Dave Winer has a high-level sketch outlining what the world of scripting languages might look like in the year 2005. The scary thing is that I think he's absolutely right about what Microsoft is trying to do with their .NET initiative.
My new PowerMac G4 showed up yesterday. It's smoking fast! Now, if only I had more time to play with it...
Linus Torvalds: "Let's assume Microsoft could tax everything on the Internet. You think the U.S. government would give up monopoly status as taxation man? The government would step in and say, 'No, no, that's what we do.'". The solution is for Microsoft to buy the government. Oh wait, maybe they already have...
Someone recently told me that reading CamWorld was like drinking from a firehose. What a nice compliment! It's nothing compared to Garret over at dangerousmeta, though.
Advogato: Why use Linux?
O'ReillyNet: P2P Goes to War. Military applications of P2P technology. Also read "Technological Change and the Future of Warfare: Understanding the Revolution In Military Affairs."
How Technology Has Influenced Worldwide Obesity
Technological Advance and Economic Growth: Harnessing Science and Technology for America's Economic Future
Digital preservation: a time bomb for Digital Libraries
Leadership in a Time of Change and Opportunity
O'ReillyNet: DOCTYPE Explained
Taxonomies and Topic Maps: Categorization Steps Forward. Unfortunately this article doesn't display in Netscape 4.x because someone forgot to close a TABLE tag. [via Snowdeal]
Fury: DotCom Storytime
IBM DeveloperWorks: Enabling XML documents for globalization
Cory Doctorow: Metadata as a failed science [via Webdesign-L]
In design school, my professors taught me a few golden rules. The first was "Never design for a committee. You will never finish." The second was "Avoid the page curl. It is very trite." Apparently, IBM's branding and identity firm missed class that day.
W3C: XML Accessibility Guidelines
J2EE vs. Microsoft.NET: A comparison of building XML-based web services
NY Times: Sinister Aspects of Japanese Animation. Ooh, I am definitely going to go check this exhibit out. I don't think susank (my coworker, who runs punkchick) knows this about me, but I am a closet anime/manga fan. [via punkchick]
Clay Shirky: Emergent Internet Operating System
Request: Can someone recommend a good screen printer in NYC? I want to get about a hundred CamWorld t-shirts printed up. I'm looking for high quality. No cheap stuff, which is why I'm avoiding services like Cafe Press. Yes, there will be CamWorld t-shirts for sale (at cost) as soon as they are available. Email or IM me.
Byte: Who Controls the Bootloader. "But of the four, only Hitachi actually shipped a machine with BeOS pre-installed. The rest apparently backed off after a closer reading of the fine print in their Microsoft Windows License agreements."
amundsen.com: Big Tent or Tower of Babel? More Microsoft smoke and mirrors? [via Scripting News]
I should call Microsoft Tech Support and complain that WindowsXP won't install on my Mac. This screengrab from a promotional Flash video clearly shows XP running on old Mac hardware. Heh.
Andrew Odlyzko: Talk, Talk, Talk: So who needs streaming video on a phone? The killer app for 3G may turn out to be--surprise--voice calls
Why McDonald's Fries Taste So Good [via the Geeks list]
Discover Magazine: Cow Parts
OpenP2P.com: The Great Rewiring
phpXML is an XML parser written in PHP.
OSopinion: Earth to Microsoft - We're Not Ready for XP
Why aren't more conferences like this? GNOMEdex costs a mere $39 a person and is being held in Des Moines, Iowa on September 14-15. Like most people, I am very tired of paying thousands of dollars a head and upwards of $200 a night for hotels just to attend a conference that usually ends up sucking anyway. But GNOMEdex is very inexpensive and won't cost me a fortune to attend. I'm looking into attending this; I'll know more soon as my schedule for the next few weeks solidifies. [via Evhead]
Creating a development process using SourceForge
Introducing Microsoft WindowsRG. [via Doc Searls]
Bad Tattoo of the Week.
ArsTechnica: Metadata, The Mac, and You
Sanity Check: I've been spending too much time online lately. Time to take a few days off. I'll be back soon...
Winterspeak: Why Gnome and KDE are misguided. Also don't miss the the reprint of "Paradox of the Active User".
A List Apart: Practical CSS Layout Tips, Tricks and Techniques
WebReview: Eleven Great Collaboration Tools
Text-friendly authoring topics. [via Zeldman]
Just say no! Funny, funny. These guys want to return-to-sender 1,000,000 AOL CDs. You know your marketing efforts are despised when people dream up this kind of thing...
Derek and Heather are trying to unravel a mystery. Can you help?
