Wednesday, June 26, 2002

The Semantic Argument Web

David Weinberger
We contributors of Web pages could be quickly enticed into adding metadata that would be a lot better than nothing if the search engines were to announce that they're going to allow people to search on the following meta tags: author's name, language, self-rating, best if used by date, country of origin, Yahoo/DMOZ category, etc. Google ought to come up with a handful of them — the Dublin Core offers a starting point — and just do it.

posted at 11:56:00 PM — permalink

Blinking Bumpers That Warn, 'Back Off'

Marc Weingarten
A signal light for buses can eliminate the crucial margin for error between the time when a bus slows down and a car responds.

I wouldn't mind having a bumper that uses even more, um, colorful language...

posted at 11:47:13 PM — permalink

'Under God' in Pledge ruled unconstitutional

A federal appeals court ruled Wednesday that reciting the Pledge of Allegiance in public schools is an unconstitutional "endorsement of religion" because of the addition of the phrase "under God" in 1954 by Congress.

This will be a popular topic for discussion in the blogosphere...

posted at 11:06:41 PM — permalink

'You are not to reference the Constitution ... '

Judge Robert L. Patterson (reported by Vin Suprynowicz)
You are not to reference the Constitution in these proceedings. You will not address it in voir dire, you will not address it in your opening remarks, you will not ask any questions about the Constitution when you summon your witnesses, and you will not talk about the Constitution when you give your closing arguments.

posted at 10:45:15 AM — permalink

Corporate sleaze carves into our trust

Dan Gillmor
Rational people are starting to assume something that isn't necessarily true. They're becoming convinced that the system is hopelessly, irrevocably rigged against everyday investors by a corrupt cadre of insiders in boardrooms and on Wall Street, willfully assisted by regulators and elected officials who are either corrupt themselves or simply blind.

posted at 10:34:01 AM — permalink

Day 13: Using real links

Mark Pilgrim
The scourge of web design is the "javascript:" link, a pseudo-link that executes a piece of Javascript code when you click on it. The most common place this problem occurs in weblogs is in the link to display comments in a separate window.

I don't have any JavaScript links, so this isn't a problem for me. Besides, if I wanted to open a new window with a link — which I don't, because I think that should be left up to the reader — couldn't I just do something like this?

<a href="http://www.whatever.com/" target="_blank">...</a>

Or this? (open links in a named window, so you don't end up with a zillion windows)

<a href="http://www.whatever.com/" target="comments">...</a>

posted at 10:29:43 AM — permalink