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  • 1 min read

Creepy

(Thanks, Aleksey) Technorati Tags: funny

  • 2 min read

[GEEK] Unified name space for aggregator extensions for OPML?

There's been a lot of discussion (follow these links for more links) of late about how to extend OPML , including what I wrote about some common aggregation related OPML attributes. From reading the discussions and thinking about it, I am thinking that a course correction might be better. Much of the discussion has been about an Attention namespace for OPML. I totally support this and will participate in that discussion. Yet there are clearly some information that many aggregators need to store with the OPML, which is not part of the core OPML standard, and also not really connected to Attention. Faced with this question an aggregator developer can do one of several things:

  • They can just create a product specific namespace (e.g. blogbridge: xxx)

  • Or they can just include regular non namespace attributes in their OPML (which will in turn cause either the validator or other aggregators to choke.)

What if instead we try to define a general set of a ggregator r elated e xtensions (are:xxx) to OPML? We could do an informal canvas and try to figure out a small set of really obvious attributes to put into this ARE name space. To start you thinking about this, here is a collection of attributes derived from what BlogBridge and FeedDemon each store in their OPML. I've identified two sets of attributes: The following have to do with bookkeeping and the operation of the aggregator:

  • are:autoPurgeMaxitems - number of items that should be stored locally

  • are:autoUpdateFrequency - how often this feed polled

  • are:numUnread - number of items currently unread

  • are:numFlagged - number of items currently flagged

  • are:numVisits - How often a user has visited this feed

  • are:firstPostDate - Date of the first post

And the following have to do with local user overrides of information that can also be specified in RSS.

  • are:userRating - user supplied rating of how 'good' this feed is

  • are:userTitle - user supplied override to the title or name of this feed

  • are:userCreator - user supplied override to the creator of this feed

  • are:userDescription - user supplied override to the description of this feed

I'm sure these are already too many. My top level question to those of us responsible for OPML import and export within Aggregators of all kinds, what do you think? Shall we try to do this? Is it a good idea? Or shall we all just create our little parochial namespaces with different words for the same thing? Technorati Tags: blogbridge, feeddemon, OPML

  • 1 min read

Very cool illusion

Try this out, it really worked for me, and is really strange and wonderful!

"This should be proof enough, we don't always see what we think we see." (from Very Cool Illusion, via del.icio.us)

Technorati Tags: cool

  • 3 min read

Big Search, Mechanical Turk and why Amazon is at least as cool as Google

Adam Green points to Scoble who re-discover and discover, respectively, Amazon's street by street, address by address, photographic coverage of the map of, what, the universe? It's a neat new user interface of something they've had for a while, actually, but still, quite cool! some nuggets:

"Will I use it? Hell, yeah, it is damn useful. I can point you to Border Cafe in Harvard Square, which just happens to be one of the best college student dives in the country." (from Darwinian Web, Adam's new blog)

and…

"But, if you need to know what a store looks like before going there, Amazon is definitely something you should check out." (from Scobelizer)

and…

"Is your house on their map? It's pretty creepy to have pictures of your neighborhood on line. Intellectually, it makes perfect sense, but it still creeps me out." (from a comment to Scoble's post)

and finally…

"Unfortunately, the image defaults to the side of the street with Starbucks. You'll have to click the film strip for the opposite side of Church Street." (again from Darwinian Web)

Which brings up Mechanical Turk, the new, totally clever Amazon service which some have written about but somehow seem to have escaped Scoble's all-seeing- eye. So what is Mechanical Turk (see this for the origin of the name)? It's an Amazon service generates solutions to little problems or tasks which are trivial for humans and impossible for computers (exaggerating a little here.) What kinds of problems are these? Oh say choosing what photograph best represents the storefront of the Border Cafe! What I imagine is this: Amazon has outsourced a bunch of SUVs equipped with digital cameras and a GPS to drive up and down all streets in the US. The cameras automatically snap picture after picture, each encoded with the current lat long. Using maps and directories each address will match several pictures. The remaining problem is to select the best one to represent the storefront. A very menial task, but one that requires a person. Enter Mechanical Turk. Anyone with an Amazon account can sign up and request to 'complete simple tasks that people do better than computers, and get paid for it." I tried this and was presented with sets of 3 to 6 photos. My job : decide which one most looks like the front door of say, Ernie's Body Shop, 1234 Main Hyway, Maine. I think each task paid something like 3 or 5 cents. Clever, eh? Even cooler, Amazon chose to build this as a totally general mechanism, with APIs for both sides of the transaction. API's to define tasks, check results, qualify workers etc.. And APIs to work on problems and suggest solutions. Pure genius! So, let's say I have a task like, answer the question: "Is this web page a blog or not?" (a question that might be of interest to BlogBridge) I could:

