The keyboard of my laptop
The keyboard of my laptop is fucked. I plugged in a keyboard, and now when I type on the plugged in keyboard things work fine, but when I type on my laptop keyboard I get numbers for certain letters. Here goes: " get n40bers f6r certa5n 3etters."
I'm running Win XP on a Compaq Presario 700. I have 2 accounts on my laptop, the problem doesn't occur on the other account (in Win XP you can have multiple logins, each with its own desktop preferences and such). I couldn't find any tips on the compaq site... anyone has an idea?
White Xmas! We went to
White Xmas! We went to see Frida (the movie) yesterday and afterwards went to Lincoln center (New York City, USA) in the middle of a snowstorm. It was fantastic - the spectacle of the snow flying around between the tops of the building, illuminated by the lights was even better than the tree. White Christmas indeed - the whitest in NYC since 1909.
My cable internet company is
My cable internet company is screwing me (charging things I didn't order) but since they're a monopoly I can't change. If I get this wireless router, can I then let everyone in the building know they can use my wireless access point? And how much is a wireless card for my laptop (Compaq)?
AIFIA | AIfIA Finishes its
AIFIA | AIfIA Finishes its First Month with 200 Members, International Flavor: "The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture, which launched in early November, already sports a membership of over 200 people from five continents engaged in the emerging field of information architecture. Recent additions to AIfIA's leadership council are similarly global, hailing from Australia, Belgium (that's me), Chile, Denmark, and the US."
CityDesk: Desktop Content Management: why
CityDesk: Desktop Content Management: why do they have this, like, really blurry screenshot?
Digital Web Magazine - Features:
Digital Web Magazine - Features: The Psychology of Navigation: "A typical user, faced with a typical, freshly loaded Web page - her eyes bouncing around the page - takes in all the options available." No they don't. At least not when they're looking for something - they'll click the first likely link.
destinationKM.com: Building ''I'' Schools: "Pioneering
destinationKM.com: Building ''I'' Schools: "Pioneering university programs in information science." Information architecture should be thaught there. Is it?
The Register: "Microsoft Corp is
The Register: "Microsoft Corp is believed to have trained its acquisition crosshairs on Macromedia Inc."
Faceted Classification Schemes / By
Faceted Classification Schemes / By B. C. Vickery. (thanks Michael): reprint (sounds like photocopy) of this hard to find book.
Bias makes ambigious metadata more useful, not less.
A comment on Christina's blog made me think: "And for metadata to be useful, it has to be honest." After reading lots of Lakoff, that just didn't sound right. Thinking about it some more, I think bias is:
1. unavoidable with ambigious metadata (unambigious metadata are things like publication date, author. Ambigious metadata are things like topics or ratings, and can be a lot more useful.) There is always bias. Unbiased categorization is not possible.
2. a value-add. I find it more valuable if a friend that I know (whose biases I am familiar with) recommends me something than if a stranger does the same. Bias ads value to metadata. Or maybe that should be: Known bias increases the value of ambigious metadata.
That's not really what I wanted to say though. More known bias means more valuable ambigious metadata. That's more like it, although I feel I'm still missing something. It's not just that knowing bias is good in a we-can't-avoid-it-so-lets-know-it kind of way, it's that bias in itself is good - it ads personality and flavour to metadata.
Is this something librarians have known all along?
Better Living Through Software: "It
Better Living Through Software: "It became a mission of mine to discover why only Germans seemed to be able to crack the Chinese auto market, but I only found more mysteries."
Metacrap: there are indeed real
Metacrap: there are indeed real and often unrecognized reasons why metadata hasn't taken off.
People are lazy and stupid are bad analysis (is that a plural?) of these reasons: people aren't lazy, they are just not interested in tagging metadata to stuff if they don't see an advantage to it: what's in it for the authors?.
People lie is an obvious one. Know thyself is where it gets good, another good one that isn't understood by many people starting out in the metadata world is that schemas aren't neutral. The conclusion (implicit metadata, like Google's analysis of links, is more useful) surely has some truth to it. Interesting. Maybe the whole idea of having people tag their stuff with metadata is deeply flawed?
I'm growing somewhat dissatisfied with
I'm growing somewhat dissatisfied with MT's rebuild times... :(
I'm compiling a list of
I'm compiling a list of small independent software developers who actually live of their product. I would really appreciate any pointers to more.
