 Tuesday, January 21, 2003
Review Of Upcoming Projection Keyboards
"I've written a review of upcoming virtual keyboards based on published reports. There are pictures, descriptions, and details for each of the four major manufactures (Virtual Devices, Developer VKB, Canesta, and Senseboard Technologies)." [Slashdot]
Great bookmark! I didn't realize there are four companies competing in this potential market now. Their products can't get here fast enough for me.
Voting for the Third Annual Bloggies is officially underway. Unfortunately, there are no library-specific blogs up for awards (hey, shouldn't we have our own category!), but Bookslut is up for "best topical weblog." Voting ends on January 31 at 10:00 p.m. EST, and the winners will be announced on March 9 at SXSW in an honest-to-goodness ceremony.
Sharp Unveils Well-Connected Home Server
"At its heart, the HG-01S is a hard drive-based video recorder with an additional photo album feature but what differentiates it from some of the other digital video recorders or home servers on the market is the inclusion of a Web server and networking functions that allow recorded video to be viewed from other computers across the Internet.
It has a 120GB hard drive and records in MPEG-2 at 720-pixel by 480-pixel resolution at either 8 megabits per second, 4 mbps, or 2 mbps. This translates to 30 hours of video in the highest quality mode, 60 hours at medium quality, and 115 hours at low quality. It can also transcode MPEG-2 video into MPEG-4, which is a newer and more efficient video compression system.
At home and in front of the television, accessing the device is much like any other hard drive-based video recorder. A graphical menu offers quick access to recorded TV programs.
Away from the living room, there are a number of options. Around the house, a built-in wireless LAN (802.11b) adapter offers access to any suitably equipped computer while the Internet can be used to access and view recorded programs and images when away from home--if the device is hooked up to a broadband connection via its Ethernet port.....
From a personal computer, it is possible to view recorded TV programs and it is here that the MPEG-4 transcoding function becomes handy.... The MPEG-4 data stream is much lighter. This can also be viewed on some PDAs.....
Another function of the device is its family photo album feature which collects and can display snapshots. These can be transferred to the server directly from a memory card via a PC Card slot on the front of the device. If the user wishes, some can also be published on the Internet for other people to view either from a personal computer of cellular telephone. Members of the family can also send images taken with camera-equipped cell phones back to the server which will store them in its memory.
The HG-01S will go on sale in Japan on February 15 and cost around $848. Plans for overseas sales of the device were not announced." [PC World]
Booktalk
"In constructing allconsuming.net, Erik has deliberately left software hooks and information bait dangling from the site, ready for us to connect and consume. Moreover, he encourages us to do so, telling us to "Use [his] XML" and try out his SOAP interface.
So I did.
While allconsuming.net can send you book reading recommendations (by email) based on what your friends are reading and commenting about, I thought it might be useful to be able to read any comments that were made on books that you had in your collection. "I've got book X. Let me know when someone says something about book X".
So I whipped up a little script, booktalk, which indeed uses allconsuming.net's hooks to build a new service. What booktalk does, crontabbed on an hourly basis, is to grab a user's currently reading and favourite books lists and then look at the hourly list of latest books mentioned. Any intersections are pushed onto the top of a list of items in an RSS file, which represents a sort of 'commentary alert' feed for that user and his books. It goes without saying that the point of this is so that the user can easily monitor new comments on books in his collection by subscribing to that feed, which, aggregated by Blagg and rendered by Blosxom, would look something like this." [DJ's Weblog, via snowdeal.org > ex machina]
Fun GE Flash site for drawing your own pictures and even sending them. While you're there, check out their vision for a digital hospital. Sorry I can't link directly to it, but everything is in Flash so I can't pull a direct URL. You'll have to click on the GE logo at the top of the page and then choose the digital hospital link from there. Grrrr - this is my one big pet peeve about Flash. [via MetaFilter]
It's RSS day here at TSL! Well, I suppose every day is RSS day at TSL since I couldn't possibly maintain my site without it, but an article over at the American Press Institute is also singing its praises:
The Next Front[ier] in the Disruption of Traditional Media
"RSS, an acronym for Really Simple Syndication is a Web content syndication format. It's a form of XML (eXtensible Markup Language), which means that each piece of data — headline, byline and story — is coded separately so that a program or Web page will know exactly what to do with it.