  1. Create a list of URLs that I want to check out

  2. Add them to Mechanical Turk as projects

  3. Seek out only workers who could show that they knew what a blog is (by submitting to some test questions)

  4. Decide how much I wanted to spend

  5. And turn the problem loose on people around the globe.

You know everyone always fawning over Google. Don't get me wrong, I think Google is great and I've done my own share of fawning. However, in my book, Amazon is the unsung hero in the new Web 2.0 world. They are every bit as innovative and cool as Google, and they do it while somehow inventorying and delivering gazillions of books and other products around the globe.

  • 1 min read

Goodnight Irene – Huddie Ledbetter, aka Leadbelly

Chorus: Irene goodnight, Irene goodnight Goodnight Irene, goodnight Irene I'll see you in my dreams Last Saturday night I got married Me and my wife settled down Now me and my wife are parted Gonna take another stroll downtown Sometimes I live in the country Sometimes I live in the town Sometimes I get a great notion To jump in the river and drown Well I asked your mother for you She told me you was too young I wish to the Lord I'd never seen your face Or heard your lying tongue Stop your rambling, stop your gambling Stop staying out late at night Go home to your wife and your family Stay home by the fireside bright I love Irene God knows I do Love her to the day I die If Irene turns her back on me I'll take morphine and die (If you know why I posted this then you know why I posted this 🙂 Technorati Tags: blues

  • 1 min read

Big news from Iraq, if it’s true…

Zarqawi probably killed! according to Iraq the Model.

"According to these two sources, Iraqi and US military forces in Mosul think that Zarqawi, al-Qaeda leader in Iraq was possibly killed in a raid on a house where members of al-Qaeda were holding a meeting." (from Iraq the Model)

And I can remember, not that long ago, that it would offend our sense of propriety or at least political correctness to write "X probably Killed!" We, didn't do that kind of thing, kill someone on purpose. The world has changed … Technorati Tags: iraq

  • 1 min read

Tivo will be able to transfer videos to Ipods… But…

Hot news for Tivo and iPod Fans. Coming soon to a computer near you!

"TiVo Inc. today is expected to announce a service that allows its digital video recorders to save programs to iPods and PlayStation Portables, further untethering television from time and place." (from LA Times)

Also covering the same story: Associated Press, New York Times, Geek News Central, and lots-o-other people. So what do I have to add? Not a whole lot, except this question : currently, Tivo doesn't provide "Tivo ToGo" connectivity to Apple Macintosh OS X, only to Windows XP. I hope that Apple is working with Tivo to address this! Technorati Tags: iPod, tivo

  • 1 min read

Dilbert Torture

According to Dilbert (or is it Scott Adams) we are approaching the whole question of torture in the wrong way:

"The objective is to think up a form of torture that's effective but doesn't sound so bad when the rest of the world finds out you did it. " (from Dilbert.Blog)

So here's what he's thought up:

"It occurred to me recently after having surgery for my deviated septum that lots of Al Qaeda members must need that same procedure. When Amnesty International finds out that we gave free medical care to prisoners, that won't sound so bad." (from Dilbert.Blog)

and…

"…we could give them spa packages that involve waxing the hair off of most of their bodies. I realize this is an overgeneralization, but terrorists seem extra hairy to me. So it would probably hurt extra much." (from Dilbert.Blog)

Technorati Tags: funny