Daily Archives: December 12, 2003

Political Realities

Posted on December 12, 2003 by Michael Pate| Comments Off

bq.The collateral damage wrought by Mr. Bush’s war is not confined to Iraq. What that war is doing to the fabric of American freedom, justice, and law is already ominous. The War on our Freedoms is a calmly reasoned report on what the administration has contrived against our liberties in the name of homeland security. – Arthur Schlesinger, Jr.
bq.ALA will have its next Midwinter Meeting from Jan. 9 to Jan. 14 in San Diego. Those in attendance – ALA officials, including officers of libraries around the country and rank-and-file members – will have a chance to rescind the shameful silence of the ALA. Ashcroft has put none of the delegates to San Diego in prison; and it takes no courage – only self-respect – for them to insist on the freedom of those librarians in Cuba who may not be “professional” librarians. But they certainly are the very exemplars of the ALA’s purported dedication to everyone’s freedom to read – and freedom of conscience. The next time you go to a public library, ask the librarians if they stand with their colleagues in Castro’s prisons. – Nat Hentoff

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Posted in Intellectual Freedom

Google Search By Number

Posted on December 12, 2003 by Michael Pate| Comments Off

Google now has the ability to search by a number of different criteria when specified via keyword. It seems the package tracking aspect is getting the most attention for now, but it brought to my mind the recent partnership announcement with OCLC.

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Posted in Knowledge Management

Weblog Paradigms

Posted on December 12, 2003 by Michael Pate| Comments Off

bq.Then another dichotomy is exposed. Quite a few Movable Type bloggers start things called linkblogs, or remaindered links, whatever you call them, they’re working around the model of longish posts with lots of visual overhead (a model also implemented by Blogger, Manila and Radio, so this isn’t a dig on MT). What if you just want to link to something, should that require a whole post with all its attributes? It’s a matter of user interface in the end. If MT made it easy to post and update a news item that was link-blog-like, people wouldn’t need to invent a way around it. But that would break the relationship between the feed and posts. Oy what a mess. – Dave Winer When I think of linkblogs, three come to mind: Anil, who has his appear on the side, Richard, who has his appear on the side, and Jason who now has his appear in the center column. The thing is, and this is just my opinion, the linkblogs serve a different purpose then the regular posts. And that is why they are broken out. I actually use two different sideblogs incorporated into this site. The blogroll is contained in one blog called blogroll while the amazon links are contained in the library. Eventually, I plan to weave this content more into the site. Eventually, I may even add a true sideblog. But right now, the content is just building up over time waiting for that day. The last thing I would want to do is incorporate them directly into the main set of entries. Dave loves doing his site with outlines. And it works very well for him. But I am not sure that people are really looking for a “link-blog-like” interface for MT. And I am not even sure that it is not something that could largely be done with the existing interface. If someone wanted to. In my opinion, it’s a matter of paradigm in the end.

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Posted in Knowledge Management