- movabletype.org (I'm not sure they live of their software)
- Fogcreek
- Userland
Peter Van Dijck - Userati:
Peter Van Dijck - Userati: seems I have connections to these people?
Another clever post by Tanya
Another clever post by Tanya on Power Law Distributions.
Three days in, the faceted
Three days in, the faceted classification mailing list has 80 high quality members and is rocking! I think we found a niche.
WThRemix - Design and Code
WThRemix - Design and Code Challenge: redesign the W3C site!
I joined the "Leadership council"
I joined the "Leadership council" of the AIFIA. I will be leading (which means I will basically start it up and keep it going) an initiative to provide translation services for IA related content. Could be cool. More later.
Meanwhile, let me reassure you about Aifia. It is set up by a bunch of really good people who are trying hard to build a good non profit organisation for information architects. They made some public relations mistakes, but they're information architects, not branding experts. (I'm writing about this Cluetrain style). The first thing I proposed after accepting the invitation to join (people get elected) was to change that name: "Leadership council". It has all the wrong undertones. Really. The majority didn't feel so, so we move on. It's all about getting good stuff done for information architecture as a field. So I'm gonna focus on that.
If you have questions/feedback about the Aifia, feel free to contact me personally.
Now get involved if you have ideas and time to spare. Good people are doing good things. It's kind of exciting.
azeem.azhar.co.uk: Auto trackback and categorising
azeem.azhar.co.uk: Auto trackback and categorising blogs (via Ben): "When I author a blog post to be able to submit it to a categorisation server. This server to perform analysis on the content, analysis on my context (what it already knows about me), analysis on the context of the blog post (what URLs am I quoting, what am I tracking back to, and analyses of those posts) to provide suggested categories which I can select.
The categories would need to come from an agreed set of taxonomies."
Repeat after me: centralized agreed-upon taxonomies don't scale. Centralized agreed-upon taxonomies don't scale. What's worse: they don't fulfil our varying classification needs, so even if they would scale it wouldn't help.
Ben Hammersley.com: More on Emergent
Ben Hammersley.com: More on Emergent Taxonomies: "So, with an Emergent Taxonomy you start off with the entry itself, and relate other entries to it - and you *don't*give*the*category*a*name*that*influences*it. How you relate the entries can be anything - from linking to it, to referencing it with a trackback to encoding an xlink or rdf data that adds additional flavours of relationship. But either way, it's just a one-on-one relationship between entries. And then, you just treat it like a social network, where the clusters are where the topics get more dense, and more defined. "
Good thinking. Names (terms) are indeed limiting, that's why we need so many controlled vocabularies and such. However, categories are how we think (see anything by Lakoff), which is why the topic approach makes sense: a topic can have many names (or terms), but it still is the same topic. I think the whole XTM topic concept (as copied in XFML) is still limited (in that it assumes topics as the atomic unit, where categories might be better), but they aren't limited by names so much.
Snark Hunting : America's Favorite
Snark Hunting : America's Favorite : Naming and Branding in Popular Culture: "Brands don't have to conduct surveys to find out if they are America's favorite, they can just trademark the name."
Catalogablog: "There are several projects
Catalogablog: "There are several projects to add metadata to Web logs to provide better access to them. However, everybody seems to be working in isolation."
heyblog: Adaptive Design and modular
heyblog: Adaptive Design and modular code: we live in a new world: hundreds of thousands of people are technology literate and have coding skills. Sony's move towards wireless devices should recognise that and add in easy programmability - that may well be the killer app, not downloading Time Warner or Sony broadband content.
New mailing list for faceted classification
Phil Murray of the Knowledge Management Connection and me are starting a discussion list for practicioners of faceted classification: the FCD mailing list.
xSiteable 0.5 released: A CMS
xSiteable 0.5 released: A CMS built around topic maps: "It has a simple Notation language for content called xSiteable Notation, utilizing for structure, binding and other assorted cleverness and the Sablotron XSLT parser for quick, reliable and powerful processing. Just run the xSiteable script, and you get a complete site out the other end, ready for deployment. Topics, associations and occurences, together with a mini-content management system and notation system, all wrapped up in one."
heyblog: Faceted Classification, almost right:
heyblog: Faceted Classification, almost right: Andrew describes a project where he used faceted classification that turned out almost all right.
