This is a two-part experiment in using my new weblog page templates and doing something unorthodox with the RSS news aggregator feature of my Radio Userland software.
The software is designed to let me "post" a linked summary of one story
at a time from the dozens of stories that are delivered by my 31 RSS
feeds every day, including news from the New York Times, Investigative
Reporters and Editors, Wired magazine, various weblogs (especially
SmartMobs), and more. I've been testing a batch of RSS-reading programs
(a real research project, not just an A.D.D. activity), which has meant
subscribing to more feeds than any sane person. Meanwhile, I've been
away from the weblog for a week and things are piling up.
Using Radio the way it was designed, posting one "syndicated" item at a
time, is a tedious process: Go to the aggregator page; pick a story;
click "post"; wait while the news summary is transferred to the editing
page; add a note or comment (optional) about the news item; click post;
return to the aggregator page...
Instead, today I skimmed my aggregator page with its 100+ items, deleted the ones I wasn't
interested in, and left the others on screen. Then, because I do
know a little about the markup code behind the Radio aggregator page, I
copied the whole thing to a code editor. I deleted most of the
formatting and technical parts of the page, including the "Post"
buttons and check boxes, and pasted the rest of the code below this
paragraph.
Result: An almost-instant "to read"list to add to my other "to do" lists.
(Although it did take some editing of HTML source code to grab all of
these links at once, that didn't take as long as reading the actual
articles and books listed. Honest.)
All of these items are from the linked sources, taken verbatim from
their RSS feeds. Some of the links may not work until I get around to
inspecting the code again, but I will put off that part of the learning
experience until later.
Practicing the Liberty He Preaches.
Lawrence Lessig, who wants to make intellectual property more widely
available, is offering his new book online at no charge. By Thomas D.
Sullivan.
Yahoo! News - Most Emailed, 4/29/04; 12:19:00 PM.
New York Times: NYT HomePage, 4/29/04; 11:19:32 AM.
Jon's Radio, 4/29/04; 11:19:19 AM.
Extra! Extra!, 4/29/04; 9:59:48 AM.
Calendars reveal chancellors' priorities.
John Frank of The Daily Tar Heel at the University of North Carolina
used the chancellor's weekly calendars obtained through records
requests to determine "the number of times Chancellor James Moeser met
with certain groups or spent his time on...
Boston workers cash in $12 million worth of sick time.
Ric Kahn of The Boston Globe, with assistance from Matt Carroll,
Meredith Goldstein, Douglas Belkin, and Emily Shartin, reviewed
municipal records to find that "from July 2002 through June 2003, the
last fiscal year, 159 cities and towns in Greater...
BBC News | Technology | World Edition, 4/29/04; 9:31:45 AM.
dotJournalism, 4/29/04; 9:31:38 AM.
Smart Mobs, 4/29/04; 9:31:37 AM.
Washington wakes up to spyware. Canning
spam is no longer the biggest Internet concern of lawmakers. Two
current bills in Congress seek to regulate the programs that take
personal information and deliver pop-up ads. Spycheckers definitions for spyware and adware
full article on CNET news
WiFiMapping. WiFiMaps
displays information about WiFi availability through the Web. Users may
look for nets by zip code (US), MAC address, SSID, or state. Some of
the data was discovered by wardriving, while other data has been uploaded by users. Results include (of course) maps.
(thanks to Drew from Zhrodague)
Panel: Living with the Genie. Smart Mobbers in the Bay Area make note: Howard will be sitting on a fantastic panel later this week, a discussion of the book Living with the Genie: On Technology and the Quest for Human Mastery.
Sponsored by the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, the event
will take place this Thursday, April 29, 2004, at 7:00 p.m. in Pimental
Hall on the UC Berkeley campus. Don't be discouraged if you don't live
near Berkeley, the entire program
will be webcast simultaneously. Web listeners will be able to email
their questions to the panel for the Q&A segment. Should be a
stimulating evening, given the assemblage of great minds.
Wired News, 4/29/04; 9:31:26 AM.
God, Send a Realistic Tech Flick.
The film Godsend arrives at a time when the politics and science of
cloning remain unresolved. Will the movie help bury U.S. cloning
efforts for good? By Kristen Philipkoski.
Green Tea Good for Hard Drives.
The same tannins in green tea that cause stains to form on your mugs
and teapots could save the hard-drive manufacturing industry some
serious dough, says a team of researchers. By Amit Asaravala.
Dan Gillmor's eJournal, 4/29/04; 9:31:16 AM.
Newspaper Calls Gambling What It Is. Not once in this LA Times story
(reg req) about Native American casinos' gambling revenues -- and
whether the casinos should pay more to the state -- do you find the
word "gaming," I'm happy to note. The gambling industry has tried to
sanitize what it does by renaming the activity into something that
sounds totally benign. And the media usually plays along. Not this
time. A tip of the hat to whoever made that decision.
Educational Technology, 4/29/04; 9:31:12 AM.
Harnessing the power of technology for learning - Converge.
Today's schools have an opportunity to make a fundamental shift in
their use of technology and to leverage it as a powerful tool for
student learning. That conclusion is one of the findings in the final
report of the BellSouth edu.pwr(3) initiative, re
Community Technology Centers' Network.
Community Technology Centers' Network (CTCNet) is committed to the goal
of creating "a society in which all people are equitably empowered by
technology skills and usage." CTCNet brings together agencies and
programs that provide computer exploration
2:23:51 PM 
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