Scripting News

Thu, 22 May 2003 16:35:04 GMT

Meet The Berkmans: 1587 Mass Ave.

Fri, 23 May 2003 03:37:45 GMT

Ben Edelman: "Gator is blocking my testing site."

Thu, 22 May 2003 15:26:40 GMT

People want to know why I like the new search so much. I can now easily see what I said about almost anything over time. Sometimes it makes me wince. Most of the time it makes me laugh. It's the data. I especially like the pictures. They surprise me. It turns my weblog into a long-term thing. For example, look at all the teases. For some reason they only go back to 2000 but I was teasing all the way back to 1997.

Thu, 22 May 2003 15:14:56 GMT

Harvard survey finds college students are a key demographic in the 2004 elections.

Fri, 23 May 2003 03:27:43 GMT

Andrew Grumet looks at URL structure in weblog tools.

Thu, 22 May 2003 17:03:10 GMT

Source code for the Google-powered weblog search.

Thu, 22 May 2003 16:57:56 GMT

Jon Udell: "Now and again, I google for my social security number, hoping that the number of hits will be zero but fearing that it won't be."

Thu, 22 May 2003 15:04:39 GMT

BBC: "Habib Miyan has been drawing pension money since he retired in 1938, and says he is 132."

Thu, 22 May 2003 12:31:38 GMT

News.Com: "A Harvard researcher has completed an investigation of the Gator advertising utility, offering a glimpse into the workings of one of the Web's most controversial pop-up networks."

Thu, 22 May 2003 10:51:12 GMT

I was sitting in a law school cafeteria yesterday thinking how far away I was from the threat of terrorism. A few hours later a bomb blew up a classroom on a nearby law school campus.

Thu, 22 May 2003 08:08:10 GMT

MicroDoc reviews SocialDynamX FM Radio Station. "I can safely leave a partially finished blog and go see a news item, or surf to a site in the browser without the fear of losing my partly completed log. This is one of the best feelings I have had since beginning to use FMRS."

Thu, 22 May 2003 10:44:53 GMT

Movable Type's new TypePad service is unveiled. It appears to be what UserLand had working (for free) in 1999. Hosting is a tricky business, as we found out, there are ISPs who now host MT sites that must somehow be included in their plans, yet there seems to be no mention of them in the FAQ.

Thu, 22 May 2003 10:26:21 GMT

Sean McGrath: "A lot of XML technologies these days are big bags of complexity."

Thu, 22 May 2003 08:49:04 GMT

Tim Bray: "I have never actually managed to write down a chunk of RDF/XML correctly, even when I had the triples laid out quite clearly in my head."

Thu, 22 May 2003 22:10:00 GMT

Sjoerd comments on Bray's piece.

Great Software Hope

Thu, 22 May 2003 08:16:16 GMT

1997 was the thick year for Netscape and Sun.

Netscape owned the browser and Sun had Java. Microsoft's developer program was kaput, everyone who was anyone wanted to develop for the Web, and that led them to Netscape and Sun, and away from Microsoft. Every pointer MS tried to chase came back nil.

Yet Netscape and Sun blew it. From this piece, written on this day in 1997: "They're acting like little Microsofts and there's no room for them as long as they approach the world this way."

I was dead serious when I wrote this. Being in a dead software market is no fun, even when you haven't signed on with the dying platform vendor. This was true of Apple and IBM in the 80s, and Netscape and Sun in the 90s.

Someday someone is going to rise to challenge Microsoft. But bet on the challenge not coming from Silicon Valley.