Book Reviews


[Day Permalink] Wednesday, February 19, 2003

[Item Permalink] Keeping a weblog can boost your productivity? -- Comment()
I started to keep this weblog on August 19, 2002. Since then I have published 1880 postings and various longer texts. I have not set any big targets for this weblog. This is just a public notebook.

During these six months I have published elsewhere about twenty articles, ten columns, and six book reviews. In about one third of these I have used ideas and material originating from this weblog. Thus I believe that keeping a weblog can boost your productivity as a writer (at least it doesn't seem to diminish the output). I wonder if other bloggers have similar experiences?


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8 Million Credit Accounts Exposed: "A hacker broke into a computer database containing roughly 8 million Visa, MasterCard and American Express credit card numbers earlier this month..." [Google Technology News]


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Is Bloogle going to be a working version of the Semantic Web? "It wasn't that we intended to build a search engine. We built a ranking system to deal with annotations. We wanted to annotate the web - build a system so that after you'd viewed a page you could click and see what smart comments other people had about it. But how do you decide who gets to annotate Yahoo? We needed to figure out how to choose which annotations people should look at, which meant that we needed to figure out which other sites contained comments we should classify as authoritative." [News Is Free: Popular Items]


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The Scobleizer Weblog: "Ahh, just when I thought UserLand wasn't innovating, they announce a major new feature for Radio UserLand users: 'How to backup and restore your Radio weblog.' This is much needed, thanks guys!"


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Why Nerds Are Unpopular: "It's a lengthy but engaging writeup of that chamber of horrors we call high school and why being smarter than the average bear is more of a liability than an asset during that stage in life. It's food for thought for those of us who've already been there, done that and been stuffed into lockers by the football team and it should give some hope to those who are going through it right now." [Slashdot]


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The brains of special forces soldiers are different than ordinary soldiers: "Special Forces soldiers have neurological differences that make them more resilient to post-traumatic stress disorder than the average soldier, say researchers. [...] A study of soldiers based at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, found that Green Berets were much less likely to suffer symptoms of PTSD after a week of gruelling exercises that simulated being captured and interrogated by the enemy." [John Robb's Radio Weblog]


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Complete DNA Map: All Your Genes: "Scientists who are mapping the human genome will unveil the final version of their work at a conference celebrating the 50-year anniversary of the DNA-double-helix discovery. By Kristen Philipkoski." [Wired News]


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Five things every IT manager should know about Linux: "Is Linux right for your organization? Columnist Timothy Witham outlines five points to keep in mind as you weigh your options." [Computerworld Linux News]


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Pentax expands digital camera line: "Pentax today announced the addition of three new cameras to its digital camera lineup. The new 5.0 megapixel Optio 550 and the 4.0 megapixel Optio 450 both offer 5X optical zoom [...] The Optio 33L is a 3.2 megapixel digital camera with a 1.5 inch LCD monitor that both swings up and rotates a full 180 degrees." [MacMinute.com: Up-to-the-Minute Apple Mac News]


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Nikon announces three new Coolpix cameras: "Nikon today introduced three new 3x Optical Zoom-Nikkor digital cameras -- the Coolpix 2100, Coolpix 3100 and the Coolpix SQ..." [MacMinute.com: Up-to-the-Minute Apple Mac News]


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Bioterrorist fears prompt journal paper censorship: "Two academic journal papers have undergone 'awesome modifications', to remove data of potential use to bioterrorists." [Google Technology News]


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Open Source Graphics Apps Coming of Age? "The MacGIMP project was recently announced to be a finalist in the MacDesign Editor's Choice awards. Photoshop 7 and Adobe Elements were also in the running and of course Photoshop won. But who would have thought a year or two ago that an open source project could even be in the running for such award? Look out Adobe, by this time next year, we'll all be using GIMP 1.3." [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion]


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Australia's first humans came 50000 years ago: "The first human beings appeared in Australia 50000 years ago and managed to overcome hostile dry conditions which wiped out the continent's large animals, according to a paper to be published in the journal Nature on Thursday." [Google Technology News]