By including a simple piece of code in a Web page, sites can offer headlines from national news sites such as BBC.com and NYTimes.com, magazines such as Salon.com and journal headlines from favorite bloggers, from MacRumors to Boing Boing.
But the power of RSS goes beyond websites to applications that are designed to parse headlines from numerous sources — a mix of media customized completely by the reader. Called 'news aggregators,' these are small desktop applications that let you read headlines from dozens or hundreds of news sites....
Building an RSS output is no problem from most Web-publishing systems already in use by news media sites. (Most sites output to multiple templates; this is just another template.) But few commercial news sites have done so — until recent weeks....
So why create RSS feeds from your site if there's no immediate ROI?
A few thoughts:
- It's emergent. RSS feeds and news aggregators are today what Web browsers were in 1996. It's a new publishing platform, and it's already the de-facto format used by the Web's early adopters.
- It's effortless. Any database-publishing system that can output Web pages can output RSS feeds. No staff time beyond creating a basic template = very little expense.
- It's migrating. RSS feeds now find their way onto Web pages and news aggregators. Apple's new calendar application, iCal, allows users to syndicate events — ranging from personal get-togethers to DVD release dates and sporting events. Headlines are not far behind.
- It's multi-platform. News aggregators are a much better fit for low-bandwidth browsers on mobile phones, PDAs and tablets.
- It's the Classifieds, stupid. Most of the RSS community is focused on content. That's great; so was the early Web. But feeding classified ads to aggregators is the next obvious step, and will prove to be hugely profitable for newspapers — or whoever decides to do it first.
- Fear Factor. Let's face it: Fear is why most newspapers first went online — afraid Microsoft, AOL or Joe Blow was going to steal market share. Not having your content available in a medium that is growing in popularity rather than waning may not have immediate ROI, but the long-term prognosis for such ignorance is death.
Most importantly, the cost of not offering your site's content via RSS news aggregators is in becoming irrelevant. I currently subscribe to more than 20 RSS feeds on my NetNewsWire aggregator. Three come from traditional news-media companies. The rest are offered by hobbyists and niche publishers.
These feeds are no less interesting, insightful or engaging than the mainstream media feeds. These self-syndicated writers have become part of my daily media habit. A Big Media Company hoping to get on my deck will start in 20th place and will need to beat out the new breed of syndicated writers.
Best of luck." [via JD's New Media Musings]
Yeah, what he said! I used to read the Chicago Tribune online, but now I read the Sun-Times in my aggregator because someone is scraping it. I rarely had time to check the NY Times technology section every day, but now I get the headlines as soon as they're posted. Something happening in world events? I see it in my aggregator before I ever make it to my car to hear it on the radio (which I don't listen to anymore anyway) or make it home to catch the news (which I don't watch much of anymore since I get far more in-depth information online). I also don't have to keep flitting back to online news sites. Instead I get all of my news on one web page that updates automatically for me.
And the classifieds idea is indeed a killer app. I subscribe to a few such feeds, like TechBargains, and I was going to make a purchase because of one yesterday (unfortunately the product had already sold out!). What I'd really love is more local news.
RIAA Wins Battle to ID Kazaa User
"A federal judge orders Verizon to disclose the identity of an alleged P2P pirate in a decision that could make it easier for the music industry to crack down on file-swapping networks....
The dispute is not about whether the RIAA will be able to force Verizon to reveal the identity of a suspected copyright infringer, but about what legal mechanism copyright holders will be able to use. The RIAA would prefer to rely on the DMCA's turbocharged-subpoena process because it is cheaper and faster than other methods--but Verizon and civil liberties groups have said it is not sufficiently privacy-protective.
