Friday, December 19, 2003

 

FINALLY, there is a reliable, free solution for Blogger users wanting to be able to offer a self validating RSS feed. Even better is the inclusion of a script that allows for pingbacks to your server. This is truly a great day for Blogger users that upload content to their own servers.


[Lockergnome's RSS Resource]

 I wonder where this will end?

Pressure increases on Humberside police after the force's admission it destroyed critical information on murderer Ian Huntley.
[BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Google Experiment Provides Internet With Book Excerpts

 

Humberside's police chief walks out of a BBC interview over questioning about errors that led to Ian Huntley being cleared to work as a school caretaker.
[BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

 

Frank Paynter interviews David Weinberger. A very good interview, absolutely worth reading when you have some time.

At some point ENT is mentioned:

The last time I looked, Paolo Valdemarin and Matt Mower - both of whom I not only respect but really like - were expecting users to categorize what they're writing according to some accepted taxonomy; I'm pessimistic about getting users to take that step. But if it works, it'd be fabulous and I totally support it.

I must say first that I really like David too. I'm looking forward to meeing him again somewhere in the world hopefully soon.

Then I'd like to say that when we first presented him the whole idea of ENT and K-collector in Vienna at BlogTalk 1.0, we did notice the skeptic look in his eyes and we have been working to solve this problem.

While at the very beginning we were expecting all users to use our tool to add topics to what they were writing (even back then we were trying to help users by suggesting appropriate topics for their posts), the system has evolved since then in a few ways.

What we are doing is separating the process of topics creation from the actual association of topics to content. While the possibility of adding topics to posts still exist and it's the best way of doing it, there are also other ways of associating content and metadata,

The first one is TopicMatching, which allows us to add topics to posts streaming through our servers automatically. Visiting our open w4 site, you will be able to see content from about 100 weblog grouped using topics created by about 15 "active users" (users with the k-collector client). In other words we are leveraging on the work of a few people to categorize a vast amount of content.

We are also investigating other ways of creating topics on our site. For example by analyzing words used in search engines that brought users on our sites. There are also other options we are testing which will allow to improve the results.

It's true, we have not resolved the whole problem, but we are definetly listening :-).

[Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog]

The New Wave? 

India's leading software firm snaps up Australia's Expert Information Services in a $22.9m deal.
[BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Tuesday, December 16, 2003

 

Microsoft's decision to withdraw older software from shelves will hit thousands of firms still using the programs.
[BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Telegraph | Opinion | Defiant? He's a Ba'athist who won't bath

 

Rahul Dravid leads India to their first Test victory in Australia for 22 years.
[BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

 

The RSS 2.0 Framework. Enables .NET programmers to add syndication to their apps.


[The Scobleizer Weblog]

Desktop Dean Home Page THis is an RSS aggreagator specific to a US campaign. The tide is really turning on syndication.

Monday, December 15, 2003

 

Download examples of MCP exam question types and testlet exam format.
[Microsoft Download Center]

 

Police are trying to trace the owners of stolen goods worth £100,000 by using the internet. Burglary victims can be reunited with their stolen property through a website used by Sussex Police called Virtual Bumblebee. If more people were to use a security tagging system, like the one offered by securi-TAG-it, then there would be less of a need for the police to set up websites and schemes in order to return stolen goods.

 

Police are trying to trace the owners of stolen goods worth £100,000 by using the internet.

Burglary victims can be reunited with their stolen property through a website used by Sussex Police called Virtual Bumblebee.

The stolen items, which have been recovered in raids, are being kept at a secret location in the county, waiting for their rightful owners to identify them.

And now the force is promoting the website where people can search for their possessions online.

Scheme extended

Pc Tom Willis, project officer, said: "Everyone who has internet access can view stolen, recovered and seized items as well as found property.

"More and more items of property are being added to the site daily and in the last six months we have seen a number of people reunited with property from thefts several years earlier."

Detective Sergeant Stuart Hale said: "Some criminals travel to commit crime so victims may also come from all over Sussex, as well as neighbouring Hampshire, Surrey and Kent.

