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Saturday, March 27, 2004 |
Contextual Help. Call up the past!
"I found this in The Guardian, great for anyone touring London:
Handheld History is a
new service launching this Spring, which allows you to use your mobile
phone to access history based on London’s famous Blue Plaques.
The Blue Plaques which are on buildings all over London, commemorate
the achievement of hundreds of men and women who have lived and worked
in the city for all or some of their lives. By calling a designated
short code or dialling a number, you'll get either basic history by SMS
or a short voice biography.
Handheld history will also entertain you through your cell phone if
you're waiting in line to get into Madame Tussauds Wax Museum, with
some horrible facts about Vlad the Impaler, the original Count Dracula,
the death of Joan of Arc, the final days of Adolf Hitler or how
Princess Diana was remembered after her death." [textually.org]
Way cool, and an excellent use of handhelds, location-based
services, and text messaging. Someday libraries will make some of their
information available this way, too. [The Shifted Librarian] 
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Free Culture Is Both!. "Free Culture" is
"Thanks to the lessons explained by others (Cory), and the courage of a great publisher (Penguin), Free Culture launches today with a free online version of the book, licensed under a Creative Commons license. You can get the book here,
though at the moment, only the bittorrent version is apparently up.
Later today, there will be a direct download available from the Free Culture site, and from the Amazon site." [Lessig Blog]
Kudos to Professor Lessig and to Penguin. I'm holding out for a Palm
version or, better yet, an audiobook (preferrably MP3, Ogg, or even Audible). However, the CC license says the following:
"You may redistribute, copy, or otherwise reuse/remix this book
provided that you do so for non-commercial purposes and credit
Professor Lessig."
If I understand that correctly, I believe that means libraries can
download the PDF version, catalog it, link to it from their catalogs,
and let patrons download it (hellllllllooooooo, SWAN!).
Of course, I also think this book is important enough that every public
and academic library should purchase a print copy as well, but it's
nice to be able to offer the uncomplicated download, too.
So thanks again, Professor Lessig! [The Shifted Librarian]
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Japanese rescue robot vids. 
A post on Dottocomu includes links to videos of the Enryu Japanese
rescue-robot tearing the doors off of cars, moving steel girders and
demonstrating humanity's hubristic attempt to supercede the Creator's
unique right to create life. It's sacrelicious.
Link
(via Engadget)
[Boing Boing]
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Research vs Products. Breakfast with Lili and Sean in MS Research.
I'm sitting here with Sean Kelly and Lily Cheng, in Microsoft
Research. We're checking out the latest social software networks. For
instance:
Myspace A very young audience, but doing some real interesting stuff.
Why do I like what Lili and Sean show me? They get me out of my echo chamber. For instance, I haven't been playing with LiveJournal much lately, but it has more than a million people doing some interesting network spaces.
Are you seeing anything online that is cool in weblog/diaries/social
software? I'm gonna have lunch with Marc Canter next week. I can't wait
to see what he shows me.
Oh, there's a ton of social network people coming to Microsoft next week. I'll write more about that on Monday.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
Let's see:
- Midentity - just went v1.0
- MediaChest - is boring
- Orkut - took down stats for good now
- Tribe.net - got a new look
 - Yafro - is hot
One funny thing - Lili emailed tonight asking that I not heckle
anyone during her thingie. :-) Now I wonder who can be worried? [Marc's Voice]
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Sarah has an answer for Dan - as well. why is XML good for GUI?.
why is XML good for GUI?
Dan Shafer asks a very good question about Laszlo:
"Instead of direct manipulation of graphical objects to create
pleasing interfaces, i get to write XML code (with its extreme overhead
burden) to describe how I want the graphical experience to look and
feel. And that's a good thing because...???"
I agree that it is counter-intuitive that XML would be a good format
for developing graphical user interfaces. I always felt that XML made a
mighty fine interchange format -- it's human-readable, almost
self-doumenting, and these days if you are working on a large software
development project you probably have at least one or two XML parsers
already linked in. So... why use it for developing applications?
There are a few attributes of graphical user interfaces that map well to XML:
Graphical user interfaces are inherently hierarchical
Screen
real-estate is naturally divided heirarchically. It is convenient for
that heirarchy to be represented by the development environment.
Graphical user interfaces evolve
While a hierarchy could
be effectively represented in a visual tool, arguably more effectively
than it is in an XML file, it is the managing the evolution of a
application where XML really comes in handy. It is natural for a design
to change over time. In response to user feedback, bugs, or simply by
realization of the author, an application needs new features, gestures,
or an altered composition. When your design is caught in a visual tool
with an opaque file format, you lose the magic of a diff. What happened
between then and now?