Brunching Shuttlecocks: The Star Wars Movie Title Generator
Request: I just ordered myself a new PowerMac G4/533 to run OS X on. All the old Macs I have lying around just can't handle OS X very well so I am biting the bullet and buying new. I'm also in the market for a good cheap (used?) Wintel box that I can run Windows2000 on. Since I know very little about shopping for Wintel boxes, I could use some advice. Where is a good place to pick up a cheap box for development purposes? Perhaps dot-com auctions? Email.
Links about wireless image formats:
The Nokiko SVG Project. (Awesome design!)
xmlhack: Comparing SVG with Flash
The Wireless Internet: Applications, Technology and Market Strategies
Sun: Enabling Web Applications for Wireless Devices
WAPBlogger is a WAP interface (enabled via the Blogger API)that lets you publish to your Blogger-powered weblog via your WAP-enabled cell phone or mobile device.
Excellent. Julian Haight has released the source code for SpamCop.
Research: Make It Flow: Achieving the Optimal User Experience
Very cool bitmap fonts.
ZDNet: Why Apple's bass-ackwards Unix approach is the right way
An interesting article about the City of Austin and Microsoft regarding ongoing talks about standardizing on MS-only software. "There is an insidious aspect to a citywide, multi-year plan. It locks users into Microsoft products only." And Microsoft's revenue plans start to unravel...
ASP News: J2EE and .Net: Two Roads Diverge in XML
Knowledge Indignation: Road Rage on the Information Superhighway
Wizards of OS 2; Open Cultures & Free Knowledge, International Conference at the House of World Cultures Berlin, October 11 - 13, 2001
Breathing life into the cellular Internet. Excellent article talking about some of the next-generation Web services that will be available for Internet-enabled cell phones and other devices.
Open source IM - it's not an oxymoron
Open-source IM provider Jabber goes mobile. However, a more up-to-date page at Jabber.com has information on a different partnership.
InternetWeek: Mobile Instant "Mess"aging
XMLmag: Jabber: Smooth Talking for Short Messages
AOL: AIM for Mobile Phones
The Cover Pages: Jabber XML Protocol
If you're like me you notice all kinds of incorrect technological facts in the movies coming out of Hollywood. Like in 'The Net' when Sandra Bullock uses a PowerBook Duo to type UNIX commands in all capital letters. Or in 'American Pie' which takes place in a suburban town in Michigan, there is a scene during the LaCrosse game where the edge of the playing field is lined with palm trees. For the obsessive movie watchers, nitpickers.com compiles these and thousands of other movie goofs, inaccuracies, and continuity problems.
Email: Computers in Hollywood
WebReference: Dynamic Web Sites with XML, XSLT and JSP
ArsTechnica: The Pentium 4 and the G4e: an Architectural Comparison
Bluetooth vs. 802.11b: "We're getting a lot of interest now from customers looking to put 802.11b radios in cell phones to access WLANs. That sure sounds like a good idea to me."
CNet has a great collection of reviews for handheld devices.
ComputerWorld: Cell carriers eye wireless LANs
Adaptive User Interface links:
The Computer-Aided Discovery of Scientific Knowledge
From 1994: Development of an Accessible Text-Based User Interface for People Who are Blind
The Moose: A Haptic User Interface for Blind Persons
The Open Agent Architecture (OAA) is A framework for integrating a community of heterogeneous software agents in a distributed environment.
Cognetics: On Beyond Help: User Assistance and the User Interface
User Interface design links for PDAs and cell phones:
The Real History of the GUI
Robert X. Cringely: How Microsoft Is Using Its Own Legal Defeat to Hurt Java
Users seek Web services clarity. "Several developing standards will make Web services possible. These four are the foundation."
Web Services: The Next Generation of Distributed Computing and Market Roundup
InfoWorld: Developers must focus on linking Web services to boost Net collaboration
Leigh Dodds is blogging the XML-DEV mailing list. Awesome!
When Larry Met Sergey, a great interview with Google's co-founders. Yesterday I saw an episode of "To Tell the Truth" where Sergey was a guest profile. Looks like Google's PR machine may finally be getting started...
"To the moon, Alice! To the moon!"
Serial Killer Profile Quiz. (I scored a 9, phwew...)
Whim & Vinegar: Web Pages That Suck, Indeed
Web Intersections is similar to MIT's Blogdex directory.
Take an IQ test. (I scored a 136, and I totally guessed at a few of the questions.)
MIT Technology Review: Taming the Web
Darwin Magazine: Abuser Interface
AlterNet: Microsoft Goes McCarthy in War Against Linux
JavaWorld: Talking Java!
