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cyberSaps business: blogging news, internet biz, communities, UK angle
A pure blogging company. With history (4 years 212 days ) in hosting Manila weblogging communities and building customised blogging environments for a range of companies and Government quangos. The latest project: building the intranet for the Government Office for the West Midlands, based entirely on Manila. Next project: their internet and extranet. See more details on services and history.

31 July 2003   

 

Firms to spend big on mobile e-mail

"...in 2008, 40 percent of the 21 million Western Europeans who own business-centric mobile phones, 8.4 million users, will access their e-mail over their handsets. This figure is a considerable jump from less than 1 percent currently. Over the same period, the annual mobile service revenue generated by e-mail will increase from €49 million in 2003 to €2.9 billion."

Spam's gonna piss people off then, as paying for spam, rich in porno images is going to cost quite a bit to download.


1217 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:05:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Firms to spend big on mobile e-mail

 

 

English speaking bloggers

Someone from Scotland is looking for bloggers to take part in an experiment, for his PhD thesis about writing styles in blogs.

"I am going to be looking for trends in style, as the relate to the character of the author. By style I mean linguistic features such as those used by the stylistics community for authorship attribution, such as sentence length, word bigrams and trigrams, and parts-of-speech. And by character, I mean just that."

 Source: owrede_log; 31/07/03; 8:04:21 am.
1216 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:58:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: English speaking bloggers

 

30 July 2003   

 

Upgrading a server

macsBrum.jpg

Mac's got a nice new pick me up!
macsMuther.jpg

Changing the server. Here Mac bashes the old hard disk out. We would have done the job pretty quick had we the room to put the fan in. As it is we'll either need to rob a new case or hack saw a gap large enough for the fan.


1215 Also posted to: Home page , serviceBF . At: 3:23:36 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Upgrading a server

 

29 July 2003   

 

4 TrackBacks, oh no!

4Trackbacks.jpg

I've been trying to backtrack ping an article on MiFi, and damn, I've managed to spam their trackback four times.

    How'd you manage that Steve? Well, It appears that you can only send a small amount of excerpt to MiFi as a track back or you'll get an error page from SQL like this. So, I figure that I'd try cutting down the size of the message, which worked but I still found an error message in my message table (see the image below). But this was because MiFi is sending back a general information page if you actually go to the ping URL stated for, I guess, any article. So I tried four times, then decided to make sure none had squirreled their way through... Arggg! FOUR! Oops. butISeeError.jpg

Gonna have to be more careful with this trackback melarkie. Soz Mat Howie ";->" Though I see others reporting the same.


1211 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:45:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 4 TrackBacks, oh no!

 

 

Loss of e-mail 'worse than divorce'

BBC: "Electronic mail is playing such a key role in companies that most people start to get annoyed after just 30 minutes without e-mail access, the study found.

But spare a thought for the techies in computer support. About a fifth feared for their jobs if they did not get the e-mail system back up and running within a day."

When fellow workers come up to the sys admin with distorted faces, to complain, then the best method of dealing with them is to mirror their feelings of loss and woe, and to pull faces back at them. So says, my insider who's recently been confronted just so.


1209 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:57:17 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Loss of e-mail 'worse than divorce'

 

 

Forth reason for recommending tablets at Frog design studio

4.) "The cool factor. These tablets evoke the future of hardware and easily wow the technology challenged in a meeting. As consultants and designers, that kind of mystique is as good an accessory as the black turtle neck and German accent."

Made me smile, had to blog it.


1207 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:40:55 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Forth reason for recommending tablets at Frog design studio

 

 

RDF Validator Results

"Parser Loading Error Exception parsing: {E301} The value of attribute "dc:description" must not contain the '<' character."

billsXMLerror.jpg

Been testing my trackbacking, trying to ping Bill Kearney's article (see below), but find that there's an error in his RDF in the trackback data in his page. All because he started off the item with some angle brackets.


1206 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:58:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF Validator Results

 

 

Foaf groups and Governmental quangos

Perhaps this may help me understand the power relationships in UK Governmental quangos.

