Testing this new Blogger Mac widget from google. Wonder what the title will be?
Oooh, and I can do bold and italics, aint that keen?
Google also came out with a couple other widgets, one for gmail, and the other for search history...
www.google.com/macwidgets/
Friday, February 24, 2006
Thursday, February 23, 2006
Auxillary Google Services
I'm sure these are not new thoughts, but I'll throw them out anyway...
As I think about all of the information that Google (and others) get during their crawling, I'm thinking they could offer some business services with little additional expense on their side.
In particular, if you think about a company's web site, people spend money on several things:
- Content creation and translation
- Format and HTML conformance
- Web search optimization
- link/site structure
- syntax and spelling
So, how could Google help out? They could offer:
1) multi-lingual output
2) format and structure verification
3) search optimization/recommendations
4) link analysis - in this case, they could provide reports/analysis of in AND out links to a company's site
5) syntax and spelling checks across the scanned content
6) plagurism checks (notify me if my content shows up someplace else)
Essentially, this turns the process from a passive service to an active service, completing the feedback loop and creating an anti-entropy mechanism (btw, these are my favorites) in the process. The end result could be an improved web (content and structure). Google could offer the service at a relatively low rate, as the majority of the work is already being done. Companies would not have to individually invest in these processes, potentially saving money and improving their end users' experience on their sites...
Kipp
As I think about all of the information that Google (and others) get during their crawling, I'm thinking they could offer some business services with little additional expense on their side.
In particular, if you think about a company's web site, people spend money on several things:
- Content creation and translation
- Format and HTML conformance
- Web search optimization
- link/site structure
- syntax and spelling
So, how could Google help out? They could offer:
1) multi-lingual output
2) format and structure verification
3) search optimization/recommendations
4) link analysis - in this case, they could provide reports/analysis of in AND out links to a company's site
5) syntax and spelling checks across the scanned content
6) plagurism checks (notify me if my content shows up someplace else)
Essentially, this turns the process from a passive service to an active service, completing the feedback loop and creating an anti-entropy mechanism (btw, these are my favorites) in the process. The end result could be an improved web (content and structure). Google could offer the service at a relatively low rate, as the majority of the work is already being done. Companies would not have to individually invest in these processes, potentially saving money and improving their end users' experience on their sites...
Kipp
Wednesday, February 15, 2006
RSS discovery and spam
A friend of mine (Mitchell Friedman) was chatting with me this morning about auto-discovery of rss feeds, which is a cool idea.
A couple of items he relayed:
I find the topic fascinating...if somewhat troubling at times...
Kipp
A couple of items he relayed:
- You can add a 'link' tag to your html that allows discovery of feeds for a given page. For example, my blog now has this embedded link: <link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://kippsterblaster.blogspot.com/atom.xml">
- For more on the link tag, check out this site
- This dude Jermey Zawodny has a RSS Auto-Discovery 2.0 proposal on his blog
- Those tricky spammers are at it in RSS, known RSS spam:
- the best one was a list of recent patents as far as I could tell so the headline was real. and the summary was real - that is they seemed to be recent patents...but the link was spam
- so now spammers can have mix and match legitimate content on the site with subversive content in one or the other or both.
- and since the rss community is one big wheel of interlinking content/sites with hub sites like sindic8 -- interesting arena for the spammers to attack
- and this is on top of the blog spam that has been and continues to be prevalent
I find the topic fascinating...if somewhat troubling at times...
Kipp
Monday, February 13, 2006
Holy cow this is cool!
In the words of my buddy John Brothers:
Wow. This is a future with potential.
This dude Vic Divecha found a really amazing demo that is a bit reminiscent of some movie scenes in the recent past.
I GOTTA get me one!
Wow. This is a future with potential.
This dude Vic Divecha found a really amazing demo that is a bit reminiscent of some movie scenes in the recent past.
I GOTTA get me one!
Friday, February 03, 2006
More Mud on the Tires
You've seen the flickr, now see the movie.
P.S. you'll likely have to download the entire thing since I'm too cheap to actually have a hosting service!
P.S. you'll likely have to download the entire thing since I'm too cheap to actually have a hosting service!
Thursday, February 02, 2006
Careers in IT?
A former colleague of mine recently posed this regarding a soon to graduate daughter:
My response was:
As to your career question, I would be very emphatic about the positive possibilities in the field. I'd probably take a bit different approach, as I think we are entering a bit different era than the one you reminisce about (referring to the 'glory days' where you could just sit around and write code...).
In particular, computing has truly moved from being a purpose in and of itself - other than in a small subset of the research community. This is not all bad, it just means computing is now, even more so, a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. This may seem blasphemous to some or maybe even trite, but I really think it has changed.
