clock … watching time, the only true currency

A journal from John B. Roberts

clock  …  watching time, the only true currency header image 4

Entries from December 2004

Is everything content?

December 11th, 2004 · Comments Off

MacMerc, a site I loosely follow via their feed, pointed me to the Content Management Comparison Tool at CMS Matrix. And then I see Richard point to a comparison of hosted blogging platforms. Content management (what a phrase) in the air. The hard part remains creation, regardless of the tool or platform. But it’s true [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Everything

Between prototype and shipping

December 9th, 2004 · Comments Off

Talking with a colleague today about when GPS-enabled digital cameras will be the norm (did someone say metadata?), and he said something to the effect of they are beyond prototypes, but not quite shipping here in the U.S. He couldn’t find the words for that state of the production process. I said: Japan. Those new [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech

Parsing isn’t the hard part

December 8th, 2004 · Comments Off

David Berlind wrote “What’s wrong with RSS is also what’s right with it for his ZDNet commentary this morning. He takes the time to skip past the tumultuous (to developers) history, without papering over the differences. Well done. More important, though, he doesn’t get caught in that rat-hole of an argument. The most interesting part, [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech

There is a home for weblogs

December 6th, 2004 · Comments Off

Toto, we’re home. That’s the weblogs category in the main Yahoo directory, courtesy of Jeremy Zawodny. He’s right… I didn’t know that existed and I’m obviously too lazy to check before posting. I don’t mind the differences Jeremy points out between the My Yahoo mini-directory and the main directory, as I expect that if it [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech

Publishing and hiding

December 6th, 2004 · Comments Off

Bob Wyman of PubSub on the Yahoo FeedMesh group comes out with this epigram: It is very difficult to publish and hide at the same time. It’s not quite poetic, but it feels pithy, at least. The context? He’s explaining why syndication is less full of unwanted messages than, say, e-mail, because tracking the world [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech

Knowing your customer

December 6th, 2004 · Comments Off

How to Sell a Candidate to a Porsche-Driving, Leno-Loving Nascar Fan is a NYTimes article looking, after the fact, at the data which drove the media decisions for the campaigns, especially the Republican campaign. The entire article, in a phrase: “Democrats watch more television than Republicans.” Yes, there is a bit more than that, with [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Everything

Classification fun: where does your weblog belong?

December 5th, 2004 · Comments Off

In responding to my notes about topicality, Jeremy Zawodny wrote Weblog topics, blogger micro-brands, and weblog classification. I think all three themes are interesting, but the first and the last grab me enough to continue. Note: I agree with the blogger micro-brand comment Jeremy makes, but the word brand conjures a vision of The Brand [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech

Track the ripples in the pond

December 5th, 2004 · Comments Off

Blogging about blogging is still interesting to many, confirming my point that we are still early, early, early in the adoption curve. Yes, the web accelerates the diffusion of innovation (years instead of decades), but we’re not there yet. Remember: very few people move at the speed of technology. Because I don’t have comments enabled, [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech

Adoption matters

December 1st, 2004 · Comments Off

So, Michael Schrage has written his last column for MIT’s Technology Review. Wonder what the politics behind that decision were, given the new editor, Jason Pontin, formerly of Red Herring? Anyway, he goes out on a high note, I think, with Innovation Diffusion. Simply put: innovation isn’t what innovators do; it’s what customers, clients, and [...]

[Read more →]

Tags: Tech