Bill Kearney: "Here I'm making several statements. I'm saying that the 'wkearney99' node is a member of this group. I'm then going on to say that the wkearney99 node is known to the group via an SHA1 hash of it's e-mail address and that it has a FOAF file of it's own at the seeAlso URL. It's also saying the group has it's own URL. This helps if something else using the group wants to confirm things about the group"

Dan Brickley: "...We could come up with properties like 'chair' that relate groups to people"

foafRegionalInn.jpg I'm trying to understand the relationships and positions of all the people involved in the West Midlands (UK) Regional Innovation Strategy. There's two A4 pages in the back of the report full of names and contact details. They should mean something to me, but don't, and as I trawl through more brochures like this, I'm going to see both repeated and new names, new organisatons, new titles for the same people.

Wouldn't it be lovely for me to be able to study the relationships, as if in a organisational chart, or family tree, one that uses my icons, colours etc., Which mixes in this group of quango boffins with this board of civil servants and so on. Then I could see who were likely to be the people I need to approach, possibly.

    For sure, these people aren't going to be interested in doing this for themselves, not any time soon, at least. I suppose if I had the time I could make the FOAF files myself. But, alas the app that would make the visual sense for me is not yet written.

I can see the day when these quangos HAVE to produce their FOAF files, so that we, the ordinary geezers, can see who the hell is writing this stuff. Long time off though.


1205 Also posted to: Home page , bis ,  At: 12:35:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Foaf groups and Governmental quangos

 

28 July 2003   

 

Regional Innovation Fund

"...Will provide support for... new projects aimed at promoting innovation and developing sectors within 10 market facing clusters. These will include projects identified by the Regional Innovation Steering Group, Business Growth Task Groups and others involved with the implementation of actions identified within the Regional Agenda for Action."

Promoting innovation? Blogs promote innovation, don't they? Market facing clusters? Which are those? Can't find much info about these (shadowy) steering/task groups.

These websites are so light on real help and heavy with the acronyms, and jargon.


1204 Also posted to: Home page , bis ,  At: 2:52:19 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Regional Innovation Fund

 

 

Knowledge Management in West Mids' (UK) cranky quangos

Bloody useless
I'm trying to discover the point of some of these new UK Government quangos. This one seems interesting but I'm not clear on what the hell it's for. Hardly any information within the site, out of date events pages, with wrong dates, anyway. Crap, 'quango' speak, that means everything and nothing. innovation_logo.gif

I believe they are a way to get money out of European and UK coffers, but where and what the money does after that is not clear, far from it. Walk with me through the site as I try and figure it's purpose:
"...a two year initiative offering regional individuals and organisations a unique opportunity to experiment with the development and delivery of public support promoting economic development. "
What's public support?

    "...the programme has been designed by an extensive local partnership to help identify untapped regional knowledge, encourage innovative new ICT use and embed leading edge innovation practices in the public, private and 3rd sectors."
What sort of regional knowledge? Peas and ham? Heavy metal bashing? What's a 3rd Sector? Google digging: apparently, it means the voluntary sector.

"It will provide funding - on a competitive basis - to support innovative, different and imaginative projects. Projects will need to deliver significant advances in innovation or knowledge, have the potential to be influential in regional economic development or provide important lessons in partnership development."
"Different" is a weasel word. But, this does seem to be the right project aims for a 'million Midlanders blogging.' Blogging with a more studious approach, rather than the teenagers angst squealing about boyfriends, can be deeply knowledgeable, and certainly a learning environment for all concerned.


1203 Also posted to: Home page , bis ,  At: 12:19:34 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Knowledge Management in West Mids' (UK) cranky quangos

 

27 July 2003   

 

RSS feeds at Amazon

"Amazon.com provides a style sheet for producing RSS, but there's no reason why you cannot provide your own. The Web Services Developer's Kit explains how to do this. One reason to provide your own style sheet is to embed your Amazon Associate's identifier in the permalinks."

Pretty clever. More micro payments for your own content (in blogs.)


1201 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:31:12 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RSS feeds at Amazon

 

 

quickSub: making feed subscribing easier

quickSub.jpg"Jason Brome's RSS feed feed button on your web page. Just roll your mouse over the example above, and you'll be instantly greeted by one-click subscription links to the most popular aggregators."

