eSchool News is reporting online publishers are threatening educators for “deep linking,” a term for linking to content within a website without going through the site’s home page.
Crikey. Don’t publishers have better things to do? Apparently not: the American Library Association has put together this list of articles about deep linking and challenges to the practice.
Dave Winer, of Scripting News is going on about directories again. Now this is one of my favorite topics, too, but I’ve been underwhelmed by Dave’s hierarchical, OPML approach to a solution.
He elaborated more today, but I still think he’s off the mark. However, it struck me that what he described today — “No one owns a category anymore than there is a single place to go for information on a single topic on the Web. We thrive on triangulation, multiple ways to view each subject.” — already exists. It’s called a Wiki. (There are also many Wiki clones.)
A Wiki is kind of a collaboratively-authored, very loose content management system, that is typically used to build a heavily hyperlinked collaborative text, but it also has a categorization feature that effectively turns the WikiWeb into a directory of resources.
This isn’t a ringing endorsement for Wikis. In fact, I think they suffer from at least one of the same problems that I previously suggested Dave’s approach suffers from — categorized directories of information without someone acting in the role of taxonomist and/or editor tend to suck for actually finding information.
Creating effective taxonomies and providing effective filtering is a skill that very few people have (hence the role of an editor/information architect/librarian/etc). Distributing that responsibility creates something different, and arguably something more “open” . . . but very rarely does it create something more effective. I’ll take effective over open.
The weblog, Dive Into Mark, is running a series called 30 days to a more accessible weblog. A different accessibility story each day. Way to go!
This article, “What’s Important in a Learning Content Management System,” has been linked several places. I haven’t read the whole thing, but I realized if I didn’t blog it, I’d forget about it! (Bookmarks, just don’t do me any good anymore, since I have six or seven thousand of them. Sigh. I’m still waiting for someone to build my Dream Bookmark Manager Tool. Basically I need my own knowledge base.)
Peter Suber is cool. Not only did he create the nifty and cerebral game, Nomic, but, as I’ve written about before, he is spearheading a free online scholarship (FOS) movement that argues scholarly writing should be free (as in “free beer” and “free speech”). Now he has put upFOS News, a free online scholarship blog. [link via SiT]
Krispy Kreme Will Crush Us All: Ahhh, another convert to that Old Time Religion. All hail the doughnut! The doughnut is mighty and good! And sugary!
[link via Saltire]
According to this New York Post article Parkay has embarked upon interactive packaging. Tubs of Parkay margarine (remember the talking Parkay tubs commercials?) soon will use motion detection to wiggle and say “Butter” as customers walk past them in the supermarket.
Packaging that talks: this is my nightmare. The entire supermarket will be a chattering white noise of margarine tubs (”Butter!”), ketchup bottles (”Anticipation…”), and styrofoam meat packaging (”Where’s the beef? Right here!”) shouting for my attention.
The good news is that it will probably resurrect the flailing web-based grocery shopping-and-delivery services. No one will want to go to a supermarket ever again.
“I am being sitting here shocked”
“But a chicken is a mammal.” (Follow up quote: “Oh. I thought my only choices were a ‘mammal’ or a ‘fish.’ “)
“I was asked to hold the puppet, so I’m holding the puppet.”
“If you’re going to misplace your pants, it’s best to be prepared.”
Names have been withheld to protect the innocent.
University of California–Berkeley is offering a journalism course on weblogs. [link via Metafilter]
Speaking of not being able to find the words, Martin Amis writes about the novel in the post-September 11 world:
An unusual number of novelists chose to write some journalism about September 11 – as many journalists more or less tolerantly noted. I can tell you what those novelists were doing: they were playing for time. The so-called work in progress had been reduced, overnight, to a blue streak of pitiable babble.
Link via Marginalia. Bill must be on a literary bender, because he’s also got a link to an interview with programmer-turned-journalist-and-novelist, Ellen Ullman.