It does seem harder to find the 'sit in a closet and code' jobs. I would suggest that people with other skills in combination with computing are the hot commodity in the future. And that other skill can be in a whole variety of areas -- business, project, management, etc. But even that is missing what I think is the big push.
I would (and have) recommended that people entering the field take a look at not only computing but combining computing with another passion (unless that is your only passion and you are a guru, and not a self-described guru, but a true genius). For example, take somebody who loves dealing with the environment -- combine that with computing and do environmental modeling, or sensor networks to monitor environments. Somebody who loves photography can marry computing and photography via the digital media and communications networks to create and extend the capabilities. etc.
Computing is so embedded in what we do and is doing so much to enable other fields to go beyond their present state that not knowing computing (and that's not HTML), algorithms, programming, data structures, etc. is going to be a deficit in the future, at least for the advancing jobs and careers.
Would I tell somebody to go into computer science to become a programmer? No, but then that's never been me since I'm not that good at pure programming. But would I tell somebody to go into computer science? Absolutely and I hope my daughters heed at least some of my advice (of course things may change in the next 10 years that I don't anticipate).
Lastly, I think there are many opportunities with companies that do respect and build on experience of people, I don't think that's a lost art, just precious when you find it. I'd hate to paint the world with such a broad brush. The world is a very large place -- which brings me to my last point. I would very much impress on young people (and old people like me) the value of an international, global view. I would highly recommend anybody looking into the future and planning their career to consider the international aspects of their chosen career. Not only from the perspective that can be gained, but also from the flexibility that it can create for future opportunities, cause even though the world is large, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is making it much smaller and so very interdependent.
some friends were pondering their future career paths. One young fellow has a strong interest in computers and asked me about the IT field. I would really be interested in how others would respond.
My response was:
As to your career question, I would be very emphatic about the positive possibilities in the field. I'd probably take a bit different approach, as I think we are entering a bit different era than the one you reminisce about (referring to the 'glory days' where you could just sit around and write code...).
In particular, computing has truly moved from being a purpose in and of itself - other than in a small subset of the research community. This is not all bad, it just means computing is now, even more so, a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself. This may seem blasphemous to some or maybe even trite, but I really think it has changed.
It does seem harder to find the 'sit in a closet and code' jobs. I would suggest that people with other skills in combination with computing are the hot commodity in the future. And that other skill can be in a whole variety of areas -- business, project, management, etc. But even that is missing what I think is the big push.
I would (and have) recommended that people entering the field take a look at not only computing but combining computing with another passion (unless that is your only passion and you are a guru, and not a self-described guru, but a true genius). For example, take somebody who loves dealing with the environment -- combine that with computing and do environmental modeling, or sensor networks to monitor environments. Somebody who loves photography can marry computing and photography via the digital media and communications networks to create and extend the capabilities. etc.
Computing is so embedded in what we do and is doing so much to enable other fields to go beyond their present state that not knowing computing (and that's not HTML), algorithms, programming, data structures, etc. is going to be a deficit in the future, at least for the advancing jobs and careers.
Would I tell somebody to go into computer science to become a programmer? No, but then that's never been me since I'm not that good at pure programming. But would I tell somebody to go into computer science? Absolutely and I hope my daughters heed at least some of my advice (of course things may change in the next 10 years that I don't anticipate).
Lastly, I think there are many opportunities with companies that do respect and build on experience of people, I don't think that's a lost art, just precious when you find it. I'd hate to paint the world with such a broad brush. The world is a very large place -- which brings me to my last point. I would very much impress on young people (and old people like me) the value of an international, global view. I would highly recommend anybody looking into the future and planning their career to consider the international aspects of their chosen career. Not only from the perspective that can be gained, but also from the flexibility that it can create for future opportunities, cause even though the world is large, ICT (Information and Communication Technology) is making it much smaller and so very interdependent.
Wednesday, February 01, 2006
TwoGirls - Mosaic
Here's a fun one for you (at least it was for me!). I discovered some software (MacOSaiX) that is really cool -- yeah it has probably been around for awhile, but I'm slow!
This mosaic is of my daughters, the original is below.
These 625 images are all from the last year or so (Greg's armpit is part of Laney's face, Abuja, soccer, Thanksgiving, Christmas, friends, family, lake, river, nebraska, nascar, football...etc. make up the rest).
I shrunk this one down, the original is 12.6MB and wouldn't upload to flickr...
The software also lets you pull images from other sources (e.g. Google Images) to make mosaics...very cool.
This mosaic is of my daughters, the original is below.
These 625 images are all from the last year or so (Greg's armpit is part of Laney's face, Abuja, soccer, Thanksgiving, Christmas, friends, family, lake, river, nebraska, nascar, football...etc. make up the rest).
I shrunk this one down, the original is 12.6MB and wouldn't upload to flickr...
The software also lets you pull images from other sources (e.g. Google Images) to make mosaics...very cool.
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