Get Out and Walk. It's Only Water. At the Edinburgh Science festival, a group of engineers stroll across an Olympic-size pool using specially modified shoes that float. It's one of several water-walking competitions held around the world, and it's serious fun. By Kristen Philipkoski. [Wired News]
7:03:15 PM    

Check Your Viral Load for Bugs. Your computer may harbor nasty little programs that combine the worst features of e-mail viruses and spam in one package -- spyware. They can alter your settings and monitor your moves in order to transmit personal information about you to snoops. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
7:02:21 PM    

Wacky Iraqi Minister a Web Star. Many in the press dismissed Iraq's Information Minister as a liar or a crackpot, but he's fast becoming an online celebrity thanks to his sense of black humor. By Leander Kahney. [Wired News]
7:01:35 PM    

Photo Shops Find the Bright Side of Digital Technology. Apparently, the Cassandras were wrong: digital photography has not made photo retailing obsolete. By Claudia H. Deutsch. [New York Times: Technology]
7:01:04 PM    

An Inventor's Memoir as Road Map. Randice-Lisa Altschul, who is being sued over her patents for a disposable cellphone, has a memoir that is a road map for inventors looking to bring a product to market. By Teresa Riordan. [New York Times: Technology]
7:00:22 PM    

Free mobile phone video - carried over audio?. Phone TV [The Register]
6:58:50 PM    

Apple contracts Quanta to build wireless display - report. Tablet Mac or home entertainment system? [The Register]
6:58:07 PM    

<Mutiny> "TurboTax is now writing secret sectors directly to your disk. Hope you don't have anything important there. Click 'Continue' to Cancel" uh... [Hack the Planet]
6:57:36 PM    

McAfee aims spam tools at small business. McAfee Security's new spam-fighting software is designed to help small and midsize businesses ward off annoying spam, the first product resulting from its acquisition of DeerSoft. [CNET News.com]
6:56:57 PM    

Sprint axes roaming, distance charges. Sprint PCS. the United States' fourth-largest carrier, is the last of the top four to offer subscriptions without extra charges for long-distance or roaming. [CNET News.com]
6:56:19 PM    

OPML and directories.

One year ago I wrote a technological ramble about Google, directories and OPML. It's still the way of the future, imho. There's no single root of the Web, so why should directories (like Yahoo, DMOZ, Looksmart) have single roots? And therein lies the problem with directories, and why we're not effectively cataloging the knowledge of our species on the Internet.

A case in point. Last week I pointed to a great directory of RSS aggregators. So why not also have it available in a format that allows it to be included in other directories? I should be able to include it in the directory I keep for RSS developers. Why should I have to reinvent the wheel? Would he want me to? And maybe it fits into a directory of tools that are useful for librarians, alongside book inventory software; or in a directory for lawyers, alongside legal databases. See the point? There is no single address for a directory, every directory is a sub-directory of something, yet all the directories we build on the Internet try to put everything in exactly one place, which leads to some really ludicrous placements. My Windows software is categorized under Mac software because we were only available on Mac when it was first categorized. This one-category-for-all-information approach is a vestige of paper catalogs, not a limit of computer-managed catalogs.

I'm burning to get this idea broadly implemented. When we do, the Web will grow by another order of magnitude.

The challenge: Put all that we know on the Internet and give people the tools to present it in a myriad of ways. Let a thousand flowers bloom. No one owns the keys to knowledge. That's Jeffersonian software. The Web, of course, was modeled after the printed page, with all its limits. This new Web is modeled after the mind of man.

By the way, one of the reasons I'm networking with librarians at Harvard is that I am driven to build this new knowledge base. There are a lot of libraries at Harvard. It's a big source of pride for the university. See, there is a method to my madness. ";->"

[Scripting News]
6:55:46 PM    

Potter DVD breaks record. The DVD of the second Harry Potter film becomes an instant best-seller as fans rush to the shops at the weekend. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
6:54:07 PM    

Fantasy games 'not for geeks'. Online games are not solely the domain of teenage boys locked in their bedrooms, say researchers. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
6:53:27 PM    

German electronics legend goes bust. Grundig, one of the firms that led Germany's post-war boom, files for bankruptcy after many years of mounting losses. [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
6:53:03 PM    

Computer mag advice can kill!. We're shocked! Shocked! [The Register]
6:51:19 PM    

Software on the defensive. Hackers are thinking up more ways to sneak into personal and office computers--but the security companies and experts at RSA 2003 are cooking up ways to put a stop to it. [CNET News.com]
6:50:43 PM