Think I'll have a go with this tomorrow, looks neat. I'm surprised by the large number of RSS readers. NetnewsWire isn't there though, and to my mind it's the premier app, though only OS X,


1200 Also posted to: Home page . At: 8:47:50 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: quickSub: making feed subscribing easier

 

26 July 2003   

 

Quick post

trackbackSourceUrl.jpg


trackBackingBust.jpg

I've found an odd error on trying to ping an MT blog: error 1, Need a Source URL (url). But, stupid me! I go to their trackback url in the browser, and I get the same response!
How can we look in the html for "<rdf:RDF" if that's all they're sending back. I deem her trackbacking bust. Bust I tell you! Well, maybe not, still looking.


1199 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:57:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

 

 

Styling RSS Feeds? Yes please!

It's my feed, I'll show you it, how I like. You don't like that? Go away.

And so you should, or look or ask for another type of feed.

I want to dress up some items, and put all sorts of HTML in there, it renders fine, as I test my own dog food in the Radio Aggregator, in NN7. So I release it. Not many read my RSS 2.0 file though, but I do.

"Should people style their RSS feeds? Should news aggregators give users the option to strip styles from posts when they're displayed? What is too much style? If there's an image with a post, it's nice to let that wrap right or left as the author intended, but should you draw the line at font changes?"

To draw the line is to unsubscribe. Do it if it disturbs you IMO.


1198 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:02:47 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Styling RSS Feeds? Yes please!

 

 

RDF Tutorial

"The first section will describe the RDF model, which is its fundamental syntax. The second section will present the semantic aspects of RDF, the concepts and the corresponding vocabulary."

Where am I digging all this RDF stuff up from? Resource Description Framework: Applications and Projects.

Anyway, back to the gripping print out...

tripleFuckWhat.jpg


1197 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:12:31 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF Tutorial

 

 

MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative 2.1

"The MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative is designed to create a portable and flexible means of storing and exchanging metadata related to digital audio and video tracks. The MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative is a content description model for audio and video tracks on the Internet."

Everybody's shaking it, all about, yeah, yeah. RDF.

I like the extensions: "such as contributors, roles, lyrics, release dates, remix/cover information, etc."


1196 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:57:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: MusicBrainz Metadata Initiative 2.1

 

 

Sep 2002: Sjoerd Visscher: RSS2.0 to fancy graph images

"RSS 0.94/2.0 to RDF converter"

Burningbird's description of this: "Mozilla's mbox-to-RDF API proves that you can reap the benefits of RDF (using those 20-odd tools of yours) without recasting the format itself as RDF. Ditto Sjoerd's RSS2-to-RDF XSLT ( http://w3future.com/weblog/2002/09/09.html#a129 ). Those who want RDF can have it, but they should pay the RDF tax (by creating, maintaining, and executing the transformations from the simpler syntaxes that the rest of us want to use, into the RDF that their tools can understand)."

I forget about the translators. Just been reading the SSR background. A simple addition to RSS2.0 to make all sorts of wild and weird data formations, patterns and display. I love ODB scripting at the best of times, but this stuff just takes the biscuit.


1195 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:46:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Sep 2002: Sjoerd Visscher: RSS2.0 to fancy graph images

 

 

Strawman simpler syntax for RDF

"The major difference between this syntax and RDF 1.0 M&S is that RDF edges correspond to elements, and RDF nodes are implicit. It is basically as the M&S syntax with parseType=resource is a default."

There's some heavy pattern making in here. [Out of the Semantic Web's Tool Box.]


1194 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:09:00 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Strawman simpler syntax for RDF

 

25 July 2003   

 

RDF in thumbnails e.g. Verdon, Moustiers, France

Describing and retrieving photos using RDF and HTTP

I do like the idea of being able to pull thumbnails up like this, that would be so cool.

Been talking in Radio's list re a photo tool for Radio with gheil. And my major concern was the descriptions or as they've described so minimally here: content schema. Nevertheless, I get the drift. I think that abouts wraps up the final jigsaw, pun intended.

