Mark Pilgrim: “I take in a lot of raw data, synthesize it, and spit it back out in ways that many people can understand.” Mark Pilgrim and Neil Deakin are two very smart web developers, but more importantly they both have the ability to document complex web technology in laymans language – so that wannabes can learn it too. This is … Read more

Dave Winer posts a link to a DaveNet from 2 years ago: “If it were not possible to read my words without annotation, we’d have to invent a medium that allowed that. But in 2001 we already have such a medium, it’s called the Web. We have tools and servers and all kinds of runtimes on … Read more

Micah Alpern asked via my Comments form: “Wasn’t this term [universal canvas] first popularized by Apple with their failed OpenDoc program?” Only one way to find out and that’s pay a visit to Google. I found a definition of OpenDoc, but I didn’t see anything that had OpenDoc and Universal Canvas in the same sentence. Anyone know of … Read more

Last night I wrote about the Universal Canvas. Today in my RSS newsreader, what should appear but a great post from Steve Gillmor on the same topic. Of course being a pro, Steve made his point way better than me. Microsoft has all the pieces, says Steve, to “create a browser-hosted read-write tool for sharing … Read more

I’ve been Scobleized. Now I really am part of the blogosphere…yay 🙂 Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

I’ve become very interested in the “Universal Canvas”, a term popularized by Microsoft and subsequently analyzed by Jon Udell. First of all, here are two definitions of the Universal Canvas: a) From a Microsoft White Paper dated June 2000, entitled Microsoft .NET: Realizing the Next Generation Internet: “The universal canvas builds upon XML schema to transform … Read more

Asterisk: “…the one thing every Web professional needs, regardless of their main job function, be that IA, Design, Development, what-have-you is adaptability. You know, the ability to wing it.” In New Zealand we have a similar concept called No. 8 Wire mentality, or “kiwi ingenuity” – based on the architypal New Zealand farmer who can invent or fix anything … Read more

RWW Word of the Day: triangulation Dave Winer (via Denise Howell’s weblog): “…Question about journalism always having to be the sophisticated big stuff? Dave says know (sic), importance of triangulation, getting news on an event from many sources.” Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

Ever listen to The Velvet Underground’s 9 minute live version of ‘What goes on’, from their 1969 Live album Volume 1? The first couple of minutes feature Lou Reed singing verse and chorus. The rest of the song is an extended instrumental and this is where it gets interesting. Each of the 4 instruments has a … Read more

I read with interest Jon Udell’s OSCOM keynote slides. The main subject is how to write the web “in a rich way” – and by “rich” he means semantic. Udell talks about there being a lack of easy-to-use XML writing tools for the Web. Weblog tools are user-friendly and they are the killer app for … Read more

I’ve installed the W3C web browser/editor, Amaya, onto my PC. I’ve only just begun to test it. But with all this talk about Microsoft abandoning its IE browser, it may pay to actively look at alternative browsers. This article at freshmeat.net has a good write-up on lightweight browsers, including Amaya. Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

My first post to k-collector! Originally published on ReadWriteWeb (archived copy)

A hot topic in the blogging world recently has been: is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser dead? Ironically, most of the good stuff to read has been via “Comments” forms – ie readers writing back to a weblog post. Robert Scoble from Microsoft said “The right question is: ‘is the Web dead in Longhorn?’ ” and he got over 30 … Read more

After a few late nights, I’ve successfully implemented Easy News Topics (ENT) tags to my Radio Userland RSS feed. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be. It involved rooting around in the Radio.root file of my weblog and upskilling myself in UserTalk, Radio Userland’s scripting language. But mostly I stood on the … Read more

D. Keith Robinson has written an interesting article about the future of Intranets. He writes: “…a company’s Intranet would be better served as more of an enterprise-wide, network-enabled application than anything resembling a Web site or Web application.” It seems likely that content management systems will over time integrate with office systems. Products like Microsoft’s upcoming … Read more