Expect light posting here for the next week, as I'm up to my eyeballs in projects at home and at work. At best, there will probably be posts without commentary. Just one more reason to use an aggregator....  ;-)

You know flash mobs are "over" when they land on "Jim Mullen's Hot Sheet" in Entertainment Weekly (August 22/29, 2003, p. 12)"

"Flash mob: hundreds of people are alerted by text messaging to show up at a certain time, and they do! The only hard part is getting Mom to drive you there."

Gary Price has two good catches (among others) over at ResourceShelf:

A New Primer on RSS
"From the announcement, 'EEVL's Primer is aimed at publishers and content providers, with the intention of introducing and explaining the concepts behind RSS and addressing some commonly expressed concerns. It is primarily intended for a non-technical audience who require an overview of RSS to make decisions regarding the possible use of the technology. However, the guidelines also provide recommendations for good practice, case studies on RSS production and links to tools and specifications which provide useful starting points for those tasked with actually producing RSS feeds.' The document is also available in Word format."

Google's SafeSearch Blocks Some Content from the White House
"The following post is far from shocking. Nevertheless, it's another example of how filters, even from much beloved Google, have problems...

The other day I was having an email chat with Marylaine Block and mentioned a neat web 'gadget' from Harvard Law School that allows you to quickly compare Google results with and without Google's SafeSearch filter activatated. This 'gadget' was embedded in a report that Harvard Law released several months ago about SafeSearch.

Yesterday, I wanted to see how Google’s SafeSearch would handle a couple of basic queries for names of U.S. Presidents. I searched for Bill Clinton and learned that Google’s SafeSearch was blocking the number one and two results. What’s more interesting is that these filtered sites come from Whitehouse.Gov. Hmm.

I then ran a search for George W. Bush. because it also blocked the first two results, also from the whitehouse.gov domain. I didn't search for each U.S. President but did give it a go with two additional names. President Zachary Taylor and George Washington also have bio pages from Whitehouse.Gov blocked. Finally, a search for White House with SafeSearch active removes the official White House Homepage (#1 result) and replaces it with a parody site. We've also noticed that SafeSearch blocks the THOMAS site from the Libarary of Congress and the Student.Gov website. Those of you who give web search presentations might find this resource from Harvard useful to find examples illustrating the weaknesses of a web search filter."