I just added RSD support to this weblog. It shouldn't effect you the reader, but it will make it easier for me to configure software to edit this site. Here's what rsd does:
Really Simple Discovery is a way to help client software find the services needed to read, edit, or "work with" weblogging software...The goal is simple. To reduce the information required to UserName, Password, and homepage URL.
If you have a Movable Type weblog and want to add RSD support, head on over here.
The staff of Boxes and Arrows published a big list of book recommendations on information architecture, interaction design, user centered design, design, usability, and more!.
Dave posted: "A promising new anonymous weblog. Check out the tagline. Interesting hexadecimal name."
Anonymous? Pffft, took me about 5 minutes of googling to find that the author is one <name removed at the request of the guilty> who also runs <other website removed>. Come on Dave, just cause you don't know who he is doesn't mean he's anonymous.
Thanks to Faecrow I am now syndicated on LiveJournal. So if you use LJ add adamw as a friend.
kryogenix has a comment about links between other places and says:
"I remain unconvinced that we need yet another addition to the sprawling world of XML-based formats that are trying to make the semantic web happen."
(This is in response to Simon Willison's posting about wanting to have a way to indicate that two links are related besides just linking to both of them in a weblog post)
Well, I'm happy to report that we don't need another XML format, it already exists: XLink. People already have a name for this idea also, its called a Linkbase
Every so often I go back and try to wrap my brain more tightly around the concept of Lifestreams.
We contend that managing one's own electronic world can be a frustrating task for most computer users, requiring too many separate applications, too many file transfers and format translations, the invention of too many pointless names and the construction of organizational hierarchies that too quickly become obsolete. What is needed is a metaphor and system for organizing the electronic ``bits of paper'' we all so easily collect, whether we create them ourselves or they come to us in the form of email, downloaded images, web pages, or scheduling reminders. Lifestreams is such a system.
Lifestreams uses a simple organizational metaphor, a time-ordered stream of documents, to replace conventional files and directories [3,4]. Stream filters and software agents are used to organize, locate, summarize and monitor incoming information. Lifestreams subsumes many separate desktop applications to accomplish the most common communication, scheduling, and search and retrieval tasks; yet its machine-independent, client-server architecture is open so that users can continue to use the document types, and viewers & editors they are accustomed to.
A lifestream is a time-ordered stream of documents that functions as a diary of your electronic life; every document you create is stored in your lifestream, as are the documents other people send you. The tail of your stream contains documents from the past, perhaps starting with your electronic birth certificate. Moving away from the tail and toward the present, your stream contains more recent documents such as papers in progress or the latest electronic mail you've received---other documents, such as pictures, correspondence, bills, movies, voice mail and software are stored in between. Moving beyond the present and into the future, the stream contains documents you will need: reminders, your calendar items, and to-do lists.
This idea seems right in so many ways, but we haven't gotten near making it a reality yet. Now Microsoft wants to get in on the action:
Engineers are working on software to load every photo you take, every letter you write - in fact your every memory and experience - into a surrogate brain that never forgets anything, New Scientist can reveal
It is part of a curious venture dubbed the MyLifeBits project, in which engineers at Microsoft's Media Presence lab in San Francisco are aiming to build multimedia databases that chronicle people's life events and make them searchable. "Imagine being able to run a Google-like search on your life," says Gordon Bell, one of the developers.
News Aggregators could get in on this also with a few properly placed advances in the tech.
This can all be accomplished with the existing technology, xml-rpc seems the logical choice for communication between applications (either web or local) and aggregators. Yea yea, I know I should get off my ass and do it myself but I can't make application authors implement it unless I stir up some interest so thats what I'm doing right now.
GetContentSize is a cool utility that will tell you the percentage of a webpage that is text and the percentage that is markup. Info for this page:
Total page size: 40882 bytes (not including images, attached scripts or style sheets)
Text content: 10811 bytes
Text content percentage: 26.44 %
That means 73.66% of my page isn't text and thats not good. I think I might edit this program to also count the percentage that is urls because they provide vital information to a page. Maybe that will give a better representation of what's important and what's garbage
Mark Pilgrim is playing with automated recommended reading again. You can get your own recommendations here.
People I subscribed to this morning:
NetNewsWire Lite is a very beautiful and full featured news aggregator for OS X. It uses a three-paned interface like Outlook Express.
If I start using my Mac more often it may take AmphetaDesk's place as my RSS reader of choice.
I'm posting t his from the great Kung-Log.
Kung-Log is a Mac OSX utility for posting to and editing entries in a Movable Type weblog.
It seems that the new TrackBack auto-discovery feature downloads each URL you link to and parses it to figure out how to send a trackback ping. The problem is if you link to a large file like an mp3 it downloads that and then if your CGI provider puts limits on your CGI's memory usage you'll run out of memory and get a 500 internal server error. Best solution I've found so far is to turn off the Trackback auto-discovery feature.