The dancing monkey boy learns a new word. (3MB MPG)
netimperative: e-government: a case for open source
"IBM detailed plans last week to merge its WebSphere Portal Server framework with the K-Station collaborative portal offerings from its Lotus Development subsidiary. The result will be a framework to house forthcoming Web services."
PDAs increasingly vulnerable to hackers. This is something to think about. The other day I was thinking about the interconnectivity of the next-generation of cell phones -- you know, the ones that allow people to play networked games, transfer data, etc. -- and I figure it will only be a matter of time before some clever person writes a cellphone virus that propagates itself using a security hole in any one of the various technologies that make up the operating platforms of cell phones. For instance, imagine yourself in a movie theatre (or other public place) and all of a sudden several dozen cell phones start ringing and beeping, playing out a musical tune. We must start thinking about cell phones and Internet-connected PDAs as nodes on the same global network as our Internet-connected home and business computers, especially since most next-generation cell phones will come with Web Services and Internet capabilities built-in.
Analysis: Managing User Expectations
WebWord: Joel Spolsky, Painless Software Management
Top Ten Traps in C# for C++ Programmers
CERT: Home Network Security
Extending XSLT to Encrypt XML on the Fly
Search Interfaces for Handheld Mobile Devices
The next International World Wide Web conference is not going to be called WWW11, it's going to be called WWW2002, and it's being held in Hawaii! Ooh, I need to figure out how to go to this...
ComputerTelephony: XML Meets "IVR With An LCD"
XML.com: Developing Wireless Applications with WAP, WML, and JSP
InfoWorld: Debunking Windows-to-Linux Myths
Amy Wohl: Life On The Internet: Could Blogging Assist Knowledge Management?
Call for Papers: Workshop on Open Source Software Development and Dependability
Is that Linux in your pocket or are you just happy to see me?
China Overtakes the U.S. As No. 1 Cell-Phone Market.
Is Design Dead? Good essay on software design and Extreme Programming.
William Hermany has pointed me towards a company called Etherage that is making an attachable mini-keyboard for Handspring Visors and Palm Pilots. Very cool stuff that may actually cause me to brush the dust off my Palm... [via Chromoscope]
Word on the street is that Andy Wang, the guy behind Ironminds is giving it up and not maintaining the site anymore. I met Andy last month at WebZineNYC 2001 and he said he was working on a new project: an alternative magazine for the outer boroughs of NYC. Even though I will miss Andy's work on Ironminds, I wish him luck with his new project.
O'Reilly Open Source Conference: Shared Source vs. Open Source: Panel Discussion [transcript]
Newsforge: Secretaries use Linux, taxpayers save millions
XML.com: Architectural Style. Summary of an XML-DEV discussion concerning the utility and short-comings of XSLT.
Microsoft has released the next beta version of WinCE, codenamed Talisker. Anyone working in the PDA or wireless handheld market should be paying attention.
Recent reports are saying that the Microsoft IIS Code Red Worm has already cost nearly US$2B in damage and expenses. This is pretty incredible for a product that has only 20% marketshare. What if the marketshare figures for Apache and IIS were reversed (Microsoft wishes so) and IIS had a 63% marketshare? We'd all be getting phone calls from our moms and Grandmas asking "Why is the Internet broken?"
Press Release: Sprint Keeps Customers Entertained with Games on the Sprint PCS Wireless Web. Interesting to watch the U.S. wireless firms follow the lead of the success DoCoMo's i-mode has had in Japan.
Linux Today: Will Open Source Lose the Battle for the Web? Lots of interesting points made here. Argh, more stuff to think about...
ComputerWorld: Is Linux ready for the corporate desktop?
Information Visualization links:
There's nothing wrong with eating oatmeal out of the box. With a spoon. Raw. Now leave me alone, I'm hungry.
Coca-Cola, NTT DoCoMo and Itochu Unveil i-mode-Compatible Vending Machine
Well-known science fiction author Bruce Sterling now has a weekly weblog. Cool, I met Bruce a couple years back at his annual SXSW party, held at his house in Austin, TX. Update: Apparently this blog is dead.
Craig Mitchell must have writer's block. The author of some of the best writing on the Web, a long in-progress story called "She Hates My Futon" hasn't updated his site in well over a year. C'mon Craig, you're killing us! I want to know how the story ends....
James at DesignWeenie.com thought he saw me this morning on a street corner in NYC. It wasn't me, and it wasn't anyone I work with who might have that particular Mozilla t-shirt. I wonder who it was? How many people with Mozilla star shirts can there be in NYC? Hmmmm....
