ITU Internet Country Case Studies - Country Photos A brilliant collection of pictures of Telecommunications in a wide variety of countries - lots of pictures of internet usage. What a find.
Ease: RFP Available XML: Eric identifies why this idea wouldn’t work: “the RSS generator probably doesn’t know anything about the lastmodified data for the other linked resources (eg. FOAF and XFML).” Gets too complex when all tools generating feeds need to tie in with the system. Didn’t think about that - too bad.
iVia Open Source Virtual Library System: “iVia is an open source Internet subject portal or virtual library system. As a hybrid expert and machine built collection creation and management system, it supports a primary, expert-created, first-tier collection that is augmented by a large, second-tier collection of significant Internet resources that are automatically gathered and described. iVia has been developed by and is the platform for INFOMINE, a scholarly virtual library collection of over 26,000 librarian-created and 80,000 plus machine-created records describing and linking to academic Internet resources. [...] iVia is designed to help virtual library systems scale as the number of high quality resources on the Internet continues to rapidly grow. “
Jupiter Research Analyst Weblogs. Let’s see what these guys have to say.
PCWorld.com - Credit Card-Size Hard Drive Can Hold 5GB: “StorCard can contain from 100MB to more than 5GB of data on a plastic card. At first glance, it looks like a credit card, and even has a magnetic strip like a credit card, for potential use in standard credit card readers.”
Hiptop Nation: “Ok…now the bag is filling with blood, I don’t know why but the whole thing freaks me out. She’s so cool about it. I guess some people are better at this sort of thing than others.” (Before you freak out, it’s about giving blood)
Image Gate is The New York Public Library’s first full working version of its new digital image database.
This may be daft, but how about a simple format that indicates which feeds and XML metadata files and such are available on a site. Most sites are getting to have lots of stuff available, with RSS and FOAF and XFML and what not. A simple file with Available Xml and other formats would mean that:
- you only need to link to 1 file from every page
- if it has a last updated date a lot of bandwidth can be saved.
Something like this:
<avx>
<file url="http://urloffile.com/metadata/file.xml" homepage="http://urlofhomepage.com"
type="RSS 1.0" typeurl="http://urloftypespec.com/rss1.htm"
latestupdate="10.30.00 10-04-2003">
<name>Frogs feed</name>
<description>Latest content in the frog category</description>
</file>
</avx>
AVX stands for Available XML. (but it could also point to RDF files and such) In the file element, the url attribute points to the file in question, the homepage url to the homepage of the site that file refers to (this is the only attribute I’m not sure about), type is a string indicating the type of feed, typeurl points to the spec of the type. We need both for human readability and for specs that don’t have a homepage. If anyone has a better solution for the type/typeurl combination for identifying a type of feed (maybe namespace?) please comment. The lastupdate field needs a better way of indicating time, but is crucial: it means a lot of bandwidth can be saved by checking this (presumably shortish) file instead of downloading large RSS 2.0 or XFML files.
0xDECAFBAD: I second that sacrilege: “She was shocked that I, alpha geek and info freako, didn’t have some intricate taxonomy of folders into which mail was sorted by carefully crafted filters.” The filesystem is dying - Microsoft is working on it. Most geeks have limited taxonomies for personal use - maybe because they know how to conduct a search. Six degrees was a good attempt but everyone who tried it (including me) that I spoke with has given up on it. I will try it again though.
For years now, I’ve been tempted to replace my hown-grown discussion board with a decent system. It’s just never quite right. A few things make me hesitate:
- My system will look and work like all these others.
- Even though I am less and less inclined to program, giving up control is hard. It means I won’t be able to implement all the nifty features I have in mind…
The build vs. buy problem seems neverending.
Taxonomist, BBC New Media, News: “Library or information science background… …with ideally 3 years experience as an indexer, cataloguer or information architect with specialist knowledge of faceted taxonomies.”
3600 Research Essays about the Net. Auch. I feel demand for a Matrix-style plug in our brains rising.
Presenting design research: “For every minute you propose to present, allow one hour of preparation. For a ten minute presentation, in other words, you need to plan in ten hours of preparation before the Big Day.”
The NATURE OF ORDER, by Christopher Alexander.
Simon Willison: “two way blogging technologies [...] are totally invaluable for the vast majority of bloggers - they help with exposure and generally make the blogosphere a more interesting and interactive place.” (about Trackback and such, stuff I’ve been slow to turn on here.)
Jakob Nielsen: (uses no permalinks!) “In investor relations we now know so much that we can provide a recommended standard information architecture to support investors’ information needs on any publicly traded company’s website.” I agree - fairly standardized IA becomes possible for many subsections of websites once we learn enough - this is happening now.
IWIPS 2003, 17-19 of July in Berlin. If only I was in Europe. But then I would probably have to miss ASIST 2003 (who’se website is almost up - about time, my budget needs approving!).
AIFIA | Future of Information Architecture: survery results. Read if you’re interested in the evolution of an emerging profession.
Ben Hammersley.com: On censorship, borders and translation: “There’s a big world out there. Let’s go and say hello.” Indeed.
Discussion on a site of mine: what language is this: “alam ko kung bakit pinalabas na ninyo ang ecomoda kahit di pa tapos ang betty lafea“?
Marc’s Voice :”A baby step towards this future might be public reviews servers, storing reviews that folks are willing to ’share’.” A more successful approach might be to use XFML.
