Something I read today complained about the templates in Radio UserLand being table-based vs. CSS based. Who cares? They work fine, after all. And, as someone who had recently spent some time crafting a personal site using tables, I thought that was the way it is done.

Turns out there's another way: using CSS, naturally. (I always loved the "cascading" in CSS. Takes me to the clean outdoors with those fresh pine scents!)

Read more about it here.

Use CSS for your next web page layout or be square!   6:13:58 PM     

Generally, I try to understand new technology from the perspective of a major company CIO. After all, I spent years in that role at several big companies.

Dave seems to really dislike WSDL. Frankly, I don't understand why. Seems like he objects to the development of a specification in advance of real-world experience with it. Isn't that what versioning is all about?

He points to the Blogger API -- which is just a human-readable page containing essentially the same information a WSDL page would contain for that interface. At least that's how it appears to me, the non-programmer. Make that "former programmer".

The advantage of WSDL, seems to me, is that a smart program can pick up the interface information without requiring a human read it. It's been through the W3C standards process with multiple players (including Microsoft, IBM, Ariba and, I think, HP) involved.

What am I missing?

PS: Don't misunderstand me re: Dave. I'm just trying to understand a particular point of view he's expressing. He's taught me so much over the last 3 years. It's been a real delight watching the evolution of the technology he and his team have developed.   5:59:45 PM     

Dave Winer has responded to my Radio UserLand search thoughts posted here yesterday. A local Radio Userland search page would be a great start. Google for searching the hosted site is just fine!

Just took a look at Google's free site search. Unfortunately, it's not possible to specify a domain/directory combination -- they say they don't support searching directories.

Looks like the only other option they offer is the full Silver/Gold search -- which costs almost $2 grand/month. A bit steep for the weblogger crowd!

Wonder if Userland could bundle a domain service with RU? In other words, instead of each of us having these numbered directories, we could also have a domain name pointing at our stuff. For example, sjl.radio.weblogs.com could point to radio.weblogs.com/0001009. Then I could tell Google the domain (I think -- unless Google chokes on the multiple subdomains?). Of course, this would also be cool for things other than enabling Google searches!   6:33:46 AM     

Business Week: A Better Web through Higher Math.

"So before you dismiss a paper with a title such as A Phase Transition in the Optimum Partitioning Problem as irrelevant gobbledygook, consider that the work was done at Microsoft Research -- and could lead to the software revolutions of tomorrow."

O'Reilly Network: How the Wayback Machine Works.

"The Internet Archive made headlines back in November with the release of the Wayback Machine, a Web interface to the Archive's five-year, 100-terabyte collection of Web pages. The archive is the result of the efforts of its director, Brewster Kahle, to capture the ephemeral pages of the Web and store them in a publicly accessible library. In addition to the other millions of web pages you can find in the Wayback Machine, it has direct pointers to some of the pioneer sites from the early days of the Web, including the NCSA What's New page, The Trojan Room Coffee Pot, and Feed magazine."

John Markoff: How Lonely is the Life that is Lived Online? [NY Times]

The study concludes that Internet use at home has a strong negative impact on time spent with friends and family, while Internet use at work decreases the time spent with colleagues.

GovNet: What is it good for? [Wired News]

Federal security experts will be reviewing proposals for the GovNet this week, but insiders report there is little excitement among the federal intelligence community for the project.

The Web Services Ecosystem and Vitiris. John Aloysius Ogilvie of Killdara sketches his views of the current Web Services ecosystem and describes the different ways to build a Web Services provider, including using Killdara's Vitiris product.   5:35:46 AM