Thursday, November 21, 2002

Russel's JavaBlogs Portal: +1 JavaBlogs Portal. Charles Miller writes: ... For example, I'd really like to harness the l33t sk1llz of the java.blogs community to create a centralised repository of our collective knowledge. All the information is out there on various weblogs, but its diffuse and mixed together with stories about our cats. A central site would give a newcomer the distilled core. I went as far as downloading and installing DSpace, to see if it could be useful. Perhaps after I've finished my manic week of studying I'll have more time to mess around with it. This is an idea that's been out there for a while. Dominic has also mentioned doing some sort of Java.blogs RSS portal before and I've mentioned it before as a Best of Breed site... So here's what I'm thinking. I'm willing to donate some of my bandwidth, etc on my new JohnCompanies.com server to start this up. But I don't want to be stuck maintaining something that no one cares about, so give me feedback if you want this to happen. Javablogs.com is available, but I'm not sure I want to mess with Java in the URL since Sun can get picky about their trademark. I also still own Developeer.com which might be appropriate also. Someone come up with something catchy. Okay, here's my thoughts on what and how: First, let's Keep It Simple. I've got OrionServer running now on Linux with MySQL, so that's the environment. It'll be pretty straight forward to throw a website up there with a sign up form, etc. which will save RSS feed URLs to a database. Then I'll start a Quartz scheduled process that'll go get the feeds from the DB and aggregate them on the front page. This is sort of an open approach, but the idea is that like a Wiki, you can just sign up and say that you want your blog to be included and I'll play Admin and wack abusers if any show up. Now beyond this, I'm not sure. I don't want to recreate Slashdot or TheServerSide or JavaLobby, so I don't know if I want to bother with a forum. And I'm not sure how useful a Wiki would be, but I can throw up a Simpleweb instance in 2 minutes if someone thinks it's cool. (No one suggest SnipSnap... everything here is going to be home grown and open). Anything else? Now this is the open way. The closed way is even easier. A group of Java bloggers (that would be YOU if you're reading this) decide who gets aggregated. I'll throw up a mailing list (or start a closed YahooGroup... whatever) and we can decide on adding/removing members via online voting. This has the advantage of ensuring quality in the feeds. A final way would be to have members rank feeds based on their perceived quality (sort of like /. moderation)... and then viewers of the site could view/download only those feeds above a certain quality, thus it's open, but self-editing/maintaining for quality. Tell me your thoughts. -Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook] Excellent idea Russel. I'm in. I would vote to start right away with the open system (with the wiki option, I love wikis), and move to the /.-like  ranking system later when we have some time to do it. I agree that the discussion board is superfluous.   7:09:59 PM    comment []

When will we get the 2 way web: read and write Is the intuitive hypertext interface finally here?. The first web browser, Tim Berners-Lee’s WorldWideWeb was also a Web editor. You visit a page of yours, notice a… [Aaron Swartz: The Weblog] I think that W3C's Amaya browser lives to that promise of a 2 way web. But the macromedia tool that this post points to may be worth investigating.   2:41:00 PM    comment []

Mark's so called warning, and a few interesting discussions about XHTML A warning to others. Someday, I'll upgrade myself from "SHOULD NOT chase after bleeding edge technologies that don't solve real world problems" to "MUST NOT chase after bleeding edge technologies that don't solve real world problems". But not today. Maybe after I turn 30. Until then, my only hope is that I may serve as a warning to others. (1284 words) [dive into mark] I'm 34 :-) Interesting discussion in there about XHTML, browsers and how they handle a few mime types. 10:57:11 AM    comment []

Mark Pilgrim has a cool new tool to help you determine who to read Neighborhoods and ecosystems. Stephano Mazzocchi is working on ways to visualize the Apache community and we talked at length about how to capture the raw data.  To me, the problem seems fundamentally equivalent to the one that we have been exploring in blogspace, whereby people are identified as Experts, Mavens, and Connectors.  I demonstrated Mark's newdoor effort, and it became clear that all we needed to bootstrap the data that Stephano wanted was to start encouraging Apache committers to start posting personal web sites with links to people that they are interested in. [Sam Ruby] The idea is really cool. I need to read more about this.   10:31:10 AM    comment []

Full or short description in RSS feeds ? Have both ! Full text in RSS? [MetaBlog]. James Duncan Davidson probably doesn't read my blog, but he does ask for the full text of entries in RSS feeds. I felt that, as I tend to be loquacious, it was better to stick to a summary. What do people think? Would you prefer the full text of the ... [Webmink: the blog] In Raising the Bar on RSS Feed Quality Timothy Appnel suggest to publish 2 feeds: one with full text for people like me who will read your RSS in their aggregator, and one with just a short description for people who prefer to click on the link. Who said you can't have your cake AND eat it ?-)   9:47:14 AM    comment []