Jenny Levine: Web Languages

Better Living through XHTML - a new article from Zeldman at A List Apart, now on my reading list [via The Rogue Librarian]

"Dave Polaschek: Why avoiding tables is important." [Scripting News]

Dave Winer has started an interesting discussion about using tables vs. CSS for layout in Web pages. Lots of people are responding, which is only making me feel that much worse about procrastinating in regards to this issue. Here are some of the links coming out of the discussion:

Why Web services will be the Next Big Thing "Web services establish a method of standardizing communication, making it easier for applications and devices to share information back and forth across the Internet." [at ZDNet AnchorDesk]

Here's a good overview of Web services for those of you that are getting curious (as I am). The more I read about this, the more I think it has potential for things like Find-It! Illinois, IGI, VIC, and interlibrary loan in general. For those of you in the know, could it be an XML-based version of Z39.50 or is that stretching it too far? I have just got to start learning XML in order to connect-the-dots and begin using it.

Andy, you've wanted to do something bigger and better. Here you go. Quantum Programming with Perl [missingmatter]

It's a toolkit. ;-)

InfoWorld's 10 technologies that made the biggest impact on the enterprise in 2001 [via Scripting News]

Out of the top 10 technologies, we're explicitly working on four of them at SLS - portals, network-attached storage, databases, and handhelds. Hopefully this coming year will bring me knowledge of Web services, and XML (RSS in particular), and maybe a grant to start going wireless. 4 out of 10 is pretty good for a Library System!

I have theories about web services, but I don't know if they're right. After all, they are based purely on brief statements I've read in other people's blogs. I guess I should really look into this in more detail, and I suppose the Web Services site is about a good a place to start as any. Oh-oh... they have an RSS feed. Maybe the address of your RSS feed will end up on your business card, eh?

Does anyone have pointers to a WS 101 article or site?

SitePoint has an article about how to Create a Content Feed for a MySQL/PHP-driven Web site. I don't happen to have a MySQL/PHP-driven Web site handy at the moment so this doesn't help me very much, but I'm wondering if Mr. Andy can translate this into msql and Perl. What say ye, sir?

At the bottom of the second page is a screenshot of how the feed winds up looking in a browser. THAT's what I want to do for Illinois Library Systems across the State. Can I make it happen with Frontier and/or Radio automatically generating the feeds? I still don't know yet.

In case you haven't seen this elsewhere, The Handheld Librarian is hosting an Acrobat PDF about X-HTML and Basic Web Pages for PDAs. It was developed by E. Lynne Beades, Web Development Librarian, at the Health Sciences Library at the University
of North Carolina Chapel Hil. Thanks to both Lori and Lynne for posting this!

The Next Generation Customer Communication Platform "In the not-too-distant future, we will begin seeing unified customer support platforms that allow companies and their customers to communicate seamlessly via the Web, telephone, and wireless devices. In this article, we will learn how two evolutionary trends are creating a new generation of unified customer communication platforms. The lines between a phone customer and a Web customer are going to blur." [at VoiceXML Planet, via WebDeveloper.com]

This illustrates my theory that in the future, libraries will have a version of the "Wal-Mart greeter" handling incoming communications, whether via email, Instant Messaging (IM), SMS, or telephone. And for a long time, that intermediary will be a human being. Most libraries have moved to automated answering systems for incoming phone calls, but that doesn't work well in the world of electronic communications (except maybe for an email autoresponder acknowledging we got your message and will respond).

We have to shift in order to communicate with our patrons in their world, not ours. We can no longer sit behind a desk waiting for a phone call.

Andy, read Adam Curry's vision for calendar Web services. I don't pretend to understand how to do this, but I think we were right that we could connect the Library Systems' calendars this way.

Meryl is on a roll today, so here's the first of two links gleaned from her site. On my list of languages I've already learned in a parallel universe where there are 34 hours in a day is PHP. Maybe I'll get to it a little bit faster in this life thanks to ComputerWorld's Introduction to PHP. Then again, maybe not.

The Library_Geek points us to a 3D XML Navigator and says "Try to imagine something like this applied to an OPAC. It certainly isn't perfect, but imagine the possibilities." I would add one more layer to this thought that it could be an excellent way to search an OPAC, reference databases, and librarian-selected index of Web resources simultaneously.

What SGML Can Teach Us About XML & the Web.

CMSWatch: If you had 30 seconds to explain the rationale for XML to a non-technical business manager, what do you say?

Harvey: Repurposing of information is typically the biggest advantage of going to XML. You can take it to traditional paper, you can take it to Web, you can take it to wireless applications, and you can take it eBooks.

CMSWatch: Can’t you go from Microsoft Word to all those formats?

Harvey: No. There’s no inherent structure in Word. If you export a Word file, you’re going to get RTF or HTML. And if you’re trying to get some sort of complex information from the data, Word just isn’t going to do it for you. [via More Like This WebLog]