I was trying to explain to a friend of mine why I'm switching to Linux or GNU when ever possible. Tried to explain some of the trusted computer outcomes. But theres nothing like pointing someone to a bias website to make up there own mind.
Month: January 2004
Xcal : Progress on Calendar
Started doing more work on the Calendar part of my website. Finally got cocoon to read inside of a Xcal. So now its more a matter of how do I actually put the xcals in the webdav directory. Once there in there I can write a classy transformer so you can read most of the information online, but also add the xcal to your calendar. I do believe xcals are accepted by all ical compatable applications? The rdf version was also a option but I can easily enable that if more accept that…
Found some useful links too.
Mozilla Calendar Notes and Queries
iCalendar DTD Document (xCal)
Pronom a new service for 2004
Was flying through Openoffice.org today looking for enough information to contribute to the National Archives Pronom application. And came across this nice openoffice ebook which is free to download and read online.
What is Pronom? Well let them tell you…
PRONOM is a database of information about the technical dependencies upon which access to electronic records may rely. It contains information about the file formats in which electronic records may be stored, the software products required to create, render and migrate these formats, and the vendors who develop these products. It includes product support life cycle information, to facilitate technology watch within digital archives. The PRONOM database can be searched online, and reports produced in a variety of formats. The system currently holds details of, 550 file formats, 250 software products, and 100 vendors, and records are being added on a regular basis. We also actively encourage the submission of new information for inclusion on PRONOM, and an online submission form is provided for this purpose. The website also includes details of our plans for significant future developments to both the content and the functionality of the system.
PRONOM was developed by The National Archives' Digital Preservation Department, as a tool to support TNA's own digital archive. However, we hope and anticipate that PRONOM will also provide a valuable resource for the wider digital preservation community. As such, we very much welcome feedback on both the current version of PRONOM and our future plans. All feedback should be sent to: pronom@nationalarchives.gov.uk
More information can be found under the menu on the left side of PRONOM Go check it out and contribute more information.
Atari ST Emulator
Andy pointed me to a crazy website which does odd things on the first page. Actually its so bad on Opera that you have to pretend to be IE for it to load a page. But it turns out to be a great resource for emulators. I'm dying to try out some of the ST emulators. If I can emulate a Atari Falcon which was 32bit and had 24bit colour on my pc I will be extremly happy…
Content Management is for losers
Rushkoff stirs the content management pot at the feature.
Content Management is for losers. Young people may have discovered the dark truth about digital media: the person who wins the right to store a piece of data has actually won the booby prize.
Well done Rushkoff, I tend to agree with alot of the sense he talks… Been also keeping an eye on Theoretical PerspectivesRushkoff's online classroom. With that and danny boy you can get some really good ideas about interaction design…
Xhtml friends network
I briefly saw this in my offline reader while reading my news in the car on the way to the Twin cities but was obviously offline so couldnt check it out futher. However in the back of my head i've been meaning to catch up on XFN. It actually looks very good and so so simple compared to FOAF even though there not really compareable… Will start using XFN soon i think…
XFNâ„¢ (XHTML Friends Network) is a simple way to represent human relationships using hyperlinks. In recent years, blogs and blogrolls have become the fastest growing area of the Web. XFN enables web authors to indicate their relationship(s) to the people in their blogrolls simply by adding a 'rel' attribute to their a tags…
My first XFN link to Dave, just need to add profile to my blog pages and i'm ready to go… might do that in a bit before i sleep.Oh just to note I also added a GeoURL to all the pages too, while i was at it.
Smoothie
Finally got a machine setup for Smoothwall 2.0. The Machine is a Pentium 2 233mmx with all of 64meg of 100mhz memory and a 3 gig hard drive. Unfortually I've run out of video cards so I'm using a FireGL 1000 pro which orginally thought was a powerful 32meg FireGL 1 card. But it seems it wont be so wasted as its only a 8 meg card and wouldnt be a good idea to swap with my 64meg ATI Radion card. Specially seeing how the Smoothwall server has no display, keyboard or mouse now. I however did put in two 3Com network cards and my ADSL PCI modem card in the hope smoothwall would pick it up, it seems it didnt and I'm now stick using the Green frog usb modem till I sort it out.
So tomorrow when i get up, I will take down the current server and change my network setup till i get it all working behind smoothwall. Better hope google caches this before it goes down later today…
If you can see this post, then i'm now sitting behind a linux firewall and everything is working well… love it when a plan comes together.
Catching the big one
In my post a couple days back, I emailed alot of leading heads of the internet about talking at the college. Well I'm pleased to say Richard Stallman has agreed to come talk in May.
I should be in the UK in May, so I could give a speech.
So simple and yet so amazing… This is going to be a huge event and I think there will not be enough space to house all the people who would like to hear him speak.
Presence and Location management?
One of the things which bugs me about mobile phones is the location trianglation which is possible to find where I am at the time. And I always thought the profiles on mobile phones were powerful but not natural enough for widespread use.
Bell Labs claim to have solved the first one at least…
Bell Labs sets its sight on location privacy and
Hiding your Location Information.
Inviting the internet to the college
I've been writing emails and back and forth to some of the leading lights of the internet. Hoping to get them into college to do talks to students and staff.
Some of the people in my hit list include, Howard Rhiengold, Lawrence Lessig, Linus Torvalds, Jon Johansen, Richard Stallman, etc, etc… Hoping to add to the list when I actually recieve replies…
Ok I've recieved lots of auto-replies and a Authorize from mailblocks but the only person to really reply is Howard Rhiengold so far…
Ian —
Why don't you consider joining Brainstorms? That way, you'd have contect with others who share your interest — and you'd know when I might be in the UK. (No plans at present, but I usually make it to London every two or three years).
Here's info. Let me know if you are interested: http://www.rheingold.com/community.html