Richard MacManus

I mentioned in my last post that one of my ongoing interests is topic mapping in weblogs. Topic Exchange and K-Collector are two initiatives that I’ve hyped a lot over the last year. However the blogosphere still doesn’t have a mainstream topic-mapping application – and I mean mainstream as in Technorati or Bloglines, apps that are used … Read more

Here goes another self-referencing post about blogging. A couple of days ago I clocked up 1 year on this weblog, having started Read/Write Web on 20 April 2003, with an introductory essay called (of course) The Read/Write Web. Looking back on the past 12 months, I have to say that weblogging has done me a … Read more

Today I got my first article in print. My interview with Marc Canter made it into Computerworld New Zealand (pg 16, April 19 edition – right over the page from Jon Udell). It was one of my goals at the start of this year to get my writing published in the print world, so I’m … Read more

I’m currently reading Lawrence Lessig’s new book, Free Culture, which is available as a free download under a Creative Commons license. I’m only up to pg 64, but already I’ve discovered some great new ideas. One of them is “media literacy”. This is the best definition I’ve found so far of media literacy: “The ability … Read more

In my day job I’m currently working on a Web Strategy for my company. I’ve created web strategies in the past and I enjoy doing them. At the previous company I worked for, a telecommunications multinational, I wrote a Web Strategy to merge the websites of the New Zealand and Australian offices. Unfortunately for me … Read more

Jason Kottke has summarised Lawrence Lessig’s new book, Free Culture, in 100 words using Microsoft Word’s AutoSummarize feature. Jason’s reasoning was that “no one has the time to read books anymore”. Sounds about right. So, inspired by this, I decided to do the same with my 50,000-word Nanowrimo 2003 novel Dirtside to Spaceside. The result is hilarious. Also … Read more

Hands up who wants to get rid of the word “blog”? I’m beginning to wonder whether the word “weblog” has outlived its purpose. But before you call the white coats, let me try and explain. You see, blogging to me has always meant writing and linking. Seb Paquet has a much more comprehensive definition, but in a nutshell … Read more

My first reaction when I looked at my referer logs and saw I’d been slashdotted was: Holy Shit! Actually it was Marc Canter’sPeopleAggregator that was the main link in the Slashdot article, but it was my interview with Marc that caused it. I’ve gotten 2000-odd visits from Slashdot so far (they’re still pouring in). This … Read more

Read/Write Web is pleased to bring you this special feature, an interview with software pioneer Marc Canter. Marc is one of the founding fathers of multimedia, having created tools and content in the medium since the late 70’s and early 80’s. He formed a company called MacroMind in 1984 and released products such as VideoWorks … Read more

Oh man, has it been a whole week since I lasted posted something on my weblog? I’ve actually been busy working on an upcoming special feature for Read/Write Web. Top secret. I’ll publish it early next week. So, er, that’s it for now really. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

Interesting comment from Lucas Gonze in the comments to my post regarding Lockergnome’s CSS-to-Tables re-design. Incidentally, Lockergnome is in the process of moving back to CSS – good on ya! But here’s what Lucas said about my pro-CSS rark-up, replicated in full: Lockergnome went back not because it preferred tables but because they’re not front-end specialist, and … Read more

I’ve been relatively quiet on the blogging front lately, for two reasons. Firstly I’ve been busily reading as much of Heath Row’s SXSW transcriptions as possible (thanks Heath!) – so I’ve been in Read mode rather than Write mode. But I’ve also been taking a good look at my goals for this weblog and deciding: … Read more

There’s a debate going on in the Web world about Lockergnome’s backwards conversion from a modern CSS design to a 1997-era HTML tables design. The web design community is outraged by the decision, because it’s basically a slap in the face to the Web Standards movement. Photo Matt compares table-based designs to McDonald’s food and … Read more

I’ve just finished reading a fantastic science-fiction book: Permutation City, by Greg Egan. It covers a lot of the themes that interest me – computer technology, virtual reality, avatars, evolution, alternate and parallel universes, philosophy, self-programming. Heck it even has an alien race (created by humans though). Now I realise these are not topics that … Read more

That is the revelation that hit me a couple of days ago. There is no End User in Information Flow (which is a term I am using a lot these days, along with “Bottom-Up Knowledge Management”). It took a 1997 presentation to tell me this. In the article I’m currently writing for Digital Web Magazine, … Read more