...more recent posts
Here's another open spectrum overview, this time with more focus on the technology side of things, which right now means software defined radio. This is what will change everything (yeah, I know, it usually doesn't work out like that, but I enjoy believing such things...)
DailyWireless has links to some of the players in the industry.
People in Bayport (you know who you are!) should not read the rest of this post. Believe me, it's for your own good.
42" Wide Screen Flat Plasma Monitor for under $3000 (although, yeah, the resolution doesn't seem that outstanding.)
Doc Searls on the bottom-up nature of protocols that form the infrastructure of the internet: "They need to be born of universal intentions that support commercial activity, but are not reducible to it." I love that sentence.
Great short Jorn Barger (Mr. Robotwisdom) essay on an Internet way of self-knowledge.
Science News Online wonders if we have it all wrong:
Nearly all political elections in the United States are plurality votes, in which each voter selects a single candidate, and the candidate with the most votes wins. Yet voting theorists argue that plurality voting is one of the worst of all possible choices.
Another mainstream overview of the arguments for open spectrum. My long distance and not terribly informed view is that Michael Powell (head of the FCC) might actually support such thinking. Can he actually do this, and keep his job? Seems doubtful with the present administration.
Was using the thumb-board on my mobile in my dream last night. I guess I'm assimilated.
Check out how much of Manhattan is covered by wi-fi (wireless internet access.)
Chandler is the code name for the Open Software Application Foundation's networkable PIM I mentioned a few days ago. (That's Personal Information Manager: mail, calendar, contacts, to-do, etc.) The buzz around this project is huge. Vista is a prototype for what Chandler might be like. It's not a product that will be released, but it's described in detail, with screenshots, in the hopes of focusing discussion. This looks very very cool. The idea that we could have networkable PIMs without a centralized server is very promising.
One of the coolest features of Vista is the ability to browse remote repositories using Jabber to convey the necessary data and meta-data. It uses Jabber extension messages to determine what views are accessible to the requestor, and to request and receive the relevant data items, via a simple UI described in the next section. More sophisticated users can address remote views and data items directly, by typing a URL that has a Jabber ID at the beginning, as described above.
Making good progress today, although there is a lot to do in very little time.
Here's my latest working theory. Probably this is obvious, but I don't think it's ever been implemented exactly the way I am doing it. The idea is that since all posts (and comments) are stored in a database, there is remarkable freedom in how I can serve them back up. And recently it occured to me just how similar weblogs, bulletin boards, email lists, and RSS feeds are. They're just different views of the same atomic data.
So I'm extending the system so that any page can be viewed in any of these styles. Making what are now weblog pages into mailing lists is my first task, because a mailing list is what we need. In this scenario the weblog becomes the mailinglist archive. Anything posted to the page gets sent as email to everyone on the list. Same with comments. This is working now, although you have to open a web page to reply (you can't just hit reply in your mail client, you have to click the reply link in the message which will open the proper page in your browser.) So that's a drawback, but I'll have this fixed up fairly soon.
I'll probably make the bulletin board view next, and then the RSS feeds. But I need the mailing list wow. I mean now. Almost there.