Martin L.W. Hall: Interests

Henry Kissinger. "Each success only buys an admission ticket to a more difficult problem." [Adam Curry: Adam Curry's Weblog]

Blog's the Word. I guess MSNBC is getting on the blogging bandwagon. from C|Net

New Map Details More Than 1,000 California Wineries

Content and Taxonomy. A good place to begin learning some of this stuff. Very applicable to my document analysis work.

Stephen Ambrose. "The past is a source of knowledge, and the future is a source of hope. Love of the past implies faith in the future." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Emile Chartier. "There are only two kinds of scholars; those who love ideas and those who hate them." [Quotes of the Day]

Robert Frost. "Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper." [Quotes of the Day]

Seeing and Tuning Social Networks [Slashdot: News for nerds, stuff that matters] This is a interesting piece from Jon Udell (by way of Slash Dot).

Community Formation and Village Shop in Blog Space

Great piece about how community online dynamics are changing.

Benjamin Disraeli. "Great services are not canceled by one act or by one single error." [Motivational Quotes of the Day]

Google Opens Up Google LabsSeveral ideas that Goog .... Google Opens Up Google Labs
Several ideas that Google plays with in public, from keyboard shortcuts (Google getting into browser usability,) to term sets (get a list of related terms to the ones you listed.) [Web Voice: online business models and technical marketing - a blog by Olivier Travers]

Stephen Jay Gould dies. Harvard professor, evolutionary biologist and noted author succumbs to cancer. World [USA Today : Front Page]

I think that an understanding of evolution is important in many things. I do not think that it changes our view of God necessarily, but it is important in our understanding of how things develop.

Getting it write

Bruce Baugh has been writing about the evolution of Weblogs.

Not exactly related, but I've been thinking about the expression "trial and error." Much more useful than "trial and success," no? Reminds me of a Garrison Keillor line from one of his Prairie Home Companions of many years ago. Addressing his talk to graduating high school seniors, he wished them failure. "Success doesn't teach anything," he said. Failure does.

My question/whatever-it-was at Steven Johnson's keynote on Weblogs yesterday was pretty much a failure. I'd be surprised if it made even partial sense, beyond one good laugh line.

Steven had some rovocative and interesting things to say. People were talking about some of them later. And I didn't know enough of what they were talking about because during Steven's talk I was busier blogging and coping with technology than I was with listening to him. Usually blogging a talk makes me listen more closely, but in this case it didn't happen. It showed when I went up to the microphone.

I had another experience like that, just before I drove up here. In excpetionalhaste (even for me, an exceptionally hasty guy) about something Thomas Friedman wrote in the New York Times. The post was full of both factual and copy-editing mistakes. Friedman responded by email (through an intermediary), saying I had read him wrong, which was partly true. I also thought he had read me wrong. But what he read wasn't what I really wanted to write in the first place. I also didn't have time to correct, explain or banter about it (which would have been terrific, since that was the original idea behind the post). So I took the post down, and an opportunity had to be tabled, if it wasn't lost altogether.

Bruce writes,

It is indeed early days in this, and we are all collectively figuring what the heck it is we want to do with this stuff. Some people have a very strong, clear sense of what they want logs for and how they want to go about it. Others are noodging.

I think we're all noodging, no matter how clear we are about what we're noodging toward.

The day that was

Still at the O'Reilly thing. Spent a lot of yesterday writing and then recovering from losing the main thing I had been working on. Got some terrific help from Rael on the matter, but to no avail. Files I know I modified during the day didn't show up anywhere. I didn't finish rewriting the main piece until a few minutes ago, and I'm wasted.

While I crash for a few hours, dig how Rob Flickenger made montages out images culled from everybody else's Web traffic, without their knowledge. Brilliant and scary. The software involved was EtherPEG.

This montage should warm Locke's & Weinberger's hearts.

[Doc Searls Weblog]

Google SVG Search, Part II. Another module, another dozen lines, and a couple of helper routines and we're ready for SVG display. Michael Classen outlines the next step in the development of an SVG based Google query script. 0513 [WebReference News]

You are an AKMA.
You stand out from the crowd because of deeply held beliefs in the unknown.
You ponder endlessly and treat everyone, even fucknozzles, with respect.
WWAD (what would AKMA do) guides your actions.
Take the What Blogging Archetype Are You test at GAZM.org

Apple announces first rack servers, P2P, chat, web services [The Register]

Let's see what Apple will do with Web services!

Apple Instant Messenger to Work with AOL. SAN JOSE, (Reuters) - Apple Computer Inc.(AAPL.O) on Monday previewed a new bundle of free programs focused on connecting users, including an instant messaging application called iChat that will work with America Online'sInternet communication program -- the world's biggest. By Reuters. [New York Times: Technology]

NY Times: Access to Free Online Music Is Seen as a Boost to Sales. Disputing the position held by the major record companies, a report issued on Friday found that people who use file-sharing networks to obtain music at no charge over the Internet are more likely to have increased their spending on music than are average online music fans. [Tomalak's Realm]

I would like to see more on this. But it would be a good trend....

StarOffice to eat MS share (probably). Gartner fixes odds [The Register]

It would be good if this could start a little trend here. Now if the OpenSource Community can accelerate the development of features this could be be very interesting indeed.

This News.Com piece is right on-topic for today's DaveNet. The reporter surveys BigCo's to find out if they have anything as concrete as the Google API to offer, and draws a blank. Yet t here are two directories here and here, containing concrete examples of web services, some of which have more utility than the current Google API, which is a good tease, but to be truly interesting, must have follow-through. [Scripting News]

16845 » May 2 4:21 PM. Powell Announces Mideast Conference Could this, a world-wide conference, finally resolve the mess in ;the Middle East? [MetaFilter]

I would like to think that this Middle East conference woul work....but I think at best it will be a tiny first step.

TiVo's Next Move"Imagine setting aside 10% of your .... TiVo's Next Move
"Imagine setting aside 10% of your TiVo's storage to keeping 2 or 3 suggested movies ready to play (this would be much less noticable in the new 60 hour units), then selecting them from your Now Playing list, operating some sort of keystroke (like three thumbs up, then select) to confirm you want to pay for it, then watching the movie instantly. No need to schlep down to the Blockbuster and fork three bucks over to the Viacom empire when from my couch, I could pay a few bucks directly to TiVo for instant, ephemeral entertainment. TiVo wouldn't have to maintain a 24/7 television channel, they'd simply be selling premium content direct to the customer on demand."

Matthew Haughey thinks Tivo should provide "last yard bandwidth". [Web Voice: online business models and technical marketing - a blog by Olivier Travers]

All Bush, all the time. Democrats are complaining that cable networks are covering the president's every move as breaking news. The problem is even worse than they think. [Salon.com]

16490 » April 18 9:59 PM. Thor Heyerdahl has died of a brain tumor at the age of 87. The famous Norwegian adventurer is best known for two expeditions that supported his theories on human migration. The Kon Tiki voyage took six people from Peru to Polynesia in a balsawood raft in 101 days. The reed boat Ra II made it from Morocco to Barbados in 57 days. The legends are one thing, but seeing one of the actual vessels in Oslo reinforces how incredible these journeys were.What incredible adventure would you love to go on? [MetaFilter]