15 October 2002

Slow Economy with Closed Doors Business Week -- With Europe's economy growing at less than 1 per cent annually, does it make sense for Ireland to rebuff practising IT professionals at her gateways? Speaking from personal experience, that kind of two-fingered attitude does not make Ireland a progressive place worthy of foreign investment. [x: 261 r: 3537] Aboard Virgin Rail with an IBM TransNote using Nokia D211 card.

They Make Jeeps into Everything Karl Ludvigsen -- The Corvette celebrates its golden anniversary this year, one year before my parents mark their 50th wedding anniversary. Both events have one thing in common -- the Jeep. My dad drove a Jeep as a US Army medical corpsman before coasting into my mom's life at Fitzsimons Army Burn Unit. Major Kenneth Brooks presented his wife with a Jeep too, in 1950, and her rejection led to him creating a sports car design that later became the Corvette. [x: 350 r: 3535] Aboard Virgin Rail from IBM Transnote using Nokia D211 card.

Marc Barrot's Active Renderer Marc Barrot -- A very elegant set of twisties hack by Marc to create a collapsible Active Renderer from Radio's Outliner technology.

Scent of a Web Page Jared Spool -- Interesting metaphor in Jared Spool's Acrobat presentation about "Scent of a Web Page." He includes useful tips concerning layout and page objects, to "ensure a good scent."

Weinberg's Zeroth Law of Unreliability Jerry Weinberg -- Tom Bowden talks about "Weinberg's Zeroth Law of Unreliability." If a system doesn't have to be reliable, it can meet any other objective. I have to get Jerry Weinberg's Quality Software Management Vol 2 on my book shelf, so I can read Chapter 19 at a leisurely pace.

Macromedia Dreamweaver MX Certification MACROMEDIA -- The Dreamweaver MX Certification exam is almost ready. It is tough. It will be released for DevCon, but you will be able to take it locally after October 27th at a VUE testing center. There's a good article on DesDev (photogenic image too) with additional details.

Resource: Phil Wolff's Excellent Knowledge Management Phil Wolff -- Next week, UCD host a Knowledge Management Seminar, but exceptional info exists right now in Phil Wolff's excellent resource, a dijest (sic) of commendable stature.

Symposium on Reputation Mechanisms MIT -- There's an Interdisciplinary Symposium on Reputation Mechanisms in Online Communities planned for Saturday and Sunday, April 26-27, 2003 at MIT. Funding for this symposium is provided through grants from the National Science Foundation (award number 0209136, CISE/Digital Society & Technologies) and the MIT Center for eBusiness. Some of the invited presenters could be soporific at best, but the event promises to illustrate ways of improving trust on the Internet. The 19 Sep 02 print edition of The  Economist carries an article about a study comparing web use in a region to the degree that people think others are trustworthy and good. So mainstream publishers are interested in the veracity of electronic content.

Sighting: Another Irish Blog ONLINE ie -- If you let your aggregators do your browsing, you'll definitely discover affiliated interests. This morning, I discovered Online.ie has a feed for my Palm. I didn't know that! But the feed appeared inside one of my FeedReader and now I want to grab its RSS file. The story that got me started is about how The Register does more than report. "There are lots of tech outlets that re-write press releases and take tech company statements at face value. I expect more of the Register. Look into some of the complaints about what is broken in Google's page ranking that were in Wired's article." Nice commentary.

Homeless Blogger Karlin Lillington -- Herself a nomadic hack, Karlin found this Salon story about Kevin Barbieux, a homeless blogger in Lousiana. Barbbieux sleeps in abandoned buildings or shelters -- and writes a daily journal that has made him an Internet celebrity. It's a mark of a digitally homogenous society when Dublin's homeless enter the blogosphere.

PHP Start Point 4 WEB HELP -- The world's best PHP Starting Point is 4WebHelp's PHP Basics page.

Contagious Threads DIVE INTO MARK -- Shortly after reading how Mark's dog ran away, my stray Pomeranian just about became homeless again. I legged it after him, into a blacked-out housing estate that had just lost power to its street lamps, and found him cornered by a sheep dog. The sheep dog had a mouthful of the Pom's hair and both dogs were snarling at each other. So I guess my lost dog story, one I blame on Mark starting the thread, is more exciting than the original. I missed my night deadline as well.

T-Mobile WiFi Deal with Borders Stores MOBILE COMMERCE WORLD -- Deutsche Telekom-owned T-Mobile USA announced a deal with Borders through which it will install 802.11b networks in over 400 of the book and music chain's US locations. T-Mobile is the company whose "HotSpot" service pumps wireless bandwidth into over 1,200 Starbucks locations (projected to increase to 2,000 stores by 2003).

Managing Knowledge Workers STEPTWO -- How do you effectively manage knowledge workers? Many companies are struggling with this challenge.

Microsoft Caught Out in Fake Advertisement SLASHDOT -- When Microsoft tried a "Switch" campaign, they got caught out in the hype. According to Slashdot, "There's a new page on Microsoft's web site that ... is way phony/marketing. See the Stock Photo". Although Microsoft took down the page, it looks like Google archived it. Niklaus Gustavson grabbed a screen shot before they took it down. John Foster grabbed a screen too.

Thinking About Thinking Dave Winer -- One distinction about outliner users and everyone else is outliners think about thinking. Outliners are aware of their own process. Only people who think about thinking get to a place where they can invest in being more efficient in their thinking. Some people say they don't think in outlines. Winer says, "Hanging information on a hierarchy makes it easy to forget it and focus on new ideas and relationships. It's a good way to relax intellectually." I use Mind Maps and distill my monthly topics into one cross-referenced document, showing me interesting places where things fit together.