Latest Articles

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  Sparrow Web, webOutliner and Web of Ideas

  I'm doing some research into an Ideas Database web application, prompted by my recent Web of Ideas post (and its sequel). I have a Movable Type sandbox blog set up as...

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  Grade School Report for my weblog

  Actually in New Zealand, we don't have "grade schools" (they're called Primary and Secondary schools here). But I wanted to subtly reference Jon Udell's influential article called "Grade School CMS"....

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  Browser-based RSS Aggregators

  A little while ago I wrote on the topic of "Smart Clients", a Microsoft catchphrase for non-browser-based web applications. In my article I mentioned an interesting browser-based RSS News Aggregator...

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  The Whiteness of the Whale – the Semantic Web

  Whenever I read about the Semantic Web, I am reminded of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. One of my favourite chapters of Moby Dick is chapter 42: The Whiteness...

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  Trackback enabled

  Excellent, I now have Radio Userland's Trackback enabled. There have been some interesting suggestions for other new Radio features too, so hopefully some of those ideas will get implemented soon. I...

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  In XML did Kubla Khan – XML as Literature

  Dave Winer says there are 2 ways to approach XML: "...people who think of XML as a programming space, and people who think of it as a literary space."The first...

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  My new domain name

  I have moved to a new domain name. Please update your records:New weblog address: http://www.readwriteweb.comNew RSS feed: http://www.readwriteweb.com/rss.xmlps the reason I am re-posting this, and my XML as Literature story...

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  Web of Ideas II

  Lawrence Lessig on US Presidential candidate Howard Dean's blogging efforts: "Neutrality aside, though, Governor Dean has earned a special respect. Of course there are issues on which I would disagree...

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  Shipbuilding

  The problem with blogging is it's easy to get distracted by ideas you can't do anything about. My previous post illustrates this. In it I railed against Microsoft for wanting to build its own proprietory...

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  The Web is no Model T

  Robert Scoble has written a couple of posts recently about Microsoft products being a platform:1. Robert quoting Kevin Warbach: "The Internet companies that have thrived while AOL faltered -- Microsoft,...

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  Web of Ideas

  A lot of people are getting pretty excited about "social software". Bloggers like Joi Ito and Marc Canter are writing with gusto about social software. I'm hearing lots of trendy new acronyms...

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  Simplicity and extensibility

  Tim O'Reilly writes in Dan Gillmor's comments: "Simplicity and extensibility should not be orthogonal. And any technology that sets them up as opposed, instead of complements, has clearly done something wrong."Note: orthogonal means...

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  The Ants and the Bees

  I'm not usually one to quote long passages of other people's writing, but I can't resist quoting Scoble's post today about ants. In Robert's vision, the ants represent Microsoft employees...

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  Reputation systems

  The subject of topics for weblogs is getting some traction in the blogosphere. There are some promising apps for topics, including k-collector and Topic Exchange. Recently I wrote a post, in...

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  Daydreaming of browser/editors

  Don Park reckons that weblogs and websites will converge within the next 2 years time:"People [will] take it for granted that webpages can be edited using their browser. People will...

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  Smart Clients vs Browsers

  Robert Scoble: "...at Microsoft we call Internet apps that aren't in the browser 'Smart Clients'".The web browser is at a crossroads. Microsoft announced in 2003 that it would not release any...

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  John Robb leaves Userland

  News today that Userland CEO John Robb has left the company. Dave Winer says about Userland's future direction:"We're going to try to do something fun, unique, and powerful with UserLand's position in...

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  More on weblog topics

  Couple of interesting comments to my last post. Harvey Kirkpatrick from itopik wrote:"I would argue that all the efforts are complementary and can be automated by some and humanified by...

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  Organizing weblogs by topic

  My post in response to Clay Shirky's article on Corante generated some interesting discussion. The time is ripe to discuss weblog topics, thanks to innovative new tools such as k-collector, Phillip Pearson's Topic...

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  Weblogs should be topic-first, not author-first

  Clay Shirky (via Ross Mayfield): "The weblog world has taken the 4 elements of organization from mailing lists and usenet -- overall topic, time of post, post title, author --...