Web Standards Project: Expectations and Misunderstandings
IBM developerWorks: Using XSLT for content management [via More Like This]
Book: Perl for the Web
Mergers and acquisitions in the XML market:
Accessibility and Distribution of Information on the Web
Thinking critically about information on the Web
First Monday: Information Seeking on the Web: An Integrated Model of Browsing and Searching
Text Mining, Web Mining, Information Retrieval and Extraction from the WWW References (huge list of resources/links)
Peter F. Drucker: The Age of Social Transformation (bookmark this landmark essay)
Unicode Transformation Formats: UTF-8 & Co.
Ben Schneiderman: A User-Interface Framework for Text Searches
This story in Unix Review reminds me of the childhood Encyclopedia Brown stories I loved as a kid.
SitePoint: Plain Text or HTML? The Great Email Debate
August 12, 2021: Windows, Windows Everywhere
Ask Jeeves: Where can I find something interesting to read on the Web? Look at answer number 5. Cool.
WebTechniques: Getting Up to Speed with Velocity. At work, we recently switched our templating framework from Webmacro to Velocity, and it is indeed much better.
Wow, do I get some weird spam. Buddy, you've been drinking too much of that religious Kool-Aid again. Update: I just received this spam a second time with a new subject "My testimony and new email address from greg" and a new email address. Dude, there's a reason why your first email account was cancelled...
A reader I respect very highly actually sent in a negative vote for using the free DNS services at granitecanyon.com, citing that they're often down for weeks at a time.
Eric S. Raymond: Open Source -- it's about control, and maybe about healing
Ah yes, now this is a great use of computer simulation technology. At last, my mind is at ease...
Interesting new weblog: Kamat AnthoBLOGy. Keep an eye on this one...
The Japanese love their pet rabbits. The Japanese love to put weird things on their pet rabbits' heads... [via Fury]
Library of Congress: Digital Formats for Content Reproductions
ArsDigita White Paper: Collaboration and Flexibility: Critical for Efficient Content Management
Separating content from display/structure links:
Computer-mediated writing/discussion/groupware
Microsoft: Authoring HTML for Middle Eastern Content
Congratulations to the Netscape (and Mozilla!) teams for getting Netscape 6.1 out the door. It's so much better than 6.0, it has a chance of becoming a great alternate browser to the beast that is IE 6.0.
Today is wireless technology research day on CamWorld:
SatireWire: Bushblog, George W. Bush's weblog
Looks like Borland might be working on the interoperability issues between Sun's Java and Microsoft's .NET. By the way, if you haven't read Breaking Windows: How Bill Gates Fumbled the Future of Microsoft, I highly recommend it as a way of understanding Microsoft's business decisions of the past five years. [via rc3.org]
OSopinion: Open Source for Good Health
Business 2.0: AOL vs. Microsoft: The Cosmic Struggle Over You
Intranet Journal: Why an Intranet Must Constantly be Updated - And Steps to Take to Make Sure It Is [via LucDesk]
More compiled info on free/cheap DNS services.
XML.com: An Introduction to XML Digital Signatures
Request: Who can recommend a free or low-cost DNS service [must be reliable] for me to use to point some of my domains to my DSL connectivity (static IP numbers)? Email. I will summarize the results.
Free DNS services (number of reader recommendations):
Grant Barrett (not related) is hosting a weblog get-together tomorrow in NYC:
Rain Lounge in Williamsburg (Brooklyn) 216 Bedford Avenue (at North 5th) Take the L train one stop into Brooklyn to Bedford Avenue, walk about 30 seconds down Bedford from there. Friday, August 10th, at 7 p.m.
Series of WebReview articles on Web accessibility:
More links about pervasive accessibility:
Availability and Accessibility of Hacker Information on the Internet
The monkey boy is strange.
I can always tell when I've been doing too much research with Google when I run across more than two purple (visited link color) links within the first twenty search results.
Wayfinding is Not Signage
User-Centered Design for VoiceXML Applications
WebTechniques: Whipping Users into Shape
New virus spreads using Acrobat files. This is a bit misleading since it requires the presence of both Acrobat and Outlook for the virus to spread. Acrobat is just the delivery mechanism. Outlook is the propagation mechanism for this vvirus. Stop using Outlook and the virus is negated. And a new acronym is born: Just Another Outlook Virus (JAOV).
Winterspeak: The Joy of Plaintext. "The real reason Microsoft hates plaintext is because it makes lock-in impossible."
Tim O'Reilly: Open Source Needs Leadership?
Emerging Technologies links:
From 1996: Securing Communications on the Intranet and Over the Internet
Knowledge Networking. "The Knowledge Networking (KN) initiative focuses on the integration of knowledge from different sources and domains across space and time. Modern computing and communications systems provide the infrastructure to send bits anywhere, anytime in mass quantities-radical connectivity."
