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Saturday, June 22, 2002 |
Plustech Walking Technology. 
The walking machine adapts automatically to the forest floor. Moving on six articulated legs, the harvester advances forward and backward, sideways and diagonally. It can also turn in place and step over obstacles. Depending on the irregularity of the terrain, the operator can adjust both the ground clearance of the machine and the height of each step. [Michael J. Hehir's Radio Weblog]
11:23:37 AM 
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You're So Fat.... "Maybe we need a Fat Czar to go along with our Drug Czar because it is clear that overeating and living the sedentary lifestyle are far more dangerous behaviors than most forms of drug and alcohol use." [evhead]
11:20:14 AM
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"Big If" by Mark Costello. A smart new novel about the folly of second-guessing the unexpected probes the minds and lives of Secret Service agents and computer programmers. [Salon.com]
11:18:01 AM
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Team grows blood capillary network to manufacture organs. Boston Globe. Boston team grows blood capillary network -- necessary for manufacturing organs.
>>>The new blood vessels are the product of an unusual collaboration that coordinates the work of doctors, chemists, physicists, and engineers in a local organization founded in 1994, the Center for Integration of Medicine and Innovative Technology. This project, for example, is headed by a surgeon but relies on advanced fabrication technology used to etch circuits into a computer microchip.<<< [John Robb's Radio Weblog] [www.davidwatson.org]
11:17:02 AM
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John Robb prescribes a news aggregator and k-log pill to organizations.
But are organizations ready to swallow this bitter pill on a large scale? I don't think so. John's got some interesting ideas that I largely agree with on a small scale. However, the 200 people example is not as simple as it sounds. The underlying problem is not one that software can easily solve. That is, the sociological change required by most organizations to implement a technology such as news aggregators or blogging is fairly massive. Just because some of us really enjoy documenting everything doesn't mean that the passion or skill is widely distributed amongst the population. If the 200 people being referred to are all enthusiastic technology professionals, then you might succeed, but this still assumes that they have great communication skills - not a valid assumption from my experience.
I would estimate that the training costs of such a migration could be far greater than the cost of the software. Further, the support and maintenance costs could be even greater than that. I don't mean to rain on John's parade since I like Radio; however, right now, I don't believe Userland is set up to handle the support burden that volumes of naive users entail. And if you think a company will deal with the operational mistakes from Userland that some individuals have tolerated, you're sadly mistaken, no matter the price.
In time, the kind of organizational software adoption that John describes will be possible and profitable for some organizations but a large number of organizations will remain unable or unwilling to adapt (see Geoffrey Moore). I would expect the rate of adoption for RSS news aggregators to happen more quickly when they are integrated in tools that already have broad penetration such as email clients (see Ximian Evolution for an example). Broad adoption of weblog tools is likely to be slower.
John Robb. How to boost employee productivity by using a news aggregator. [klogs]
A small change in the way we work could shave 45 minutes off of the average workday. That small change is to use a news aggregator to get news instead of gathering it by hand. Applied across a 200 person company, that 45 minutes of savings could be worth $1,650,000 a year. The wild part is that the cost to implement this is only $8,000 and requires little if any support from the IT department.
If we are going to really boost productivity, we are going to need to focus on those improvements that provide the most bang for the buck. Small changes in work habits can have amazing results. To get at these nuggets, companies need to spend time really watching what people do with their time. If they did, they would find that much of the time they spend is wasted on simple tasks that could easily be automated.
Other things to focus on:
1) Auto-categorization of e-mail.
2) Integrated search (desktop, LAN, K-Logs, Web) with all proprietary doc formats revealed as HTML.
3) Voice mail on the desktop PC.
4) Accurate K-Logging of current activities: status, thinking, plans, projects, etc.
5) Online presentations, to-do lists, project plans via outlines.
6) K-Log personal portals that integrate all connection info (e-mail, IM, phone, address, bio, resume, picture).
Very simple stuff can yield big results. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] [www.davidwatson.org]
11:16:25 AM
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Ideas are free. Meaningful implementation is rare. This puts the patent dispute in perspective (courtesy, Julio Gomez).
Kramer: What are you guys talking about?
Seinfeld: They're re-opening the Rainbow Room at Rockefeller Center.
Kramer: What? That was MY idea!
Seinfeld: Which part of the idea was yours? The million dollars you don't
HAVE, or the building you don't OWN?
[John Robb's Radio Weblog] [McGee's Musings]
11:14:15 AM
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Day 10: Presenting your main content first.
