| Monday, October 20, 2003 |  |
| World Kit |
 Mikel Maron is doing very cool things with world maps. First he made World as a Blog which is a Flash animation that shows web log postings in real time, popping up on the world map, at the location of the poster. And now he's taken it further and put together World Kit, which makes it possible to do the same thing with just about any data that has geographical coordinates, by interfacing with the Flash app though XML. I can't to play with that. If I just had more hours in the day.[ Programming | 2003-10-20 05:11 | 1 comment | PermaLink ] More > |
| Weblog Interfaces |
| Weblog APIs (Application Program Interfaces) can allow you to operate a weblog program through a different program. For example, you can post articles from another program, with an interface you like better, without having to change your primary weblog software. Or you might post entries directly from a weblog aggregator. Or programmers can think of new ways of tying things together that previously weren't.
Probably the first example was the LiveJournal Client/Server API. And then there was the Blogger API, and more recently the MetaWeblog API. And now I was just reading about the new Atom API. I haven't gotten around to using any of them for my NewsLog program that this weblog is running in. When last I was looking into it, when the Blogger API was the main thing around, I just couldn't figure out how to squeeze my functionality into its too limited paradigm. Next time I feel like giving it a shot, I think MetaWeblog and Atom looks like what I ought to concentrate on. [ Programming | 2003-10-20 05:29 | 0 comments | PermaLink ] |
| Corporate liability terminator |
 It rather bores me to talk about the politics of a state I don't even live in any more, but certain things just need to be kept in the light. Like, I'm sure most of the California voters didn't know about Arnold Schwarzenegger's relation to Enron. Specifically the meeting he had with the former Enron top brass in 2001, and the stack of internal Enron memos outlining the plan to get him elected as governor in California so that he could make sure the energy companies wouldn't have to be held responsible for any of the billions they ripped the taxpayers off of. So Arnold would be the man who would cancel the lawsuits that would otherwise ask for $9 billions of profits to be paid back. And, well until now that was just another conspiracy story. But that happened to be one of the very first things he's now done as governor, asking for those lawsuits to be settled out of court. And that puts it in an entirely different light. And he's now working on removing the law that even made those suits possible in the first place. Read more for example here. Well, if it was just a matter of an actor being elected to political office, and he was just going to use good common sense, I'd say go for it. He seems like a nice enough guy, and his Austrian terminator accent and colorful past would be a source of many good laughs. But this seems unfortunately more like just another corrupt politician, bought off in advance by criminal corporate interests.[ Politics | 2003-10-20 10:02 | 2 comments | PermaLink ] More > |
| Accidental Authority |
| By the magic of google ranking I've somewhat unfairly become a leading authority on a bunch of strange subjects. Like "ebay scams", "computer troubles", "ganguro girls", "euros dollars & oil" and "nestle corporation". Oh, many other things too, but those are some that lead lots of people here to certain articles in my weblog. And sometimes I think that is surversively enjoyable. I mean, that my brief mention of a couple of skeletons in Nestle's corporate closet will actually show as well as Nestle's own websites is absolutely delightful. But I think there probably are better places for people to go to talk about ebay scams and their various computer troubles than my personal accounts of the same. But I feel a bit of responsibility, and am wondering whether I should go and place some more comprehensive information and links on those pages that people seem to be flocking to. [ Information | 2003-10-20 10:30 | 1 comment | PermaLink ] More > |