Team Knowledge Management: A Computer-Mediated Approach
Modeling Work: Workflow and Task Modeling (PDF)
Wisdom - A UML based architecture for interactive systems (PDF)
A Software Development Process for Small Projects (PDF)
I love irony.
OnJava: Java and XML Web Services, Part I
Books: On the plane trip back from Seattle, I finished reading Angry Young Spaceman by Jim Munroe. I highly recommend it. I also started reading:
Next up:
Yes, I normally read four or five books at a time.
The Art of Information Architecture
The Computer Science and Telecommunications Board of The National Academies is doing a plannning meeting on Open Source Software Development.
NY Times: Time of Growing Pains for Information Age
Craig Burton (former SVP of Novell) has some excellent things to say about the Microsoft vs. Open Source debate.
More Microsoft double-speak: "They can load any third-party software with no problem at all. If anything, we're fighting for user choice and pushing hard for that." Oh really?
Linux.com: Interview with Brian Behlendorf. "We are trying to build a process. You've heard of extreme programming, you've heard of other methodologies. Open Source development shares a lot of traits with extreme programming but has differences as well. So, we've been focusing on distilling that down to a science, to where we can train other companies on it and have sessions with engineers from those companies where we teach them how to put aside the ego from time to time and share code."
David Reed: The End of the End-to-End Argument. Pay special attention to the paragraph at the end about collaborative creative spaces. [via Winterspeak]
Sniff? sniff? What's that I smell? Corruption? Impeachment?
Some excellent reading material:
The Disgruntled Ex- Burger King Employees Manifesto. Man, I love the Web.
InternetWeek: Content Management: Integrate To Dominate
IBM: The HotMedia architecture: Progressive & interactive rich media for the Internet
ACM 2001 International Conference on Supporting Group Work. Ooh, I might want to try and go to this...
Steve Jackson Games has released a new game called GURPS Transhuman Space whose setting revolves around advanced biotechnology and interplanetary colonization.
For those people developing user-authentication processes, this is an interesting story. A guy named Paul Bissex was unable to register at cheaptickets.com because his last name contains the word "sex". Oops!
Dance, Monkey Boy! Dance! Somehow, I am now more afraid of Microsoft than before I watched this MPG clip...
A reader writes in: "I went to that exact same "TV Preview" thing in Austin, TX, more than 2 years ago. Both of these pilots were rejected years ago, and the preview was just a controlled experiment to see how you react to the commercials."
Two more readers pointed me to this recent Teevee.org article that explains more about the TV Preview scam.
Back in New York after a very relaxing week in Seattle.
A couple different readers sent in notes pointing out that Medscape has been covering medical conferences in realtime for several years now. Very cool.
WebWord: Greymatter, RSS, and Syndication
Risks of the Passport Single Signon Protocol
IBM research: Knowledge Socialization Project. Includes a white paper called "Fostering the Collaborative Creation of Knowledge."
The Institute for Knowledge Management is a global consortium of member organizations committed to understanding and developing tangible business value from knowledge management.
www.universalusability.org
Anyone know if the Digital Storytelling Festival will be held this year? Last year's was cancelled.
Cringely thinks Microsoft wants to fork TCP/IP to create a more "secure" version of it that is Microsoft-only. This is classic "embrace and extend" Microsoft behavior. If Microsoft does this on purpose, to make TCP/IP an untrustworthy protocol, then we can surely expect the Internet to fracture, leaving us with a Microsoft Internet, an "open" Internet, and possibly an AOL Internet, all of which have limited (or no) interoperability. Sigh...
Last night in Bellevue, I went to a TV Preview event with my old friend Matt Simerson and his girlfriend. It was an interesting experience. In exchange for answering a lot of marketing questions, you get to preview two of the TV shows being considered for the Fall season. I knew I was just being treated as a number (and I loved the fact that I was a guy from Brooklyn participating in an event intended for Seattle. Heh, mess with their statistics!) but I didn't care much. The first show was something called "Soulmates" which was about a woman who keeps running into people who she's met in a past life. The show was incredibly bad and simply not believable. I highly doubt we'll see it on TV this fall. The second show was a sit-com called "City" starring Valerie Harper. The writing was funny and the characters seemed to be fairly well developed. Harper plays a city manager (I think it was Chicago) who lives with her college-age daughter. The show itself is somewhat of a rip-off of "Spin City" but has a different tone.
My presentation slides from Web Design World are now up. I presented a session called "CMS Workflow and Collaboration" that I am not entirely happy with. Oh well...