Graphical user interfaces are often built by a team
XML
files are simple text files. Media files live separately and can be
linked in by name. Designers and coders can work together on separate
pieces of an application without the need for complex group-ware
solutions. Coders use the tools they are used to for editing and
archiving files. Designers can use the tools they are used to for
creating and editing art assets and media files.
Graphical user interfaces require structure
Graphical user
interfaces need to be split into pieces to be manageable. XML provides
a structured framework which makes its fairly easy to divide your work
into bite-sized chunks. A common problem in a visual tool is that
people "lose" things. It may be hard to figure out what object a script
is attached to. An object that is invisible can be hard to discover or
manipulate. In a system where all objects and code are encapsulated in
simple text files, anything can be found. The inherent structure of an
XML file helps organize an application. There are lots of visual tools
that offer a tree-view of XML files which make this structure more
approachable.
As an aside, for Dan who "still doesn't get Laszlo," there's a whole
lot more to Laszlo than XML. What makes Laszlo cool is its constraints
system, animation geared to UI design, client-server data model,
effective class re-factoring, and more.
Someday there'll be a GUI tool for creating and editing Laszlo
applications. Let's face it: typing in pixel coordinates and RGB values
is no fun. Ideally there would be a layout tool that directly created
and edited LZX files. Most folks at Laszlo design in Illustrator or
whatever and transfer pixel and RGB values to the XML files. By the
way, this is often what folks do when building UI for desktop apps. [Sarah Allen's Weblog] [Marc's Voice]
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Interested in Laszlo?. Wanna build a rich media application or service? getting tired of HTML? Don't wanna learn timelines? Then check out Laszlo Systems.
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Free Laszlo for non-commercial usages.  I wanted to make sure everyone caught this.
In the midst of their big announcements yesterday, Laszlo announced their......
Laszlo Presentation Server Non-Commercial Edition
Laszlo Presentation Server Non-Commercial Edition (LPS NC) is
intended for organizations that would like to build and deploy
applications for non-commercial educational and research purposes as
well as non-profit organizations providing information for public
benefit. LPS NC is also ideal for Laszlo developers and partners
looking to showcase and promote Laszlo applications.
Support
LPS NC is supported via Laszlo's online forums. Access to the forum
is free and available to all Laszlo customers. It is monitored by
Laszlo's technical staff and enables you to get answers and exchange
ideas with other customers, developers and the Laszlo team.
Pricing
Subject to acceptance of an application form, LPS NC is free. It is
intended for organizations using the product for non-revenue generating
purposes.
Apply For NC Now
If you are interested in LPS NC, please submit a completed application form to Laszlo for review:
Download LPS NC application form (PDF format)
For additional questions about the Non-Commercial Edition, contact getnc@laszlosystems.com.
Marc's bit...
As long as it's non-commercial - you can do it - for free from Laszlo. The Internet Archive is using it. [Marc's Voice]
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Seb groks the ASN. Interview with Ken Jordan (Seb Paquet). 
March 24, 2004
Interview with Ken Jordan
On the venerable nettime mailing list, Geert Lovink interviews Ken Jordan, one of the coauthors of the ambitious Augmented Social Network
white paper. Jordan and collaborators have been thinking about the
issue of self-representation online for a long time, and he highlights
quite clearly many of the key issues in this area.
The ASN is a blue sky
vision for the future of online community. It stakes out some
conceptual territory, presenting a civil society vision of how the
Internet could evolve — particularly addressing the issues of Identity
and Trust (two packed terms that have a pretty specific meaning in this
context). It provides a clear alternative to the dangerous direction
the Internet may well be heading in — a corporate/government
panopticon. But it’s not enough to stand against digital disempowerment
and control; we need to stand for something. The ASN
shows that by coordinating the writing of standards and protocols
between several different, previously separate technical areas
(persistent identity, interoperability between community
infrastructures, matching technologies, and brokering) you could add a
layer of functionality to the Internet that would be greatly in the
public interest.
Jordan enumerates shortcomings of current social networking systems such as Friendster:
- They are non-interoperable walled gardens.
- Profile info is thin, not nuanced; it isn’t context sensitive (the boss and mother problem).
- The profile information is static, not effected by your actions elsewhere.
- You have limited control over your own profile information
(“It calls for a new class of services: identity brokers”; you also
want a “digital bill of rights” that enables you to exert control over
access.)
- The sites are exclusive, invitation-only clubs. [Note: I believe this is the exception rather than the norm].
I can’t help but notice how close weblogs come to fitting the bill -
apart from restricting you to a single context and making it difficult
to control acess, everything is in there. (See Dina Mehta and Lilia Efimova on blogs as SNSes .)[Many-to-Many]
Marc's bit....
It's almost been a year since thr ASN was first published. I became
involved in it - as I support the theories and vision of the ASN.
