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  Web

  Winter Reading

  There's an interesting meme doing the rounds: what webloggers are reading this summer. This, of course, is right up my street. So here's what I'm reading currently... although it's actually the middle of winter here in New Zealand.I'm an eclectic reader, so I usually have a number of different books...

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  Web

  Gestating

  That's what I'm doing currently. Gestating ideas, for an innovative new business and also for my writing (and as an extension to both - my weblog). So apologies for the lack of blogging, but I expect to deliver a nourishing meal-sized Read/Write Web entry by end of next week. Feel...

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  Web

  Quick thoughts on Kottke’s Re-Design

  I promised not to focus on web design, as it's not my niche. But I remain a keen amateur designer, as all Web junkies are, so I want to jot down some notes on Jason Kottke's re-design. I haven't read through the 995 comments that people have left on his...

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  Web

  Beginning to see the light

  I've always wanted to namecheck that great Velvet Underground song. I wore my teeth in my hands...So I could mess the hair of the night. Anyway, Sébastien Paquet has posted a suggestion to improve the Topic Exchange - which reminded me of my own efforts to ignite the topics community...

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  Web

  Mama don’t let your baby grow up to be a Generalist

  It's fun to be a Generalist, you get to explore a variety of different topics and it often makes for good blogging. People don't really know what to expect when they see a new Read/Write Web item in their RSS Aggregator (although given my current experiment to try and blog...

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  Web

  I’m valid again

  For what it's worth, I've re-validated my homepage to conform to XHTML Transitional. Thanks to the people who left comments and emailed me about issues relating to validation. The two main culprits in validation always seem to be the '&' character and non-closed <br> tags. Joe Lindsay also pointed out...

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  Entertainment

  How much free music is available online?

  I was going to leave a comment at Lucas Gonze's weblog, but I may as well use trackback and hope he sees this. Lucas posted a follow-up to his "whine that policing unauthorized music on Webjay is turning into a huge drag". He is considering a form of community moderation...

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  Web

  Google AdSense for Search

  Good timing Google! Adding search functionality to my site was on my To Do list for this month and Google has just announced a new AdSense for Search feature. It allows website owners to add a search box to their site and potentially earn some pocket money with ads that...

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  Web

  Feed of the Day

  Cool, I'm Feed of the Day at Feedster! btw regular readers may've noticed I'm posting more frequently now. Shorter, pithier posts. But I plan to continue the long-form entries too (like last nights). I'll see how this experiment goes...

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  Entertainment

  I want to promote NZ music on WebJay

  Lucas Gonze, creator of WebJay, said today: "Policing unauthorized music on Webjay is turning into a huge drag. The problem is that I have to impose my puritanism on others, which is absurd."By "puritanism" I presume he means being morally pure and obeying the law of music copyright. Now, I...

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  Web

  Funk

  Don't worry I still like blogs ;-) I was thinking it would be amusing to change my name to The Artist Formally Known as Read/Write Web and write a post entitled 'Slave to RSS'. But that would be a bit silly. Besides, I don't have enough graphical ability to design...

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  Web

  The Bore-osphere

  In answer to all the blogs I've read today:1. No I don't want a friggin' Gmail account. 2. I don't want to read your opinion on Dave Winer closing down 3000 weblogs.com blogs. 3. I don't even care about Firefox 0.9 being released.Maybe I'm just in a bad mood today....

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  Web

  Limits of the Web in 2004

  When I was a very young child, perhaps 5 or 6, I wrote a poem that got published in The Timaru Herald newspaper. My first published writing.I think I may've dreamed recently that I'd found a copy of it on the Web. I can't recall (I'm not good at remembering...

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  Web

  Knowledge Management in the Real World

  Knowledge Management is a term that many people dislike, myself included. Firstly it's a misnomer - you can't "manage", at an organization or corporate level, something as subjective and contextual as knowledge. It's even debatable whether you can manage knowledge at a personal level - because we don't always know...

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  Web

  A Theory of Synchronicity for the Web

  In my previous post, Stasis and Synchronicity, I scratched the surface of something that's been bothering me recently. I've been sensing a degree of stasis in the blogging world, not to mention in my own life (and given what I wrote 12 days ago about weblogs being avatars, perhaps the...

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  Web

  Stasis and Synchronicity

  Jeffrey Zeldman wrote today about Glassdog's transformation from an "experimental narrative powerhouse" to a mere blog. Under the provocative title The saddest music in the world, Zeldman's piece was a reflection on how The Web has not lived up to its original promise:"Oh, little child. Long ago, before you were...

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  Web

  Govt takes up publishing standard

  That's the title of my second NZ Computerworld article, which is in this week's edition (pg 16). Here's a PDF copy of it. It's also available in HTML format on Read/Write Web.Since it is an article that attempts to bring RSS into a mainstream light, some people who arrive here...

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  Social

  Checking out the IRC world

  I recently downloaded the mIRC client and have been checking out the Freenode IRC network. The few times I've logged in there haven't been many people about - mainly because I live in New Zealand and so my time zone is out of whack with the northern hemisphere. But tonight...

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  Web

  Fixed a couple of CSS bugs

  This is a boring post about fixing a couple of tedious Internet Explorer CSS bugs. But I want to record it for my own records and for future Google searchers.1) The IE Italics bug - in the past I used italics whenever I quoted somebody. However on certain CSS designs,...

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  Social

  Weblogs as Avatars: some thoughts

  I'm in a stage right now where there are lots of details that I'm juggling in my life, both in the real world and my weblog world. My job is busy, with quite a few relatively exciting projects on the go at the same time. My home life is busy,...