The Unreasonable Man

Lipsum OnLine

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Physics on screen

Don Park's Daily Habit

Neat.

Onscreen objects should not only look great, but also feel right. If an object looks heavy, it should feel heavy when I am pressing on it or moving it around. If the surface of an object looks rubbery or plastic-like, objects behave accordingly when objects are dropped on it. GUI designers have forgotten about physics, something game programmers have not.

Unfortunately, there aren't any physics engines for GUI available today and it would take more than a patch to retrofit existing game physics engine for GUI. I hope someone writes one so onscreen objects can exhibit real world properties like momentum, collision effects, elasity, etc. There is also the sound to consider but, until affordable sound projection technologies becomes readily available, noise will be too much to bear in typical office environments.

RSS Shifts the web

Phil Windley

Why is RSS important? Because it says "here's what's changed on the Web."

When I started building Web sites in 1993, it was very clear then that people visit sites that get updated frequently. That's still true.

Now, however, we have a new tool, RSS, that tells us what's changed. I no longer have to limit my reading to sites I know get updated frequently. Instead, I get pinged whenever sites I'm interested in change.

That's a fundamental shift in what the Web is.

Librarians' Index to the Internet

No idea if this is any good, but it has just appeared. See here for the website and click here for the RSS feed.

Let's set up some student blogs — with inter-blog RSS feeds

cogdogblog:

Ever since I launched this weblog April 2003, I have been talking up blogs quite a bit in my system. The usual heat seekers grab on to the potential and some of the more technology skeptical folks at least do not wrinkle their brows in confusion when I mention "blog". I've run a few "BlogShops" , set up some blogs for folks to experiment with, etc. Most seemed to lack the almost OCD tendencies needed to keep at the practice. ... The uptake has not quite taken off yet, even after some nibbles that seemed like 2 colleges saw blogs as a possible KM (Knowledge Management) tool but went not much further than thinking about it. Some days it feels like the technology universe here is hemmed in at WebCT, Blackboard, Word, and PowerPoint, while I keep seeing much more interesting things way over the fence. ... I was starting to think this might take another decade to see blogs rise in use, but out of the blue, I found out one of our more innovative faculty members is setting up individual blogs for some 200 Anthropology students, for them to practice the reflective writing exercises he has provided in different media for years, and, linking cohort groups of students using RSS to link their posts to each other.

If we use Blogger and Bloglines, there'll be no additional costs involved. So, let's go!

Dave Winer's feeds.scripting.com: RSS aggregator, polling, event log, HTML links

Feeds.scripting.com now has a built-in RSS Aggregator that is automatically subscribed to the feeds in the Top 100. I's another view into the community. The aggregator updates every hour at 15 minutes after the hour. If a site falls off the Top 100 we still read it, so it's also a way of seeing where we've come from.

NewsGator Online Services

Users who subscribe to NewsGator Online Services can now synchronize their subscriptions across multiple machines. This is an industry first - NewsGator 2.0 for Outlook and NewsGator Online Services are the first commercially available tools to provide this capability in such a flexible manner. This sophisticated system ensures that subscriptions follow users wherever they go, users never have to read the same content twice (unless they choose to), and even supports multiple subscription lists so users can have separate, but overlapping, subscription lists at home and at the office.

NewsGator Online Services includes three content reader editions, allowing users to read their subscribed content any time, any place, and on any device: Web Edition; POP Edition; Mobile Edition (users can read their subscribed feeds on any mobile device that supports HTML, including mobile wireless phones and PDA's).

NewsGator Online Services also provides exclusive, subscriber-only content to its subscribers. Initial media launch partners for premium content include InfoWorld and others to be announced soon.

The Top 100 feeds is being recalc'd every five minutes

'Think of the set of feeds it defines, like you'd think of a stock index. Now imagine an aggregator that was automatically subscribed to all the feeds in the Top 100. I'm working on this, and it's nice' (Dave Winer).

WebLogs, WebLogs v2

v.2 posted by email. v.1 (now deleted) contained an html error that cut off the second half of the post

I meant to say, the reason I am interested in TinderBox is because the "public" blogs I have overlap and yet it's cumbersome making them relate to one another. In many ways, they are discrete; I'd prefer something more like a relational database

I'm struggling with the same issue. I'm pretty sure the short-term answer is an encompassing front-end such as NetNewsWire or a PC equivalent eg: NewzCrawler. I suspect that BlogLines et al will soon deliver similar functionality on web-based products. See ShortWire

TinderBox is Mac only. They have been promising a PC version for over a year; make of that what you will. One interesting description of TinderBox was as an "IntroNet", allowing an individual to record, catalogue, sort and publish their thoughts in a clean and clinical manner. One response to this thinking was that it removed the public "brainstorming" element that inevitably follows from published weblogs, and that maybe that was a bad thing...

Multiple Weblogs?

This may be what we're after... ecto is a feature-rich desktop blogging client for MacOSX (we also have a Windows version in the works), supporting a wide range of weblog systems, such as TypePad, MovableType, Nucleus, Blogger, and more. ecto is the successor of the wildly popular Kung-Log, which has been in use by thousands of Mac users and which earned a 4.5 mice in the MacWorld July 2003 issue, a 4.7 rating by users of VersionTracker.com, and a 5.0 rating by users of MacUpdate.com.

ecto features

* support for multiple weblogs and servers (with easy-to-use Account Manager)
* intuitive interface for creating and editing weblog entries (customizable with spellcheck, syntax-coloring, and find-replace)
* full local control of recently posted entries and drafts (with search function)
* quick access toolbar menu with HTML tag templates plus keyboard shortcuts (fully modifiable)
* support of all available remote control options of MovableType and TypePad (posting entries with continuation, summary, keywords, multiple categories, trackback, text-formatting, comment options)
* easily change the posting date of entries
* full-featured HTML-rendered preview of entries using Safari's WebKit
* advanced file and image upload tool (supports converting and thumbnailing images, with history of uploaded files)
* save settings on a per-blog basis
* send notifications by email (with Address Book support)
* insert details of the currently playing iTunes song in your entry
* embedded debug console to troubleshoot network connections
* extensive help documentation accessible from within ecto
* and much more!