Jenny Levine: Cool tools

Inside joke: if only the sombreros were animated, they'd be dancing! Actually, the Flamenco Project sounds interesting, so you should check it out even if you're not spitting Coke through your nose right now. It "investigates how to effectively incorporate large category hierarchies into information access user interfaces" using categorical metadata. [via Peter on SIGIA-L]

One final post for the night. I've been talking to the folks at Macromedia because I'm trying to determine the potential for ColdFusion at SLS, and today they pointed me to iHotelier as a sample of what can be done with Flash. You can read about the case study at the Macromedia Showcase, or you can go directly to the Broadmoor's online reservation form. I have some concerns about this type of implementation, but Kristy and Colin have been great about answering my questions.

I'm mainly posting this for my Flash buddies from last week, because I'm hoping that they'll pass along to me any cool tips and tricks they learn at the second training session next month since I can't be there myself. I'm at least hoping to get a copy of the manual. Please-oh-please-oh-please? I'll be your best friend. :-)

I haven't visited Kottke in a few days (bad Jenny!), so I'm overwhelmed by new things to read and play with from his site. A sampling:

Developing a personal schema/taxonomy - me, too!
Line from an upcoming dot com movie starring Tom Cruise: You had me at "Hello, world." (I know, I know, you're not laughing because it's not that funny, but this *killed* at lunch the other day. Killed!)
James Gleick's forthcoming book
The Nutshell toolbar - I'm installing this at work and at home
Why I read Kottke

The Trouble with TiVo "So if TiVo’s this terrific, why hasn’t it—or any of its competitors—taken off? Talk to people like Makely and you’ll hear nothing but accolades. But after two and a half years on the market, less than 300,000 TiVo systems have been sold. The company’s two main competitors, UltimateTV and ReplayTV, won’t even release sales figures (they’re estimated to have sold less than 100,000 units apiece)." [via Slashdot]

And of those 100,00 ReplayTVs, I own two of them. I agree with all of the owners quoted in this article. I love my Replays, and you'll take them away from me when you pry them out of my cold, dead hands. I hate watching live TV now, as does the rest of my family. Because it's so easy to "tape" programs, find them, and watch them, I tape a bajillion shows for the kids. They are growing up thinking that Batman, Between the Lions, Boy Meets World, Brady Bunch, Dragon Tales, Even Steven, Gunsmoke, Superman, and Zoom are on at any given time of the day. Even better, I can skip right through the commercials. In 3-5 years, everyone will own a piece of equipment that digitally rcords TV shows so that you can watch them whenever you want to. And I haven't even mentioned all of the shows I tape for the adults in the house. Go get yours now - I promise you won't regret it!

Cool tool alert: Current IP Check will tell you what your current IP address is. Can be helpful, helpful. SLS folks - if you need to check you're in the IP range you gave us for reaching our server, check it here first! [via 'brary blog]