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Doc asks if Google takes advantage of RSS to aggregate news and if not why not. The answer is no, and for two reasons: 1. Few RSS feeds contain the full text of the article and a search engine needs this to index. Sure, you could harvest the headlines and then index the site URL for the full text, some sites do this, but this approach is not reliable. Headlines are very dynamic and you increase the risk of synch. problems if you pull headlines from one URL and pull content from another. Google scrapes headlines and indexes articles from the same URL. With RSS 1.0 and 2.0 it is possible to put full text in an item, but commercial publishers are loathed to do this, and even webloggers like myself like the traffic to the original article, where I can deliver the message as I want it to be…

Peter O’Toole turns down an honorary Oscar. “O’Toole sent a handwritten open letter to the academy saying he was ‘enchanted’ by the gesture, but insisting that he is ‘still in the game and might win the lovely bugger outright.’” O’Toole certainly has a way with words. A friend at high school dated Peter O’Toole’s daughter. O’Toole had a nickname for him: ‘the C**t.’, he would open the door and wave him in with ‘ah, its the C**t’. United Press International: Peter O’Toole: Not time for Honorary Oscar

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

19th Century Salons were stuffy places that disappeared, today as much ‘intellectual’ chit chat takes place in saloon bars and cafes. [OK this is actually just to post rationalize the headline]. Ken Layne spies some changes at Salon and identifies it with the current trend to what Jeff Jarvis calls ‘nanopublishing’ and Nick Denton is doing in serial fashion. “Maybe someone or something is buying Salon. Maybe they’ll run it cheaply, like the group Web log that it is. “

There are some people that rarely leave Manhattan except to go to the airport, it is as if its island status makes its inhabitants behave like they live in a medieval walled city. A new breed of Manhattanites are even more particular, they rarely leave the districts that comprise the lower rise neighborhoods that are hemmed in between Midtown and Wall St., Greenwich Village, the East Village, Lower East Side, Tribeca, etc. Clearly it needs an all encompassing name, what about the Schmillage, suitably nonchalant?

“Demi, stunning at 40 after a $US700,000 ($1.2 million) makeover… is said to be smitten with the man Bruce has branded ‘the Silver Fox’.” NEWS.com.au | Demi ‘dating’ Bill Clinton (December 16, 2002)

“Former Home House of Eminem Marshall Mathers” “Cat looking at cat looking at eminem house” “Pic me looking at guy guy cat Eminem’s house” Via Who Would Buy That

Apple: it’s all about the brand “Ask marketers and advertising experts why Mac users are so loyal, and they all cite the same reason: Apple’s brand. “ Evan Williams pokes fun at Wired’s not too clever article on Apple, “the silly thing about this article is the notion that Apple’s brand and products are completely unconnected”. Marketing people often get confused about the difference between a company that offers products that have unique features and one that doesn’t. The most primitive see brand and features but nothing in between. Pepsi is all about brand and Tivo is all about product. In the middle, however, there are intangibles, things that are not the result of pure marketing spin but do not really offer anything different from competitors from a feature perspective – design elevates these intangibles. The PC industry is becoming mature and saturated in terms of features, people will buy…

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You couldn’t make up this shit. Most people have some sympathy for Michael Jackson as someone who has clearly lost all touch with reality – but do you trust this man to bring up healthy, well adjusted kids? The latest – after dangling a baby that people think ‘may’ be his from a 4th floor window – a visit to the zoo with his kids in veils. BBC NEWS | Entertainment | Showbiz | Jackson’s zoo outing

Back from Europe – and how nice it was to be back, the sun is shining, nearly 70 degrees in San Francisco and yesterday we took a delightful stroll to Muir beach. So being the miserable git that I am, I’ll have a go at the English: Plans to increase university tuition fees in the UK are being strongly opposed by the Labour left. BBC – Short attacks student top-up fees On the face of it the argument sounds convincing: increases in fees and reduced state subsidy of higher education lead to less people from poorer families receiving higher education. Wrong – analyze the facts and you realize that what is being argued for amounts to campaigning against tax increases for the wealthy – something which should be an anathema for self-respecting members of the left. Police Academy The facts: As the Economist points out, people in the UK are…

Martin Schwimmer notes that Toyota have registered scionsucks.com and scioncarssuck.com