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Monday, March 15, 2004 |
RSS Feeds for Internet Archive Collections.
"So as for your 'I want this' list re:RSS goodness and libraries:
'An RSS feed of new additions from a library's digital collection, whether it be for images, audio, or video.'
..is already done at the Internet Archive, albeit on a collection-centric basis - examples include:
http://www.archive.org/services/collection-rss.php [everything!]
http://www.archive.org/services/collection-rss.php?mediatype=audio&;;collection=monotonik [music label Monotonik!]
http://www.archive.org/services/collection-rss.php?mediatype=movies&;;collection=feature_films [feature films - which is an excellent new collection, btw.]
Oh, on a related note, with the help of Andrew Grumet at MIT, we
just added an RSS feed which has BitTorrent enclosures to our
BitTorrent site LegalTorrents.com, which you featured in December.
Information on getting (complicated!) Beta version working with Radio
Userland is here:
http://grumet.net/rssBitTorrentIntegration/radioClient.html
LegalTorrents is here: http://www.legaltorrents.com
This
is very cool cos it paves the way for people to automatically download
the latest additions to a collection using RSS + BitTorrent, every x
hours/days." [From Simon Carless]
Excellent - this is very much what I want to do with library digital collections! Thanks, Simon! [The Shifted Librarian] 
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Push Me, Pull Me, Just Give Me My Feeds. Push or Pull?
"I remember the early days of the push technologies on the Internet.
It was only a few years ago but looking back I viewed them as one of
those great ideas that failed due to poor marketing and
implementation....
Today we have RSS and aggregators. This XML language and its
associated client software allow you to 'subscribe' to a feed and then
receive the updates whenever they occur. Almost every presentation that
mentioned RSS at this year's Computer's in Libraries conference (and
there were many of them that did,) described this as a 'push'
technology. I beg to differ on this description. It may seem like push
but is it really?...
Here's my question. When teaching people about RSS and aggregators,
should we be describing it as a push technology when it really isn't?
(Yes Jenny, I'm expecting a comment from you on this.)" [Me. Like It or Not]
I don't think it's important to classify RSS as push or pull,
although if forced to I would say it's a push technology that the user
pulls. (How's that for straddling the fence!)
I think the best context in which to describe it is customization
and filtering; in other words, I get to pull in what I want, and
hopefully 2004 will be the year when I can fully customize that
experience (*cough* metadata *cough*). [The Shifted Librarian]
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Radical alien-style cube case.  This
is a sweet PC case -- "The bare-bones chassis includes three large
acrylic windows, cut-outs for a mind-numbing 11 fans, chrome
front-panel switches, and a set of medium-duty casters. You can remove
the drive bays, the motherboard tray, and the backplane, and Xoxide
plans to offer interchangeable drive bay modules for buyers who prefer
different configurations. All three acrylic panes are fitted into the
case's U-shaped wraparound cover, which removes them from harm's way
whenever you work inside."Link (via Wonderland)
[Boing Boing]
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Cover art for ReVisions anthology.  Last year, Charlie Stross and I wrote Unwirer in a public blog. The story was for ReVisions,
an alternate history anthology edited by Isaac Szpindel and Julie
Czerneda. Now, Kenn Brown has finished the cover art for the book, and
it's very very nifty. Link (Thanks, Kenn!)
[Boing Boing]
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Articles Restored. Thanks to the Wayback Machine, I recovered several articles of mine that were originally run by Happy Puppy,
back when they were one of the top three sites devoted to games. (Happy
Puppy has been sold a number of times since then, and all the old links
are broken.)
The articles are:
- Hit Hunter, a humorous piece looking at possible ways to replicate the success of Deer Hunter...
- A Requiem for the Hill, or, I Dreamed I Saw Charles Roberts Last Night--written when Avalon Hill was taken over by Hasbro.
- Tilting at Windmills, a proposal to do a version of Nethack with Diablo-style graphics.
- King of Dragon Pass, a review of the game, which was an IGF finalist some years back.
Still
two pieces I can't find--"You Can Smell the Desperation," an article
about an announced takeover of three hobby game distributors by
iEntertainment (that never came to pass), and a report on the first
(and only) IGDN conference. [Games * Design * Art * Culture]
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Two responses to globalization?. Friedman provides a nice insight: The two responses of the developing world to extreme globalization.
