Thursday, February 13, 2003

Happy Birthday, Weblog! Who Knew? This weblog was one year old yesterday. (On this month in 2002...) [Aaron Swartz: The Weblog] 2:36:37 PM

Digital Media Adapter Bring it on! New Digital Media Adapter from Linksys that connects to your stereo system for streaming audio from your PC. A version that'll let you stream video should be out later this year. Read [Gizmodo] 10:57:14 AM

blog serial I've been thinking about various forms of content that would be suitable for weblogs and news aggregators. One form, which I call a blog serial, is a series of weblog entries that are retrieved over a period of time. The trick with blog serials is that each subscriber gets their own URL to the RSS feed, and each time a feed update is requested, the server checks its internal data to determine if its time to post the next item in the serial. Here's an example. Cory Doctorow published his latest sci-fi book, "Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom", under a Creative Commons license. I'd like to read it in my blog, so I go to his site, sign up for a custom RSS URL, and subscribe to the DOMK blog serial. Each hour, my news aggregator polls the DOMK, and each day/week/month, the DOMK updates the RSS feed with another subchapter of the story. I can start to read DOMK at any time, and my news aggreagator helps me pace my consumption of the story into chapters and subchapters. Blog serials can be used for training as well as entertainment. In my courcework for UoPhx, I have weekly reading assignments. For example, I'd love to subscribe to both my facilitator's weblog for weekly lectures, as well as to the textbook blog serial to read the various chapters each day. Thoughts? Has anyone out there heard of anything similar? I'd love to find others who are blogging about this sort of thing... 10:20:38 AM