Blog Posts
All my blog posts and articles
August 2005
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2005-08-17
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2005-08-15
The unfolding of language: Looks like a very interesting book
Read more →http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=blogbridge-20&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0805079076&fc1=000000&lc1=0000ff&bc1=000000<1=_top&nou=1&IS2=1&f=ifr&bg1=ffffff&f=ifr I came across this review in “World Wide Words”, an email newsletter (remember those?) about … well, words. Here’s an excerpt from the review:
“He takes readers through introductory topics such as syntax, case endings, grammatical gender, and the curiosities of Semitic nouns, in which a set of three consonants creates a template within which detaile...
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2005-08-13
Who has a life?
Read more →As you might have seen over at our BlogBridge blog, we are experimenting with a new visualization of blog postings, right inside BlogBridge. I’ve taken to calling this the Kleppner Widget as it was invented by Paul and Andrew Kleppner who have been contributing some cool stuff of late.
This is a snippet from a pre-release build of BlogBridge:
What you are looking at is a display of 4 Feeds (Dan Gillmor, Joho the Blog, ...
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2005-08-11
Check out Findory
Read more →I was talking about search engines the other day. I guess Findory includes a search engine, but in my mind it’s a lot more. Here’s how they describe it:
“Our patent-pending technology personalizes the homepage for each reader, recommending content based on what they’ve read and what new content is being published. We crawl through thousands of news and blogs articles so you don’t have to.” (from About Findory)
You have to play with it to get the idea. For me it’s especially handy to uncover other information that is somehow related to what I am writing about in my own blog.
For example, ...
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2005-08-11
Color laser printers consume lots of consumables
Read more →Color laser printers are wonderful. The one I use is a Konica Minolta QMS 2200. We’ve had it for years and it works like a champ. Only thing is, the toner is really pricey. So pricey that I started suspecting that something was awry, so I kept a log of when I replaced what consumable and how much I paid. It’s a lot!
Yes, “consumable“, because in addition to the toner there are a bunch of other things that ‘wear’ out and that you have to replace. The printer very helpfully says, “Replace Oil Roller” and stops working. What the heck is an oil roller? I don’t know but it costs ...
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2005-08-10
iTunes and Podcasts
This is just a quickie: did you know that you can just drag and drop the URL of a Podcast RSS feed (a.k.a. an RSS Feed with enclosures) onto the Podcasts list in iTunes? In other words, you don’t need to surf the Apple iTunes catalog looking for your favorite show if you have the URL. This is especially handy if the Podcast you want to listen to has not made it to their catalog.
Technorati Tags: podcast
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2005-08-08
A bit of personal PR (at least I labeled it so you can skip it)
Read more →Hey, I just came across this:
“The Invention of the Pivot Table: The concept that led to today’s pivot table came from the halls of the Lotus Development Corporation with a revolutionary spreadsheet program called Lotus Improv. Improv was envisioned in 1986 by Pito Salas of the Advanced Technology Group at Lotus.
Realizing that spreadsheets often have patterns of data, Pito concluded that if one could build a tool that could recognize these patterns, then one could build enhanced data models. Lotus ran with the concept and started developing the next-generation spreadsheet.” (from ...
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2005-08-06
The death of spam?
Read more →My friend Paul English has written an interesting bit about spam and ways that we need to combat it:
“The keys to ending spam are (1) to eliminate the ability for spammers to falsely identify themselves and (2) to then determine which Email Service Providers (ESPs) actually prevent their correctly identified users from sending spam.” (From Sender Identification Rollout)”
Paul makes a very interesting analogy with Identity Theft – he calls it “Email Identity Theft.”
In the following piece, ...
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2005-08-03
BlogOn Conference: I’m on the advisory board
Read more →
BlogOn is a conference being organized by the inimitable Chris Shipley.The full name is “BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit”.
And yes, **yours truly is on the advisory board FWIW.
The conference is in New York City, on October 17 and 18.
Look here for more information.
You probably know Chris Shipley from the ...
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2005-08-02
Sifry: “A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily”
Dave Sifry of Technorati has an interesting analysis of the current dynamics in the Blogosphere:
“Summary:
Technorati was tracking over 14.2 Million weblogs, and over 1.3 billion links in July 2005
The blogosphere continues to double about every 5.5 months
A new blog is created about every second, there are over 80,000 created daily
About 55% of all blogs are active, and that has remained a consistent statistic for at least a year
About 13% of all blogs are updated at least weekly” (from Sifry’s Alerts)”
Read the whole thing for lots of other interesting tidbits!
Technorati Tags: blog, technorati
July 2005
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2005-07-28
People are still doing groupware startups, believe it or not!
Being a veteran of the groupware movement (worked at Lotus for years, and co-founded eRoom Technology) this item caught my eye:
“Liquid Systems, a venture-funded software company that is focused on enterprise messaging and collaboration, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans.” (from InfoWorld)
I guess only the InfoWorld headline refers to “groupware” but it’s a very 80’s term, that even in the 90’s we at eRoom avoided like the plague.