Infosys said all the walls have been blown away in the world, so
now we, an Indian software company, can use the Internet, fiber optic
telecommunications and e-mail to get superempowered and compete
anywhere that our smarts and energy can take us. And we can be part of
a global supply chain that produces profit for Indians, Americans and
Asians.
Al Qaeda said all the walls have been blown away in the world,
thereby threatening our Islamic culture and religious norms and
humiliating some of our people, who feel left behind. But we can use
the Internet, fiber optic telecommunications and e-mail to develop a
global supply chain of angry people that will superempower us and allow
us to hit back at the Western civilization that's now right in our face.
A couple decades ago I read a study (I wish I could find it online)
that examined how certain nations were genetically incapable of working
within the international system. Their internal dialogue led them to
lie, cheat, and steal in order to avoid paying debt, abide by
international rules of behavior, etc. A large part of this internal
dialogue was grounded in an overweening pride and a feeling of unfair
treatment by powerful, arrogant 'enemies.' [John Robb's Weblog]
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A classic example of terrorism's coercive impact.
Watch the election results in Spain. It will be a strong indicator as
to whether current terrorist methods can actually coerce change in a
modern nation-state. My analysis is that it will likely backfire
against the terrorists by increasing support for the party in power.
Turnout is expected to be over 80%. Just before the attack the PP was
up 4.5% in the polls and just 4 seats shy of an absolute majority. [John Robb's Weblog]
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MEMRI has the full translated text of the al Qaeda message claiming responsibility for the bombings in Spain.
The Death Brigades penetrated into the European Crusader
heartland, and struck a painful blow at one of the foundations of the
Crusader coalition. This is part of a settling of old accounts with
Crusader Spain, the ally of the U.S., in its war against Islam…
Take your hands off us! Release our prisoners! Get out of our lands! Then we will leave you alone. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Spain is coerced by al Qaeda.
Wow! The bombing in Madrid completely reversed the elections in Spain
today. The Socialists (who want to withdraw from Iraq) won by a
substantial margin. Prior to the bombing, the Popular Party was ahead.
This is a tangible terrorist victory. Of course, this is blood in the
water for terrorists. I was clearly wrong in estimating the impact of this attack due to
some unique factors: the government's prevarication regarding the
perpetrators, the extremely high public sentiment against the war in
Iraq, and the rapidity of the elections after the attack. Working on what this means over the longer term. Will post that thinking tomorrow. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Question: Do you think your country can keep you safe from terrorists?.
Voters in Spain answered this question on Sunday. Many said no. They
are not alone. Many people in the US and other parts of Europe reading
this think the same thing. This reaction is key to understanding what
is going wrong globally. The nation-state is in decline. It has failed
in its most basic task: to provide for the safety of its citizens. The
consequences of the delegitimization of the nation-state will be
central to life in the next century. [John Robb's Weblog]
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Chapter two
of Dan Gillmor's book is up. He tells his side of a meeting that I
remember very well. As we were working on Manila in the spring of 1999,
I was keeping Dan briefed step by step, but it didn't really come
together until we had a demo
at his office at the Merc. He, along with my uncle and Jamis MacNiven
at Buck's became our first users that summer. Dan's class at the
University of Hong Kong was among the first educational institutions,
if not the first, to do weblogs. [Scripting News]
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SXSW irc users: support freenode.
Adina sez, "Lilo's letting SXSW use irc.freenode.net even though SXSW
is a commercial project. People who are using freenode might want to
contribute. In general, folks whose projects benefit from freenode
might want to consider posting a "support freenode" link." Link [Boing Boing]
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Secret knocking codes for firewalls.
Port-knocking -- like a secret knock for firewalls. Schneier calls it
"defensive system that would not accept any SSH connections (port 22)
unless it detected connection attempts to closed ports 1026, 1027,
1029, 1034, 1026, 1044, and 1035 in that sequence within five seconds,
then listened on port 22 for a connection within ten seconds.
Otherwise, the system would completely ignore port 22." Link (via Crypto-Gram) [Boing Boing]
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Warren Ellis -- Biological. A short dose of delicious new prose from Warren Ellis:
Lavinia sits on the bench outside the local Starbs and swallows her
antifutureshock meds with a soy chai latte. After a few minutes, she
feels able to switch her shades from obstacle-imaging to full vision.
The world slowly fades up from green and black wireframe to
three-dimensional colour. She gazes blankly over the rail station, at
the full-motion billboard ad for the new Speculum Bar down on Main
Street, where warm drinks are mixed in and served from the muscular
rectums of young Algerian girls.