I don't think there's a need to embed it in the actual pic is there? I've got my contextual information about my kids' pictures, which is the only thing I care about categorising. Though trivial to write it in, I don't like the idea of having it in two places, the blog item, and the pic... Hmm, has to be in there too <slaps head> The blog item sits in the description, Dublin Core, and all that old chap.

pictureRDFCode.jpg .
Here's a window in BBedit, with the nice colours, and the original
gheil also said: "PhotoMechanic http://www.camerabits.com/ is a good tool in the $ bracket. It manages database stuff (and hands editing over to PS), but has some annoying miscues in its DB i have not worked around yet: can't get the date to flow through, on either xml output or text output :-( "

Photomecanic looks pretty damn good actually. $150 OS X, Classic, and Win. Writes some stuff in to the correct parts of a JPEG, but seems to be based on a competing standard at least something else, more about news: "Digital Newsphoto Parameter Record (DNPR) version 4 -- This is the lower level file format for encapsulating digital news photographic data. It allows for editorial and technical information to be carried in the same file." Well, I suppose, my kids are news to me, and the family that read that category. Interesting to know this stuff. Maybe it's slipped me by.

FOAF

I got well into a tool to build FOAF files in Radio, the other day, love to finish that off. Here's my very first. I'm Johnny no friends at the bar, eek!


1193 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:13:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RDF in thumbnails e.g. Verdon, Moustiers, France

 

 

Further shortcut processing in Radio RSS feeds

callbackFix.jpg

I notice that some shortcuts aren't being added from weblogData.shortcuts.personal to user.html.glossary when they're brand new. Still have to find that code that marries up these shortcut tables, think it's at start up...

Anyway, I've added another call to processMacros, this time with the shortcuts in weblogData.shortcuts.personal directly ref'd.

If you're using the back log RSS tool and rely on shortcuts in your feeds, this fix will be important. Update your tool.


1190 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:14:42 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Further shortcut processing in Radio RSS feeds

 

24 July 2003   

 

Quick ping me post!

Testing out Jake's ping in Radio's Trackback. I still don't know what all this means you, know ";->"

I'll go look for some reading and bring back the links here... BRB
How TrackBack Works
A Beginner's Guide to TrackBack
Trackback in the UserLand environment


1183 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:14:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick ping me post!

 

 

RIAA Hit List

"The subpoenas are flying, and we're naming names. Are you on the list?"

Pretty strange to see a list of people. Kinda like they died in battle against the evil RIAA.


1181 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:21:32 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: RIAA Hit List

 

 

Trackback testing

Do I know what track back is? Nope! But determined to use it in my site. I'll have to transfer my comments and trackback to my own Manila machine... Should do that by mid next week... Still much to do.


1180 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:10:59 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Trackback testing

 

22 July 2003   

 

J Robb's Law

"Robb's Law: NEVER (under any circumstances) publish a weblog to a domain that you don't control."

Tee Hee.


1177 Also posted to: Home page . At: 6:35:59 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: J Robb's Law

 

 

mF: Trackback to Guide Beginners

"Beginner's guide to trackback. Old news to most here, but with even Radio Userland now implementing the technology, trackback has the potential to be another kind of spam, with gratuitous self-links popping up all over the place. When everyone can blog, will the Blogosphere be the next victim of Usenet's neverending September? Whether providing "community support" or "publishing tool", how long before popular bloggers are forced to implement Bayesian trackback filters?"

I remembered the never ending September: they were called Assholes On Line.

I haven't really been into Trackback, what I've seen hasn't been that useful. I don't switch on comments on my site because I don't want any comments from the great unwashed cluttering up my site. Though I'm looking forward to TrackBack in Radio, as a way of me, continuing a discussion, I guess I'll just have to suck it and see. I'll have power to delete those that contaminate the purity of my site, but that'll piss people off. Hmmm. Oh! The Angst!

 Source: MetaFilter; 22/07/03; 9:46:35 am.
1174 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:28:24 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: mF: Trackback to Guide Beginners

 

21 July 2003   

 

UserLand Product News and my new tool

fameAtLast.jpg"News about Manila, Frontier and Radio UserLand"

Awww! That's nice, I'm mentioned in dispatches. Damn nice tool though, well, the Feedster service is really the point.

Not only that but Dave Winer also points to the "I'm a cool tool!" Such a nice chap, and I've always said so. ";->"

Doh, and I missed Dr David Davies' link on Saturday, never mind here it is.