Technorati Tags: collaboration, groupware, vc
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2005-07-27
Interesting new search engines
There was a recent interesting article in the New York Times describing some new, unusual search engines:
“Search engines are so powerful. And they are so pathetically weak. … When it comes to digging up a specific name, date, phrase or price, search engines are unstoppable. The same is true for details from the previously concealed past. For better and worse, any information about any of us…” (from New York Times)
None of them blows me away, but in case these are useful or of interest:
www.clusty.com www.vivisimo.com www.grokker.com www.mrsapo.com
Technorati Tags: searchengines
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2005-07-26
RSS in the Academic/Research/Scientific community
Read more →I recently wondered out loud (on a couple of mailing lists) how much action there is with RSS and Blogging within the Academic/Research/Scientific community.
The reason for that question was that I was considering that with those folks refereed, scholarly articles are what counts which seems diametrically opposite to the casual, ad-hoc, first-person rants that are generally associated with blogging. (Ok I am just exaggerating to make a point.)
I learned that there’s actually lots and lots going on with RSS and Blogging in that world. Here are some interesting from a more or less random collection of serious science and academic pubs all of which have RSS support of some kind. T...
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2005-07-25
[GEEK] Site Referral Log Mystery: How does this happen?
Can someone explain why my referrer log for this site is full of spamish-looking like urls, none of which actually have a link to it? For example:
texasholdemcenteral.com, www.freewebs.com, skate.cyberfreehost.com, google.co.uk/search, www.myspace.com/nyjeter2ox, images.google.ca/imgres, images.google.co.uk/imgres, evilplots.com/texas-holdem, www.texasholdemcenteral.com, online-casino.blest-casino.com/ , www.favorite-casino.com/online-casino, www.sportscribe.com/poker-party, com/texas-holdem.html, favorite-casino.com/casino.
And so on? It’s got to have something to do with page rank and Google, but I would love to understand HOW and WHY they do it.
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2005-07-22
[GEEK] This may be good news for Java, long term
“IBM has announced that it will be joining the Harmony open source Java project. Although right now, IBM’s role is limited to providing thoughts and suggestions, it is likely that IBM will be contributing code to the project in the future according to Rod Smith, Vice President of Advanced Technology at IBM.”, from JavaLobby.
While Java is great as a language and as a platform, there has been reasonable concern about Sun’s stewardship of it, both short and long term. The fact that IBM seems to be throwing their hat into the ring of making an alternative, open source, Java platform, can either be good by itself or because it gives Sun a kick in the pants. Either way, I think it could be good!
Technorati Tags: interesting, java, IBM, puppy
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2005-07-21
Microsoft bought one Bridge, maybe they’ll buy another
Check this out: Microsoft Announces Plans to Acquire FrontBridge… Is BlogBridge next?
(ok, you know I am only joking, right ;->)
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2005-07-20
Ok it’s official: The Maldives is the most beautiful place on earth
For a while now I’ve been fascinated with my Flickr SmartFeed of the Maldives. The pictures are one more beautiful than the next. Maybe this betrays my Caribbean heritage, but this one just blows me away.
Technorati Tags: flickr
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2005-07-19
Scoble, Technorati and Bloglines (and Dow Jones and Nasdaq AGAIN different?! What’s going on?)
Read more →Scoble has been really picking on Technorati recently, and I can’t figure out why. Given the megaphone that Robert has it has got to be really hurting Technorati. There has been a lot of detailed commentary about this, some of it quite good, for example David Berlind and Dan Farber on ZDNet and Padawan.info.
My modest contribution to the debate is this: Why does it shock anyone that the number of links reported by T...
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2005-07-15
Blogging 101 article in NYT
Scripting News: 7/15/2005: Dave points to the New York Times article by Rich Meslin, Blogs 101. It’s a very nice collection of Blogs of general interest as a good introduction to the world of Blogs.
“If you want to get the feel of Web logs and blogging, visit some of these sites. Most blogs carry links to other blogs on related topics or that the author likes. This page is under development; feel free to suggest your own finds. Business and sports suggestions are particularly welcome.” (from New York Times)
It’s a really nice starter list, but Rich, how about providing your list as OPML as well?
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2005-07-15
[GEEKY] Using OPML for master lists of feeds
Read more →I encounter more and more organizations or people who are collecting lists of feeds or blogs for one purpose or another. With BlogBridge we have the BlogBridge Topic Experts. Global Voices have their collection of international blogs (very cool!) And of course, anyone using a feed reader or aggregator has their own list of subscriptions.
Anyone who is making a list of blogs or feeds (or I suppose, URLs of any kind) that is not secret or private, would do well to record that in a simple OPML list. And the ‘handle’ to that list or collection is a URL.
Lets see. Instead of telling people, you can find my list of best restaurant blogs as a BlogLines list, or as this html page, or as a BlogBrid...