Jeffrey Zeldman wrote today about Glassdog’s transformation from an “experimental narrative powerhouse” to a mere blog. Under the provocative title The saddest music in the world, Zeldman’s piece was a reflection on how The Web has not lived up to its original promise: “Oh, little child. Long ago, before you were born, some of us … Read more

That’s the title of my second NZ Computerworld article, which is in this week’s edition (pg 16). Here’s a PDF copy of it. It’s also available in HTML format on Read/Write Web. Since it is an article that attempts to bring RSS into a mainstream light, some people who arrive here may not know how … Read more

This is a boring post about fixing a couple of tedious Internet Explorer CSS bugs. But I want to record it for my own records and for future Google searchers. 1) The IE Italics bug – in the past I used italics whenever I quoted somebody. However on certain CSS designs, italics breaks the width … Read more

I’m in a stage right now where there are lots of details that I’m juggling in my life, both in the real world and my weblog world. My job is busy, with quite a few relatively exciting projects on the go at the same time. My home life is busy, looking after a highly energetic … Read more

Now you tell me! There is in fact a way to automatically ping Topic Exchange from within Movable Type. Thanks to an old Ben Hammersley post, I found out that the category attributes page has a box to enter TrackBack URIs to automatically ping. So after all my work over the last week, I’ve managed … Read more

Topic navigation is up and running on Read/Write Web, including cross-posting to both K-Collector and Topic Exchange. You’ll notice on the main menu, it now lists internal topics (or categories if you prefer – you say tom-ah-to, I say tom-ay-to). And in my RSS file, I’ve added references to both KC and TE. Here’s basically … Read more

Matt Mower’s written a great explanation of how the K-Collector aggregation process works. KC is a very clever system and I’m pleased to hear it doesn’t actually require the KC client app on Radio or MT in order for people to participate in the KC community. What I will do is continue with my own … Read more

There’s already been a great response to my post last night (see the comments to previous entry). Greg suggested his aggregator Blogdigger could be included in this – I agree! Matt and Andrew also posted very thoughtful responses. Here’s some of my feedback (copied from the comments – I must get these enabled inline…): Overnight … Read more

A few weeks ago I suggested merging Topic Exchange and K-Collector together, or at least bring the two sets of functionality closer together. I figure I’ll take a leaf out of Marc Canter’s book and try and rally the community together on this project. I’m hoping the respective developers of Topic Exchange and K-Collector can … Read more

This is an article I’ve submitted to Computerworld NZ. I interviewed Ferry Hendrikx of the NZ E-Government Unit for this. Note that the target audience is mainstream IT people, so as well as writing about Ferry’s experiences in E-Government I decided to also explain what RSS is and put it in the context of everyday … Read more

All this hullaballoo about Movable Type’s new licensing structure is just another example of one of the Web’s enduring issues: how to make money on the Web when users are accustomed to free lunches. It’s not just an issue for developers either, it’s as bad (if not worse) for writers. But before I address that … Read more

I don’t want to wade into an RSS syntax debate, but I came across a practical example of why to duplicate the Guid and Link elements in your RSS 2.0 file. Rogers Cadenhead recommends that they be duplicated. It is one of two differences between Rogers’ new proposed RSS feed for Movable Type users and … Read more

More tinkering. Last night I made the header and footer fixed width, evened up the right-hand column’s width in relation to the left column, added more white space to the main content area, and made various other changes to the CSS. I’m much happier with the layout now – it looks more balanced and not … Read more

Yesterday I explained why I moved my blog from Radio Userland and today I’m going to explain how I did it. I’ll also talk a bit about my new CSS layout. The Move I have to give a big shout-out to Bill Kearney, whose Radio Exporter tool made it relatively easy to export all my … Read more