Online Journalism Review via poynter.org via Boing Boing Blog.

Tunisia jails, reportedly tortures popular blogger and online journo. The notion that Tunisia's less-than-democratic government is unfriendly to outspoken journalists is nothing new. But according to a story in OJR by Andrew Stroehlein, Tunisian authorities have recently expanded their policies of anti-free speech brutality to their first online journalist. Web publisher Zouhair Yahyaoui was arrested, allegedly tortured, and sentenced to two years in jail for "spreading false information" through his blog and news site TUNeZINE.

Jason Kottke is spending a month (?) in Paris. He seems to be appreciating the city of lights through his stomach, much to my vicarious delight.

From Thursday:

Except for the horse meat tartare
    I don't know what the hell we ate the last time we were here, but the food we've had the last few days in Paris has been nothing short of almost perfect. You can easily get food this good in San Francisco, but it's significantly more expensive, too Californian (would you like avocado with that?), and not quite as good. The secret ingredients are butter and cream.
    Addendum: This afternoon for lunch, we stopped at a little cafe not unlike every other cafe in Paris. Poulet et scalloped potatoes for 11 € (VAT + service included)...best chicken I've had in awhile. I hardly needed a beverage it was so juicy.

From last Sunday:

So good it'll make you wanna croque

    A croque monsieur is a sandwich consisting of two slices of white bread, ham, cheese, a bit of cream (or cheese) sauce, and yet more cheese melted over the top of it after the whole thing has been grilled. I somehow missed this miracle of French cuisine the last time around, but am taking full advantage of it now. I've even written a little song about it, quite unintentionally. It just popped into my head and every time I see le croque monsieur on the menu, I can't help singing it:

Croque Monsieur, Croque Monsieur
uh huh huh**, Croque Monsieur
(repeat)

A chart topper for sure.

** The "uh huh huh" here is what I think of as typical French grunting (gathered mostly from misrepresentions of snooty French characters in movies and cartoons), a sound that when followed by a "monsieur" could be thought of as playfully condescending in tone.

Meg  Hourihan is there too.

Le Colimaçon
44, rue Vieille du Temple
75004 Paris
48€ for two (one appetizer, two entrees, one dessert), with 1/2 bottle of wine

Wonderful dinner last night at Le Colimaçon right down the street from our apartment. I started with chèvre chaud aux figues, a salad of mixed greens with warm goat cheese melted on toasts accompanied by fresh figs and tomatoes. The balance of the figgy sweetness with the vinaigrette was absolutely perfect and every bite, especially when accompanied by the warm cheese, caused me to exclaim, "this salad is SOOO good!" For my main course I had confit de canard, a moist and tender drumstick and thigh of duck with cripy skin and juicy in its own fat. (For those keeping track at home, my vegetarianism suffered a fatal blow with my meal at the French Laundry and has never fully recovered.) This was accompanied by two cakes of grated potatoes and was rich and salty and moist and tender and simply wonderful.

I can't believe we simply stumbled into the place while wondering down the street looking for dinner. We selected it for two simple reasons: reasonable prices (under 20€ for entrees) and co-ed (the Marais has its share of gay bars and clubs, many of which seemed to be "going off" on Sunday night as we looked for a dinner place). If you're looking to eat in the Marais, I absolutely recommend this place for dinner. The only disappointment, which was slight, was the tarte tatin, which seemed less good only because I make it often at home. I'm looking forward to going back again, maybe even tomorrow!

Make me hungry for French food. I have to swing by Oakland's own Trio Bistro and Grill for some informal eating of hearty food with American portions at Lake Merritt.

From Seb's Open Research:

Wired has a list of books that are similar to Smart Mobs. Related books include:

• Digital Biology by Peter J. Bentley, 2001
• Beyond Chaos by Mark Ward, 2001
• Emergence by Steven Johnson, 2001
• The Moment of Complexity by Mark Taylor, 2001
• Linked by Albert-Laszlo Barabasi, 2002
• Nexus by Mark Buchanan, 2002
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, 2000
• Six Degrees by Duncan J. Watts, 2002

The Wired article summarizes the main contribution of each book. The general theme is that the role of the connections between objects in emerging networks can account for everything. Remember back to dynamic systems, differential equations and probability, no, well these are the basis along with biology for a new generation of patterns and ideas. [David Crow]

Do we need a book on emergent behavior in the blogosphere? On klognets?

Design hero Alan Cooper's advice.

Politeness isn't saying "Please" and "Thank you".

Polite software:

• is interested in me
• is deferential to me
• is forthcoming
• has common sense
• anticipates my needs
• is responsive
• is taciturn about its personal problems
• is well-informed
• is perceptive
• is self-confident
• stays focused
• is fudgable
• gives instant gratification
• is trustworthy

Cooper explains this tao of interaction design. I can see doing walkthroughs, testing the experience against these criteria.

Klogging calls for sharing information and klogs help with narrative, unstructured information. What about with structured information?

Stepping up to fill a gap in UserLand's Radio, eCriteria.net offers a web-hosted database to complement your blog. Not the first database service provider, but it may be the simplest. Standard, premium, and enterprise packages. DeadCellZones provides lookups by location.

Why isn't this built in to Radio? I want to blog a structured book list and book review using my writing tool. Sometimes. Movie reviews with a check box for "4-stars" and an auto link to the iMDB.org site. As part of a blog post. Syndicated with that post.

Why isn't this built in to manila? It runs on the frontier database and could easily do this work. Search my blog for movie reviews starring ...

Is this so far from the blogging vision that you can't include it?