Tuesday, February 14, 2006

Richard Totaro, a doctor from New South Wales, Australia writes of a fantastic medical application of RSS. "The National Library of Medicine has provded customised searches of PubMed (the medical literature search engine) using RSS. Write a search, click Send to RSS and they produce a RSS feed which updates whenever you update at the feed. This is an extraordinarily powerful tool for researchers and clinicians looking at the medical literaure. One example feed I wrote searches for a type of critical illness, or look at this feed which looks at the outcome of cardiac arrest patients." 

Earlier this month I quoted Greta Garbo in Grand Hotel (1932) with the famous line "I want to be alone," and immediately got a bunch of mail saying the actual quote is "I want to be left alone." Well, I just watched the movie again and the emailers were wrong, the line is exactly as I had it, and she even repeats it. The Library of Congress website makes the same mistake the emailers did, but the Wikipedia page for Garbo has it right.  

Now here's a wish. I'd love to buy a DVD of MGM's Hollywood Review of 1929. One of the very first talkies, it features some of my favorites. I find the movies of this period utterly fascinating. These are the stars of the silent screen, so they over-emote with their eyes and gestures, some of them talking on-screen for the first time. And these people are all so incredibly dead, long gone, some of them like Marie Dressler died in the early 30s. The funny thing (at least to me) is that while these movies look so ancient, they really aren't that much older than I am. 1929 is 26 years before I was born. 26 years ago from now is (now sit down) 1980. Most of these people were alive when I was born. Anyway, progress over the next ten years would be incredible. In 1929 the miracle was they could talk. By 1939 they were doing blockbusters like The Wizard of Oz, The Women and Gone With the Wind.  

I'm giving a lunch talk at Yahoo on Friday in Santa Clara. For more information contact Chad Dickerson. (This is for Yahoo people only.) In the spirit of full disclosure, I am not being paid to speak, and I am paying my own travel expenses.  

Steve Gillmor: "Where in the world is Jonathan Schwartz?" 

He might be with Niall Kennedy, who just announced he's leaving Technorati. I've gotten to know Niall since moving back to the Bay Area. He's one of the good guys, part of the glue that ties things together. I wish him the best of luck in whatever he does next.  

Marc Canter explains that a speaking slot at ETech costs $10,000. You also get a booth, three tickets and your company's name on the program. 

For $60,000 you get a keynote, as spelled out in their sponsor's prospectus. 

A keynote at Supernova costs $50,000, according to their prospectus. 

Scoble is a media hacker. He's testing the various search engines by inventing a new word, brrreeeport, and seeing how long it takes for each of the engines to pick it up. 

Ernie the Attorney: "We need a benevolent dictator."