Content inventory tip 6: reduce
Content inventory tip 6: reduce strain on wrists by using keyboard shortcuts. On Windows,
- alt-Tab switches between windows
- ctrl-Tab selects url bar in browser
- ctrl-c is copy
- ctrl-v is paste
Boxes and Arrows: Our Favorite
Boxes and Arrows: Our Favorite Books: Recommendations from the Staff of Boxes and Arrows. A great list, but a disclaimer of what the associate fees are used for would have been useful for community building.
Boxes and Arrows: All About
Boxes and Arrows: All About Facets & Controlled Vocabularies: just a teaser for an upcoming series. Looking good!
Ironically the MIT DSpace Business
Ironically the MIT DSpace Business Plan PDF is a 404.
Bliss Classification Association: a fully
Bliss Classification Association: a fully developed faceted classification system I didn't know about.
webgraphics : weblog : W3C,
webgraphics : weblog : W3C, XHTML.. but should it be more?
tima thinking outloud. : Announcing
tima thinking outloud. : Announcing MT-Meta: A Meta Data Plugin for MovableType. If I understand this correctly it uses the title text entry field to let you enter keywords. I am planning to get Taxomita to plug into MT on release 2.0.
I've used cloudmark for several
I've used cloudmark for several months now, and it is no doubt the best anti spam software around. Their business model is brilliant as well: the consumer version is free, in return they get the collaborative anti-spam filtering of millions of people, and they sell the enterprise model that uses that intelligence. I hope it works out and they can keep the consumer version free, if not they'll stand no chance against MS.
Carl Linnaeus, father of all
Carl Linnaeus, father of all taxonomy: "Before Linnaeus, species naming practices varied. Many biologists gave the species they described long, unwieldy Latin names, which could be altered at will; a scientist comparing two descriptions of species might not be able to tell which organisms were being referred to. For instance, the common wild briar rose was referred to by different botanists as Rosa sylvestris inodora seu canina and as Rosa sylvestris alba cum rubore, folio glabro. The need for a workable naming system was made even greater by the huge number of plants and animals that were being brought back to Europe from Asia, Africa, and the Americas." (via Ben Hammersley)
My Google pagerank is now
My Google pagerank is now 7/10 (it was 6/10 a while back). I think it means that good sites link to me. Google ego striking :)
Information Flow #4 ~~ August
Information Flow #4 ~~ August 2002 ~~ Facets and Multiple Angles of Access.
I updated the XFML software
I updated the XFML software page and decided to put links ad stuff on XFML on this blog. The XFML.org page just contains official release announcements now.
And more reactions to Mark's
And more reactions to Mark's XFML post:
metaGarbage: "XFML is a new kid on the block and yet another metadata format, somewhat similar to RSS. I%u2019m not quite sure of what use it is to me at the moment, but there%u2019s a feed available."
Sean McGrath :"Breaking out of rigid hierarchies with faceted classification and XFML. Doesn't this look nice? [...] I see a bright future for XFML."
Mickblog: "This is an interesting variation on RSS/RDF. It allows you to describe your site in a much more categorical manner and allows you to create more poweful navigation aids. I'm sure it does much more but thats good enough to be interesting."
G10.log: "My question to Has is, "how expensive would it be to implement XML, XFML into a site to make the site's content accessible to anyone?" There are many companies that fall into the $10,000 and under price tag for a site, is it possible to build some of these "advanced" technologies into a site without dramatically increasing the cost?" How about, like, for free?
qweb: promoting quality in Web
qweb: promoting quality in Web interaction design. The only example there is very nice.
[BOT] Concept Dictionary. This is
[BOT] Concept Dictionary. This is a set of topics and subtopics about drugs. Manually, a set of weigthed generating terms were added. A spider searches the web for stories related to drugs and automatically assigns topics to these stories. The end results gets exported in this XFML feed, which is the first known case of someone using the occurrence strength concept which lets you indicate how much trust you have in the occurrence. I say cool.
Imagine
XFML (through Mark's excellent post) is getting people thinking. The word imagine crops up regularly in these posts.
Heal Your Church: "Using a format such as XFML, or at least a much smaller node-like structure based upon an XFML element, the system then goes out and pushes the necessary information into our waiting queue, emails the appropriate moderator for final approval. No forms, no typos, no fuss, no muss. "
Traumwind: "XFML, Lua and Traumtank
well, maybe not in that order... But that's what is keeping me ticking these last days."
Rowboat: "This has the data structuralist in me drooling! It's like having that pile of Lego in front of me again!"
Column Two: "This is a really useful case-study that shows how faceted classification information can be converted into a range of navigation and searching tools, amongst other wonders. "