A flock of Fuckit Kids clatter past Lavinia, videoloop John Lydon
tattoos on their scrawny arms snapping out the words "fuck it" over and
over. Some of them slow down in front of her. People under twenty-five
or so aren't used to seeing pregnant women. One of them stops dead,
scratches his scabby upper arm, making his fresh new talking John Lydon
face bend and ripple. Antishocked to the eyeballs, he still struggles
to cope with Lavinia's alien curves.
Link [Boing Boing]
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Steampunk submarine free paper toy.  Stefan
sez, "John McEwan is a grand old man of military and role-playing
miniatures. He also makes cut-and-fold paper models of buildings and
vehicles. Some of these are really, really cool, like a line of
alternate-history zeppelins and steam tanks. Once in a while he puts up files for free download. This month it's a cool Victorian submarine."
Link
(Thanks, Stefan!)
[Boing Boing]
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New addition to the solar system.
Is it a planet or isn't it? Today, CalTech astronomers announced the
discovery of a "planetoid" eight billion miles from Earth, or more more
than three times the distance of Pluto.
With a size approximately three-quarters that of Pluto, it
is very likely the largest object found in the solar system since the
discovery of Pluto in 1930.
Link [Boing Boing]
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The Future of Work. Congrats to Tom Malone for the launch of The Future of Work,
a terriffic look at how decentralization is affecting the nature of the
organization, the structure of business and our work lives.
When we first launched Lotus Notes in the early 90's, it was an era of Reengineering The Corporation, in which companies were reducing the cost of coordination internally
through business process reengineering. Companies embraced Lotus Notes,
an advanced communications technology for the time, reflecting the changing nature of the organization from centralized hierarchical structures toward more decentralized work flows.
When I left
Iris/Lotus/IBM in 1997, I did so primarily because in '95-'96 I saw, in
our customers, the beginnings of something quite significant: they were
extending their core business processes and practices outward to
partners, suppliers, and in some cases even customers. When we launched
Groove's V1 product in 2001 and began selling it to enterprises, our
primary focus was on how it was an advance in decentralized
communications that would reduce the cost of coordination externally
in a manner not possible with technologies primarily designed for
enterprise use. The fact that enterprises and government have embraced
Groove truly reflects the changing nature of business from centralized structures toward networked, decentralized organizational relationships.
Over the past 12-18 months, we've seen some other very significant
technology-catalyzed changes occurring in business, in society, and in
our everyday lives. Last year was most certainly the "year of the
laptop". Broadband is now ever-more pervasive,
and 2003 was also undeniably the "year of WiFi". Our PC usage patterns
have been transformed: we carry them to meetings, use them at hotels
and on client sites and at home. Whereas most of us used to do most of
our work in our "office" or "cube", our most important work is now done
in our "virtual office" - the one that is implemented in software on
PC's and a variety of devices tucked away in our backpack, briefcase,
purse and pocket.
This isn't a small trend: its impact on business, society and our
lives is huge. I would strongly recommend that you spend some quality
time with this presentation based on a landmark study done in 2003 on the pervasiveness of off-site work.
I sit here writing this as we're about about to lift the veil from
what I believe you'll find truly represents the next generation of
communications software, Groove v3.0.
Our primary design goal for this product, based very specifically on
how it has been being used by our customers over the past three years,
was to implement, for its users, the essence of their "virtual office".
Where we do our work together, and where we want to do our work together because of how it feels and just works. We now live in an era of extreme mobility,
where the attributes of secure communications, coordination, and
synchronization are core to most everything we do in terms of
information work. An era where our tools and mobile devices must be
specifically designed with advanced, elegant awareness & notification
to help us to efficiently swarm around our joint activities, and to
aggregate and prioritize notifications in ways that help us to conserve
our attention and cope with information overload.
Think of how you yourself work, on a day-to-day basis. This era is
one of virtual work performed by a highly decentralized workforce.
Technology's role in this era is to bring us effective horizontal fusion - reducing the cost of coordination between us in a manner not possible with centralized technologies. It should reflect the changing nature of work, from the physical workplace, toward the decentralized workspace. And it most certainly will. [Ray Ozzie's Weblog]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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Stunning, elaborate paper toys to print, fold and glue. I really like the Wrigley Field, too. 
More foldable, glue-able PDFs -- this time, it's ultra-fab Japanese paper robots.
