Tuesday, June 25, 2002

Why Intel loves Palladium. Who remembers PSN? [The Register] 9:12:49 PM

IBM to sharpen Web services toolkit. Forthcoming SDK will feature UDDI repository, XML APIs, and built-in database [InfoWorld: Top News] 5:34:43 PM

James Gleick: Life is different with email. James "Chaos" Gleick talks about the phase-change of life in the online age. Something happened starting 10 years ago that was really exceptional. The speed of change of technology is different now. It's qualitatively different. It's disturbing. We can't always appreciate that because our memories are unreliable. Our attention spans seem to be shorter. We all feel this. But something very much like it happened a century ago, when the world suddenly got electricity and telephones, and underwent a sudden and dramatic change in the size and topology of the globe. So, it's happened before... It's still slightly surprising to people to remember that as recently as 1994 most people not only didn't have e-mail, but they didn't really know what e-mail was, and it didn't occur to them that they were ever going to have it. I remember it all vividly, because I started an Internet company in the summer of 1993. And I remember talking to my friends about it, and people thought I was nuts. I would talk to lawyers, and I would say: I think it's possible that in a while, maybe in a few decades, every law firm will be able to send e-mail, just as now they use the fax machine. And my lawyer friends would roll their eyes and humor me. Every profession operates differently now, because the online world exists. Every profession, and it's still just getting started. Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog] 10:18:18 AM

Germany has adopted a law prohibiting regional var .... Germany has adopted a law prohibiting regional variation and seasonal discounts on book prices. The measure was strongly supported by authors, publishers, distributors and booksellers in Germany, though it is more controversial in the rest of Europe. Quoting State Minister for Cultural Affairs, Julian Nida-Ruemelin: "[C]ountries that do not have such a law publish markedly fewer books and can support far fewer bookshops and publishers. Under a free-pricing system, the law of supply and demand will immediately affect prices, since publishers mark up their bestsellers to compensate for losses from the discounts handed out by supermarkets. The temptation becomes strong to publish only those books that will sell easily and quickly, with a resulting loss of diversity." (Thanks to Terry Foreman.) [FOS News] I'm not sure what to think of this story....Is it good for the exchange of ideas and our society?  Does it benefit particular interests at cost to society as a whole?  Hmmm.... 10:15:07 AM

website project ideas.. Kass has been updating the sites ideas page at TIC, showing students' website project ideas. The variety is way cool! [freeRadicalized News] 7:35:14 AM

Science-Technology Drive Is Urged to Fight Terror. The United States should begin a program to help fight terrorism through science and technology with a vast range of efforts, a report released Monday by the National Research Council says. [New York Times: Technology] "'The scientific and engineering community is aware that it can make a critical contribution to protecting the nation from catastrophic terrorism,' said Dr. Lewis M. Branscomb, a co-chairman of the committee and a professor emeritus at the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard. 'Our report gives the government a blueprint for using current technologies and creating new capabilities to reduce the likelihood of terrorist attacks and the severity of their consequences.' It's about time that such a report came out -- I hope good things come out of it. 7:34:41 AM

It's a Tablet. It's a Notebook. From Microsoft, a New Hybrid.. When Microsoft announces that machines using its Tablet PC software will be introduced on Nov. 7, the emphasis will be on using pen-based features to enhance conventional notebook computers. [New York Times: Technology] The most interesting part of the article for me was the section about Office:  "Microsoft's huge Office business, many analysts say, is mature and destined to stagnate. Some companies are balking at a new Office licensing program — going into effect on July 31 — that abandons some traditional discounts and seeks to persuade corporate customers to sign up for automatic upgrades, making it more a subscription business for Microsoft. The new pricing system will raise prices substantially for some customers, though lower them for others." 7:32:16 AM

MS to unveil new Office, Tablet PC plans. ...That version will include better support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), an industry standard for data description and exchange and a key technology behind Microsoft's... [Yahoo News Headlines - XML] "Raikes will announce that the new Office version, being developed under the name Office 11, is scheduled to ship by mid-2003. That version will include better support for Extensible Markup Language (XML), an industry standard for data description and exchange and a key technology behind Microsoft's .Net Web services plan. " Will we be able to write DocBook in MS Word and Powerpoint from Office 11?  Will we be able to post to blogger and query google from Office 11? 7:30:44 AM

I'm curious what type XML support InCopy has.  For Adobe's XMP?  Adobe ships InCopy 2.0. InCopy has been developed for writers, editors and copyfitters at magazines and newspapers. The software features support for XML, built-in dynamic spell-check, integrated thesaurus and table creation control. Interface enhancements include fast font substitution and the ability to work on multiple views simultaneously. InCopy also features a plug-in architecture that makes it possible to enhance the software's capabilities with new features created by third-party developers. [Yahoo News Headlines - XML] 7:27:56 AM

Roy Tennant's presentations always look excellent: Roy Tennant has put online the slide show from his .... Roy Tennant has put online the slide show from his talk at the British Columbia Library Conference (May 9), Down and Dirty Digitization: Everything you need to know about putting content online. (Thanks to Library News Daily.) [FOS News] 7:25:14 AM

NewsForge reports on Martin Halbert's talk at the .... NewsForge reports on Martin Halbert's talk at the ALA conference on MetaScholar, Koha, Greenstone, and other open source software to automate various tasks for a digital library. (Thanks to Red Rock Eater.) [FOS News] The FOS people forgot to put the link to NewsForge in their post. 7:19:37 AM

I'll have to take a look to see what Fed's been up to -- something wonderful, I suspect. The Internet and the Elimination of Barriers: Can the Internet solve world conflicts?. Fed's talk had this rather daunting title: The Internet and the Elimination of Barriers: Can the Internet solve world conflicts? An apt topic for these troubled times, however. Group presentations coming up in a few minutes, based on the speedy (hasty? haha) research the kids had to do. (They had to come up with websites on conflicts, in a mere 20 minutes.) [freeRadicalized News] 7:11:40 AM

© Copyright 2002 Raymond Yee.