Internet Alchemy

David Johnson, developer of the Roller web app is having problems over his domain name: Erin Clerico and the folks over at
Weblogger.COM are upset about the
name RollerWeblogger and have
asked me to change it.  Now, I don’t think that RollerWeblogger is the
best name in the world, and it certainly does not roll (no
pun intended) off the tongue - but it is the name that I chose.  If I change it, not only will I make it more difficult for people to find Roller, but I will also break all of the links out there that point to the articles on my personal weblog. As a weblogger (can I still call myself that?), this is pretty upsetting to me.

I stumbled across this nice set of examples of using RDF and Dublin Core in RSS today. The author carefully shows how the use of Dublin Core elements and qualifiers to structure the information improves the machine readability of the documents.

I’ve made two new changes to myRSS. The first is that the channels are now categorized where possible using the Open Directory classification scheme. The second is the launch of the sponsorship scheme whereby users can sponsor enhanced features of the channels such as increased frequency of harvesting or removing the redirect link. The first channel to be sponsored is Anethesia and Analgesia, a site listing new research in those fields. The first sponsor was The Penn State Department of Anesthesiology - thank you! This is going to be fun!

Just noticed that the venerable Hot or Not is now rating blogs: Is my Blog HOT or
NOT?

Phil Ringnalda is experimenting with FOAF in RSS as part of his wider RDF experiment.

At first sight sharing subscription money between bloggers is an idea that might just work:

[L]et’s use the Disneyland approach: “entrance to the park costs money, and all the rides are free.” We’ll pay one price for unlimited access to all of the blogs — say, just $2.99 per month.

[L]et’s automatically divide our payment among all of the bloggers we read, based on how often we read each one. In other words, if you read Jill more than Jack, Jill gets that much more of your payment. If you never read Sam, Sam doesn’t get any of your payment.

However, it’s pretty obvious that most of the participants are simply trying to get as many readers as possible and they’ll try any trick to do it. One clue is in the name of some of the blogs: Confessions of a porn writer, Naughty Bits. Another is in the content of some of the other blogs: Baby Jesus butt plugs - I got this idea from another blog to use subject names that attract..

Dave Winer is striding forward with his latest version of RSS (the RSS Basic branch) previously called RSS 0.94. now controversially called RSS 2.0. As usual Dave progresses in his own way, without community discussion or support.

There is some initial feedback and questions on Ben Hammersley’s site (whose prospects of getting a book published this year are rapidly receeding)

Erik C. Thauvin: In most simple string-concatenation cases, the compiler will automatically convert a series of operations on Strings into a series of StringBuffer operations, and then pop the result back into a String

Dan Gillmor: How did technologists, government officials and a host of other early players turn something with no obvious business model into a system that has become so intrinsic to the new century?

Decentralization was the key, linking together existing network protocols, deciding on routed packets rather than circuits. There are plently of standards that use this model but not all of them succeed (where success = adoption on a massive scale). HTML is one that did, XML is another; WAP is not, nor were the closed computer networks CIX, Compuserve or (early) AOL. The framework is laid down by a central authority but the users and implementors are given enough leeway to express themselves via the medium.

Blogging Roller: I think every Wiki should have
a weblog like front-end, it draws you in and helps to build the community
spirit of the site. But, should every weblog have an integrated Wiki?