By Stephen Downes
January 22, 2004
How Dynamic Categories Work
People
in the wider community are finally discovering dynamic categories, something I've been
plugging for a couple of years now, and which you can view
(as always) on my research page and on Edu_RSS Topics. What is a dynamic
category? Think of it as a predefined search. What's new,
though, is how they're doing it - a very elegant XPath
approach. Are you busy creating hierarchies and structured
directories? Forget about it. Think dynamic categories
instead. By Jon Udell, Jon Udell's Weblog, January 22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
You Got Google mail -
Report
Because of spam, the future of emails and
email newsletters is that there is none. Enter Google.
Google forbids the use of AdWords in email newsletters
(where it would be remarkably effective). Why? Suppose
Google created an email service, made it spam free, and
allowed it to support advertising (as Reuters is supposedly
reporting, though the link hasn't shown up yet). This may only
be a rumour, but it has legs. Join permission based highly
focused advertising, Blogger and RSS, no spam, and Google's
reputation for goodness and you have a winning combination.
By Andrew Orlowski, The Register, January 21, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
4 Colleges Collaborate on Open-Source
Courseware
You have five days to read this
before the Chronicle lowers the silicon boom and charges
you for access, so copy it now and send it to your
friends(*). The headline: "Four universities have announced
a $6.8-million collaborative venture to create open-source
courseware tools and related software for higher-education
institutions." All I can say is, YEAGH! (* Note: this advice is valid only
if copying and forwarding is legal in your jurisdiction.)
By Andrea L. Foster, Chronicle of Higher Education, January
22, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Del.icio.us
It's still a usability
disaster (people need more than just headlines), but it has
been getting a lot of press, and rightly so. The service
is, as it asserts, "a social bookmarks manager. Using
simple bookmarklets, you can add bookmarks to your list and
categorize them." The software is "pre-pre-alpha" and
changing almost daily. But if you squint real hard, you can
see the future here. As noted in Robin Good, "Our approach,
therefore, is to create a navigation tool that copes with
Internet complexity at the individual, rather than the
organizational, level." By Various Authors, January, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
The Scout Portal Toolkit
This is a
very interesting software release with some nifty features.
In addition to the usual search request features, it allows
user annotation, user rating and user agents. It also adds
an intelligent metadata tool to assist submissions. The
free software runs on PHP and MySQL, so if you have a
computer with an internet connection, you can get it
running for free. What is needed now is to make the user
generated content - like the annotations and rations -
available to other readers via RSS or some similar format.
Ah, it's all just a matter of time now, isn't it? By
Various Authors, Internet Scout Project, January, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
Self-Publish And Be Damned? Not
Always.
They used to call it vanity publishing,
and it was the last refuge of the talentless. But as
writers become more frustrated with publishers - their
rules, their share of the profits, their slow response time
- they are turning with increasing success to self
publishing. And some, like this writer, are finding
success. By Andy Kessler, OpinionJournal, January 20, 2004
[Refer][Research][Reflect]
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