for an interesting blog entry? Ari Paparo, the founder of Blink (a social-bookmarking service during the Dot-Com Era, that worked almost exactly like del.icio.us) opines on why Blink failed and del.icio.us succeeded, despite Blink having 1.5 million users at its height and del.icio.us only 300,000. His conclusion? They too were a victim of the Dot Com mentality - too much VC money being blown foolishly, an emphasis on proprietary formats and holding onto information instead of sharing it, an old-skool reliance on hierarchical folders instead of dynamic tags. Go read this essay - it's one of the more fascinating things I've come across in the Heterotopia in a long time!

--And some short notes as well, things worth checking out but that I might not have a lot of comments concerning...

--I came across two intriguing entries this week for Mac owners who want to improve their screenshot abilities: this one from the Mac design site "creativebits" explains how to use Terminal to change the default format of your screen-captures (from .png to, for example, .jpg or .pdf), while this one from Lifehacker announces a new Dashboard Widget that lets you modify your screen-captures manually, including file type, export location and scaling.

--VoIP unplugged, via CNET: Vonage announces new portable phones that can tap into free WiFi networks, much like your laptop does currently at local coffeehouses. You cheapass slacker.

--Via Boing Boing: In case you didn't know, the US Postal System has official instructions on how to write to Santa (or God, for that matter - you can find a link to the instructions at that original post). Why all the rigmarole? Because the USPS whenever possible likes to forward such letters to local chapters of "Operation Santa," volunteer groups who write back to the kids and sometimes even buy presents for them; and they need the proper information from you in order to match the letter with the right local chapter.

--Hey, it turns out that it's not carpel tunnel syndrome at all that you're experiencing, all you heavy keyboard users who have constant pain in the wrists - it is in fact repetitive stress injury. Fine, wonderful, you've changed the name! Now can someone actually explain what I can do in my daily routine to avoid it? I mean, besides getting one of those ergodynamic keyboards, which actually do profoundly work, as I can attest? And who needs a new one, by the way, now that I have a new Mac with USB hubs instead of SCSI ones? Just a couple of days before Christmas, all you readers who tune into this site every day for free, hint hint hint?

--Well, it's about time: The Chicago Tribune finally starts offering RSS feeds. (Thanks to Gaper's Block for pointing this out; please check that original post for the RSS link, since I'm on a mobile device and can't retrieve it myself.)

--Meg Hourihan, one of the original founders of Blogger, has a great lifehacking post up at her personal blog right now: How to pick a surprisingly good bottle of wine at a restaurant. In a nutshell: Quickly determine the average age and average price of the wine list; then pick a wine a little older than the average age, but that still costs the average price. Most of the time, she opines, you end up with a surprisingly good bottle, so much so that your friends will compliment you on your wine-choosing ability. Hmm, I'll have to try this out myself, the next time I'm at a fancy place and order wine with a meal...whenever the hell that might be.

--Zuh? '80s computer company Commodore making a comeback? Based on a Dutch company buying the name for US$33 million, and deciding to release a bunch of new consumer products under the old brand? Or to put it in the terminology of my key demographic group of readers, "...da fuck?!" (Disclosure: I stole this joke from Janeane Garofalo, albeit in her case she was talking about Americans' reactions to Mentos commercials.)

--Ah, the perfect Christmas gift for all the Lovecraft fans on your list: A Call of Cthulu board game. Well, okay, the only reason I mentioned this is so I could once again talk about how I used to live next-door to the founders of Pagan Publishing, back when I was an undergraduate in Columbia, Missouri. Dude, talk about the perfect next-door neighbors for an undergraduate! Anytime I was bored on a Tuesday afternoon back then, I always knew I could stop by their place and be entertained until the time came to hit the clubs later that night - they'd always get me high, always show me all their new tech equipment (and they always had new tech equipment), always give me a sneak preview of their latest game or publication, always give me the newest updates about the Church of the Sub-Genius, always tell these hilarious anecdotes about extreme practical jokes gone awry (like the time, for example, that their psychotic friend in Alaska shipped them a human head via UPS as a practical joke, and how they all ended up on the FBI attention list because of it). Dude, how can you go wrong with Lovecraft and stoned weirdo undergraduates?!

Thank you, Ford Motor Co.: Given a situation where they were either going to piss off the gay community or piss off conservative Christians, they chose to piss off the conservative Christians. And Jesus, this is so rare anymore in the United States, it seems almost like a revelation.

--And finally, from the "Don't You Dare Laugh, It Could Happen To You Next" department: Heather Hamilton, a popular Microsoft employee who is usually very astute, mistakes a fake Onion article for a real news item. Ouch! And how amazing is it, by the way, that the Onion has yet to get slammed with a major libel lawsuit, given that there are now tens of thousands of people every week in the Heterotopia mistaking their satirical news items for real ones? Which of course makes me think of what would happen if such a thing actually did occur - of an entire nation of smartasses coming to the Onion's defense, and millions of dollars donated to the Electronic Freedom Foundation and ACLU (who would undoubtedly volunteer to be their legal counsel), and of an entire underground movement against the Patriot Act and copyright manipulation suddenly turning mainstream. It almost makes me wish that such a lawsuit would actually be filed, just to serve as the catalyst for this mainstreaming of civil-rights attention. Hmm!

(Got something you'd like to see mentioned in The Heterotopia Report? Bring it to my attention at ilikejason at hotmail dot com, although of course I can't guarantee it will appear. Yes, I also do reviews of such things as software, books and DVDs; please write to obtain my mailing address.)