Blog Posts

January 2004

• 2004-01-14

  I want RSS to disappear.

  I want RSS to disappear. The question was posed, “What do users want from RSS”? I thought long and hard about this and here’s where I come out.

  Speaking strictly as a user, what I care about are RSS applications. I care about reading, scanning, writing, absorbing, learning from, contributing, and sharing. So what I want from RSS is to disappear into the plumbing, and in every way possible enable and encourage great applications to be designed and built.

  All kinds of wonderful new stuff that is yet to be invented. Authoring tools, reading tools, syndication applications, content applications, distribution servers, mass political blogging platforms, search engines and indexes, ra...

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• 2004-01-13

  Some amazing (Mars) panoramas. This

  Some amazing (Mars) panoramas. This is via Boing Boing. If you look at the navigation device in the bottom right, you’ll see that this site actually is an archive of all kinds of cool 360 degree panoramas!

  #science
• 2004-01-13

  David Isenberg’s WTF Conference: This

  David Isenberg’s WTF Conference: This is from David’s newsletter, SMART Letter:

  …. Here’s the idea — an instant, bottom-up meeting. WTF. Let’s get together face to face. Let’s talk about the end of telephony and the beginning of communication, about the end-to-end principle and its enemies, about smart people and dumb companies, intellectual property and creative commons, digital democracy and info-surveillance, e-commerce and the war against customers, and whatever else is on our minds. Let’s get to know each other, learn from each other, exchange ideas, frustrations, tools, toys and hacks. And let’s see what happens from there. WTF — it’ll be lots more exciting than talking corporate heads behind podiums…..

  David, count me IN!

• 2004-01-12

  Scott Kirsner of the Boston

  Scott Kirsner of the Boston Globe: “Salas has spent the past few months developing BlogBridge, software that allows users to easily keep tabs on multiple weblogs — kind of a “Reader’s Digest” for the blog world.” Thanks for the mention, Scott. The whole bit is:

  ** Pito Salas was the chief technology officer at eRoom, an online collaboration company acquired last year by Documentum, which in turn was bought by EMC. Salas has spent the past few months developing BlogBridge*, software that allows users to easily keep tabs on multiple weblogs — kind of a “Reader’s...

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  #business
• 2004-01-09

  It’s easy to predict the future!

  It’s easy to predict the future. Tim Bray has just concluded an interesting series of postings on what he calls TPSM or Technology Predictor Success Matrix. I’ve had a belief for a while that actually it’s easier than you think to predict the future of technologies. I will limit my comments to technology and computer related predictions, but I bet this applies to other fields as well. ****

  Want to see? I predict that in the future:

  Computers will be able to recognize handwriting Computers will be able to understand human spoken language There will be pervasive, high bandwidth, wireless connectivity

  And ...

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• 2004-01-08

  Wonderful Mars pictures? Unavailable! I

  Wonderful Mars pictures? Unavailable! I was looking around the Mars Rover Web site for some of those amazing pictures, and to my surprise they are now asking for a password to get into the ‘raw images’ area. I’ve got to believe that this is not for security but because their server was getting totally beat up by people like me browsing around.

  Hmm, maybe they should use some warez technology? Here maybe for the first time is a very ligitimate, legal, and useful place where Bit Torrent and other clever file sharing technologies could be used as a force for good 🙂

  #science
• 2004-01-08

  Walt Mossberg: “You may never

  Walt Mossberg: “You may never go back to Internet Explorer again.” In the current episode of Mossberg’s Personal Technology, he sings the praises of tabbed browsers. Of course old hat.

  “The Web browser is probably the most frequently used category of software in the world. But in recent years, the browser most people rely on — Microsoft’s Internet Explorer — has been stagnant, offering very few new features.”

  He recommends Safari for Mac (of course,) and NetCaptor for Windows.

  Of course in knocking Internet Explorer he neglects to say that both NetCaptor and MyIE2 are relatively thin skins over the core IE ActiveX controls. So much credit still goes to Microsoft. Sorry!

  On Windows, I’ve found MyIE2 somewhat better than NetCaptor, but both are better than IE.

• 2004-01-08

  CRN: “NewsGator 2.0, which pulls

  Old news, and the link is no longer working: CRN: “NewsGator 2.0, which pulls news feeds in RSS or Atom …”: First Time I’ve seen a commercial announcement of Atom support. Full Quote:

  “Also on Wednesday, NewsGator Technologies announced version 2.0 of its NewsGator news aggregator at CES. NewsGator 2.0, which pulls news feeds in RSS or Atom syndication formats from sources such as online news Web sites, blogs, and newsgroups, now lets users synchronize their news collection efforts on multiple machines, such as their in-the-office desktop and their on-the-road laptop. The new edition also offers an application programming interface (API) that corporate developers can use to build customized news apps for employees. NewsGator 2.0, which collects news feeds and then displays them within Microsoft Outlook 2000 and later, will ship Jan. 19, and cost $29 per user.”

• 2004-01-08

  Well, is it Dr. Dean

  Well, is it Dr. Dean or Governor Dean? It’s funny to me when people try to build up Howard Dean’s stature by using one or the other title, depending I guess on what the speaker thinks sounds more impressive. I’d say given the job he’s applying for, the only relevant qualification is Governor Howard Dean.

  #politics
• 2004-01-04

  Absolutely stunning animation of recent

  Absolutely stunning animation of recent mars landing. I do not exagerate! Check it out.

  #science