1171 Also posted to: Home page . At: 1:23:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: UserLand Product News and my new tool

 

 

Cyber sex lures love cheats

"Growing numbers of married people are turning to chat rooms for sexual thrills, say US researchers."

No problems here. "Be careful out there," people :-)~~

 Source: BBC News | Technology | World Edition; 21/07/03; 10:45:16 am.
1170 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:59:03 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Cyber sex lures love cheats

 

 

Quick post

And a quick test of Trackback for Radio. Here's a site I should link to.


1169 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:05:52 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

 

 

A phone message

I wandered lonely as a cloud
That floats on high oÕer vales and hills,
When all at once I saw a crowd,
A host, of golden daffodils...

Just testing a post from a mobile phone... Nothing to worry about, move along now, nothing to see here.


1168 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:08:50 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: A phone message

 

20 July 2003   

 

Radio's web bug V Blog Patrol

I think I'm very happy with Blog Patrol. I've moved off Radio's web bug because it was slowing down page loads. Blog Patrol's got a lot more stats too. As well as top 20 referers, last 10 referers (prefer last 24 hours), top search words, last 10 searches; OS, screens... Not bad.

Time to roll it out across all my pages. A whole site render, well there's a few new things in the templates, like a Feedster search, which is very useful for me to find past posts. All due to my new tool, Back Log RSS.

And, I've finally moved all my blog reads from the tabs of NN7 into Radio's aggregator. Lets see how good it is.


1167 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:01:33 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Radio's web bug V Blog Patrol

 

 

Is UK eGovernment full of holes?

"The nightmare is not that New Labour's targets for putting government online will not be achieved, but that hitting the targets might make very little difference on the 'modernisation' front. Already, for example, over 50 per cent of services are online, but only ten per cent of the population have ever used them. The Inland Revenue has built a magnificent system for online filing of tax returns, but only 70,000 people (out of a possible 8 million) use it.

The problem is exacerbated by the fact that those people who have most need to interact with the state (because of being poor, elderly or ill) are precisely the groups who feel most uneasy about using unfamiliar, online, channels. The battle to put government online has been won. But the battle to put citizens online has only just begun."

The digital divide, as it's called. This is the biggest obstacle, and to my mind, blogs are the answer. They're addictive for those who fall for them, involve life long learning, are a great communication platform for those who are ill, the elderly could blog to the past, building up a life of memories...


1165 Also posted to: Home page . At: 7:23:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Is UK eGovernment full of holes?

 

18 July 2003   

 

Quick post

amazingHighPraise.jpg If anybody asks, about my new tool tell them it's late here, I'm pissed and going next door for 'summore.'

Please reply on the Radio thread, I'll pick it up there in the morning. Of course, you can email me... But wait till the English afternoon for my hang over to go and me to answer.

Hey, Lisa said it was amazing Now, that's worth all the tea in China. Cheers kitten.


1157 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:20:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Quick post

 

17 July 2003   

 

Feedster total RSS search engine

"If you want Feedster to index your entire weblog, all you need to do is generate a new RSS feed with everything you've ever blogged"

It's a bit late this evening, well very, very late. But this is such a nice idea. I'll get a script sorted 'toot-sweet.'


1156 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:20:47 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Feedster total RSS search engine

 

16 July 2003   

 

Out of office most of today

I've number of birds to kill, hopefully with the one stone. So, I'm out lunch, meetings and to the servers all day today. If anybody emails, better to SMS, if urgent.


1155 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:34:45 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Out of office most of today

 

15 July 2003   

 

The money in politics

The most interest I had was at the pub, later. Mind, I guess I went to mix and network, so perhaps that's why I felt that the actual debate was humdrum.

There I found several 'consultants' who were there to 'find out' about blogging and how they could profit from it.

Though talking to some they were seemingly pretty clueless when it came not only blogging, but also technology. But then, that's what I thought of the night. There's me down from the sticks, grass still behind my ears, and the seat of power without an email address for the Prime Minister nor WiFi anywhere within. OTH, I was naive about the business that fed off politics. I mean did you know that the Government had earmarked £2.2 billion for broadband access for their rural operations centres, and that nobody had asked for any of it? Here's some background, not sure when from. It seems the Gov is full of angst, and indecision. The usual debate where technology is concerned. "Shall I wait till next year when the computer will be cheaper and more powerful or get it now?"