One of the main advantages of using a purely CSS-based layout is that it is easy to rearrange elements within your HTML source without affecting the visual layout, so that your main content displays while the rest of the page is still loading. However, I am aware that most weblogs still use table-based layouts, so this tip is for you.
If you have a table-based layout with a navigation bar along the left, your navigation bar is being presented to blind users like Marcus and Jackie before your main content. There is no way to describe how much of a problem this is; you have to see it for yourself:
- Sample table-based layout.
- Modified layout, with content first. These two layouts should look essentially the same in visual browsers, but in Lynx, the difference is obvious.
- The original layout, rendered by Lynx.
- The modified layout, rendered by Lynx. The main content is displayed first, then the navigation bar.
You do not need to redesign your entire template from scratch to avoid this problem. There is a (relatively) simple technique, affectionately called the "table trick", that can present your main content first, while still keeping your navigation bar on the left side.
Who benefits?
- Marcus benefits. As demonstrated by the examples above, Lynx displays content in the order in which it appears in the HTML source. This means Marcus must scroll through your entire navigation bar every time he visits your page. Scrolling sucks.
- Jackie benefits. JAWS, like Lynx, presents content in the order in it appears in the HTML source code, not the order they appear on screen. With JAWS, the problem is even worse, because Jackie must sit through JAWS reading your entire navigation bar before hearing any real content, and there is no sure-fire way to jump straight to the main content. (We'll talk more about this problem on Monday.)
- Google benefits. Google gives more weight to content closer to the top of the page. That's the top of your HTML source, not the visual top of the page. In fact, most people who know about this technique are in the search engine optimization industry; to them, the accessibility benefits are secondary.
How to do it
View your own site in the Lynx Viewer and see if your daily posts are displayed first, before your navigation bar. The Movable Type default template gets it right; if you use the default template or something based on it, you probably do not need to do anything. But view your site in the Lynx Viewer anyway, because it will give you a deeper understanding of the issues involved.
If you are using one of the default Radio templates, you may need to adjust your tables to put your main content first. There is no specific copy-and-paste way to do this; you will have to dig into your own weblog template and look at the table structure. The sample layout and modified sample layout show the basic technique.
Instead of the obvious table layout:
| ... navigation bar ... | ... main content ... |
We do this instead:
 | ... main content ... | | ... navigation bar ... |
I'll give you the whole weekend to hack on it.
Further reading
[dive into mark]
11:12:46 AM
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Wired News Fingering Cancer Genes. "Genes have fingerprints just like fingers, which got one cancer researcher thinking. Since the FBI uses neural networks -- a type of artificial intelligence built to imitate neuron function in the brain -- to sift through masses of computerized fingerprint data to solve crimes, why not do the same for genetic fingerprint data?" ""We trained (the neural networks) to recognize this is one cancer and this is another and this is not a cancer," Kahn said. "Eventually it learned to recognize partic [snowdeal.org > {bio,medical}informatics]
11:08:54 AM
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The Economist: Watch this airspace. Smart antennas are already in use and mesh networks are starting to appear, while ad hoc architectures and ultra-wideband are still largely restricted to the laboratory. But each challenges existing ways of doing things; each, on its own, or in combination with others, could shake up the wireless world. [Tomalak's Realm]
11:05:46 AM
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New 2-pound laptop could be a boon for writers. Alphasmart, the makers of pseudo computers reminiscent of the TRS-80 laptops of years past which are used by writers and students, has unveiled preliminary information about a new machine called Dana that will run on the Palm OS. This machine, whose price has not yet been announced, looks interesting to me as a writer. If it is sturdy enough, it could be a good tool for writing and data management in the field, for instance when I am out visiting a bird watching site and I want to write something up about the site or access the bird identification outline I have been creating on my Palm and make some changes on the fly. I can do this with my Palm Vx and the add-on keyboard I have now, but the connection between the keyboard and the Palm is anything but sturdy, and the larger screen on this Dana device would make writing much more pleasant.
I'll have to keep an eye out for more details about the product in the future... [Mac Net Journal]
11:02:51 AM
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I really like the idea of a sofwtare based Dead man's Switch like the one slashdot pointed to. Makes more sense to have a browser interface so you can 'check in' from anywhere. Once I get my office organized enough I think I'll try that as my first tool for Radio [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]
10:58:30 AM
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I Want My File-Served TV!.
Stewart Alsop
I first heard Hendricks say those words two months ago, and they've been bugging me ever since. Last week I figured out why--it's because file-served television seems the only sensible future for television. If I'm right, that's good news for TiVo, and for consumers as well. [Michael J. Hehir's Radio Weblog]
10:57:09 AM
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© Copyright 2002 Mark Oeltjenbruns.
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