Since I've been interested in AppleScript for a long while, maybe I'll treat myself to Matt Neuberg's new book on the topic.
After XMas.
Whatever side of the drug policy debate you fall in with, you have to admit that the Media Awareness Project has a lot of RSS feeds on the topic.
I met Andrew DeVigal at the ONA conference in mid November. He's an Assistant Prof at San Francisco State University, who helps out on the student online magazine version of [X]press. He also maintains a nice trove of links and summaries about online interactive narratives entitled obviously enough, InteractiveNarratives.org.
Link parkin': Jan-Ole Esleben's JunkBroom is a Bayesian spam filter plug-in for Microsoft Entourage.
Did I mention I've seen an order of magnitude more spam in my inbox over the last week or so?
Michael Foetsch (I've got learn how to put umlauts in HTML), has released Python bindings for mfGraph, a toolkit for working with GraphViz graphs.
Maybe this has been happening for a while, but I was mildly distrubed to see Wired News running straight AP copy. This is a far cry from the folks who wanted to be at the head of the typhoon of change sweeping our times.
How the mighty have fallen...
Just because I'm a sports junkie:
Salon's King Kaufman interviews Gregg Easterbrook, author of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, a rather entertaining weekly column on happenings in the NFL. The interview is wide ranging, mainly focusing on how and why Easterbrook got fired from ESPN.com for weblogging somewhere else, and his reactions to the situation.
Mainly I'm in agreement that Americans need to take sports a little less seriously. Sell out for your team when it's in the moment, but leave the overheated passion at the stadium.
And don't be a meanie about it!
In a recent addition to the Python cookbook, Richard Philips presents an elegant way to create dictionaries from lists (plists for you Lisp old timers), using Python's built-in dict, zip, and list slices.
Harpers.org was recently redesigned by Paul Ford of Ftrain.com. From Ford's peek inside the process, Semantic Web technology was used to allow the massive amount of content Harper's has to be utilized in many different ways.
I have my doubts about Semantic Web technology, but this is a great example of how one designer, who has control over the ontology, can make it work.
And oh yeah, Harpers' still has some of the best written words in the world.
According to a relatively recent report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project: " There is a trendsetting technology elite in the U.S. who chart the course for the use of information goods and services."
Stashing for later reading. Thanks to the NITLE weblog.
Joe Gregorio put together a Python module to wrap TidyLib and make it easy to clean up non-conforming HTML-like text.
New to me, but slightly stale, Raph Levien countered some Tim Bray skepticism regarding whether BitTorrent is a radical technology or not. Granted I don't really use BitTorrent, but I sympathize with Raph's point of view. I'm waiting for some enterprising PR firm to use it to build buzz on an indie or underground film.
Think Blair Witch ratcheted up a notch. Or Gibson's Pattern Recognition.
Probably happened already.
Apoo is "An environment for a first course in assembly programming." Implemented in Python, it looks like a cool environment for working with assembly, and also a a potential embedded VM for programming language hacking.
Link parkin': JCraft recently released JSch yet another SSH2 implementation in Java. I'm not absolutely sure, but it looks like JSch can be combined with JTA to get an SSH shell in an applet, leading to secure remote login from anywhere you can get a Web browser.
Got 3000 good words to say about digital media, networks, and/or operating systems? Then the International Workshop on Network and Operating Systems Support for Digital Audio and Video (14th year ) is for you. Paper submissions need to be pre-registered by Feb 23, final deadline Mar. 1
Link parkin': tsearch2 is a PostgreSQL extension for doing text indexing on table columns. Neat feature, tsearch2 extends the open source RDBMS with a term vector datatype. Seems like a good basis for doing some IR type stuff on top of an RDBMS.
According to the National Center for Education Statistics, 90% of kids use computers, and 59% reach the Internet.
Jeez, observing 90% of any large human population doing the same thing, other than survival functions, is amazing. Kids? Add another degree of difficulty.
Nick Usborne relays a parable about what the Web is all about.
Normally I don't indulge in these things, but this one struck an inspirational chord.
I don't know what this means, but I've been over the 100 subscription mark for about a week now. That includes trimming some deadwood from the subs list.
