Publishing del.icio.us webfeeds through FeedBurner

To try out FeedBurner I burned the two feeds for the linklogs on the site. The data of these feeds comes from Del.icio.us, which means I don’t know if anyone is using them. By serving them through FeedBurner I hope to get some information.

Nothing has changed on Del.icio.us, so the previous addresses still function. But the icons on the site now point new subscribers to the FeedBurner versions.

Screencasting as a blog format

I just watched Jon Udell ’s screencast Heavy metal umlaut: the movie which is interesting in a number of ways. First the movie itself, which shows how a Wikipedia article evolves over time when users add text, restructure the page and remove ‘graffiti’.

But also the way the story is told is interesting. Instead of a blog post that describes changes to the article, a screencast, which is a short Flash movie, takes the reader by the hand, actually showing the changes to the page while you hear Jon talking about it. What would have taken quite a long, and perhaps less interesting story, is now brought in a way that’s much more appealing.

Of course the Wikipedia article now includes a link back to the same screencast in which it features.

extisp.icio.us

With all the interest in tags lately new foms of data are getting available. A service from to extisp.icio.us uses the data from del.icio.us to generate an overview of all tags a user has given to the bookmarks he stored. Here are mine.

The SOHO 1000th Comet Contest

Predict the date and time that SOHO 1000th -a comet yet to be discovered- will make its closest approach to the Sun (perihelion).

Waddeneilanden weren buitenstaanders

Zo’n 60 jaar geleden was Nederland één van de oprichters van de EEG (zo heette de Europese Gemeenschap toen). Héél Nederland? Nee, een eilandje bleef dapper weerstand bieden aan hun opkomende landrotten en maakte het leven van de bewoners van het omringende vasteland bepaald niet gemakkelijk… (vrij naar Asterix)

Nu.nl: Waddeneilanden weren buitenstaanders. Belachelijk dat zulke beschermingen mogelijk zijn, de pijlers van de EG zijn toch het vrij verkeer van goederen en personen in de hele EG.

Google versus comment spam

Google announced a technique for preventing comment spam. The idea is that by making the comment spam less valuable spammers loose the interest in misusing comments.

It works by adding rel="nofollow" attribute to hyperlinks. With this search engines can recognize untrusted links on a page, and use that information in their algorithms. Google says will use it in their ranking system, by not crediting the posted link.

It’s a shame such measures must be taken, but I think this is a useful step against comment spam. I hope that when developers of blog software add support for this rel attribute they also include a way to remove the attribute if the comment is not spam. This will make ‘good’ links count in the search engines.
It gives site owners some new power, as they can decide who they consider good. But it’s the same power we already have for blog posts, because each time you write something you decide which links you add.

Nieuw: linklog voor Ontwikkelingen

Ontwikkelingen is uitgebreid met een linklog voor links naar nederlandstalige sites die ik tegenkom op het net. Die links voeg ik toe via del.icio.us en een PHP-script plaatst ze daarvandaan op deze pagina. Hoe dat werkt heb ik het artikel My linklog now comes from del.icio.us geschreven.

The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything

Did you know that search engines can help with much more then just simple questions? Google and MSN both know The Answer to Life, the Universe, and Everything, a famous question from the book The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy .

I found this on WikiPedia, which itself might be the closest thing to the Hitchhiker’s guide that exists!

AutoStitch, create panoramas automatically

A few days ago I put a link to AutoStitch in my linklog and today I tried the software to see what it can do.
I started the program, openend three photos and the program started calculating. The resulting image was amazing. Without any work from me, no rough positioning, no ordering of images, no point-to-point alignment a great panorama was created!

Here’s an image I created with AutoStitch from a few photos:

I’ve been looking for a program to quickly create panoramas and this really is a great program. At the moment it’s a freely available demo.

Google patents highlighting search terms

Google scored patent 6,839,702:

A system highlights search terms in documents distributed over a network. The system generates a search query that includes a search term and, in response to the search query, receives a list of one or more references to documents in the network. The system receives selection of one of the references and retrieves a document that corresponds to the selected reference. The system then highlights the search term in the retrieved document.

which is… highlighting search terms in web documents.

I want a patent.