[GEEK] Undrestanding and getting around EDT
No, not Eastern Daylight Time, the Swing Event Dispatch Thread. Duh. If the abbreviation EDT doesn't send shivers up your spine you're not really a Java Geek. Or maybe you are an uber-geek.
Anyway, I came across this clear and short article explaining the big traps and how to avoid them. It is the SPIN project which implements a way-esoteric-PhD-level technique to make it easier to work with the EDT.
Magic Links
Here's a really cool idea (via Boing Boing - see their story) - Creating a web site, identical to an existing one, except that certain words have been changed to links. A very powerful idea. Read the [article ](http://www.whitelabel.org/)and see the site.
In BlogBridge we already have automatic highlights of keywords. That is, you can specify a set of words or phrases you care about, and BlogBridge will highlight them whenever they occur in a Blog posting.
What if: in addition to preprocessing words for highlighting we also preprocessed them for magic links. In other words, automatically certain words in a blog posting would be turned into links. Wow!There are variations here:
We could allow you to specify a URL with your keywords and then instead of simply highlighting, magically convert the keyword into a link.
We could have a large glossary of words of interest on our BlogBridge server and map them to links.
We could (following the example that inspired this) look up words which occur frequently in WikiPedia and supply links to that.
We could look them up in Google (using the Google API) and supply links to that!
It boggles the mind. Food for thought.
Find what you care about with BlogBridge
We just got a totally cool new BlogBridge feature working, which actually was suggested by a user a few months ago: keyword highlighting. It's quite simple:
The user supplies a set of keywords they care about (in my case: "Bush Kerry Microsoft eRoom Curacao and Pito")
In turn, whenever blogs are displayed, wgere hose keywords occur, they are highlighted , like so:
Click on the image to enlarge it and note how the words Kerry and Bush are highlighted.
That 's not all. Keyword matches also figure in the scoring of feeds, so when you want to look only at your highest rated feeds, those with matches will be rated more highly(actually this is configurable.)
WDYT?
Web Services gone wild
Here's a cool idea: using the web services of Google and Technorati together to find other, related blogs. Here's the idea:
One of the things I am trying to do with BlogBridge is to help users discover new blogs that they would be interested in. Let 's say I am interested in finding other blogs which are related to or similar to one of my favorites, Scripting News.
First we ask Google for other sites ' related to' Scripting news (click here to see result.)
Starting at the second entry, we ask Technorati whether the returned link is part of a blog. If so, chances are these are related blogs.
Now I chose Scripting News as my example before I actually tried the excercise and I must admit it generated a weird set of so-called related blogs:
I actually had only heard of one of those. And I have to say I don't know exactly why Google thinks that they are related to Scripting News, but still it's an interesting approach that I will work on refining and then incorporate into BlogBridge.
Why Google is great
I've written about this before, I think, but I am once again pleasantly amazed by Google.
I momentarily blanked out on the name of the 'other' conservative blogger - other than Glenn Reynolds (Instapundit) that is.
So I asked Google, what sites are related to Instapundit? And here's what it says. Number 2 on the list: Andrew Sullivan. Yup, right answer!
Cool or what?
Mars Rover tracks seen from space
You know I am a fan of the cool little Mars Rovers. Here's an interesting little bit from Nasa:
"Mars Orbiter Sees Rover Tracks Among Thousands of New Images
NASA's Mars Global Surveyor, starting its third mission extension this week after seven years of orbiting Mars, is using an innovative technique to capture pictures even sharper than most of the more than 170,000 it has already produced.
One dramatic example from the spacecraft's Mars Orbiter Camera shows wheel tracks of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Spirit and the rover itself. Another tells scientists that no boulders bigger than about 1 to 2 meters (3 to 7 feet) are exposed in giant ripples created by a catastrophic flood.
Those examples are available onlinehere and here. In addition, about 24,000 newly catalogued images that Mars Global Surveyor took between October 2003 and March 2004 have been added to the Mars Orbiter Camera Image Gallery here. These include additional pictures of the Mars Exploration Rover sites seen from orbit."
Amazing, huh?
BlogBridge Usability Victims
We are looking for a few people who would be willing to give verbal feedback on BlogBridge usability. I think it would take at most 1/2 hour of your time, and you'd have a chance to have a very direct impact on the direction of the product. Please call Pito or email me at pitoatblogbridge.com and I will fill you in.
When we have T-Shirts , you will get one, gratis!
BlogBridge releases coming fast and furious
BlogBridge is going " Great Guns" as I told my friend David in answer to "What's going on with BlogBridge?" Well I don't really know what the heck that means except that I am pumped to see the progress we've been making. More and more every day. And now there's a way for you to see it too!
We just made a beta release (0.5.6) Betas have been coming about once a month.
Beta releases are tested (to a certain extent) on multiple platforms, include a web site update, emails and so on. We also snapshot the source code to SourceForge for the open source community.
Well, we realized that we have useful running code more often than that, so we've introduced the idea of an Alpha release , which is not really tested but feels pretty stable and consistent. We will issue an update email, do a very minor update to the web site, and again snapshot the source on SourceForge.
See our web site for a more detailed explanation and let us know what you think!
BlogBridge Beta 4: Sept 15, 2004
Ok, guys, we have another beta release with lots of great new goodies! It will be up on the web site tomorrow hopefully. It sports lots of new features, which I will be describing when I have some more time to do it. For now, please go to the BlogBridge web site and look around. Some links of interest:
One of the cool new things in this beta is the BlogStarz feature , illustrated to the left. Notice that each Channel has several new pieces of information. Not all are fully implemented yet. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Now, here's the real story:
The icon on the top left (pointing up or down or not) indicates how 'popular' this Channel is. Today, Popularity is measured by the number of inbound blog links as reported by Technorati.
The Starz in the top center summarize BlogBridge's measure of this Channel's interest to you. One Starz - Not very; 5 Starz - Very Very.
The Icon on the top right (heart or bomb) is clickable. It is where you subjectively tell BlogBridge how you feel about this Channel. Kind of a Tivo Thumbs up/down. By the way, of course this icon will change to a thumb.
Finally there are 3 numbers at the bottom left. These correspond to how many articles there are total in this Channel, how many you have not read, and how many BlogBridge guesses you will consider Good articles. The numbers go in the opposite order: good / unread / total.
Try the new beta. I hope you like it. Let me know!