"We even traced one owner to the United States."

Virtual Bumblebee was piloted in Bognor but has now been extended to the whole of West Sussex.

Victims can type in a description of the item they are looking for and then see if any of the seized goods match.

Already nearly 30 people have come forward to claim their property but about half of the hoard has still not been identified.

In July there were 275 items on Virtual Bumblebee waiting to be claimed, all of which have photographs the BBC reports.

If more people were to use a security tagging system, like the one offered by securi-TAG-it, then there would be less of a need for the police to set up websites and schemes in order to return stolen goods.


[Securitag-IT News]

BBC NEWS | Technology | New chief for online government
Arts & Letters Daily - ideas, criticism, debate: "In a few years, a third-party candidate will be President. It is not politics, but technology that will cause the Dem/GOP duopoly to fail... more� "

Thursday, December 11, 2003

BBC NEWS | World | South Asia | Cartoon fame for Indian tech school

"At the Indian Institute of Technology, I learned to use my huge brain."

"But I try not to frighten ordinary people with any gratuitous displays of mental superiority.

"For example," says Asok, "I no longer reheat my tea by holding it to my forehead and imagining fire."

 

An article about news aggregators from a lawyer's perspective.
[Scripting News]

This BBC link is about Northgate. The company that grew out of SA’s involvement in Angola I believe. 

A UK company offers to seize indicted ex-Liberian leader Charles Taylor and split a $2m bounty with any sponsor of the swoop.
[BBC News | News Front Page | UK Edition]

Web Screenplay What more is there to day?
weblog archive | Creative Commons: "Project Gutenberg hits 10k, events in San Francisco

In celebration of Project Gutenberg's 10,000th book release, founder Michael Hart and CEO Greg Newby are planning a series of events to commemorate the milestone. Starting tomorrow with a lecture at the Golden Gate Club and finishing up this week with an appearance on TechTV.
Along with the annoucement they're offering all 10,000 books as a downloadable DVD disc image, ready for burning."

Wednesday, December 10, 2003

Bishop of Kirkuk: New Iraq Needs Europe's Help There are 700,000 Christians in Iraq says this Chaldean cleric. I am reading William Dalrymples "From the Holy Mountain", which is an account of a Journey among Eastern Christians, at the moment. I was completely ignorant about this up until now. Syria is 20% Christian for example. Saudi Arabia really does seem to be an anomaly with its apparent lack of toleration.
BBC NEWS | Business | The challenge of rebuilding Iraq

Article on Bechtel in Iraq. I remember when Steve Bechtel was running the London Office in Hammersmith.

 

RSS in my heart.The BBC's support for RSS isn't new, but it is newly explained on their site. For example, if you scroll to the bottom of the index page for UK news, in the lower right corner you'll see a menu item called "RSS version." Click to visit a page that explains what RSS is all about, and links to the feed for the page you came from. It requires a little digging to find all the goodies, but the payoff is huge because the BBC has so much you can subscribe to. Now there's a way to find it from the BBC site.
[Scripting News]

Tuesday, December 09, 2003

I am bound to need this at some stage. 

Excel spreadsheet illustrating network ports used by Microsoft products
[Microsoft Download Center]

Jeremy Zawodny's blog: Yahoo! News Search via RSS I must try this once I get a minute or too.

Monday, December 08, 2003

Sun, RSS and Apple Challenge Office Dominance: What does Steve Gillmor mean by an "RSS Router"?

Thursday, December 04, 2003

Paul and I continue our project to drink our way around the Northern Line.

Last night we reached Clapham South. We started out at the Grove, followed with the George, The Abbeville, Oblivion, and the Firefly.

The winner is THe Abbeville, hoorah! 67 Abbeville Road, London, London, SW4 9JW if you are interested.

"Karl Marx joked to Friedrich Engels that he would make the bourgeoisie pay for the hemorrhoids he developed while writing Das Kapital at the British Museum, a few blocks from here. After several hours of listening to papers on revolutionary educational theory, I am beginning to appreciate that sentiment." here.

