Phil Wolff has posted a great collection of links, texts, checklists, and templates.
Category Archives: Communications, Connection, Internet, Web, Media
Free CDs loaded with great software
There are two open source software packages that are packed with applications I use at work and at home: GNUWin II and TheOpenCD. It’s much faster to download the applications individually, and I take that approach myself, but if you spend time installing software on friends PCs every now and then, this can be a real time saver.
Hollywood acts against BitTorrent tracker sites
Wired: Hollywood Wants BitTorrent Dead.
Wordform Kick-Off
Shelley has officially kicked-off the Wordform project. Like CivicSpace is to Drupal, its goal it to take a current platform, and improve upon it significantly. I’m looking forward to watching where this project goes 🙂
Speaking of CivicSpace, take another look at Philly Future. A ton of changes this weekend. I still need some design help, but I’m far more happy with its information architecture now.
Learn how to use XmlHttpRequest *now*
if you develop web applications and you aren?t looking today for ways to include dynamic interface techniques like those made practical by XmlHttpRequest, you?re going to end up losing to someone who is.
Charles Miller: 12/11/04 via Dave Johnson.
delicious-java
It seems whenever I’m about to start building something, someone else has already started to pave the way. Hey, that’s a good thing. I’m not complaining 🙂
The “architecture of participation”
John Battelle comments on Google’s recent moves and concludes they are joining the “architecture of participation”:
…what really distinguishes open source is not just source, but an “architecture of participation” that includes low barriers to entry by newcomers, and some mechanism for isolating the cathedral from the bazaar. This architecture of participation allows for a real free market of ideas, in which anyone can put forward a proposed solution to a problem; it becomes adopted, if at all, by acclamation and the organic spread of its usefulness.
All of the most significant open source communities have some centralized “cathedral” elements — look at the way Linus controls what goes into the Linux kernel, or the way Larry Wall controls what goes into the design of Perl. But the most successful open source communities surround that cathedral with a bazaar that is significantly open. In the case of Linux, this is the original Unix architecture, a set of “small pieces loosely joined” (to quote the title of David Weinberger’s book about the architecture of the WWW). In the case of Perl, it was CPAN, as much as anything.
Tim O’Reilly: The Architecture of Participation: 4/6/2003
In this, I think he nails why the Dean campaign was so effective utilizing Meetup.com. Meetup.com was the Dean campaign’s “bazaar” that indeed was a set of small groups, loosely joined, but united in purpose. It’s why his organization, Democracy for America, is still alive and kicking now, and if it doesn’t lose its way, will continue to do so for a long time to come.
An EditThisPage anniversary
Thanks for wishing us a happy five years blogging Mr. PapaScott 🙂 Sorry for missing yours. Happy belated five years for you too.
It’s getting real close to my own 5 year EditThisPage anniversary. It’s a good opportunity for me elaborate on my own personal history a bit:
Back then, I was already a blogger, maintaining my personal site using a free version of Frontier for Windows, amongst other hand built tools of my own. Blogging was so new, I was, in fact, the only known blogger in all of Knight Ridder, the company I was working for. Additionally, I was publishing a RSS feed on the Kosovo war that was being aggregated by My.Userland and My.Netscape. These efforts brought me some visibility in the company, and more than a little notoriety with some folks there. Many thought I should not be doing what I was, and should stop. A good thing I didn’t.
When Dan Gillmor was exploring options to run his weblog, word had reached him about me, and he asked for my opinion. Whether Dan using Manila (DaveNet: Oct. 25, 1999) was influenced by me, or the other way around – I have no idea anymore – but one thing was for sure, I had to have a way to experiment outside the confines of work. I didn’t want simply extend my ego online with a new blog about myself, hense PhillyFuture was born.
Happy anniversary to you, to us, to Manila and to its gone, but not forgotten hosting environment EditThisPage.
EditThisPage and Blogger.com (Blogger.com preceded EditThisPage (DaveNet: Dec. 08, 1999) by a couple months I think, while Manila, the software behind EditThisPage, came out almost simultaneously with it) provided models that it seems all other blogging tools and environments have looked to for inspiration and have striven to improve upon.
One thing I need to add: I miss working with Dan and the folks at KR. Being surrounded by journalists and their idealism during that time was something special. Especially Dan. Our talks about technology were just terrific.
All of us were kinda like homesteaders back then. But in my humble opinion ? it’s now when things get interesting. After all ? you need to have paved roads to have a Mustang, and our roads aren’t all the way there yet, but are getting close. And the Lord knows ? I want a Mustang!
WordPress vulnerability and fix
deli.icio.us stuff
After reading that Rafe was using it, I thought I’d give it a try. You’ll never go back to managing bookmarks entirely with your browser again. I’m using its output to help build my Links page on this site.
The following are some links for my own reference:
XML.com: Introducing del.icio.us.
Manageability: Groovy and Del.icio.us.
Jeffrey Veen: Publishing Links With Perl.
Roger L. Costello: Building Web Services the REST Way.
Jon Udell: del.icio.us.