Stephen Timms, e-commerce minister according to Hansard (Dec 2002): "The Department of Trade and Industry has made available £30 million to the RDAs and Devolved Administrations for pilot projects to extend broadband access. Several of the recipients have used this fund to enable small businesses to access broadband via satellite technology. For example, the South West Development Agency, East Midlands, Development Agency, East of England Development Agency and Advantage West Midlands are collaborating in the Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trials (RABIT) programme to trial alternative broadband Internet access to small businesses in rural areas using wireless and satellite. The scheme has been operating since September 2002. Some £700 is made available to each company. By the beginning of December, 264 applications had been approved, of which 75 per cent. to 80 per cent. involve satellite trials. About 1,800 to 2,000 companies are expected to participate in the programme to December 2003."

From what I know about the RDA here (Advantage West Midlands) they are terribly risk adverse, and from what I gleaned last night this is endemic in e-biz sections of local Gov and quangos across the country.

Stephen Timms, e-commerce minister according to Hansard (Nov 2002): "My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister announced yesterday that the outcome of the Spending Review 2002 shows that a total of approximately #6 billion will be invested in electronic governmentÑincluding £1 billion towards high-speed broadband connectivity. Existing funds for regional economic development (and RDAs will have £1.8 billion in 2003Ð04 for this purpose) can also make a contribution where lack of broadband is a barrier to economic development. That is why I announced in June the intention to establish a regional broadband unit to use the public sector's spending power to boost availability and take-up in rural areas."

Fuck loads of money!
And fuck loads of reading about Rural Broadband Services.
And loads to read on the Remote Area Broadband Inclusion Trial.
And more here: Wired-up Communities.

Have to say I'm not so interested in wiring up remote locations, not personally, more interested in the blogging opportunities for SMEs and blogging as a bridge across the digital divide and as a means of life long learning.


1153 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:28:47 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The money in politics

 

14 July 2003   

 

Off to London

Anybody asks, I'm off to the Houses of Parliament.

Storming the citadels.


1150 Also posted to: Home page . At: 2:20:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Off to London

 

13 July 2003   

 

'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions

"The "blogosphere" may never be the same after America Online releases free blog-publishing software to its 34 million members this summer."


1147 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:15:32 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: 'AOL Journals' To Bring Blogs To Millions

 

 

Don't get mad, get political

" The MIT folks are building a system which will collate all publicly available information about all public officials in the US.

We could do the same for the UK. Imagine a site that would automatically collate information about MPs' financial interests, voting behaviour, Commons attendance, speeches, publications, campaign literature, friends, attentiveness to constituents etc and make it available on the web? Later we could extend it to cover corporate bosses and the quangocracy. "

Sounds a pretty bloody boring site. You still need journalists and bloggers to sift through that stuff to give it, life.


1146 Also posted to: Home page , warBlog . At: 11:58:05 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Don't get mad, get political

 

12 July 2003   

 

Blogging for better bins, councillor blogs

Another Labour bod, this time a local councillor starts blogging, about local issues: "when opposition councillors start realising what he is writing about them, they will set up weblogs of their own - but only if they can master the technology. "

And a prophesy: "within the next 18 months he reckons 200 councillors will have started a their own weblog, and within five years the numbers will have "snowballed" to 5,000. "

More power to Monday's Houses of Parliament blogging conference.


1141 Also posted to: Home page . At: 5:09:21 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Blogging for better bins, councillor blogs

 

 

Why online ads do not work

"...If they had been presented to me in a way which didn't irritate or annoy me then I might well have looked at them properly."

Only ads I use are Google ads. When I'm searching for something, they can be quite useful. But now they've spread elsewhere, and I don't find them useful at all. They're not in context, nor am I looking for further linkage.


1140 Also posted to: Home page . At: 4:59:07 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Why online ads do not work

 

11 July 2003   

 

Bloody stylesheets

You may notice some weirdness with my font sizes for a few hours as I 'live' mess around with them.

