Just a note to say that "beta" support for the new XFML 1.0 (CORE) specification has been included in liveTopics version 1.0.5 which is now available from the beta update server and will be available from the release server at the end of this week.

The new liveTopics XFML exporter will allow you to publish an XFML topic map from your weblog that contains all of the topic information defined in your public weblog, with each topic linked to the pages it occurs on.

Additionally support for a Date of Publication facet has been included.  Using this facet a compliant application can offer users the ability to drill-down by year, month and even to a single date as well as drilling down by topic.

This is pretty exciting.

I've just exported an XFML version of my weblog to facetmap.com so that you can browse my weblog by-liveTopics and drill-down by Date of Publication (e.g. start at 2002, drill-down into May, drill-down into 23rd May).

If you go to here you will see an example faceted browsing interface. It's basic but quite functional.

You will see two "facets"

• The liveTopics facet contains all my regular topics in a big old list (with number of posts in parens)
• The Date of Publication facet contains one topic 2002

Underneath you will see the "top 10" pages at this point.

If you drill down into either facet (please try drilling down into 2002 first) you narrow the range of available posts to display. Keep drilling down via and notice how this restricts the liveTopics that are displayed in the other facet to only those used in posts that are still available in your selected date range.

Now start to think about other ways of chopping your weblog than just "Date of Publication"

I don't know who the Atlantla Journal Constitution are, or how biased a source they are, however this makes fascinating reading.  Here's a short summary.

• The official story on Iraq has never made sense.
• The connection that the Bush administration has tried to draw between Iraq and al-Qaida has always seemed contrived and artificial.
• "Rebuilding America's Defenses," a 2000 report by the Project for the New American Century, listed 27 people as having attended meetings or contributed papers in preparation of the report.
• Among them are six who have since assumed key defense and foreign policy positions in the Bush administration.
• This war, should it come, is intended to mark the official emergence of the United States as a full-fledged global empire, seizing sole responsibility and authority as planetary policeman.
• In an interview Friday, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld brushed aside that suggestion, noting that the United States does not covet other nations' territory.
• It speaks in blunt terms of what it calls "American internationalism," of ignoring international opinion if that suits U.S. interests.

Does recent American foreign policy seem intelligible now?

Tomorrow I am going to buy a Netgear FVS318 firewall/router for sharing my home cable connection between a group of PC's.  Looking around the 1.1 firmware update seems to fix the major issues I've seen reported about this unit, otherwise it looks like a strong product.

Does anyone have any caveat's they want to draw my attention to?

We're kicking off a k-log initiative at my company tomorrow. I've identified a dozen people to serve as guinea pigs. IT installs the software tomorrow, and they'll take a few days to get familiar with the software. Rather than bombard them with any formal training right away, I want them to be comfortable with what's on the screen - at least that way they'll figure out what questions they want to ask.

So far, people seem cautiously optimistic about the concept. We're great at using our own product for CRM - but we haven't committed enterprise wide to doing anything like this other than CRM. Wish us luck!

[tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]

» It was my great pleasure to meet Rick last night and share a few beers at the Chandos pub near Trafalgar Square.  For a man on 7 hours sleep outta 48, Rick was remarkably cogent ;-)

More on this later.