Computing

Topics related to computers and computing

Sunday in the park

February 16, 2004

I spent a portion of Sunday afternoon, between working on some php projects that need to be finished, watching the ducks and Canadian Geese on the pond at the lake. For some time I pondered Dave Winer's comments on Saturday about Atom and wondered why not produce a feed normalizer that converts Atom to RSS. Obviously I wasn't the only one. The thing is, Dave is right. We have a good standard already (Thanks Netscape and Userland). If it's too ambiguous in areas for some then lets extend the current spec in a way that does not break it.

What to tell Microsoft

February 9, 2004

Dave Winer asks for suggestions of features that he should bring up with the Microsoft IE team that would make IE better for blogging. My request is more one for Dave, something I'm pretty sure he would do anyway, but please publish the list of suggestions. There are lots of other great browsers out there and I'm sure there are folks who will pick up on the tips and help make all kinds of blogging interfaces (and not just web browsers) better.

You don't exist, go away

February 7, 2004

IBM Developerworks has a good article about error checking and how programmers and designers need to be careful to ensure that the checks they make are checking for not only probable answers or situations but also possible. Imagine a web form asking for the name of the President of the US when you were born. The form asks for the middle name, but denies input when you enter "S" as President Truman's middle name.

There is comment that the author gives companies their own customer comment line when they ask for a phone number. I've been known to use the same technique for email addresses.

Search engines vs. directories

February 7, 2004

With the increasing power and reach of search engines there is an ongoing debate about the benefits of search engines and human edited directories. The big search engines are locked in battles with web developers who are in search of the all-powerful first place in search results. If one does a Google search on "horse AIM icons" for example the first several results that are returned are all advertising for various drugs.

So here's an idea. Why doesn't google implement an API interface that could allow web users to indicate that the page results are deceptive. By requiring people to sign up for an API Id and limiting the number of sites that can be reported in a day they could help reduce malicious use of the service. Perhaps there is ultimately a human that reviews the top offenders and does a blacklist of sorts to remove them from the top of the results.

Stanford Center for Internet and Society

February 6, 2004

Stanford's Center for Internet and Society brought their student blogs on line just before Thanksgiving last year. They are still growing and have not yet become as regularly published as the blogs at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet & Society. It is encouraging to see so many sites for people to discuss law coming to the net. There are those at schools, and sites like Groklaw. I wonder if West Law will start indexing blogs? Is law a better subject for academic blogging than other possibilities? Does the course of "open peer review" (i.e.

Life Balance

February 6, 2004

This week's Tidbits has a review of Life Balance. It looks interesting. Jeff Porten's review does, however, point out a common failing of technology. He says "Making this software work for you requires you to figure out its philosophy, and then integrate your own way of doing things into that structure."

I've seen this more times than I can count. At the office instead of producing high quality information on a consistent basis the team of very talented people often get wrapped up in and consumed by using the technology. Instead of being information workers the team gets sucked into being technology workers trying to figure out how to fit the information into the philosophy of the technology and then how to get the desired results back.

Searching

February 5, 2004

The New York Times has a good article about searching the internet today. It points out some often overlooked techniques as well as ways that tools like Google can be used to provide better results.

It also alludes to special purpose databases and the time and expense that is associated with them. It doesn't get so deep as to mention services like West Law for doing for legal research. The article also didn't address that there are many ways of finding information on the internet. Often things that can't be found in Google, for example, might be revealed by directories like Yahoo or DMoz. In addition there are many free databases of information that are not completely searchable by google. Things like property records and marriage licenses are often in these databases.

On the same day the Times has a really saddening article about the state of people helping people. The premise of the article, supported by a handful of people they talked to is that technical people (geeks) are tiring of helping friends and family solve computer problems. Several of the people they talked to go beyond not wanting to help and are hostile towards technical neophytes.

The Chip Merchant

February 5, 2004

Macintouch (no permanent link to link to) has a note about The Chip Merchant that says their place in San Diego has a sign that it has been seized. I used to to some business with them. That is I did business with them until they sent me defective RAM and then expected me to pay for return shipping and their shipping me replacement RAM. They state that this is the standard practice for all RAM vendors. It took getting the BBB involved to get it sorted out but it soured me on doing business with them.

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