06 July 2002

Radio: Putting Categories on Home Page PHIL WOLFF: He's got a good idea for putting Radio's Categories on your home page.

dEnd of an Era KILKENNY, Ireland -- It's the final week to buy dSide magazine at Irish news agents. After nine years of documenting Ireland's youth landscape, the dSide crew has shuttered its northside offices. Just across the Liffey River, two other institutions, The Kitchen and the Virgin Megastore, have also closed shop. All three of these things were part of the 1990s, when Ireland discovered what cool was. It might take a better economy to resurrect them again. x: 17

Sighting: Blog Toaster Simon Fell -- He's running blogToaster. You need MSN Messenger. Add "toaster@zaks.demon.co.uk" as a new contact, and start a chat session, enter "add http://www.pocketsoap.com/weblog/" and hit enter, repeat with all the URL's of the weblogs you want to get notified about. enter "list" to see the list of URL's you've registered. When BlogToaster picks up a change from weblogs.com of a URL you've registered, it'll send you a message.

Faces: Mel Estes KILKENNY, Ireland -- They don't have firecrackers in Ireland on July 4th. In my mind, I remember several Independence Day celebrations. One occurred along the banks of the Potomac River in 1985. I knew Mel Estes back then, a ribald analyst and acerbic wit. Here's one for Mel. ribald: Characterized by, or given to, vulgar humor; coarse. x:125

Time Out: Minority Report KILKENNY, Ireland -- You must see Minority Report. It redeems Tom Cruise from Vanilla Sky. Its dark vision reminded me of Sixth Day, Clockwork Orange, Mission Impossible, and Silence of the Lambs. Except it was riveting on its own merits. Go see it.Then read The Guardian and reflect on the supposition that the world may run out of resources before 2050.

Deep Linking is Oxymoronic DAVE WINER -- In Denmark, a judge ruled against a search engine that respects the robots.txt convention, and stops it from "deep linking" into sites run by the Danish newspaper association. All these court cases are as stupid as dirt. Several good technical preventatives exist. First, if the search engine supports robots.txt, you can simply edit the file on your site, and save the lawyer's fees. If it doesn't support robots.txt, first raise the issue in public, and the tech weblogs will get right on it. If that doesn't work, add a simple script to your server to look at the referer attribute on the HTTP request and if it isn't from your site, redirect to your deep linking policy page. We know for sure that when a company goes to court for "deep linking" that they aren't talking to, or listening to, their technical people. BTW, there's only one kind of linking on the Web. Why would you ever point to the home page of a news oriented site.

Who Wants Palladium? SCOBLE -- "How does Micrsofoft grow in size? Certainly not by listening to Robert Scoble. It does it by visiting Boeing, GM, EDS, the U.S. Government, and various other big Fortune 1000 companies and organizations. Now you know where the pressure for Palladium is coming." Scoble also writes about how to resist Palladium and it means knowing how to migrate to Apple or Linux. x: 26121

Internet Should Help Extend Reach of Music SCREEN DIGEST -- In its report "Music Industry in the 21st Century," Screen Digest argues that the Internet gives the record industry a platform that increases overall interest in music. Through proper on-line marketing techniques, the report argues, the industry "can mould communities of like minded consumers, which are the basis for purchase."

Policy Change Considered for .edu Domain EDUCAUSE -- I work with Irish and American lifelong learning programmes. Sometimes the market don't consider the programmes to be legitimate because they don't have .edu domains associated with them. Now EDUCAUSE, the higher education information technology nonprofit that oversees management of the .edu domain, has opened a public comment period on a proposal to expand the eligibility requirements to obtain a name in the domain. Currently an institution must be accredited by one of six regional accrediting agencies to apply for a name in .edu. That doesn't work for most Irish educational institutions. Under the proposed change, postsecondary institutions accredited by any national accrediting agency recognized by the U.S. Department of Educaiton would be eligible. x: 109