Yahoo has launched a new Yahoo Search to compete with Google. As Brian points out it also finds the RSS feed of a site, if one exists. Fits in well with My Yahoo’s recently launched beta RSS aggregator. The nicest thing about the Yahoo search I’ve found so far? A search for Ten Reasons Why puts me ahead of “10 Reasons to Believe in the Christian Faith.” Never managed to edge those dang Christians out on Google.
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Joel on Software writes about biculturalism. In this case, the two cultures under discussion are Windows programmers and UNIX programmers:
Suppose you take a Unix programmer and a Windows programmer and give them each the task of creating the same end-user application. The Unix programmer will create a command-line or text-driven core and occasionally, as an afterthought, build a GUI which drives that core. This way the main operations of the application will be available to other programmers who can invoke the program on the command line and read the results as text. The Windows programmer will tend to start with a GUI, and occasionally, as an afterthought, add a scripting language which can automate the operation of the GUI interface. This is appropriate for a culture in which 99.999% of the users are not programmers in any way, shape, or form, and have no interest in being one.
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And the award for Quickest Thinking In Use of Technology 2003 goes to….
When officer Jason Zier pulled over a 1992 Mazda 626 on Thursday afternoon, the vehicle’s registration had expired. By the time he’d finished writing up Sean Leach for the infraction, the car was legal again. That’s because the 36-year-old Jersey City man had a cell phone, a friend with a computer who he could reach and the foresight to use the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission’s online registration service.
Via Gizmodo
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Just Say No to Microsoft is a site that lists alternatives to major Microsoft software packages.
I’m a big fan of the Mozilla Firebird browser, Mozilla Thunderbird mail client, and OpenOffice office suite as replacements for Internet Explorer, Outlook Express, and Microsoft Office.
Now I’m eager to check out Ability as an alternative to Microsoft Access (since OpenOffice doesn’t come with a database manager) .
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…but affirmation is good.
174.
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Wal-mart is apparently planning to launch its own line of Wal-Mart notebook computers. The article from CNet says:
The retail giant plans to begin offering notebooks under its own brand name during the first quarter of 2004, according to industry sources quoted in a report the Taiwan Economic News published this week. . . . If Wal-Mart, which sells PCs from companies such as Hewlett-Packard and eMachines, moves into the notebook market successfully, it could send ripples across the PC industry. The retailer’s typically aggressive pricing could compel manufacturers such as Dell, HP and Toshiba to reduce their notebook prices in response, analysts said.
Thinking about this in the light of the recent Fast Company article on Wal-Mart, this could feasibly be a move that significantly affects notebook pricing, particularly for manufacturers that sell via retail stores (e.g. Hewlett-Packard).
It would also be interesting to see if if Wal-mart would forsake Windows and sell Wal-mart-branded laptops with Lindows or Lycoris (two consumer-oriented desktop versions of a Linux OS) installed. They already sell Lindows workstations from Microtel. Given that the Linux-based Microtel desktops haven’t exactly revolutionized the OS industry, I doubt that a Linux-based Wal-mart notebook would.
But it would be fun to see Wal-mart and Microsoft get into competition. :)
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Kudos to Clay Shirky for Otlet: Some ideas die because they are wrong.
[Yahoo] was, in other words, “an intellectual cosmos illuminated both by objective classification and by the direct influence of readers and writers.” And it sucked. Sucked sucked sucked. We didn’t even know how bad it sucked until Google came along and (its hard to remember this even five years later) saved the Web from drowning in its own waste.
I won’t dive into the Otlet debate 1, 2 (not that it’s that heated).
However, as someone who in the past longed for a way to heirarchically categorize all of my information, I have gradually moved away from that mode of thinking toward the value of search.
In fact, my current strategy for personal knowledge management, both at home and work, revolves around recording the non-heirarchical flow of ideas into a wiki. My wiki-of-choice is the Python-based MoinMoin, because it’s quick to set up, easy to customize, and has good management tools. While I maintain some notion of heirachy when recording ideas into my personal wiki, I find that the best way to access them is through the search.
The problem with ontologies or taxonomies is that they are damn hard for the average person to build and maintain effectively, especially if you want it to be used by someone else, and even more so when it has to interface or mesh with other taxonomies created by other people. Which is why I think Dave Winer’s attempt at organizing weblog entries by heirarchical categories, and the eventual goal of meshing multiple people’s category directories together, pales in comparison to the usefulness of a tool like searching a Wiki or searching a weblog for your own information or searching Google or Feedster for multiple information sources.
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Last week, the blogosphere was all atwitter over Skype, a P2P VoIP (”peer-to-peer voice over IP” for the acronym-challenged) application.
This week, several weblogs pointed to the New York Times today about Dartmouth transitioning to Internet telephony:
This week, as classes begin, the 1,000 students entering the class of 2007 will be given the option of downloading software, generically known as softphones, onto Windows-based computers.
Using the software together with a headset, which can be plugged into a computer’s U.S.B. port, the students can make local or long-distance telephone calls free. Each student is assigned a traditional seven-digit phone number.
Of this Dartmouth development, Stephen Downes wrote about an article that
says students will be able to make long distance calls for free – but neither indicates what software is used and whether the institution is paying additional (and post-Skype, unnecessary) charges.
Nope, nope, and nope. Skype doesn’t make the telcos unnecessary at all. I think Stephen and the bazillion other people writing about Skype and Dartmouth are conflating computer-to-computer VoIP with real internet telephony.
Read more…
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I wonder if the marketing wonks responsible for Windows 2003’s Rights Management Services understood the other common usage of the “RMS” acronym.
Of course, being a big geek, phrases like “RMS will require Windows Server 2003″ now make me chuckle to myself.
Isn’t it ironic . . . don’t you think?
P.S. Yes, I recognize that the use above and Alanis’ use of “ironic” runs counter to the opinion of 78% of the Usage Panel, but everyone loves a nice pop culture reference in the headline, right?
P.P.S. By god, don’t you just want to be a member of the Usage Panel?!? What a crew to have heady grammar discussions with . . .
Update 09/11/03: Of course it would have made my ebullience seem more honest if I’d spelled the word “grammar” correctly when I posted this. D’oh!
Update 09/12/03: And if I had actually remembered to put the URL in the second link. D’oh, d’oh!
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