I myself have been trying ot make sure it happens.
The PeopleAggregator is our first step towards that. [Marc's Voice]
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Steven Hawking's wife accused of physically abusing him.
Steven Hawking's wife has been called in for questioning regarding
injuries to her husband. She used to be one of his nurses, and the
other nurses who tend him blame her for "numerous acts of cruelty."
Both of them deny this.
Professor Hawking, author of A Brief History Of Time, has
repeatedly been taken to hospital with unexplained injuries, such as a
broken wrist, gashes to the face and a cut lip, that have left his
family concerned for his safety.
Link
(via Fark) [Boing Boing]
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Aerogel.  Juju
has written an nice introductory piece about aerogel, a solid material
that just a tiny bit denser than air. The pics are amazing. They look
fake, but they come from the NASA web site. Link
[Boing Boing]
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GDC 2004: Carmack speaks!.
For the first time ever, id Software's chief coder John Carmack gave a
talk at the Game Developers Conference. He had a lot to say about the
perils of engine development and advancing game technology. [Extremetech]
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Producing a blogger-read audio of Lessig's book. Lessig's new book, Free Culture is available online as a gratis, Creative-Commons-licensed file, under terms that allow for the creation of derivative works.
AKMA has proposed a hell of a derivative work: he's inviting any
blogger who cares to to read a chapter aloud, recording it and posting
it, so that a distributed audiobook of the book will be produced. I may
take a crack at a chapter myself this week.
Heck, we could have duelling chapters; which version
of chapter 5 do you like, Accordion Guy’s or Jenny the Shifted
Librarian’s? (Disclaimer: I just typed their names in there. They
haven’t offered or anything. Yet.) (Another disclaimer: When I went to
Jenny’s just now to get her link, I saw that she had the same idea —
and we didn’t even talk about it Wednesday night!)
Link [Boing Boing]
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Steve Gillmor - Why Microsoft needs RSS. Steve nails it! RSSify your org or die!
Memo to Steve Ballmer:
QUOTE Perhaps it's just as a
friend of mine suggested: RSS is not a high-priority item in the queue,
dwarfed by the challenges of security, open source, digital rights
management and the Longhorn evolution. These issues are rightly
top-of-mind, but that doesn't mean RSS shouldn't be up there too.
First, RSS offers a powerful evangelism tool for your security
efforts. For example, distributing Windows update information via RSS
would let you annotate hot fixes and updates with timely information
and tutorials about the reasons why the update should be accepted.
Delivering the updates as RSS enclosures might mitigate the concerns of
people who are concerned about unauthorized changes to their
configurations.
Another opportunity presents itself in the instant messaging space,
where important collaborative information is often lost to the ad hoc
IM bit bucket. Instead, IM data could be pipelined into an RSS feed for
archiving, auditing and indexing. RSS enclosures could speed the
adoption of audio and video messages, as well as provide a persistent
transport and collaborative synchronization for Tablet ink, OneNote
meeting recordings, music and photo sharing.
But the biggest Microsoft opportunity is in the authoring space,
where you could perform the same powerful ratifying effect you first
rendered with SOAP. What if you were to authorize a freely
redistributable runtime version of InfoPath that produced XHTML-ready
RSS content? The tool would empower users to drag and drop RSS objects
into the container, annotate and format them, then post them via an
IETF-standardized API mechanism that you would participate in producing.
Not only would such a tool promote substantial adoption of
well-formed XHTML, but it would also promote the use of RSS as an event
mechanism in workflow apps and even calendaring and scheduling. RSS
enclosures would be a convenient addition to InfoPath forms' e-mail
distribution methodology to boot.
If InfoPath can't be opened in this manner, there's another prime
candidate for RSS authoring: OneNote. As the strategic core (at least
for me) of the Tablet platform, OneNote promises a terrific environment
for rich text/ink/audio/video micro-content creation, management and
routing. With an XML API waiting to be switched on for its second
release, now would be the time to act to gain significant market share
in the developer community where RSS is already well-seeded.
Steve, thanks for listening. RSS may appear to be just a niche
technology, a hippie miracle cure for everything from information
overload to e-mail dysfunction. But I'd like to see the data on
relapsing from RSS. Once you kick the browser, it's very hard to go
back to the old way of doing things. I look forward to hearing from
you, perhaps via your own RSS feed. That's one channel I look forward
to subscribing to. UNQUOTE [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
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© Copyright 2004 William J. Maya.
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These
pets make pitbulls look like tweety bird. According to the headline of
this page of three pictures, these guys are money collectors in
Nigeria. 
Looks like the guys over at 
Bernal Spheres are theoretical space-habitats that curve in on
themselves, making fantastical, topsy-turvy eschroid landscapes. Here's
a page with some nice pix and details.
