Nothing and Some More

RSS aggregator and weblogs: Web gadgets for news junkies (via The Shifted Librarian)

The model of content aggregation has changed dramatically over the past few years. From centralized news gathering on Web portals, we're moving to a flexible, decentralized model open to alternative forms of content. In my own work, I keep up with many Weblog writers whose commentary often rivals more conventional sources in quality and isn't tamed by corporate constraints.
But I want to mix those insights with solid reporting from the wire services and industry publications. I'm after the kind of overview that comes from seeing how a wide variety of sources interpret the same facts. That's hard to achieve online, but RSS software filters out the noise, making it a serious option for Net-minded newshounds.

Variety has a RSS feed (via TSL)

RSS 0.92: A Step-by-Step Beginner's Guide to Creating Your First Document and another RSS tutorial plus MetaBrowser, a cataloguing tool for the internet that helps browse/add/manipulate the semantic data available in webpages (via TLS)

Why building MetaBrowser ?

The Semantic Argument Web: What really scares me or The Semantic Argument Web

I do think there is a way to entice large numbers of people to provide some metadata for their pages. Have Google announce that it will now enable searches on a minimal set of metadata such as the Dublin Core that provides the basic tags most people would find useful. If people knew that this would make it much easier for people to find their pages, they'd probably do it. Thus, we could get a limited set of smarts into the data that would make much of life on the Web easier, although the semantics would be limited to pretty much what is on your dog's license tag. This isn't the type of smarts TBL has in mind.

What the Semantic Web is not

I see another obvious reason to use metadata, even without the incentive of their potential exploitation by search engines: to control your own words, instead of having them catalogued by someone else or a machine.

Instead of asking machines to understand people's language, it involves asking people to make the extra effort

The analogy with grammar and orthograph is clear: I make the extra effort to have a correct and coherent syntax so I can get understood the way I intended it. Sure broken tagz And. no metadata iz, one way Too do w'eb pagiz !?. Ju5+ L1k3 I k4|\| +4Lk z3 1337 //4'/. I can also try to have correct spelling, valid markup and a coherent text structure.
Obviously an integrated spellchecker with metadata-awareness tool is missing to write efficiently on the semantic web. But I had homepages before I got one-button publishing, why not tinkering now while waiting for the nextgen tools.
Sorry, I can't write such a tool, I'm still trying to design correctly my own mono-user integrated scriptable CMS+PIM+RssAggregator.

SGML history

DiveIntoMark showed how auto-discovery of RSS was that simple. Having your site/writing structure understood by a machine can be useful now.

FAQ about META tagging

The word METADATA® was registered in 1986 as a trademark (U.S. Trademark Registration No. 1,409,206) belonging to The Metadata Company. The trademark was granted "incontestable" status in 1991. Metadata is a proprietary mark which stands for The Metadata Company. For this reason our application of this architecture is sometimes referred to as META data.

To Attend or Attend Not

Asiafirst, a weblog about the Art and Culture of India and China

Web Communities and the Art of Making Money Good questions he asks. Echoes my own wonders about the inexistence of Craiglists for Europe, the US-focus of 99% of the spams I get (recently I have been receiving spam telling me how smart it was to invest in Euro... almost as funny as the offers to increase my breast size, or enhance my computer skills) or the geographical-obsessed communities.

To be honest, I really don't grok the community fixation of most web sites. What's a community anyways ?
I'm pretty sure I'm missing something, but what's wrong with the P2P model: I have a site; you too. We share. Hyperlinks, points of view, valuable and stupid ones and insight based on our experience. What's the point of doing that in a crowded place ? an easy url to remember ? a similar design ?
Wath's wrong about the Web is a borderless community way of seeing websites as simple interesting voices, not expecting complete individuals. Just words and ideas. The metadata I want are the subjects a site deals with, not who/where is the author. Are the links I present more valuable because I'm living 10 miles from you ?
Furthermore, meeting people is always a one-t(w)o-one experience that I fail to reproduce online.
Chitchatting and emailing before a blind date can smooth things, but the burst of adrenaline you get when you fist smell, see and hear the whole physical other is worth every byte I'm missing (the last MasterCard ad goes like this <q> Cell phone (to call friends): $180, pda (to beam friends): $200, internet setup (to IM friends): $50 - actually being with friends: priceless</q>).
Yes, I can meet people easily on the web, I'm a dog but no one knows it. On the other hand, no one believes I'm a dog and want to bark with me.
I guess I'm more into doing my own cocktail here than trying to become a franchised bartender elsewhere. Drinks are free anyways.

Meetup in Paris: blog and LiveJournal users meetings.

Stay4Free brings people together who are offering and seeking free accommodations to travellers all over the world and does not display well with my Mozilla.

La comunidad de weblogs argentinos

Also via TSL, Clear Landmines. You can also donate money to Handicap International. Unless you prefer breasts (via BoingBoing)

©Quiet

P2P streaming or the new netradios ? (via /. - the community adds win32 binaries only and no source and that swarmcast seems more interesting)

DJ of the future

[Gary Robinson] thinks the Internet will enable those old-time radio DJ's to be replaced by individuals who are doing something a lot like blogging and who supply music recommendations and/or audio streams as part of what they do. If the blog posts were audio, then they would be doing exactly the same thing those DJ's did. If written, they are blogging.

And the obvious audio illustration

Last Night A DJ Saved My Life
Last night a DJ saved my life
Last night a DJ saved my life yeah

Cause I was sitting there bored to death
and in just one breath he said
You gotta get up you gotta get on you gotta get down girl

by INDEEP

The Covers Project, a database of cover songs. With RSS update

Andrew, the Netjetter is back home. You can read his whole trip notes.

Learn to speak Corporate-ese

The Economist: granma got a gun in Venezuela

In the slums, too, people assume that armed conflict is coming and that the enemy is better prepared. I have a 24-inch TV, says the leader of one pro-Chavez community organisation in western Caracas, and if I can sell it to buy a pistol, I will. Both sides argue that the other has nothing to lose. The middle class is risking nothing, the community leader says. They hire people to fight and die for them.

The Economist: UK: who gains from immigration ? Hint: most people do.

The Economist: Euro, coping with a sinking dollar

Jejune

1. Not interesting; dull: and there pour forth jejune words and useless empty phrases (Anthony Trollope).
2. Lacking maturity; childish: surprised by their jejune responses to our problems.
3. Lacking in nutrition: a jejune diet.

USA Present at the creation

USA:
Global Population 4.7%
Global GDP 31.2%
Global cinema BoxOffice revenues 83.1%
Global Defence spending: 36.3%
Global spending on R&D 40.6%

Porn as always is an early-adopter. And don't trust what you see on the web. Or in print.

Oh, Ann.

Narrative structure in The Tale of Genji