Wednesday, December 03, 2003

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/12/03/npris03.xml&sSheet=/news/2003/12/03/ixhome.html

 

Now, in Britain's prisons, making an insulting remark about terrorists is grounds for dismissal. While it's perfectly fine to carp about George W Bush and Margaret Thatcher, Osama bin Laden must deserve respect....
[The Edge of England's Sword]

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

More on St Thomas and Kerala. Absolutely fascinating.

I am not really interested in this. I just wondered how the Newsgator add in would handle categories.

Pirated versions of Microsoft's next operating system are on sale in Malaysia well before the official release date.
[BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]

Monday, December 01, 2003

A Los Angeles county official has asked computer and video equipment vendors to consider eliminating the terms "master" and "slave" from equipment because they may be considered offensive.
[eWEEK Technology News]

BW Online | December 8, 2003 | The Rise Of India. More on outsourcing to India's brains.

 

David Buchan describes how he uses NewsGator and PersonalBrain (a knowledge mapping tool) together, and drags messages from NewsGator/Outlook to PersonalBrain for visualization.  Pretty cool!


[Greg Reinacker's Weblog]

I need to look at this re PSP etc.

 

_________

 

Dear K-Loggers,
 
Here is an interesting tool that can potentially RSS-enable your organization (RSS is really simple syndication).  It's called k-collector:
 
http://www.evectors.com/itkcollector/
 
Itis an enterprise RSS aggregator that gathers information from multiple systems from e-mail to sales systems (see overview:  http://www.evectors.com/itkcollector/).   It also uses an innovative method called Enterprise News Topics (ENT) to add metacontent to the news items (either automatically or by hand).  The end result is an easy to read and modify news dashboard. 
 
Worth getting a demo. 
 
Sincerely,
 
John Robb
 


Look Out, Outlook: RSS Ahead in 2004 More predictions for RSS

Friday, November 28, 2003

Just testing the newsgator/blogger integration with a bargain from our auction website. 

Blue Palomar GT mountain bike
[Bumblebee Auctions]

Wednesday, November 19, 2003

Tonight's Northern Line excursion is cancelled because Paul is ill with the flu. Called Sam last night to congratulate him on Sri Lanka's win over England. He is going to come with is when we hit Clapham North as that is where his son's bar is. He is also soon to open one in Borough apparently. That spookily is on the Northern Line also.

Friday, November 14, 2003

We did Balham on Wednesday. Started off at the Bedford, followed by the Duke of Devonshire - first Christmas decorations, then the Dish Dash and finished up in the Balham Tub.

Monday, November 10, 2003

Enjoyment: "Balham Bar & Kitchen, 15-19 Bedford Hill, Balham, London SW12 (020-8675 6900)"

Friday, November 07, 2003

There is no point going anywhere in Mordern except "Out and Out".

Thursday, October 30, 2003

We decided to do South Wimbledon last night and kicked off at the Sultan which had a SPBW - London Pub of the Year 2003 Nomination. Then on to the Nelson Arms, followed by the Kilkenny.

Wednesday, October 29, 2003

I am just reading "The Age of Kali. William Dalrymple is - to say the least - a fine writer.
Been recommended the Sultan for South Wimbledon and the Duke of Devonshire for Balham.
London Underground : Line facts: Northern Line
Background information CULG - Northern Line

Thursday, October 23, 2003

NExt week we are going up one stop to Balham. I suggest we start off at The Bedford.
"An extremely popular venue and past winner of the pub of the year award. Contains its own theatre and dancefloor. Hosts comedy events and shows sporting events on TV."
77 Bedford Hill
Balham
London
SW12 9HD

Tel: 020 8682 8940
After the Wheatsheef - which was indeed a dive we stumbed upon ght King's head which was splendid Kings Head, Tooting, London - pub details # beerintheevening.com: "84, Upper Tooting Rd, London, SW17 7PB [map]
Tel: 020 8767 6708"

Wednesday, October 22, 2003

Today we are off to Tooting Bec. It doesn't look all that exctiing. We will start at the Wheatsheaf: 2 Upper Tooting Rd, London, SW17 7PG.