Yup, starting to feel like I did in my USENET prime, he says, pulling on his suspenders.
Link parkin': Jeff Jarvis has a nice collection of Africa related blogs. Might be nice to build an aggregation of these somewhere, if they have RSS feeds.
Brian Lloyd's PythonNet integrates the Python runtime into the .Net framework, allowing Python programs to access all of the .Net toolkits (but not vice versa).
Maybe I'll actually take the time to really get into .Net programming now that I don't have to learn C# or reignite my latent C++ skills.
Link parkin': Magnolia is a standards based, buzzword compliant, open source content management system, produced and maintained by Obinary.
Just because I'm teaching CS 211 next quarter.
James H. Morris tangentially points out something I've tried to drill into early CS types here at NU. Studying Computer Science is more than just learning about programming.
Morris' has two specific instances of things you wind up learning as cs major (in a good program). "How to make something work in the mud" and "How to tell what's really going on". Lord knows we struggle daily with incomplete information in bad environments, whether it be with physical robots in the real world, or software robots working on the Web.
Interesting side note, CMU seems to be seeing an uptick in female matriculation. Meanwhile, the tap is drying up here in Evanston. In the last two CS 200 level courses I've taught, there's been two women and one woman. Not a good sign.
Okay, now that someone has released an SVG engine that supports embedded scripting, you can call SVG a Flash competitor.
Mostly targeted at PocketPC, I wouldn't be quaking in my boots if I was Macromedia though.
Got 5000 interesting words on computers and entertainment? Submit a paper to ACM SIGCHI's Conference on Advancements in Computer Entertainment Technology.
I recognize there are plenty of other game and entertainment conferences, but as far as I know (and that ain't saying much), this is the first time ACM has gotten serious about the topic. Plus SIGCHI is arguably the most successful SIG in ACM, so this could be the start of something big. Think Supercomputing except for games, and without the bimbos of E3.
Delicious (del.icio.us) is a social bookmarks manager.
Okay, big deal. Bookmark management isn't exactly rocket science. Anyone who's been on the web for any length of time remembers all sorts of desktop and web based tools to manage your bookmarks when the Web first arose.
Simple. The context has significantly changed since let's say, 2000 even. First, the concept of Web services, especially REST style services, now has traction. So del.icio.us has a Web native programming ecology to embed itself. Second, experimentation with large scale social Web based tools (acknowledging all the research on Usenet) is still in its infancy. Meta Weblog Services is not quite applicable here, but something meta on top of this infrastructure could easily be built.
Link Parkin: Pears is an open source, lightweight, 3 paned, RSS aggregator written in Python.
Okay, last time I talk about the Medill Storytelling Symposium here.
Rich Gordon, my partner in crime in organizing the event, has two posts over at E-Media Tidbits regarding the symposium. The first encapsulates the panel on interesting ways consumers can interact with information. The second was regarding our discussion of how new media education in journalism departments has worked out. I'm sure Rich would have posted something about our third panel on digital images, but he was simultaneously busy working on the student newsroom for the ONA conference.
If you didn't make it, Rich's posts give you a good taste of what happened. Being a bit of a perfectionist, there's a lot I would have changed to make it a better event. But for a low budget, 1.5 man effort, it turned out pretty well I think.
Jay Rosen is doing great thinking on his PressThink weblog. I wonder how much reach it's getting off of the Internet?
In any event, his latest essay, "Spin Alley" digs into the sordid state of reporting after major political events such as debates. In short, reporters rush to a blessed area where campaign flacks all deliver prepared responses, regardless of what happened at the event! Invoking Shannon and Wiener, Rosen illustrates how Spin Alley actually reduces information rather than creating it, which is what journalists are supposed to be doing.
Even worse is the proprietary nature of Spin Alley. It's an area constructed by insiders on both sides. No outsiders, such as Ralph Nader, allowed. There are nominally good reasons for doing so, but this strikes Rosen, and me, as not particularly being in the public interest.
When I read Rosen's plea to blow up Spin Alley, I new immediately plenty of others would jump on weblogs as an alternative. Jeff Jarvis is the first one out of the box that I saw.
