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RSS and Echo

RSS and Echo

Jon Udell on RSS: “It’s about a new way of communicating, one that’s defined by personal publishing and subscribing, and that empowers writers and readers as never before.” Amen to that, brother. People are trying to change RSS into something called Echo. If you want to know why, then I recommend you check out Jon Udell’s…

C List blogger checks his stats

C List blogger checks his stats

I admit it. I regularly check my stats at Technorati and Blogshares, plus I do some search engine checks now and then. Everyone does it. I have to say I’m not exactly setting the world on fire in terms of popularity. I’m probably a ‘C List’ blogger at most 🙂 But I am noticing my Google popularity is increasing for the phrase “Read/Write Web…

Internet Explorer.NET

Internet Explorer.NET

In my recent articles I’ve explored the concept of the Universal Canvas, a term made popular by Microsoft when it launched .NET in 2000. But things just got interesting, with the news that Microsoft will phase out its Internet Explorer browser as a standalone product. Internet Explorer will be integrated it…

Learn by writing

Learn by writing

Mark Pilgrim: “I take in a lot of raw data, synthesize it, and spit it back out in ways that many people can understand.” Mark Pilgrim and Neil Deakin are two very smart web developers, but more importantly they both have the ability to document complex web technology in laymans language – so that wannabes can learn it…

Save the Web

Save the Web

Dave Winer posts a link to a DaveNet from 2 years ago: “If it were not possible to read my words without annotation, we’d have to invent a medium that allowed that. But in 2001 we already have such a medium, it’s called the Web. We have tools and servers and all kinds of runtimes on all kinds of operating systems. We don’t need or want…

Apple and the Universal Canvas

Apple and the Universal Canvas

Micah Alpern asked via my Comments form: “Wasn’t this term [universal canvas] first popularized by Apple with their failed OpenDoc program?” Only one way to find out and that’s pay a visit to Google. I found a definition of OpenDoc, but I didn’t see anything that had OpenDoc and Universal Canvas in the same sentence. Anyone know of a…

The Universal Canvas System

The Universal Canvas System

Last night I wrote about the Universal Canvas. Today in my RSS newsreader, what should appear but a great post from Steve Gillmor on the same topic. Of course being a pro, Steve made his point way better than me. Microsoft has all the pieces, says Steve, to “create a browser-hosted read-write tool for sharing and routing information.” But the…

Universal Canvas – In the Beginning…

Universal Canvas – In the Beginning…

I’ve become very interested in the “Universal Canvas”, a term popularized by Microsoft and subsequently analyzed by Jon Udell. First of all, here are two definitions of the Universal Canvas: a) From a Microsoft White Paper dated June 2000, entitled Microsoft .NET: Realizing the Next Generation Internet: “The universal canvas builds upon XML…

Adaptability

Adaptability

Asterisk: “…the one thing every Web professional needs, regardless of their main job function, be that IA, Design, Development, what-have-you is adaptability. You know, the ability to wing it.” In New Zealand we have a similar concept called No. 8 Wire mentality, or “kiwi ingenuity” – based on the architypal New Zealand farmer…

Triangulation

Triangulation

RWW Word of the Day: triangulation Dave Winer (via Denise Howell’s weblog): “…Question about journalism always having to be the sophisticated big stuff? Dave says know (sic), importance of triangulation, getting news on an event from many sources.”

Generalists and Specialists in harmony

Generalists and Specialists in harmony

Ever listen to The Velvet Underground’s 9 minute live version of ‘What goes on’, from their 1969 Live album Volume 1? The first couple of minutes feature Lou Reed singing verse and chorus. The rest of the song is an extended instrumental and this is where it gets interesting. Each of the 4 instruments has a unique voice, but by…

Rich XML writing tools

Rich XML writing tools

I read with interest Jon Udell’s OSCOM keynote slides. The main subject is how to write the web “in a rich way” – and by “rich” he means semantic. Udell talks about there being a lack of easy-to-use XML writing tools for the Web. Weblog tools are user-friendly and they are the killer app for web writing, but they lack the ability to create…

Lightweight browsers

Lightweight browsers

I’ve installed the W3C web browser/editor, Amaya, onto my PC. I’ve only just begun to test it. But with all this talk about Microsoft abandoning its IE browser, it may pay to actively look at alternative browsers. This article at freshmeat.net has a good write-up on lightweight browsers, including Amaya.

IE is dead – long live Longhorn

IE is dead – long live Longhorn

A hot topic in the blogging world recently has been: is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser dead? Ironically, most of the good stuff to read has been via “Comments” forms – ie readers writing back to a weblog post. Robert Scoble from Microsoft said “The right question is: ‘is the Web dead in Longhorn?’ ” and he got over 30…

How to implement ENT into your Radio RSS feed

How to implement ENT into your Radio RSS feed

After a few late nights, I’ve successfully implemented Easy News Topics (ENT) tags to my Radio Userland RSS feed. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. It involved rooting around in the Radio.root file of my weblog and upskilling myself in UserTalk, Radio Userland’s scripting language. But mostly I stood on the shoulders of giants to get this…

Web-based future of Intranets

Web-based future of Intranets

D. Keith Robinson has written an interesting article about the future of Intranets. He writes: “…a company’s Intranet would be better served as more of an enterprise-wide, network-enabled application than anything resembling a Web site or Web application.” It seems likely that content management systems will over time integrate with office…

Blogroll bug update

Blogroll bug update

I posted a question onto the Radio Userland discussion list. I asked why updates to my OPML blogroll don’t automatically update my weblog menu. Nobody had an answer. A Google search came up empty too. But from my own checks it does seem that when you update your blogroll.opml file in your Gems folder, the ompl file itself…

What became of the Browser/Editor

What became of the Browser/Editor

I’ve been re-reading Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee. As inventer of the World Wide Web in 1990 and current director of the W3C, Berners-Lee is a visionary and innovator. His current obsession, the Semantic Web, is not yet widely understood or appreciated. Just like the Web 10 years ago.  Indeed one of Berners-Lee’s…

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