this is an idea worth pursuing

News Aggregator for Weblogs At Harvard

This is an experiment. I’ve wanted to try this out for quite some time — it’s a mini-aggregator in a Manila site. A managing editor selects feeds for a news page for his or her community. This means that people can learn about and enjoy a news aggregator without having to install and run one on their own. When they want to control their own subscriptions, then they can advance to the next level. The display of the aggregator here is still quite crude. But there will be new stories at the top of the hour. I have to provide a way to see what we’re subscribed to and a prefs page to add or remove feeds, and to determine how many are displayed on this page. In other words the development is far from finished. But it works. DW

hypertext, post Xanadu

Ben Hammersley.com: of Cigars and hypertext

I’m stuck by the meanings of the links themselves. Where they are, what they link to, the words they link with and so on all add an enormous amount of information to the piece. Links can be subtle, ironic, funny, informative, maudlin, depressing, even designed not to be followed at all. The browser status bar can be a major source of semantic meaning, without even following a link through.

sometimes link is just a link. to mangle a metaphor . . . . sometimes you can get the joke by seeing where a link would take you. Other times, you need to follow the gesture . . . . depends on how curious you are, how much time you have, how well your host has prepared you . . . . .

the truth will out

Foock yuoo tuu Bork Bork Bork [dive into mark]

_As a reply to MSN’s treatment of its users, Opera Software today released a very special Bork edition of its Opera 7 for Windows browser. The Bork edition behaves differently on one Web site: MSN. Users accessing the MSN site will see the page transformed into the language of the famous Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show: Bork, Bork, Bork!_

Follow the thread to the end . . . .

more thoughts on empire

[IP] a piece very worth reading till the end SYMPATHY FOR THE DEVIL

_The other means by which long terms of peace – or, more accurately, non-war – have been achieved is the unequivocal domination by a single ruthless power. The best example of this is, of course, the Pax Romana, a “world” peace which lasted from about 27 BCE until 180 AD. I grant that the Romans were not the most benign of rulers. They crucified dissidents for decoration, fed lesser humans to their pets, and generally scared the bejesus out of everyone, including Jesus Himself. But war, of the sort that racked the Greeks, Persians, Babylonians, and indeed, just about everyone prior to Julius Caesar, did not occur. The Romans had decided it was bad for business. They were in a military position to make that opinion stick._

Interesting people get interesting mail: browsing the archives will have to suffice for me. Read this all the way through. It *will* be on the exam.