At issue in the RIAA's request is an obscure part of the DMCA that permits a copyright owner to send a subpoena ordering a "service provider" to turn over information about a subscriber. Verizon says the DMCA does not apply because the company is only a conduit and is not hosting the material on its servers." [CNET News.com]
This is where I rely completely on blawgs to dissect this, but this message sent to the DMCA-Discuss mailing list is disturbing:
"The DMCA (Section 512) has a number of ugly provisions, including the infamous 'takedown' provision. Included in those provisions are an expedited subpoena process where a copyright holder can go to a court clerk and demand from an ISP the name of a subscriber alleged to have violated copyrights -- all this before any determination of whether a violation has occurred has been done. The RIAA did this to a Verizon subscriber. However, Verizon fought back by claiming the copyrighted information was not on Verizon's network -- it was on the subscriber's own network, and Verizon merely provided access to it and therefore fell under the exemptions of section 512(a), which has neither subpoena nor 'takedown' provisions.
The judge today ruled for RIAA against Verizon. This means that the RIAA can demand an ISP take down information stored on its customer's computers, AND can demand the names of those customers without even going through the trouble of filing a lawsuit.
Even when the law is on our side, we lose."
Where Next for RSS?
"People who hang around with bloggers all know what RSS is (if you don't, I'll introduce it.) RSS is headed for some interesting times as regards client software, traffic management, and business model, and it would be reasonable to expect some breakage along the way.
RSS FOR THE UNINITIATED: The history of RSS is fraught and complicated and I'm not going there. To summarize, RSS is a little XML language that you use to describe changes in a web site. Usually this is called an 'RSS feed'. Then all kinds of different programs can read the RSS feed and give you clickable news summaries that mean you don't actually have to visit all those websites unless you know there's something there you want to read.
Most people, once they start using RSS to check the news, just don't go back, the amount of time and irritation saved is totally, completely addictive....
When I turn on my laptop in the morning, NetNewsWire goes out and scans 21 RSS feeds. Then it checks up on them at 30-minute intervals after that (this is configurable). I don't know how typical that is, but I know there are people who track way more than I do. There's a problem here - if RSS becomes as wildly popular as a lot of prognosticators (including me) predict, there is going to be an ungodly traffic bulge every morning, and then at half-hour intervals all day.
People who read RSS through web-based products like the Userland offering are going to present a much smaller load to the sites providing the RSS. But I think that RSS-reading is going to get wired into Mozilla and IE and Safari and people will just do it from their desktop.
Fortunately, I think the Web's caching mechanisms will hold up under the load assuming everyone plays by the rules. Unfortunately, at the moment we're not...
I hate to be a wet blanket but I just don't see RSS readers persisting for too long as a standalone application class, this stuff just belongs in the browser. It will take a couple of years for it to get cooked into mainstream browsers in a mature enough form to be usable, so the guys with the RSS-reader software should make hay while the sun shines and start figuring out their Next Big Thing.
RSS was driven by the Weblog-technology companies and I suspect they'll continue to do just fine, Weblogging ain't going away any time soon. Also, anyone who does any kind of publishing software had better start offering a real-easy-to-use RSS interface and sooner rather than later or they're just not going to be in the game." [Textuality, via WebReference]
Emphasis above is totally mine. I'm up to something like 175 feeds in my aggregator, and it scans once an hour.
I can't say "me, too" loudly or often enough. I'm a big believer in RSS (in fact, I've based our entire grant project on it), and I agree that RSS readers will go mainstream and become background like browsers. In fact at this rate, I think RSS will make great headway with PDA and cell phone browsers first. I think there's a huge future for multimedia enclosures in RSS. My plan is to revolutionize communication between Illinois Library Systems using RSS.
Resistance is futile! Bwahahahahahahaha
Googlert
" 'Googlert is an experimental free service which keeps you updated on what the web is saying about you, your products or your interests. It does this by performing regular Google searches on your behalf and sending an e-mail alert containing any new results that appear.' " [via Search Engine Blog, via Library Stuff]
You'll need your own Google API key, but you can sign up for a free one pretty easily. I'll have to play with this when I get home and find mine.
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