<vent>
1. How on earth do you configure w.bloggar to get the category list from TypePad? It supports two different methods and yet I can’t get either to work (posting is fine.)
2.Why can’t RSS Bandit be convinced to use Firebird instead of IE? I guess the system file association wouldn’t be obvious enough. (And all applications without a ’save’ feature give me the willies!)
</vent>
When I lived in the US, and received InfoWorld, I loved John Udell’s column. Didn’t even realize he had a blog. Good stuff, including fascinating food for thought about the XML/RDF mental models (tree of couples [key/val pairs] vs. collection of triples). I haven’t been doing a lof of XML stuff lately, but this point, and also the general ponderings he has about the actual vs. perceived value of structured data for interoperability, is really good reading. I like the point about XML and namespaces as they stand maybe not being the panacea, but certainly it’s a good form for transformations into whatever you’d want. Of course that’s part of the whole premise of XML, but in my past dealings, everyone gets very focused on their flavor or schema, to the detriment of noticing obvious business gains to be had by (non-display) transformations. I think every partner I dealt with who had a XML interface (usually poorly designed, and DTD-based if we were lucky!) at AuctionWatch, had “named” it something like ComapnyNameExchangeXML, as if it they planned on getting a patent for the effort. (I have to admit, when I authored our doomed-due-to-business-refocusing XML spec, I was tempted to do the same thing; but AuctionXML was just so pretentious. At least eBay doesn’t have a cutesy name for their XML spec. Actually eBay doesn’t have anything cutesy as far as I can tell, which isn’t really a bad thing.)
After reading some of this stuff in Udell’s blog, I’m going to have to check out the RDF “Tuple QBE-ish” query language(s), looks really cool.
Udell also has a post about Adobe and Microsoft’s form-create&fill tools (Acrobat vs. Infopath) capable of posting data back via SOAP. I’m glad to see this getting more attention, especially from Adobe… their previous Acrobt forms stuff was pretty lousy, and I’d love to have a working cross-platform solution for this. I’ve been procrastinating about creating a new form at work for requesting work on the enterprise system (with the goal of better cost control). It’s the kind of thing that really needs to get into a database (or even MSProject) right away, but I don’t want to build a web app for it; but I also don’t want to generate a PDF/Word doc that will just generate a ton of paper on my desk. Sigh.
with my sincerest apologies to Ice Cube and his classic “Jackin’ for beats”…
gimme that site, fool
it’s a full-time jack move
b-bside yo homie make that page load
and i’ll jack any typepad, yahoo
that’s the name of the suckas i’ma redo
ain’t got no busines model
but drop PHP, break ya off somethin’ proper
OK, so I’ve had a really hard time motivating myself to work on prince.org lately. There’s 34 open bugs/feature requests in bugzilla, and a few small things I just want to add. But for some reason, it’s tough to sit down and do it; maybe partly due to the heat in Barcelona now. Yeah, that’s it. Well, anyhow, I’ve been thinking what to do with some of my other domains, including princefans.org, I’ve been trying to come up with something, not just another portal/forum/?. I still enjoy that, but it’s 90% done how I envision it, in the org already. I wanted to clone Craigslist for Barcelona in EN/ES/CAT languages when I was moving here, but found out it was already done, and really well, at that. I thought of blogs, since I’ve toyed with them for so long (paid LiveJournal account for 2 years, then tried MT, b2, …) Honestly, typepad is the friendliest so far, which is what I need to encourage me to actually use it. And that it’s hosted is a plus, otherwise I’ll just tinker with the code and not blog. Many readers might consider that a plus, however 
One of the moderators (well, really ex-moderator) from prince.org IM’d me today about a thread she started discussing the “reputation” of the org. We chatted about how “out of control” it seems to be. I think this almost always happens, with “almost anything goes” forums. Adding more moderators (which I am going to do) will help, but anything with such a large, diverse group of people with varying opinions, will devolve into chaos. We’re not quite there, and I don’t think it’ll ever get to the point of total anarchy, but it’s worrying at least to her. To me less so, but she’s perhaps more in touch with the site contents than I am–I actually don’t read it too much. Point is, I think this is endemic to large communities built with the “message forum” paradigm. I believe the blog paradigm for communities has inbuilt limits to this destabilizing effect, and I’m really interested in investigating it further.
In short, I am excited about the prospect of providing a typepad-like site, for Prince fans (because that’s the group I have access to, and a suitable domain doing nothing, and a lot of creative energy in those folks). I’m certainly not aiming to steal TypePad’s business, or make something nearly as involved. A simple experiment in community-building via blogs. There are some technical challenges that are vaguely interesting, too. Not sure whether I’ll make another blog for that project, or comment here, or even do anything. Hopefully the good people of typepad won’t mind me jackin’ some of their ideas. If someone gets really into it, I’ll just push the user toward them anyhow, I think.
Vaguely related anecdote: my wife (when she was my girlfriend) met Ice Cube, when he was just blowing up. His first solo CD was out, and it was the bomb. I played it to death, and he was in town for a show. My wife was walking in midtown (New Center area) with a distant cousin, and ran into him. She actually got his autograph for me on a napkin. It says “To Ben–stay up! Ice Cube”. I think I even have it, still, packed away somewhere. Funny. I’m glad to see his career longevity, seems like a really smart guy.