21 July 2002

No Mobiles Zones DUBLIN, Ireland -- First class carriages in Irish Rail feature small decals on windows that remind people to use their mobile phones with consideration for others. Figures from researchers at Taylor Nelson Sofres show non-mobile users are more likely to favour a ban on the use of mobiles (62 per cent) than those with mobiles (45 per cent). And comparative research on the continent shows that in countries with high mobile penetration such as Italy and Finland over 70 per cent of the population want restrictions.

Instant Messaging Displacing Long Distance Dialing More people than ever are eschewing long-distance calls for alternative forms of communication like e-mail and Instant Messaging.

Live Topics Google Jazz Activating liveTopicsGoogleJazz. While Matt is taking a forced vacation from his weblog (this adds a - short - delay to the otherwise imminent release of liveTopics 1.0), I've added an optional expandHits parameter to the liveTopicsGoogleJazz macro. Check the last line of this post. [read more] [s l a m]

First to Arrive at the Blogs Jason Levine's Q Daily News has sparked an ongoing fracas about the subjects of early weblog history, Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook, and Dave Winer. In my opinion, Winer is the person who did the most in 1997-98 to demonstrate and popularize weblogging. Blood's online history of the medium strongly disagrees; he isn't mentioned until the launch of EditThisPage in late 1999 after three other weblog publishing tools have become available. It makes him sound like a latecomer to the party, even though two years earlier his company was producing a weblog publishing tool before anyone else. Though this may seem like a transparent attempt to butter up Dave, I'm interested in this because I'm intrigued by Blood's quixotic efforts to tell the history of weblogs. Even Winer's most outspoken critics ought to acknowledge that he's one of the people responsible for the weblog, the loud-mouthed bastard child of a link list and an online diary. [Workbench]

Commercial Break: Why wait? Use WS-Routing & Reliable Messaging now with .... MSMQ 3.0 ?!? [Clemens Vasters] Cool, I knew that it did SOAP over HTTP, but didn't know it included WS-Routing support. Added to the todo list, so many toys, so little time ! [Simon Fell]

The Recording Industry Deserves No Special Consideration Papa Doc: "What KPIG deserves from the RIAA is a fucking award, not a knife in the heart." Doc, this is why the stock market is tanking. Common sense is not part of how our businesses work. Clearly KPIG was pushing the envelope, honorably, into a new channel for distribution of music. The music industry, run by a bunch of people who probably understand music about as well as Steve Case and his little buddy do, stuff a cork up the ass of the distribution channel, and then complain about all the shit that's splattered all over the place. That there's demand for music delivered over the Internet is totally obvious. For the 18th time in eight years, we're waiting for the idiots to get out of the way and let the goddam business develop. [Scripting News]

Microcomputer Technology Center Drops Off the Accredited List BRAY, Co Wicklow -- Last summer, the Microcomputer Technology Center relinquished its accreditation by the Distance Education and Training Council (DETC). I used to work for MTC and know the study programme I developed will go to good use in other distance education programmes. Wayback to MTC