You've heard it a million times. Hip-hop, techno, and drum 'n' bass were practically built around it. Nate Harrison's story behind theThe Amen Break.
A fascinating listen woth your 18 minutes. I never realized some much music riffed on the same one sample. I had always assumed it was just a very popular sound from a piece of gear. How extraordinary.
Via Nick Denton: Cribcandy is weblog of "bookmarkable stuff for your home." The site features "wists," the thumbnail entries that make up the site. Its like del.icio.us meets Flickr meets e-commerce. Very interesting.
Tim O'Reilly notes a remix of Cory Doctrow's Someone Comes to Town, Someone Leaves Town using a syndication feed where, once subscribed, you get a couple pages every day. No matter when you subscribe to it, it sends you the book starting from the beginning.
This is a very clever example of syndication potential to do more then broadcast news headlines. Bravo!
Please fire whoever wrot[sic] those install instructions, you've completely cut out and alienated the population who is not very web savvy.
I got a laugh out of the thread this quote came from. Being said person how wrote the installation instructions, I guess I should be fired.
As much as I'm the first one to admit there is always room for improvement in my work, it never ceases to amaze me how many people walk into setting up Movable Type believing it's like installing MS Word on their desktop. No matter how hard any technologist tries, whether it be Microsoft or Six Apart, installing server-based software (remotely nonetheless) will always be a more complex affair then anything on you face on your desktop. Imagine everytime someone in your neighborhood crashed their computer, yours and every neighbor's machine went with it. A scenario like this is only the beginning of what you face.
So here is some advice. If you have never installed software on a server and want a weblog stick with TypePad and if you absolutely must have Movable Type, spring for the extra fee a MT hosting partner like Pair Networks to do it for you.
Matt Haughey writes:
Show, don't tell. It crops up time and time again and is some of the best advice I've been given.
I have a different spin on that life advice that has been with me as long as I can remember -- actions speak louder then words. Funny how I from time to time get wrapped up in words that I get distracted from just doing what I'm talking about.
Of all the startups I heard about while attending the Web 2.0 conference, I thought Rollyo was the most useful and clever of them all. Like so many of these companies though I'm scratching my head and wondering what their business model will be though.
It's here now and worth exploring. Business 2.0 gives more detail here.
Bottom line: the imprecise RSS specification resulted in a lot of guess work, which complicated things for developers, end users and feed producers. The solution? We clarified the RSS spec.
The solution? We clarified the RSS spec. While problems with entity-encoded HTML haven't disappeared completely, in my experience they're far less common than they used to be (and when they do occur, we now have examples to point to).
And that's all that's needed here, too. Clarify the OPML spec, and we can skip another prolonged format battle.
Clearly RSS feeds have gotten much better, but I think the Feed Validator had a much greater impact on that clean-up then the clarification Nick sites. Don't forget RSS 1.0 and 0.9x feeds were equally as busted as the 2.0 version he points to.
Having had my fair share of frustration with both RSS and OPML and OPML's "spec" is far more ridiculous then RSS ever was and that is saying something. I have to wonder -- is it worth saving OPML? I'm not so sure. By default OPML is used as an import/export format by aggregators -- there was nothing else proposed and it just spread as the market for tools exploded. This isn't too dissimilar to how RSS grew. The difference here though is that OPML's use is quite limited in comparison to its intended scope. OPML was specified to be a general purpose outline format however it is only really used for representing blog rolls and it does that poorly. Without a real specification of the values, attributes or even the attributes case there are many variants of the OPML blogroll format in the wild. So is it "really" fixable if it were specified? Not without a lot of breakage really and you'd still need to be ready for all the crazy variants from the void left by the lack of a good specification.
I guess what I'm saying is it doesn't really matter whether it gets better specified or not. Best of luck who are taking it on. My view is that the toothpaste is out of the tube and OPML as a blog roll format will only be a bit player a best.
I'm much more interested and intriuged by XHTML outlines -- the microformat better known as XOXO. I've used it before in a few instances and its worked very well. (X)HTML's system of providing outlines has been around longer, is better specified and more widely supported in the grand scheme of Internet software that I have to wonder what does OPML provide that makes it better? What does specifying and developing another format buy us? I can't think of anything. The current universal support of import/export by aggregators is nothing to sneer at, but how hard would it be to convert current blog rolls to XOXO? Trivial. OPML blog rolls don't contain any more information per entry then the XHTML link tag. Which require more effort: fixing the spec and then all the OPML blog rolls or just converting to XOXO? I think its a tie. Which would provides the better footing going forward? I think clearly XHTML because you can do more now and its already here, well specified and well supported.
It's understandable why OPML is supported in aggregators and that that should continue to be exploited, however I just don't see furthering OPML for blog rolls. Let sleeping dogs lie. It's served it purpose. Lets not get trapped in past foibles and move on to new and better things.
UPDATE: Sam Ruby who I believe is the most patient and persistent person you'll ever find in technology has entered into the OPML conversation. The Feed Validator that he was instrumental in driving has OPML validation with a call for more tests. This I believe supports my assertion that his validator was more instrumental in cleaning up bad RSS then clarify the specification as Nick Bradbury wrote. So perhaps there is a bit more hope of a clean up then I had before.
People have complained about how long Perl 6 is taking to arrive; I used to grumble about that myself. Now that I watch things growing and changing on a daily basis, I'm glad everyone is taking their time.
I kind of feel the same way as Geoff Badwell posts in Perl Polyglot. I haven't had the time to follow what is happening in the Perl 6 world, but when I do have a chance to review I am encouraged, very encouraged, about what is to come. Sure I'd like it here today, but at least its coming and with a great deal of promise from years of research and observation.
Despite my love hate relationship with Perl, I'm certainly not ready to jump ship to Ruby so quickly.
