Saturday, July 13, 2002

Mobile Agents Realized My interest in mobile agents was sparked via my involvement in Macromedia Director and Lingo, the programming language that drives Director. Peter Small was thinking and writing about how  Lingo could be used to grab bits of information from the web and deliver it into graphically rich interfaces created in Director. William Cockayne and Michael Zyda in their book Mobile Agents write about using Frontier and a BBS to create a colloborative system for project teams. Although this system was not truly an agent, it included the foundations for building what many of us use in Radio today: scripts and a general architecture (Frontier). They go on to describe a futuristic version of this BBS. "It could be used to help children all over the world colloborate on projects by providing connections to other schools, helping the children and teachers understand the context of the other students, or even create friendships among children who will probably never talk to each other face-to-face." "Imagine this scenario:The agent of a small school in the United States finds out from an agent run by a university that a school outside Moscow is discussing similar issues related to pollution in their communities. The U.S. school's agent (aggregator) contacts the Russian school's agent and begins to coordinate information to show to the teachers of the respective schools." Sound familiar? I can't remember if this book or Peter Small's discussions of object oriented programming led me to Scripting News, but what fascinated me the most about Scripting News was watching Dave Winer work, think and create what is Radio today. In my mind the news aggregator is the most powerful piece of Radio. It is the agent that connects me to the thought processes of some of the brightest folks out there. 10:22:02 AM    Trackback []

Newton RSS reader. Raissa, an RSS reader for the Newton [Syndication News from Bill Kearney] 9:40:22 AM    Trackback []

Free Geek. John at New Improved Media wanted me to blog something about Free Geek, so I asked him to write something about it. Here is what he wrote: "Make the needy nerdy" is the motto of FREE GEEK, a Portland based 501(c)(3) not-for-profit, that takes used computers and makes them youthful and vibrant once again. The technology revolution benefits many but creates two serious problems: 1. Computers manufactured today have a very short life cycle. Large numbers of computers are deemed obsolete within two years and discarded, pressuring landfills and leaking toxins into the environment. The National Safety Council reported that during 1997 more than 20 million computers reached obsolescence and only 11% were recycled or reused. At the current rate, by the year 2005, 350 million machines will become obsolete. 2. Many people lack ready access to computer technologies and the Internet's information and communication resources. In 1999 the U.S. Commerce Department reported that households with incomes of $75,000 and higher were over twenty times more likely to have access to the Internet than households at the lowest income levels and nine times more likely to have a computer in the home. FREE GEEK recycles used technology to provide computers, Internet access, education and job skills training to those in need. In exchange for a few hours of community service in the recycling center volunteers earn their very own Freek Box, a refurbished computer system loaded with the Gnu/Linux operating system and Free Software programs. FREE GEEK teaches new users how to operate their Freek Box and offers a variety of hip classes, like Perl programing, in their training center. In the two years of its existence the GEEK has diverted over 100 tons of computer hardware away from the landfill and into the hands of many new Linux users. The 10,000 sq. ft. FREE GEEK Community Technology Center houses a recycling center, training facility, and a thrift shop where you can buy used equipment, FREE GEEK T-shirts, key chains made from RAM chips, and wind chimes made from recycled hard drive parts. Link Discuss (Thanks,John!) [Boing Boing Blog] 9:36:23 AM    Trackback []

Cutting through the jargon. Gerry McGovern has written a marvelous article on demystifying content management. This exposes the needless jargon and hype in the [Column Two] 9:29:58 AM    Trackback []

Getting information retrieval right. Marcia J. Bates clearly writes from considerable experience when she talks about Getting Web Information Retrieval Right This Time. Looking [Column Two] 9:29:37 AM    Trackback []

What is information architecture?. Thomas Myer from IBM presents an overview of what information architecture is, and what an architect does. This explains some [Column Two] 9:28:48 AM    Trackback []

Functional specification tutorial. Mojofat has a very nice tutorial on preparing/writing a functional specification document. [iaslash - news for information architects] 9:26:57 AM    Trackback []