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Jan 14 2003
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One Line Bios, step 2.

Posted by | metadata | No Comments

In the right hand side bar I have indicated my own one line bio within largely decorative <olb> tags. Any others that I see around I will be adding to my Blogroll. In the RSS 1.0 output I have added the <olb> and links to an HTML bio (not yet up) and an XML version. This metadata is added to each item. I will be replacing the RSS 0.91 output with RSS 2.0 which will include the ‘author’ module. <author:olb>Scottish, based in San Francisco, former architect at Foster and partners, co founder: Moreover, co founder: Origins.net, co author RSS 1.0</author:olb> <author:linkHtml rdf:resource="https://www.davidgalbraith.org/author/bio.html" /> <author:linkXml rdf:resource="https://www.davidgalbraith.org/author/bio.xml" /> More soon.

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Jan 14 2003
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Derrida and AltaVista’s undeconstructable translation service

Posted by | religion | No Comments

Here is an experiment to do at home. 1. Take 150 words either written by or about Derrida. 2. Using AltaVista’s Babel fish, Translate them from English to French, then from French to German, then back to English. 3. What comes back is no more or less complete gibberish than what you started with. Clearly the translation service is better than it used to be. Before: “Derrida seeks to destabilize these inherited assumptions. We think, therefore we question, he counters. Even Plato’s own thinking contains such challenges to it’s own theses.” After: “The research work of Derrida d

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Jan 14 2003
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Wired, ten years after – Wireless

Posted by | technology | No Comments

From the second issue of Wired in 93: “There seems to be an unwritten rule nowadays that every product announcement must trumpet the fact that the new gizmo is, even if only in some minor way, wireless. We now have wireless mice, keyboards, modems, printers, and networks. The once-esoteric deliberations concerning radio bandwidth auctioning have become front page news in the Wall Street Journal. What’s strange is that there is no corresponding consumer clamor for wireless products. In fact, wireless keyboards and printers have flopped every time they have been introduced.” It took 10 years, but as Jon Udell said in December, Wi-Fi was the story of the year (oh – and Bluetooth can deal with the other bits and bobs, printers and the like). Perhaps Wired should think about a name change. – But they’re in NY now, so are probably more interested in what people are wearing this…

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Jan 14 2003
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The ‘view source’ test

Posted by | xml | No Comments

Jon Udell: “Service advertisement techniques such as UDDI are not likely to pass the View Source test “. XML and Web Services in particular are designed for machine to machine communication, but, as Jon rightly points out, their success ironically depends on human readability. Udell: Services and links

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Jan 14 2003
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Wolfram’s new clothes

Posted by | science | No Comments

Stephen Wolfram is this years winner of Wired’s tech renegade of the year award. Wolfram spent the best part of ten years in a nocturnal existence working on ‘A new kind of Science’ which he self published because he didn’t trust peer review. If he was a painter his garret existence would be a badge of honor, but in the world of science this isolationist approach draws suspicion. connected.telegraph.co.uk – A revolution or self indulgent hype? How top scientists view Wolfram

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Jan 14 2003
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Eel in bath for 33 years

Posted by | trivia | No Comments

“A German family has kept a live eel in its bathtub for the last 33 years and even trained it to swim into a bucket when someone needs to wash. “ CNN.com – Family keeps pet eel in bath, for 33 years – Jan. 7, 2003

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Jan 14 2003
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Look back in anger

Posted by | Uncategorized | No Comments

Timecode was one of the more successful attempts at an entire film in one take. Alexander Sokurov’s new film goes one step further in that the single take is based upon a plot that involves traveling in time through three centuries. It takes something intrinsically non-realtime and films it as if it were. It will be showing in San Francisco in February. Russian Ark

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Jan 14 2003
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One line bio’s are ‘personal headlines’

Posted by | metadata | No Comments

Blogroll entries with bio’s have started coming in – keep sending them. Some of the the one line bio’s describe the weblog rather than the author. When doing your ‘<olb>’ try and make it a sentence that best describes yourself – think of these as personal headlines that could eventually link to a full bio just as a news headline is sometimes written as mini digest of a news story.

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Jan 13 2003
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AOL – was toast 10 years ago

Posted by | business | No Comments

Jeff Jarvis waves Steve Case off with good riddance. Back in 1993 when the Internet itself was the top item on their hype list, Wired decided that ISPs would wipe out AOL/Compuserve etc. It seemed plausible – why would you pay for access to a walled garden, largely private, non-Intenet service with a crappy interface. What is amazing is that AOL ever became big in the first place when ten years ago they were already an anachronism. AOL actually pulled off something incredible, clearly their marketing, however tacky, worked and they were doing something right. But with a bad product, service and customer support one does wonder what exactly. The depressing thought is that several million of us behaved like Gollum, seduced by a free disk – look, me have shiny, shiny, pretty CD thing. BuzzMachine: Steve case to step down

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Jan 13 2003
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Weblogs and bio’s: add this tag and I will put you in my blogroll

Posted by | metadata | No Comments

If you look at my Blogroll you will see that all items have a one line description. Weblogs are about people and the first thing I do when looking at a new weblog is try and find the ‘about me’ info. In order to link weblogs to bios I am proposing a blogroll format of $name ($blogname): $one_line_bio (maximum 150 characters total). Where this becomes the headline link to either an XML bio or ‘about me’ page. So here is the deal, if you email me a blogroll entry in this format I will add you to my blogroll. [OK so not exactly much of a prize – but this is a kick-off to something much more interesting, I promise]

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