[Update:] nearly fixed it. Just MSIE 6 on PC that's not making my menus each the same size. And the line spacing between my buttons. On the Mac MSIE's buttons aren't showing the text. Fed up now, going to get some breakfast.


1128 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:34:19 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Bloody stylesheets

 

10 July 2003   

 

Style Sheets in HTML documents

Easy bits and hard bits... I've been trying to add more combinations of stylesheets to my templates. Right now, I can move the menus to the, left, right or make them disappear.

But, I want to add text sizes. However, I can't, well, not the way I want. I can swap individual stylesheets, or even groups of stylesheets, or make one style sheet out of several.

I want to be able to select say the 'left' sheet, then the bigger fonts sheet. And for that to be persistent in cookies. I can, with the method of loading the @Import but this would require a new page load.

I thought I could write two cookies, one for the menus, one for the text. I'm not sure if that would work (if I spend hours on it) as it seems that the selection of link sheets is a either this or that, not some of these, one of those and an other of this. You cannot pick and mix, only pick.

Mark Wilton-Jones has a solution to select two sheets, but the rest are switched off. So, I'd have to have a user select, 'left, big' or 'left, small' and 'right, big' or 'right, small' and so on. But, when I want to throw in 'red' and 'orange,' I'm going to get into dumbass stuff.

How can I pick and mix from hundreds of tiny little stylesheets? I'll have to sleep on it.


1127 Also posted to: Home page . At: 9:11:16 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Style Sheets in HTML documents

 

 

Ad sales double Yahoo profits

"Yahoo said the figures reflected the continued popularity of its sponsored web searches, which mention advertisers' names in conjunction with certain search results.

It also credited strong sales of fee-based services to consumers and small business users.

Sponsored web searches, introduced last year, have proved a runaway success with small business advertisers who cannot afford larger online promotions."

I've been wondering about Google's adsense. My mate put them on his football site for 4 days and scoped $175. But some of his click through rates were around 33% which is waaaay too high. So he's been kicked off. OK... Fair enough, though he's pissed off, obviously.

But, he wondered, well demanded, to me and I guess to Google in writing, that he be paid his $175.

I wonder if they will. I wonder also if it's the advertisers who paid, sometimes up to $2 for each click, who'll be paying or Google? I bet it'll be the advertisers.

I don't think Google adsense will last that long.


1126 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:22:58 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Ad sales double Yahoo profits

 

 

BBC catches the Westminster blogger

"Cut it with the bling bling and do something for the community, man"

They've also added some promo for next Monday's meet at House of Commons. I bet it gets packed out now. Lucky I put my RSVP in early.


1125 Also posted to: Home page . At: 12:02:00 PM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: BBC catches the Westminster blogger

 

 

An Introduction to Purple

"Its purpose is simple: produce HTML documents that can be addressed at the paragraph level. It does this by automatically creating name anchors with static and hierarchical addresses at the beginning of each text node, and by displaying these addresses as links at the end of each text node."

I found this on Mark Canter's blog and apparently, some people have it working in Blosxum and MT. Looks quite interesting, this purple stuff, and from two years ago. Never heard of it before.

I'd like to add this to my Radio. And currently thinking it through. It's the versioning that could be the problem. If I create, say, a story, and add purple links to the paras. Fine. But later I move paras around... There's some info on the purple page about versioning... Hmmmm. Interesting


1123 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:50:57 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: An Introduction to Purple

 

09 July 2003   

 

Left or right stylesheets

That's a nice bit of fun. With my stylesheets re written to be left or right. Maybe tomorrow I'll make some different colours, or maybe with some completely different designs.

I used the style switcher at A List Apart. Haven't tested it on all browsers/platforms yet. I know there's problems with NN4 but, well, the stylesheet I'm using has problems with that old browser anyway.


1122 Also posted to: Home page . At: 11:05:26 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: Left or right stylesheets

 

 

The internet is shit

"It is vital we realise this and move on."


1121 Also posted to: Home page . At: 10:54:22 AM  . .
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Other title(s) for this story: The internet is shit

 

 

Careless PDA users threaten corporate security

"Whereas in 2002 PDAs' main use was as a personal organiser, this year the top function is as a business diary."


1120 Also posted to: Home page