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Watching time, the only true currency // A journal from John B. Roberts

Month: June 2003

  • Start again

    We’re home with Paton now, and it’s time to start again. This time, we know how it works with a new baby, but a few things are different. Most of all, Benjamin is here, and we’re trying to weave him into the Paton picture, and vice versa. Also, Paton will probably be different, although these…

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  • Welcome, Paton!

    Paton Donahoe Roberts arrived this morning. She’s healthy, and so is her mother.

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  • Simple search = not so…

    More on search from Tim Bray last night. Very short, on a topic I’d like to hear more about from him, based on his experience. I know something about this topic from the user end and the product end, if not the technology end, since I worked on the now un-lamented Snap.com / NBCi.com back…

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  • Skip the essay, check out the software

    Someone on the on the online-news mailing list pointed out that Scopeware offers Vision Search, which is what Gelertner was talking about as an interface (screenshot). Scopeware is by Mirror Worlds Technologies, Gelertner’s company. Fueled by the research and writings of Dr. David Gelernter, world-renowned Yale professor and our Chief Scientist, and Dr. Eric Freeman,…

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  • Back down to zero

    Command-K is my favorite keystroke combo in NNW… Mark All Unread, on a per subscription basis. It’s about 30 minutes later, and the red number is gone. Until tomorrow, anyway.

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  • 51 subscriptions, 211 headlines unread

    I use NetNewsWire Lite to read various news sources, blogs and otherwise. It’s somewhat daunting to start my day’s reading (usually at night, like now) with a big red “211” on the Dock icon. That means 211 headlines unread, from my 51 subscriptions. I fire through most of them, opening Safari window after Safari window…

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  • “…pounded like a piton into…

    A sharp image, from David Gelernter’s essay “The Next Great American Newspaper,” in The Weekly Standard. This pointed vision describes the traditional ‘reverse pyramid’ style of journalism, but he’s more hunting the great beast that is traditional journalism. Style and bias are part of the story, but the larger point is about time vs. space.…

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  • In search of…

    …a good search engine for this blog. OK, I’m not really that desparate, but until I can figure out a better month-long archive scheme, I have found myself frustrated by trying to find something I’ve written, after less than three months of posting! Since I’m lazy, I will read Tim Bray’s series on full-text search,…

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  • Weather index for web traffic…

    Today was a sunny, clear, calm day in San Francisco. Maybe my memory is faulty, but it feels like we’ve had more of those this year than anytime in the last seven years. For those of us who sit in front of a computer as part of a job (in addition to hobbies like this…

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  • Am I ready?

    Child #2 will arrive sometime soon. I’ve known this for, oh, about nine months. 😉 That said, I admit to still being only ‘mostly ready’ for the arrival. I guess I feel that I’ve been through this before, and I know what to expect. At the same time, though, I’m sure (a) the birth will…

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