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Mar 13 2003
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A clean headline is the basis for all ‘syndicatable’ content

Posted by | xml | No Comments

The web works with hyperlinks – and hyperlinks that have some explanation work best. For news, the age-old headline provides perfect text for a link and headlines are specifically created to whet the appetite for more information. One of the central problems that developers will need to work around for blogging multimedia files is how to create meaningful links. For example the Audblog system that lets you dial a number, record a message and post it to your weblog leaves links that don’t say anything about the content, and for good reason, this is very difficult. There are 3 solutions: Automatic text summarization of a sound file (Autonomy can do this – but the results are unreliable). Prompted voice recognition of a spoken title (and these systems ‘just love my accent’). Keying in a title (difficult on a cellphone). Despite the difficulties, a clean headline is the basis for all…

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Mar 13 2003
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Blogging MMS

Posted by | xml | No Comments

Aha – so MMS uses SMIL. “This is a multi-part message in MIME format. —— Content-type: multipart/related; boundary=”Boundary_(ID_p5GD6C2ojYJObmQ605bMrg)”; type=”application/smil”; start=”“ “ azeem.azhar.co.uk:

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Mar 12 2003
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Are the mainstream newspapers turning to news aggregators?

Posted by | technology | No Comments

The Washington post looks to online newspapers from various UN members to gauge opinion: “As the United Kingdom seeks a second modified U.N. Security Council resolution to disarm Iraq, the online media in most of the member countries are strongly opposed to launching war any time soon.” In Security Council Countries, the Diplomatic Crunch Hits Home (washingtonpost.com)

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Mar 07 2003
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PageRank is trivial in the overall scheme of things

Posted by | search engines | No Comments

One good thing to come out of consolidation in the search space is the general realization that Google is, first and foremost, an advertising company with an excellent brand. It is another advertising company, Overture, that has bought some of the main search engines, not the other way around. Search technology is a commodity and subtleties like PageRank are icing on a cake that others have the recipe for. The main issue with search from a technical perspective is scalability and, as FAST has shown, Google is not the only one to have figured this out.

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Mar 07 2003
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The inevitable Google backlash

Posted by | technology | No Comments

We are seeing a rise of anti-Americanism, largely because America is so powerful and there is a tendency to resent power – but America is a better place to be than much of the rest of the globe. Resentment of dominance is not limited to global politics, but a natural phenomenon in any environment. Because of Google’s dominance, we are seeing the first signs of anti-Googleism, but Google is still a better search engine than most. If we look at the alternatives, well Altavista and Alltheweb are now owned by Overture, hardly a small startup – the time to champion them as little guys has passed, and very few bothered to then. Sterling Hughes: Golden Calf

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Mar 06 2003
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The miracle of stem cells

Posted by | science | No Comments

A boy’s own stem cells are used to trigger re-growth of part of his heart. Now if these cells were from someone else, some ‘pro-lifers’ would have a problem with it. Is pro-choice non pro-liferation? Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage

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Mar 06 2003
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Do online businesses profit from laziness?

Posted by | business | No Comments

If you subtract the amount of money that people pay Blockbuster in late fees from their revenues then Blockbuster is unprofitable. Then take Netflix, which is premised on not having the revenues that make Blockbuster profitable but leveraging instead the greater effiencies of web based distribution, and subtract the amount of revenue from people who watch less than a few movies a month then you have a non-viable business model. Despite the logistical and technical efficiencies of online businesses, I wonder if many are paradoxically based upon the inherent inefficiency and laziness of people. (People like me, who have had the same 3 movies out on Netflix for 2 months now.)

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Mar 05 2003
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RSS comes full circle

Posted by | rss | No Comments

Over on RSS-DEV: “There are millions upon millions of people who use services like My Yahoo for customized news, stock quotes, etc. Why not start sending them to an RSS aggregator instead?” Funny how some things have their time, I think the battles are over for RSS, version 2.0 gives the majority of people what they want, extensibility through modules, but stays simple, and for those that really need RDF, they can go back to version 1.0. More surprising is how the idea that RSS could rival My Yahoo is seen as something new – this is where it started, several years ago there was an RSS aggregator: My Netscape.

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Mar 04 2003
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Drawing the line on anti-Americanism

Posted by | politics | No Comments

I may be a dove on the war issue – but largely on grounds of practicality and execution. A war in Iraq should not be fought now if it hinders a war on terrorism by: 1. Alienating the Arab world. 2. Creating insurmountable diplomatic problems with former allies at a time when the US needs support. 3. Defocusing, draining resources and creating long term instability without a clear post war plan and budget. However, the capture of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was a resounding victory and if the capture of Al Qaeda operatives solicits anti-American sentiment then so what, there is no option. Surgical removal of Al Qaeda terrorists is a good thing. BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | ‘Al-Qaeda brain’ praised as hero

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