Random quickies

Christian Crumlish

Added jwz to my aggrefier. interesting thought about livejournal URLs: since jwz is a paid user (as am i, as bodega), he gets to use the vanity hostname subdomain jwz.livejournal.com instead of the plebeian www.livejournal.com/users/jwz or www.livejournal.com/~jwz etc. all of which still work too. should I assume Jamie will continue to be a paid member in perpetuity, or should I use a default-style address, just in case? The latter makes more sense to me (changes link).

Eastgate is releasing Tinderbox 2.0, with some new weblog-compatibility features. Tinderbox, a kind of hyper neural-net-ty electronic note-taking and correlating application, already had the ability to output notes as weblog entries, but now includes a Weblog Assistant that can automatically set up a customized weblog. Also, "Tinderbox now cooperates with other weblog tools, letting Tinderbox users post notes to server-side tools like Blogger, Radio Userland, and MoveableType at the touch of a button." I really want to give Tinderbox a try, but something's been holding me back.

RSS Starting To Catch On: Opinion: Despite a pending standards battle - RSS is finally getting the attention it deserves, and for good reason. It can save IT time and money - and may be one of tomorrow's keys to communications.

things i'm learning from mediajunkie agg:

• no title? no link
• not sure what other metadata could be captured and displayed - the multiauthor weblog tool is pretty barebones. Even getting the source weblog to appear required a hack offered by Mark Paschal or Marc Barrot or one of those guys over on the UserLand message boards.
• The layout sucks. Items should be little floating CSS boxes.
• There's no grouping for multiple weblog items.
• No author credit for group blogs, like the Corante Many-to-Many weblog. I often don't know who is writing, though I'm learning to recognize each individual voice (I knew it was Clay speaking for "we" and speaking of the backchannel article as a "tribal fetish object" without seeing his byline) - and I discovered Liz indirectly by reading that blog though I assume she was already well known elsewhere (among academic bloggers?). I was already reading Sebastien Paquet's stuff.
• Back to Mediajunkie, I'd like the ability to single out, promote, and rearrange the articles. The autotool is clearly just a placeholder measure while I figure out how to do something useful, or turn it off and go back to private aggregation and only rearranging my own content in public.