I'll add two tweaks though. There seems to be a concept of Grid Blogging kicking around, flash mobs of bloggers writing about a particular topic. Why not grid blog about a televised debate?
The second tweak is that those grid blogging have to aggregate into a well publicized feed. Part of the reason there's a Spin Alley is that it reduces the cost of getting quotes for good copy. An RSS feed could level the playing field a bit.
And just to make it even easier, all grid bloggers would have to do is use specific keywords in their title. Then, assuming they all have an RSS feed, a standing query feed could be setup at Feedster. Complete opt-in and openness at both ends.
If you've got 500 good words on blogging, you might be able to get published at the BlogTalk 2.0 conference. It'll be held in Austria around July 2004.
The program from BlogTalk 1.0 doesn't look particularly academic but still provocative. This may be a good thing depending on your opinion.
Sean over at cheesebikini comes perilously close to echoing my July thoughts on cameras and communication integration. In short, a camera on the network is not a camera any more. It's a communication device where image capture and transmission is natural. This means that thinking about the photographic quality is somewhat besides the point. "Photos" become much more ephemeral.
I must have been on to something, even Alan Reiter agrees.
So I'm all jazzed wrapping CLUTO's static library in a Python module using SWIG.Things are going smoothly when on a lark I decide to hit Google with "python clustering".
Lo and behold, it gives me Pycluster, a module that wraps a C level clustering library from UC Berkeley. There's also a bunch of other toys based on the same library, all cooked up by Michiel de Hoon and friends.
It looks like there's significant overlap in the clustering algorithms provided by CLUTO vs Pycluster, but they're different enough to both be useful. One nice thing is that Pycluster actually does self-organizing maps (SOM).
Might be time for a bake-off.
SonyEricsson is now offering a PCMCIA card that provides both GPRS and Wi-Fi connectivity. I'm guessing that software to deal with handoffs between cellular and Wi-Fi services isn't there yet, but we're getting closer to seamless wireless networking. At decent data rates no less.
Looks like no MacOS X support though. Boooo!
Thanks to Gizmodo.
Ex post facto, but the Little Languages Conference had it's third edition about two weeks ago. The program looked pretty cool, and the presentations have been recorded.
Evil RealAudio though. Yick!
Just because I'm teaching CS 213.
I finally found the feed for Alan Reiter's Cameraphonereport. Definitely thumbs up. Each post is more in depth than in any other weblog I'm subscribed to. E.g. this discussion of photo albums and cameraphones.
Jump on it if you have the spare cycles.
Personally, I think photo album types should add whiizzy non-photorealistic rendering tools for photo manipulation. The hard nut? Making the tools workable from handheld devices or non-desktop interaction in general.
Probably destined for linkrot, but Gregory Huang has penned a nice in depth article detailing startup Peppercoin's drive to make micropayments work. Boiling it down to the essentials, Peppercoin basically bills the buyers accurately, but randomly pays the sellers big. Conceivably, sellers could get screwed, but the stochastic properties of the system smooth out the payments. Meanwhile, paying big aggregates many small purchases and makes the micropayments cost effective.
Between Peppercoin's genius tech wizards (Ron Rivest & Silvio Micali) and smart management, it would appear to be a no-brainer.
Here's my question though. How do you get enough buyers to sign up? PayPal worked as an adjunct to eBay, but now that PayPal is part of eBay, Peppercoin can't hitch a ride on that wagon.
Aggregator++. intraVnews is from FutureGlue. One benefit over NewsGator is that intraVnews is free for individuals.
Zero tech content, just sports geekery below.
Steve Kettmann, for Wired News, writes of the demise of edgy sports as The Village Voice shuts down its sport page. The only 'net angle is the discussion of how ESPN.com is slurping all of the edgy writers and putting them on Page Two.
Hey there's always RedEye.
Maybe not.
EDGE is AT&T Wireless's 2.5G service. Over at Wi-Fi Network News, Glen Fleishman reports that AT&TW is claiming that 6,500 cities are EDGE enabled.
Uh, hunh.
Not cheap at $80/month, plus $150 for the network card to start, but at least it's in range of early adopters.
Maybe the US will get to decent cellular data in my lifetime.