Thursday, August 29, 2002

Semantic Studios: Ambient Findability. I want to be able to find anything, anywhere, anytime. What's surprising is how close we are to making this impossibly strange dream a reality. Ambient interfaces, sensors and small tech are about to intertwingle the physical and virtual worlds in shocking ways that will make history of the Diamond Age. [Tomalak's Realm] 1:09:26 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

A Model for Metablog Contextual Linking. Following a link from Small Pieces I landed at a BurningBird <a href="Burningbird: Technology to enable Community">post about a blog threading project: Project is called Thread the Needle, or "Needley" for short. Its purpose is to track cross-blogging threads. How it works: You register your weblog, once, with an online application I'll provide (i.e. provide your weblog location, name of weblog, email). Frequently throughout the day, the Needle service bot will visit the weblog looking for RDF (an XML meta-language, used for RSS and other applications) embedded within the weblog page. Note that this may change to scan weblogs.com for changed weblogs that are registered, or based on the first time a person clicks the link or some other procedure — testing these out as you read this. The RDF will be generated by the service now and copied and pasted into the posting; hopefully someday it will be generated automatically by the weblogging tools. The RDF either starts a weblogging subject thread — starts a new subject - or continues an existing thread. The bot pulls this information in and when someone clicks on a small graphic/link attached to the posting, a page opens showing all related threads and their association with each other. [Radio Free Blogistan] 12:59:38 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Usability testing a registration form. Matthew Ellison writes up the results of usability testing five different versions of the registration form for the WinWriters online... [Column Two] 12:58:43 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Why I Blog. Here's a good response to Sam Gentile's bored of blogging post. During the course of 6 months of blogging, I've "met" several MORE people that are much smarter than I am. I see how they respond to other people's postings. I read their comments. I learn from them. Their comments drive me to learn more. And then to give back, I post here. Hoping that I can inspire someone else. Hoping that a comment generated from my entry will drive me down a new path. I learned that Robert Frost's poem The Road Not Taken is very applicable to technology. I have to look at all pathes and decide which one is right for me. Yep, that about says it all for me. I'm learning a ton by blogging. Christ, I'm losing weight because of blogging. And I really like the community that I can see forming already (people I linked to originally getting linked to by others...). This is fun stuff. I wouldn't waste my time doing it if I didn't enjoy that daily feeling of "what I'm going to discover today?" -Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook] 11:15:13 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

Know thy browser.... After just reading yet another blogger attacking three different weblogs for their choice of colors which are difficult for him to read, I've just got to bring this to your attention. In IE, under the Accessibility options, you can choose to: "Ignore colors specified on Web pages" "Ignore font styles specified on Web pages" "Ignore font sizes specified on Web pages" In NS, under the Color preferences, you can choose to: "Use my chosen colors, ignoring the colors specified" In NS, under the Font preferences, you can choose not to: "Allow documents to use other fonts" So -- why publically attack others for their design choices when you have the power to override them?  Accessibility, indeed, is important, but why do you choose to overlook already implemented solutions and go after others' designs?  They're allowed to make choices, too... [jenett.radio] 11:06:06 AM    trackback []     Articulate []