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

  • Excitement != business opportunity (RSS)

    I’m excited about how RSS has changed my reading habits, but the growing fervor hasn’t yet convinced me there is a new business opportunity here. Maybe if you’re an independent software developer (think Ranchero.com or Bradsoft.com), and you can move faster than Microsoft’s Outlook team. But… really something large here? We’ll see. I’m wondering whether…

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  • BOOK: The Hours

    While at the hospital, I finally finished The Hours, by Michael Cunningham. More famous, I think, for being made into a movie than anything else, but that’s not fair to a Pulitzer Prize winner, I guess — even if Nicole Kidman, Meryl Streep, and Julianne Moore were the leads. I didn’t enjoy the book. It…

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  • 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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