Grumpies December 6, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : General , 1 comment so farChris McEvoy has started up a blog called Grumpy Old People which kind of appeals to me - can’t think why.
Named after the BBC TV series Grumpy Old Men which was the best thing on TV last Xmas ( not saying much ) the introductory post proclaimed
We need to moan and complain a lot more than we do. I’ve noticed that people seem to have to always be positive about things even when they’re crap. A problem should not be described as ‘an opportunity’ or ‘ a challenge’. If it’s crap then why not say it.
The multi-author blog is coming along nicely and now Chris has only gone and registered a domain for ApologiesNotAccepted.com !
You may think that casting a vote twice a decade to choose between tweedle-dum and tweedle-dee is ‘doing your best’, but it isn’t.
Well don’t blame me, I voted for Eugene V Debbs
update:
read the comments on metafilter
Reasons to be cheerful - 1,2,3. December 3, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning, meta-blog, internet, Music , add a commentThree reasons to be cheerful this weekend
-
3 clear days off to get on with my Ultraversity work.
At last it feels like I can make some real headway towards getting module 1 finished. I’ve done the La3 ( double loop ) already using webnotes, which was satisfying.
- I’ve tamed my information overload - phew!.
I’ve been through a messy learning period of switching browsers, switching how I read webfeeds ( RSS ), expanding my use of new tools, and subscribing to the same groups in different ways - but now it’s finally all coming together. I’ve mainly shifted from client programs to web applications, alleviating platform dependent problems and allowing almost perfect synchronisation between locations. So, much less Opera, Safari, NetNewsWire, Agent and IE. The blog is at the centre now, with bloglines, Furl, Gmail, del.icio.us and Flickr etc all integrated and running reasonably smoothly together - nomatter where I am.
- Audioscrobbler and LastFM
My own personal radio station which (mostly) only plays the music I like - this is wonderful.
Furl vs del.icio.us December 1, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : learning, internet , 4commentsFurl vs del.icio.us
Two useful web services, both social bookmarking tools with overlapping functions but significant differences. You don’t really want to use both in parallel so what are the advantages and disadvantages of each?
Q First what is social bookmarking?
A Sharing the URLs to possibly interesting websites you have found, with others online.
Q Why would I want to do that?
A For many reasons, both social and selfish. By matching your research interests with others you might benefit from the combined results of many different individuals’ unique browsing activities. less stones left unturned. By keeping your bookmarks online you can use them and add to them from any computer wherever you are.COMMON FEATURES
Both allow you to bookmark websites as you come across them, just by clicking a bookmarklet which you install on your browser’s toolbar.
You have to register an account first, and login once on each computer where you want access. There is no charge for this.
Both allow you to then publish a link to your online bookmarks, and an RSS feed for people to subscribe to. Both attempt to help you find more websites from other people who are bookmarking the same kind of stuff.
ADVANTAGES OF del.icio.us
* You use tags rather than categories to label your bookmarks. Tags are more flexible, you just type them in like keywords when you add a link, and it’s then simple to view any links from other people who have used the same tags. This is the same system which Flickr uses for labeling shared photographs - social tagging . I prefer it to the older more rigid system of first creating a category, and then assigning your entry to a category, perhaps primary and secondary or multiple categories. Tagging has been enabled by the power of searching superceeding indexing.
* del.icio.us may have a larger user base, or a better informed one compared to Furl which was launched more recently.
*minimalist interface, if you like that sort of thing - no ads.
ADVANTAGES of FURL
* Saves not just a link but a copy of the webpage you are looking at, into your personal archive. This enables fast searching of the content of all the websites you’ve Furled - possibly the clincher. Also useful for making backup copies of a website at a particular time, frozen for you as a safeguard against loss. ( I furl my own, too )
* doesn’t have a silly name with dots in it!
