Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Mediaburn Channels at Odeo Mediaburn Channels at Odeo.com 9:39:44 PM

NOLA.com Breaking News The New Orleans Times-Picayune has switched to weblog format for breaking news. Brilliant. It's inevitable that all news organizations will make this switch. They also have an RSS feed for breaking news. [Scripting News] 8:38:56 PM

Via John Battelle Time on Search. Time magazine tackles search in this week's issue. I spoke to a Time reporter last week, and you never know where it's going to go - Time tends to talk to a lot of folks, and then boil it all down to the least common denominator. The piece starts with a "search in the future scene" which pretty much summed up the conversation I had with the reporter (without of course saying we had it), then rounds up the conventional wisdom, numbers and all[1], and then goes into an overview of "next generation search," beginning with AOL's SingingFish (a Time Warner property), on to futuristic image search Viisage, mobile search (4INFO), an interesting app called Mobot (pattern matching via cel phone camera images), question answering (KnowItAll), tagging (Flickr), audio/video (Blinkx, Nexidia), maps (A9) and personalized (Greg's Findory gets a nod). Why did I do all these links? Because Time's website doesn't link out. How 1996 is that?! I can only imagine all the folks who were not mentioned in this roundup are feeling blue - for a startup, a mention in Time is a Very Big Deal. But thank goodness for all of us Time did not put this package on the cover, as the reporter told me they might - that always marks the beginning of the end of any trendy story. Maybe next week.... [1]So the battle is on for the next generation of search, which will be smarter and more tailored to the individual, embrace video and music--and be accessible from any device with a chip. By 2010, search-engine advertising will be a $22 billion industry worldwide, up from an estimated $8 billion today, according to Safa Rashtchy, a senior analyst with Piper Jaffray in San Francisco. It's the reason search has become the most hotly... [John Battelle's Searchblog] 7:30:38 PM

Tech Notes on OPML, H2O Playlist & Search Why is the RSS/OPML revolution poised to take off in universities now?. Dave Winer just wrote a nice email note in response to my post on OPML at Harvard: Jim, that's why I went to Harvard two years ago, to bootstrap what you're booting up now. Good work! Why is now the time for the Really Simple knowlege Syndication revolution to take off in universities?  I have three suggestions: 1. The form of initial participation in OPML matches how academics and researchers work.  Academics in particular continually make and share lists and outlines, e.g. annotated bibliographies, course lists, syllabus, citation indexes, research sites, research data--so I think lists are an easier starting point for participation than blogs, at least for most. News reporters write daily posts, and naturally see blogging as valuable.  Academics make, organize, append, share, and discuss lists and outlines.  Academics quickly see the value in OPML outlines and OPML outline editors. 2.  The landscape has been prepared by widespread diffusion of open RSS and the RSS-ethos of making information freely available in open files on the web.   The RSS ecosystem had to follow the laws of natural succession.  Grasslands and nitrogen-fixing plants had to be established before trees could take root and proliferate.     OPML on top of global adoption of RSS and podcasting/rich media enclosures makes online outlines vastly more valuable than their offlline siblings. Online I can point an amazing array of sources.   I can pull together a point of view with supporting exhibits, and publish the entire package to the web as a living, constantly updated knowledge environment.    Holy smoke! As an academic I can use OPML to make a personalized online work environment for my daily research and writing.  I can make my personal work environment available to colleagues and students.  In addition, I can search, view, and gather information from complementary work environments created and used by others.  For example see John Palfrey's OPML outline on Internet Law.   These sources may be available in many different formats, they can be hosted anywhere in the world that has web access, they can be in any language, and they can be published by individuals as well as institutions.   Source formats that can be easily incorported into an OPML outline include (a) documents in open folders identified by URL and file name, in PDF, Word, HTML, RSS, OPML, or Excell file format, (b) HTML pages and web sites, (c) RSS files from blogs/news sources as well as from other types of sources outputing RSS--such as weather data, historical timelines, etc., (d) RSS files with enclosures of video, audio, and images, often set up as podcasts (e) direct pointers from OPML to video, audio, and images and other media, (f) tags in Flickr and similar categorization and file-sharing services, (g) Wikis such as WikiPedia, (h) OPML outlines published by colleagues and others.  3.  Academics now have powerful and easy-to-use tools that enable them to compose, edit, borrow and share, and publish OPML, as well as search for it,  study it, and integrate new OPML content into existing outlines and online work environments, which in turn generate more OPML. [Jim Moore's cybernetics, politics, emergence, etc.] 7:27:17 PM

The Feedburner Weblog New Look. We are going to be rolling out an expanded suite of services for publishers this fall. In anticipation of these new features, we have overhauled the FeedBurner user interface in order to make it easier to see and manage all aspects of a feed from a single integrated vantage point. We'll be launching the new interface within a few days, just as soon as we're done putting it through its paces on the obstacle course. Here are a few screen shots for those of you who like previews. [Burn This! - The FeedBurner Weblog] 7:05:15 PM

Katrina Images: Katrina slams Gulf Coast. The devastating storm strikes the southeastern coast of Louisiana and threatens to move across the state and head north. [CNET News.com] 7:59:36 AM

Low Clouds Low Clouds. Armin's busy working on his Scotland travelogue. [The Cartoonist] 7:54:33 AM