Tuesday, December 3, 2002

I've got to go with Doc on this too. It reminds me of the old Bruce Springsteen song, "57 Channels and nothing on." Have you accepted TiVo as your personal savior?. Now Scoble has gone over. Tivo has completely changed my life, he says. He's not alone. We don't have a TiVo. We do have about 300 channels coming in from an antenna and a dish. Last night I tried to watch some of it. After catching the end of the Raiders-Jets game (while working on the laptop), I surfed up and down the endless table of choices, finding nothing that attracted my interest more than the stuff on my laptop, or on the bookshelves in my office. Even the good movies (on the Sundance and Flix channels, for instance) tried my patience. I am actually, seriously, thinking of bagging the TV completely. Not because it will change my life, but because my life has changed already. [The Doc Searls Weblog] 10:47:02 PM    comment []

Maps designed by mobs [bOing bOing] 9:11:33 PM    comment []

Book Excerpt: Web Graphics for Non-Designers. You needn't be a Picasso or Rembrandt to design effective Web pages; but you do need a solid understanding of how colors work together on your site. Using color is the topic of our next series of book excerpts; beginning with basic theory and color schemes. From glasshaus. 1202 [WebReference News] 9:00:40 PM    comment []

Hey the Daypop Top 40 is back. Life can now resume.  [Scripting News] 7:33:05 AM    comment []

RSS and CIL. Using RSS: An Explanation and Guide "I wrote a little piece on RSS for Information Outlook Magazine, the trade journal for The Special Libraries Association. The table of contents is available from the site." [Library Stuff] Have your local librarian order a copy for you. I know I will! Congrats, Steven! And speaking of RSS and Steven Cohen... we got the preliminary program for the Computers in Libraries conference in DC in March, 2003. My name is in there with Mr. Cohen for a program on RSS, so circle that one on your calendar now if you're attending the show. During our brief 45-minute presentation, I hope to demonstrate the grant software SLS is having written since it features individual and group news aggregation. Here's the description of our program: "Rich Site Summary (RSS) is a form of XML that is used to syndicate content from thousands of Web sites into an aggregated news feed. RSS feeds have begun to attract the attention of those in the fields of content delivery and management. Content from numerous sites can be delivered to one place (an aggregator), saving the precious time of visiting these sites frequently throughout the day. This session covers how to get started in the world of RSS feeds, including a review of the major players in the field, resources to help locate feeds, and what the future will hold for RSS[~]plus practical advice on how to utilize feeds." There are lots of other interestingly-titled programs in the guide, starting with Wednesday's Keynote speech by Michael Schuyler titled "Library as Implant: Librarian as Cyborg." Here's the description of his talk: "The future will be more futuristic than you ever thought possible. Librarians seem to feel that the future will be a little more automated, a little more wireless, and a little more online, perhaps, but otherwise libraries will provide the same kinds of service they do today and become community centers as well. The problem is, this view is too introverted. It fails to place the library in the context of the future, which may turn out very differently than we understand today. Futurists are predicting that 10 years out, we may be right, but 20 years out, we may see a future that is so vastly different, we cannot imagine what it will look like. If you think of technological progress as a gently rising curve, the only way you[base ']ll find the future is by looking straight up. The future library may very well be an implant; the future librarian may not be a Homo sapiens." And if I play my cards right, it looks like I'll get to see Peter Morville and Gary Price again and meet Pat Delaney and Tim Bray. I'm looking forward to this one already. [The Shifted Librarian] 7:15:03 AM    comment []

Brent Simmons shows how NetNewsWire will interface to AppleScript. Is this the kind of thing people using RSS feeds want? I'm curious. Personally, I've been using RSS feeds for over three years, and have only rarely wanted to do this kind of scripting, mostly to see how various forms of RSS are doing. And in those cases I'd go directly to the XML feeds, not use the database Radio's aggregator maintains. I wonder if there are any gold nuggets in there, killer apps for scripting and syndication. I suspect if they're there, Brent will find them. [Scripting News] 7:11:53 AM    comment []

Blog and the City. City Guide Meets Blog "Veteran blogger John Hiler of Corante and Microcontent News has launched a city events guide in blog form for New Yorkers, CityBlogs: New York. The site and e-newsletter focus (initially) on event listings for cinema, book readings and talks. Hiler explains the concept this post, Bringing the Power of Blogs to a City Near You: 'I started devouring the local listings guides to find more events: the Village Voice listings, the Time Out NY events calendar, the New Yorker's Goings On About Town. I found the hundreds of events in the listings overwhelming: what I really wanted was someone to find the most interesting events and tell me which ones to go to. I wanted that someone to be an expert in their field. And I wanted that someone to cover niche categories that just weren't in the local event listings: jazz jam sessions in the Village, kickboxing matches in Queens, or Haitian dance classes near Union Square.' He also defines the the advantages of blogs over local listings: [apple] Personality versus Dry Descriptions [apple] Useful Recommendations versus Overwhelming Comprehensiveness [apple] Readable by Anyone versus Accessible Only to Experts [apple] Niche Coverage versus Mainstream Coverage [apple] Local Stringers versus No Followups 'This is what Jeff Jarvis calls the killer app of weblogs: local coverage of events,' Hiler writes. 'Bloggers can provide the sort of distributed coverage of local events that newspapers can't even dream of.' True. This is an exciting venture, one well worth watching. And Hiler definitely has a handle on a successful value proposition [~] niche events listings and coverage." [Hypergene MediaBlog] I just know that John is going to include events sponsored by the New York Public Library, RIGHT JOHN? I mean, how can you have a "book readings" category and NOT check in with NYPL? Why, I'll bet Carrie Bickner (drat - her site seems to be down at the moment) or one of the many other fine folks at NYPL would love to help out with this project. After all, I really like the idea behind CityBlogs, and I hope he's trying to start a Chicago version. As for asking John why his blogs don't have RSS feeds, don't get him started. We debated this during dinner after the Yale conference, and John has his reasons for not providing feeds for his own work. It's a crying shame, though, because it means I can't keep up with all of the great work that he and the other Corante bloggers are doing, although that wouldn't stop someone else from scraping their sites, now would it? [The Shifted Librarian] 6:12:59 AM    comment []

I use both NetNewsWire and Radio for news. Yes there is some duplication and overall it all works. Brent Simmons shows how NetNewsWire will interface to AppleScript. Is this the kind of thing people using RSS feeds want? I'm curious. Personally, I've been using RSS feeds for over three years, and have only rarely wanted to do this kind of scripting, mostly to see how various forms of RSS are doing. And in those cases I'd go directly to the XML feeds, not use the database Radio's aggregator maintains. I wonder if there are any gold nuggets in there, killer apps for scripting and syndication. I suspect if they're there, Brent will find them.  [Scripting News] 5:49:17 AM    comment []