I’m stealing the title from another blog (can’t remember which one), but here’s a host of links I’ve been meaning to record. This small bunch will clean out my inbox. I’ll leave my Safari bookmarks for another time.
- Tim Bray on OSCOM sessions, back in September, comments:
The sessions (I thought) went well, and here’s a surprise: approximately two-thirds of the attendees, here at the world headquarters of publishing technology, were hearing about blogging and RSS for the first time. I obviously think that blogs and simple syndication are going to change the world; I hadn’t realized how early in the process we are.
- Metadata is nothing new, from Ned Batchelder (not sure where I got the link, since I’ve never read another word on his site), has a great overview, including this comment:
Electronic data on the web has made metadata even more powerful: both the original data and the metadata about it are published in similar ways.
- Old column in Slate by Michael Lewis on why daddies don’t kill their babies, despite early, sleep-deprived inclinations that way. Part of an occasional series… I’ll have to go back and read the other columns.
- Megnut pulls out an interesting quote from an essay by a Berkeley professor about how political conservatives in the United States use language to control the conversation. Her comment at the end? “I guess if Republicans continue to relieve us of taxes, they’ll eventually relieve us of the infrastructure our taxes fund.”
- Before There Was Web, There Was ViewTron about one of the early online services. I remember my friend getting Prodigy back in the mid-1980s… his father worked for IBM, which was half-owner of the original service, with Sears (!), so almost a beta-tester. Blocky and slow. I also saw Minitel in France in 1991, for a few minutes, and the little I saw was more electronic directory than the ‘rose’ pages which were (I’ve read) more popular. Anyway, always good to know where you’ve been, as the author (Howard Finberg) points out at the end of his article with the inevitable Santayana quote.
- BBC article/interview with Jakob Nielsen on info pollution. “It is time to stop your computer deciding how your time is allocated.” But I like a clean in-box. 😉