Photo by Jesse Andrews.
Man, should I even bother mentioning that Andy “Termie” Smith and my ex-roommate is leaving Flock when he makes fun of me in his parting post?
Well, whatever… if I can’t get over my self-aggrandizement, I guess I never will. Fooey on my self-importance.
Welcome to the pool of sumblimators, Termie, and here’s to beating me out at the top of the Google pile of search results announcing the termination of our prior employment.
Just wanted to point out that folks should keep their eyes on SoundFlavor, a little project I worked on awhile back. Not sure when it’s going to launch, but it’s definitely got legs.
Hey hey, anyone else notice that LinkedIn is sporting some fancy new Web 2.0 gradients and open white space? Just in time for OpenBC’s OpenDesign contest conclusion!
Too bad they didn’t get on the microformats tip. Kinda seems like a waste of effort without them, don’t it?
In my continuing campaign to make AJAX + XHTML + CSS the future of application development, I wanted to point out the release of Mootools, an excellent compilation of scripts that perform a subset of things similar to Dojo, but is a much smaller library that’s a bit more accessible to code against. Digg and enjoy.
Cris Pearson of Plasq (makers of Comic Life) showed me a bundle of screensavers he was working on a few weeks ago and are now available free for downloading.
This excellent set includes:
The Multipack are throwing a Zen Garden-esque contest called PimpMyHTML. They really should have called it PimpMyMicroformats given that they’re using the follow microformats:
The rules are pretty straight forward, and as I’m a fan of constraints and AJAX+CSS+XHTML, I’m looking forward to the entries:
And as you’re limited in filesize, it might be worth your while to go check out the forthcoming Mootools and read up on some ideas on exploiting CSS instead of using JavaScript. And while you’re at it, Molly has two articles on microformats definitely worth a gander.
Moving off of outmoded WebCore, The Omni Group has come out with OmniWeb 5.5, based on WebKit. In my tests, it still has some bugginess loading certain websites, but on the whole, it’s a solid browser that I find using as my trusty secondary (after Camino, of course).
This release is important because it adds yet another to the growing stable of WebKit browsers in the wild.
It also sets a number or precedents with regards to visual tabs, customizing your surfing experience web-wide or at the individual site level and adds RSS subscriptions to its standard feature set. It’s still not the perfect browser, but it’s certainly a contender (though with a $30 price tag, I’m not sure anyone but Omni fans will be willing to ante up with so many decent competitors out there).
Have you ever danced with your software?
If Windows, Linux, Ubuntu or Mac OSX were dance partners, how would they dance? Would they lead, or would you?
More importantly, would you accept a second dance if any one of them offered?
Photo by John Lester.
I can’t quite tell how significant this is, but I know that it’s been a long time coming and that, only over time, will we begin to understand what this system will really mean for information systems.
In classic understated flair, Doug, Eugene and Brad will be releasing the Web 2.0 version of Doug Engelbart’s Hyperscope to the world tonight.
It’s hard for to describe succinctly, but basically it’s taking hypertext and adding the “hyper” to it (today’s web linking is kind of like the Model-T compared to Engelbart’s space age original 1968 vision). You’ve really got to try it for yourself to see what I mean; what at first seems like a big outline (it’s cleverly built on top of OPML) quickly becomes an immersive experience that other system pale in depth and flexibility to.
In some respects, this kind of learnable system is what I was talking about in my post on learning from game design. The only presumption, or goal, of the Hyperscope system is that you’re interested in working with knowledge and information — how you go about finding, linking to, appending or operating on that information is up to you.
All that and it’s built on Alex Russell’s Dojo Toolkit is an achievement in open source cross pollination that should be also be duly recognized.
Congrats guys.
Photo © copyright Adam Loeffler.
I don’t understand why someone hasn’t patented the patent process and shut down the whole racket. There’s nothing that inspires more fear, has created more anger and resentment and held back innovation in the POMO world (thanks Dave!) more than the US Intellectual Property system — and most notoriously copyright and patents.
Now, I’m not an intellectual property communist — far from it. In fact, I’m very much about people getting credit for their work, for their inventions, their ideas and in due time, compensation — both economic and social.
But the system is effed. And as there are alternatives to copyright and trademark, there similarly needs to be an open source alternative to patents, that allows the creative and ingenious to receive credit and kudos without creating a chilling effect on future and subsequent derivative innovation — innovation that has historically been built on borrowed and hacked ideas. Innovation necessary for human progress to continue at the pace it’s at today.
It’s bad enough that sentient creatures will look back centuries — if not decades — from now and laugh at how us humans smogged ourselves to death. Oh no, they’ll also barrel over in hysterics at how we held back our creatives by denying them the freedom to dabble freely and openly without the both fear of being blatantly ripped off as well as slapped with a law suit for violating someone else’s property rights. “What a bunch of cheap trust they had back then”, they’ll quip. “it’s a wonder that the little guys continued to play along even after the whole balance had shifted away from protecting them to protecting the overbloated incumbents!”
I mean, how else can you explain this quote from Christopher Lunt, formerly Friendster’s senior director of engineering (recently made refamous for their social networking patent)?
“My approach was defensive,” he said. “We were not looking to stifle creativity by competitors, nor to make money by licensing. We were making sure that things material to our business were protected, so someone else couldn’t claim the idea.”
“I dislike the current patent process,” Lunt added. “I feel it’s a little too permissive in terms of what is granted as a patent. But that doesn’t mean I can ignore it.”
Gah!! What a waste! Of money! Of talent! Of time! To have to register defensive patents is bullshit. The answer, quite simply, is something more proactive… more positive… duh! It’s open patent licensing! And why our legal system hasn’t codified this yet, well, that’s because you don’t make money off of open systems — you make money because of openness. And that’s something that our legal system, at least the purveyors of the modern legal system, could give a rat’s patootie about. It’s far too subtle. Kind of like that boiling frog in Al’s movie… or the dinosaurs paying no heed as the weather was getting colder… before the Ice Age. Or as the black ground started rising above their shins… drowning in the refuse of their own ancestor’s remains.
Factory Joe 