Blogs through phones. Who wants to write a simple format that can encode the location information. You write an entry on your phone/device. It gets sent to your blog. In the code is some simple RDF that says where you were when you wrote this/took this picture.
New Architect: You Are Here: “Go to Google Images and type in “rose,” and you get about 197,000 hits - with everything ranging from the flower to people named Rose to a Rose Garden seating chart. “If you see one or two that you like, and you want to see something similar, there’s no way to tell the search engine to do that,” says Michael Crandall, vice president of business development for VIMA Technology.” Um, “more like this“?
Here’s what I want in m digital camera:
- 20 Gigs of storage (if iPod can do it my camera should too). Use lots of RAM to store pictures temporarily until they are saved on the harddrive. That should store ’bout 5000 high res pictures, which is a nice number - enough for a two week holiday for example. And firewire of course.
- No delay when making a picture. Figure it out hardware people! How can you do decent photography when there’s a split second delay after clicking the button?
- A great UI. Most digital photography UI’s are plain horrible. It’s as if user centered design never happened.
- multiple lenses. If I want to snap on a zoomlens I should be able to.
- a pricetag < $700 for the basic model.
facetedclassification: “For example, the number one book on Amazon right now is “8 Minutes in the Morning”. The Subject of that book is “fitness” or “losing weight”. That’s an important facet. But there are other values in other facets, like Price ($10.47), rating (4.5 stars), edition (hardcover only), and so on. These are attributes of the book itself, but not of the book’s subject. They are other headings under which you could file “8 Minutes in the Morning”.
[...]
A better example would be a piece of furniture, like a chair at a chair store. It has facets, certainly, like size, softness, price, and whether it
has a refrigerator in its arm. But what’s the subject matter of the chair? At this point, it seems awkward to classify the chair with things called “subjects”.”
iPod’s IA (via PeterM) Facets indeed. Yet, the iPod’s interface doesn’t let you combine facets, and there is a strange distinction between playlists and browsing by artist/album/genre. I haven’t looked into it too much though. Yesterday, I had an experience: I needed music in a room, turned to the cd player, and realized my music wasn’t on that. It was on the laptop. 2003.
There’s something wrong if Matt Jones is afraid to redesign his website.
Plain English Campaign: Free guides: How to write in plain English: “It’s not ‘cat sat on the mat or ‘Peter and Jane’ writing.”
(via Mike): Showcase of Japanese Keitai Culture: pictures of people using their cellphones.
Let-Me-Stay-For-A-Day.com: “I am travelling the world to visit most of the people who invite me over and I write about this all in my daily reports on this website.” Simple and clever.
On why different cultures classify differently. Not sure if I agree with it all but interesting stuff.
Rogue Semiotics: What the XFML?: “Taxomita [...] Something else to go on the server. It will, of course, require PHP and MySQL, so that’s more gubbins to install and learn. Stop it, world, stop it now.” Sorry. The poorbuthappy.com homepageclearly states “can’t … stop …”.
Today I am ripping a whole bunch of my CD’s and then I will put them on my girlfriends’ iPod. Then I’ll borrow it and go to the gym. I wish I knew of a way to grab the audio of the Stanford CHI seminars as mp3s so I could listen to them in the gym. That would be amazing. Any ideas?
Pepys’ Diary: “In the morning before I went forth old East brought me a dozen of bottles of sack, and I gave him a shilling for his pains. Then I went to Mr. Sheply who was drawing of sack in the wine cellar to send to other places as a gift from my Lord,1 and told me that my Lord had given him order to give me the dozen of bottles. Thence I went to the Temple to speak with Mr. Calthropp about the 60l. due to my Lord, but missed of him, he being abroad. Then I went to Mr. Crew’s and borrowed 10l. of Mr. Andrewes for my own use, and so went to my office, where there was nothing to do. Then I walked a great while in Westminster Hall, where I heard that Lambert was coming up to London; that my Lord Fairfax was in the head of the Irish brigade, but it was not certain what he would declare for.” Posed to go on for 10 years: blogging from the death.
LazyWeb I invoke thee.
It’s 2003. Can we finally have a simple XML format for exchanging the basic blog/discussion board information. Just get the basic stuff in there, and then make sure as many as possible tools support both import and export. This is easy stuff! If I was developing a discussion or blogging tool, I’d write it myself and implement it. It could have elements like:
(gbde)
// generic blog and discussion exchange format
(item type=’post’ id=’19863′)
// type could be post or comment or thread for example
// item can have a parentid attribute as well
(author id=’157′)
// if author has been defined before in this xml doc you only need to give the id
(ip)(/ip)
(email)(/email)
(name)(/name)
(homepage)(/homepage)
// and a bunch more of identifying fields
(/author)
(content)
(title)(/title)
(text format=’plain’)(/text)
// Multiple text elements allowed
// format can be plain, html, or a url to a page defining the format
(/content)
(item/)
(/gbde)
Getting support for this wouldn’t be hard either. Exporting this stuff is easy in most systems, importing sligthly harder (but not much). Most systems should be able to code good support for the standard in a day or two.
Adoption of technology: How the Ashaninka from Peru created a Website
How low can Dow go?: “In a stunning example of corporate insensibility, Dow Chemical, the worlds largest chemical company, and new owners of Union Carbide is to sue survivors of the 1984 Union Carbide gas disaster in Bhopal, India. While the site of the disaster lies covered in toxic waste and survivors struggle with continuing ill health and deadly pollution from the site, Dow has decided to add to their woes with a Indian lawsuit.”