b.cognosco

A quest to examine, inquire, and learn.

Home · Essays · Archives · About

Recently

Tuesday, July 09, 2002

More on TrackBack

KMpings & Trackback. The KMpings Experiment.

I created a little blog called KMpings that allows any blogger writing about knowledge management to ping their post to a tracking page (if their software supports it). Think of it as a themed www.weblogs.com for the knowledge management community.

I wanted to try out this experiment since I think the TrackBack function created by Movable Type has a lot of potential for aggregating blog posts within communities of practice on the web or an intranet. Please post any feed back you have to this message or shoot me an e-mail. [High Context]

» I really want TrackBack for Radio.

And KMpings sounds like a great idea.

[Curiouser and curiouser!]

Possible Community Server for Intranet

Macrobyte Resources: TLS 0.3 for Frontier and Radio UserLand. "TLS provides client side tools for making secure HTTPS requests, and server side tools for running a secure web server."[Frontier News]

From the Department of Redundancy Department

But I'm going to make some changes here. For the first time in my life I am not going to look for a job. I'm going to build one.

Okay so what's next?.

Strangely enough being made redundant on Monday was not the most unnerving that has happened to me this week.

What is more unnerving is my decision not to look immediately for another job.  Instead I have made the decision to see if I can make an adhoc mixture (as I see it now) of blogging, k-logging, knowledge management, intranets, collaboration and communities into a compelling business proposition and make a living from it.

For some time now I have wanted to strike out in my own direction.  To lead rather than be led.  It seems fate just handed me my chance. This is not a risk-free strategy, and I'm just beginning to admit to myself what I'm letting myself in for.

So from here onwards I will happily entertain any offers of work, suggestions about what works (and what doesn't).  Ideas, novel solutions, novel problems.  It's all good.   I've also got an acre of understanding to do, here goes!

Suddenly I feel like I am growing into my weblog title.

Matt [Curiouser and curiouser!]

TopicRolling Update

TopicRolling 101.

A feature that I have planned for the next release of liveTopics (the finishing touches go on the 1.0 release this week, for definite) is the topicRoll.

In the same way as a blogroll represents your subscription to other what other people are writing, the topicRoll represents your subscription to what other people are writing about -- their topics.

Whenever you add a topic to a post it is added to your topicRoll and (optionally) published automatically to your weblog.   In turn you can subscribe to as many other topicRolls as you like.  This means that as soon as someone uses a new topic, it is automatically added to the topics that your copy of liveTopics has ready for you to use.  In the same way other users can see & re-use the topics you are using.

When combined with the idea of topicMiner (also due in version 1.5) this will allow you to thread together existing archived discussions in a completely new way.  Mining topics allows you to find existing topics in archived posts.  You will be able to mine other peoples topics from your own posts and vice verca.

I'm hoping this will enable some interesting cross-blog exchanges. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Best is New CEO at Lightning Source, Inc.

J. Kirby Best has been named president and CEO of Ingram's Lightning Source subsidiary. Best takes over as CEO from Lightning chairman John Ingram who had been serving as president and CEO since the resignation of Ed Marino this spring. Best will report directly to John Ingram.

Since 1997, Best has been chairman of Publishing Solutions, Inc., a data collection and sales tracking service for the publishing industry. Prior to launching PSI, Best had been president and CEO of Royal Book Manufacturing. [PW NewsLine]

Update on e-Book Industry

Promising Chapter in E-Book Story. Wired News Jul 9 2002 5:42AM ET

Asian Piracy the Real Threat

I used to do some work in Shanghai. Long before DVD burners were widely available here in the states, kids in Shanghai development houses were burning digital copies of new DVDs that came in from the outside. They had the hardware, the software -- an entire infrastructure -- available to them for the sole purpose of copying stuff. And they had the technological wherewithal to supercede any silly copy-protection or encryption scheme the MPAA, RIAA, or DEA can come up with.

This is where the real focus on piracy needs to be. Microsoft knows it. Everyone in the software industry knows it. There are probably people in the RIAA who know it, but it's far easier to treat average Americans like criminals and to dupe (or pay) ignorant Congressmen (see: "Berman Proposal A Publicity Stunt" and "Legislation from the Hot-tub Party") into passing ill-conceived, over-arching legislation that criminalizes all sorts of normal, rational activity.

This certainly isn't an easy problem to solve. China has been working on it for years, as the article points out. But it is where the real focus on piracy needs to go. Not toward the average customer for music, films, and other media.

posted by Bag Man » July 8 2:16 PM | 10 comments. "Piracy sure beats manual labor" Can China's Piracy industry be stopped? Should it be stopped? Will this be the fate of all copyrighted material? Lisa Movius offers few answers, but gives a pretty good overview of the situation.

Publishers Should Embrace Multi-Modal Publishing

[...]"When you finish writing a book (ILAW casebook), would you consider different models for publishing? The answer is yes. Foundation Press turns out to be reasonable about us releasing a version online, for free. Why is Foundation Press happy about this? As long as we don't make PDF files available in same pagination of the book, law students will be happy to have the book in "real" form. So yes, it's a little bit of experimentation."[...]

Using Jabber IM for Weblog Change Notification on System Status

If we're to have properly automated print manufacturing, then we clearly need easy, simple system notification that can be used in many ways. There is nothing in the industry today that makes reporting, notification, and status updates as ubiquitous or accessible as this simple idea of RSS feeds, weblogs, and a little IM.

IM and REST: First Class Events?.

After posting the previous piece about IM and REST, I happened to see a reference to work DJ Admans is doing with weblog updates and Jabber on Scripting News.  The basic idea, as I understand it, is to use Jabber in lieu of something like MQSeries or JMS to notify people of changes to weblogs.  I see the usefulness of that: remember those discussions in your undergraduate architecture class about polling vs. interrupts? [...]

Blogs for System Status

Blogs for System Status Communications.

My organization operates hundreds of servers in several data centers and a network that connects over 250 separate locations.  One of the problems we have is status communication to various interested parties.  Tonight I decided we should have a system status blog that uses categories with separate RSS feeds for various severity levels and systems.  For the low price of $40/year we could have:

• One easy spot to post status announcements, which would be ordered in exactly the right way.
• A web-based record of status.
• Multiple RSS feeds of the various systems and severity levels.
• Easy integration into the personalization feature of our intranet;  RSS feeds would show up as gadget boxes for people who want them.
• The ability to easily subscribe to RSS feeds and digest them in various ways for people with special needs. 

How could you not like that?

Contact

       

This Page was last updated: 2/9/2003; 11:17:07 AM