Saturday, August 17, 2002

The beta of tcp-im is up for Frontier and Radio.  The amazing thing is that this allows you to create services on your desktop that can be offered to anyone that has a supported IM client or a tcp-im enabled version of Radio -- even if you are behind a firewall.  It is going to take a little while to flesh this out, but the core functionality is there. What this will allow you to do: 1) Allows communication via instant messaging between two copies of Radio.  This could be used for instant outlining (the ability to share outlines you create in Radio instantly with people that subscribe), notification of updates to a weblog (instant news aggregation), and more.  It also allows you to publish to your weblog via any supported IM client. 2) Build instant messaging bots.  This means you can build applications in Radio that people can ask questions of via IM.  For example, if you build a database of artist/album titles using Radio and connect it to this framework, people could input "Sinatra" via IM and get a list of albums he recorded.  3) It could, if there was a way to tap into the file attachment function of IM systems be a way to share file directories between subscribed desktops.  This would be great for shared documents, photo albums, and multimedia directories.  If you add a file to your shared desktop folder, everyone that subscribes to it would get it instantly. As you can see, this is a major step on the road towards personal publishing and cross company group collaboration.  Nice. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] As you can tell that was all taken from John Robb's blog.  The new tool is the begining of another amazing idea at UserLand.  Point #3 is epsecially interesting.  Maybe I have to open the hood to Radio and give it another look. comment [] 3:06:41 PM

I'm sorry I couldn't help it.  This is too funny and makes me think of Beka.  Maybe I should email her the link. comment [] 12:43:12 AM

From the author of Small Pieces....a nice little snippet on his blog.  Note the text "Research is useless at this stage."   Sounds to me like they just don't care what their customers want, they will when they're no longer their customers.  comment [] 12:16:26 AM

Record Labels Want 4 Internet Providers to Block Music Site [New York Times: Technology]  Grabbed this during some late night surfing.  It's time the U.S. learns that it's not the owner of the 'net.  We're a major player to be sure but the rest of the world has a stake to.  This is laughable attempt by the major's.  The source has it right, the best thing to do here is to file a complain with the Chinese courts.  If we go down this road of blocking access to sites we don't like as a country we start stepping on the freedom of the internet.  We'll be no better than China limiting access to foreign news.  For instance, if someone were to cut and paste my blog posts and put them on their site without my permission and against my wishes I wouldn't ask our government to block their site because they violated my legal copyright which is at the bottom of my page and is binding, I'd email them or try to get in contact and either ask for credit or removal of the material.  If someone is stealing your merchandise you don't have the city shut down that street you sue the store.  Bottom line is that this is a test case to see how far they can go and this needs to be stopped. comment [] 12:09:37 AM

© Copyright 2002 Michael Hellesen.