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  Entertainment

  Audio Blogging Experiment Results

  Audio and video blogging seem to be hot topics currently. I myself have done two, pretty low-tech, audio blog posts. Both were readings of textual posts, one of a Read/Write Web classic from January 2004 - The Fractal Blogosphere. And the second audio post was something I wrote just last...

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  Reliance

  The thing about web technology - and computing in general - that continues to frustrate me, is that it forces me to rely on hardware and software that is often outside of my direct control. It's all very well embracing the server side and using browser-based products like Movable Type...

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  Entertainment

  A New Kind of Literacy

  Note: This post is also available in audio format (.wav file, 2.9MB)."Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline" announced the headline at the National Endowment for the Arts website on 8 July 2004. On that day the NEA published a report entitled "Reading at Risk" (PDF), which outlined the findings of a...

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  Notes on Tim O’Reilly’s Oscon 2004 speech

  One good thing about audio on the Web is that I can listen to things while I'm working. Which is precisely what I did this morning with Tim O'Reilly's keynote speech at the Open Source Convention currently being held in the US. The audio was done by IT Conversations, rapidly...

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  Read/Write/Think/Dream

  As I was browsing the Web, looking for inspiration, I discovered a work by John Baldessari - a conceptual artist from America. He transformed the library space at UCSD (University of California, San Diego) into a beautiful work of art... the photos online are enough to make me want to...

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  Entertainment

  Audio Blogging enhances the Social Web

  Yesterday I did my first audio blogging post. I think audio has the potential to be a key part of the so-called Social Web, or Social Media as it's being called now. And I like the term 'Social Media', over the more tradional term 'Social Software'. It emphasizes that the...

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  More on Subscriber Stats

  I've just hit a century, 100 Bloglines subscribers. I was on 79 only 4 days ago, when I posted my article about Bloglines subscriber stats. Mind you it helps when the creator of Bloglines links to you :-)To put this into perspective, I also noticed today that Boing Boing has...

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  We’re all on the same page

  In yesterday's post I mentioned The 3 C's: Create, Communicate and Collaborate. The 2nd one could just as easily be 'Converse', as in conversations. All of these C's are things I strive to achieve in my weblog. In an effort to strengthen the 'Communicate/Converse' prong, I've finally gotten around to...

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  Analysing Bloglines Subscriber Stats

  I love Bloglines. It's a browser-based RSS feeds aggregator that almost singlehandedly proves the case that web applications can be better than desktop-based ones. I say this in the context of Joel Spolsky's already classic essay on why web browser apps are winning the war against so-called rich or smart...

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  Sylvian and The System

  This is a Short Story by Richard MacManus. It takes a speculative look at what the blogosphere might be like in 20-30 years time.IMy name is sylvian and this is my story of The System. Twenty years ago it was called the Web. Back then people were making it up...

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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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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  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...