Preoccupations

MS Newsbot

Microsoft's personalised news service, Newsbot, is in beta. (The UK site has been in beta for a while now and can be found here.)

Greg Linden, CEO and founder of Findory News, shares his first reactions to Microsoft's beta:

It's difficult to determine the underlying algorithms from inspecting the behavior of the site, but there appears to be strong evidence that it is mostly based on subject categories. ... If it is true that MSN Newsbot is merely using subject classifications for its personalization, Findory's personalization technology is considerably more advanced. Findory's algorithms combine statistical analysis of the article text and of users who viewed the articles with information about articles you previously viewed. Our personalized news is fine-grained. Our personalization is targeted closely to your interests while maintaining enough serendipity to enhance discovery. We help you read the news more efficiently and find articles you otherwise would miss. There is still nothing else like it out there.

Writing for the web

Tim Bray:

The state of Web authoring tools is kind of like the state of what we used to call “Word Processing” twenty years ago when I was getting into this business. If everyone’s going to write for the Web (and it looks a lot of people are going to) we need the Web equivalents of Word Perfect and Wordstar and Xywrite and Microsoft Word, and we need them right now.

Jonathon Delacour:

I’m an advanced content creator who, like Tim Bray, wants the convenience and ubiquity of browser-use together with the advantages of a feature-rich client. ... Why can’t Tim and I have a decent WYSIWYG browser-based editor?

Apple: now much more than "just" a computer company

The Apple/Motorola initiative to put a version of iTunes on Motorola's next-generation phones (see here) has led to speculation that this might be ' "step 1" in a relationship between Motorola and Apple to build wireless iPods'. Marc Canter writes elsewhere:

See! I told you so! You think Apple still thinks of themselves as a computer company? I doubt it. They've been milking the Mac and their users for years and they're about to launch their entirely new model - which will be based upon enabling people's digital lifestyles.

Music is just the first step. And creativity. You'll soon see .Mac and Rendezvous play a big part in Apple's comprehensive solution for the digital convergence. Shared calendars for the family, tied into your vacation albums and home movies. Throw in nutritional guides, pick-up and drop-off schedules and after-school activities - and we'll finally have iCommunity.

Apple is showing the world - right now - that end-user's experiences actually DO count. That's why the Mac was always the best and why the iPod is the best. They're doing our R&D for us!

History of the English Language

This site includes a list of links to on-line, worldwide resources for the study of the English language and its history. (Many of these links were discovered by others too numerous to list here! Thanks.) As well, my students are contributing to an anthology of historical texts representing different genres of English, and an encyclopedia on the cultural history of English.

Here, you can find links to other U of T enterprises. These include the Dictionary of Old English Project, Albert Masters' Medieval Manuscripts site, Ian Lancashire's electronic Renaissance Dictionaries, Jack Chambers' work on Canadian dialectology.

Vanishing digital texts

Books, scientific journals and films which are published only on the internet could be lost unless a system to store the digital material in permanent form is put in place, said Lynne Brindley the chief executive of the British Library. ...

The BBC's £2.5m Domesday Project, a snapshot of Britain in 1986, is a prime example of the difficulties looming on the horizon if no universal, permanent method of digital storage is found and used. This project stored information and photographs on video discs but within a few years the system used to play them had become obsolete and the discs were rendered virtually useless. Academics have since had to develop software that will emulate the original BBC computer system to ensure its continued accessibility.

Legislation passed last year enshrined the principle that electronic and non-print publications should be deposited at the British Library in the same way as books, pamphlets, maps, printed music, journals and newspapers. However the changes to the Legal Deposit Act did not address the problem of the added costs entailed.

The Independent

CSS tutorials

Excellent site covering lists, floats and selectors.

NPR and RSS

NPR news and information is now available through RSS feeds.

NPR is an internationally acclaimed producer and distributor of noncommercial news, talk, and entertainment programming. A privately supported, not-for-profit membership organization, NPR serves more than 750 independently operated, noncommercial public radio stations. Each NPR Member Station serves local listeners with a distinctive combination of national and local programming.

To live in America now

'Jonathan Raban on how the White House's obsession with secrecy has turned America into a nation of conspiracy theorists' :

To live in America now - at least to live in a port city like Seattle - is to be surrounded by the machinery and rhetoric of covert war, in which everyone must be treated as a potential enemy until they can prove themselves a friend. Surveillance and security devices are everywhere: the spreading epidemic of razor wire, the warnings in public libraries that the FBI can demand to know what books you're borrowing, the Humvee laden with troops in combat fatigues, the Coast Guard gunboats patrolling the bay, the pat-down searches and x-ray machines, the nondescript grey boxes, equipped with radio antennae, that are meant to sniff out pathogens in the air. It's difficult to leave the house now without encountering at least one of these reminders that we are being watched and that we live in deadly peril - though in peril of quite what is hard to say.

... This is an extraordinary moment in American history. Half the country - including all the people I know best - believes it is trembling on the very lip of outright tyranny, while the other half believes that only the Bush administration stands between it and national collapse into atheism, socialism, black helicopters, and gay marriage. November 2 looms as a date of dreadful consequence. A bumper sticker, popular among the sort of people I hang out with, reads: Bush-Cheney '04 - The Last Vote You'll Ever Have To Cast. That's funny, but it belongs to the genre of humour in which the laugh is likely to die in your throat - and none of the people who sport the sticker on their cars are smiling. They are too busy airing conspiracy theories, which may or may not turn out to be theories.

The Guardian

Petrarch

a single website where Petrarch's works, and works written about Petrarch ... (are) archived ... for study and research

Corpus vitrearum medii aevi

Medieval stained glass in Great Britain, on-line here.

Merton College, Chapel Choir, east window ©English Heritage