* Makes recommendations based on items which people who have furled similar things to you, have furled recently. A bit like
Amazon.co.uk when it says “people who bought this book also bought these CDs….”PROGNOSIS
I think Furl will attract more new furlers through recommendation because it’s easier to get started following the instructions, and the script they provide for publishing latest Furls on your blog is a good advertisment. The organisation was recently bought up by Looksmart and continues to develop, so perhaps they will embrace the tagging system more fully or do something more to bring the categories together. del.icio.us will remain the preserve of geeks and academics, which may have an upside as well as the opposite.
I use Furl a lot more than del.icio.us, similarly to the way Alan Levine describes but if I had started using del.icio.us first, it may be a different story.
So whichever your preference, if you haven’t already - get started with social bookmarking today.
other articles of note:
Digging into del.icio.us on Weblogg-edHow do you use del.icio.us - by Roland Piquepaille
10 cool things to do with Furl - by Amy Gahran
Blog and words of the year December 1, 2004
Posted by Andy Roberts in : Memetics , 4commentsNews yesterday that “Blog” has been dubbed word of the year 2004 by Merriam-Webster with the runners up being
2. incumbent
3. electoral
4. insurgent
5. hurricane
6. cicada
7. peloton
8. partisan
9. sovereignty
10. defenestrationStrange choices, some of them, arn’t they? I’ve heard of the defenstrations of Prague ( 1st 1419, 2nd 1618) but who chucked someone famous out of a window in 2004?
And maybe Blog should be the word of next year really.
More interesting perhaps, are the words of the year in retrospect. If we look at the Oxford Dictionaries’ words of year for the past century some appear a lot earlier than you may expect. What was the word of the year when you were born?
1904 Hip
1905 Whizzo
1906 Teddy bear
1907 Egghead
1908 Realpolitik
1909 Tiddly-om-pom-pom
1910 Sacred cow
1911 Gene
1912 Blues
1913 Celeb
1914 Cheerio
1915 Civvy street
1916 U-boat
1917 Tailspin
1918 Ceasefire
1919 Ad-lib
1920 Demob
1921 Pop
1922 Wizard
1923 Hem-line
1924 Lumpenproletariat
1925 Avant garde
1926 Kitsch
1927 Sudden death
1928 Big Apple
1929 Sex
1930 Drive-in
1931 Mickey Mouse
1932 Bagel
1933 Dumb down
1934 Pesticide
1935 Racism
1936 Spliff
1937 Dunk
1938 Cheeseburger
1939 Blitzkrieg
1940 Molotov cocktail
1941 Snafu
1942 Buzz
1943 Pissed off
1944 DNA
1945 Mobile phone
1946 Megabucks
1947 Wonderbra
1948 Cool
1949 Big Brother
1950 Brainwashing
1951 Fast food
1952 Generation X
1953 Hippy
1954 Non-U
1955 Boogie
1956 Sexy
1957 Psychedelic
1958 Beatnik
1959 Cruise missile
1960 Cyborg
1961 Awesome
1962 Bossa nova
1963 Peacenik
1964 Byte
1965 Miniskirt
1966 Acid
1967 Love-in
1968 It-girl
1969 Microchip
1970 Hypermarket
1971 Green
1972 Watergate
1973 F-word
1974 Punk
1975 Detox
1976 Trekkie
1977 Naff all
1978 Trainers
1979 Karaoke
1980 Power dressing
1981 Toy-boy
1982 Hip-hop
1983 Beatbox
1984 Double click
1985 OK yah
1986 Mobile
1987 Virtual reality
1988 Gangsta
1989 Latte
1990 Applet
1991 Hot-desking
1992 URL
1993 Have it large
1994 Botox
1995 Kitten heels
1996 Ghetto fabulous
1997 Dot-commer
1998 Text message
1999 Google
2000 Bling bling
2001 9/11
2002 Axis of evil
2003 Sex up
2004 ChavAnd there are some fascinating phrases with explanations at the American Dialect Society word of the year site
such as
Most Useful: word or phrase which most fills a need for a new word
Winner flexitarian: noun, a vegetarian who occasionally eats meat. 31-41
You’d need the context to understand it though, “bacon vegetarian” seems clearer to me.
is an online professional who initiated DARnet 
