Embedded Ulysses test

New GoogleBooks feature:

GoogleChrome thoughts

Biggest headaches:

- very slow with limited RAM, especially closing tabs

- forgets passwords DAILY

- tabs take much more memory than firefox

- Flash video bug causes freeze after 2sec (comes and goes???)

- font choices ignored?

- random tab crashes, esp. Flash-related

- infrequent updates/bugfixes

- i miss the separate search box

-

A kind word for Google Reader

i've never been a fan of rss
because it's always seemed redundant to me

why should authors host two copies of the same content
one plain, one fancy?

i thought users should skip the fancy part
and blog in vsimple html
that browsers can parse like rss

but i've grown dependent on 'sage' in firefox
for most of my own browsing
(plus 'update scanner'
for pages w/o rss)

and now i find myself moving more and more feeds
onto google reader
because it actually archives all blogposts
into a single stream (no paging)

which is economically absurd
but very handy

and now you can consolidate many feeds into one 'folder'
that you can read as a single feed



del.icio.us also lets you consolidate feeds
(though you quickly lose track of
sources for 'via' attribution)

and i guess twitter makes this the central principle
but i have no confidence
that twitter's archives will endure
and no social network to start from...

 
 
 
 
 
.

Google Web suggestions

1. the ten-item default is insulting
   
2. calculate the quantity of content on each page and allow sort-by-quantity (or include that in the basic ranking)
   
3. recognise a wide range of META headers, and implement search-keywords for them (esp. doctype, persons, places, things, yahoo-category)
   
4. Wikipedia article-titles could be used to standardise person/place/thing-names
   
5. 'DATE' meta-headers could be used to sort search-results by date
   
6. when people use the asterisk-wildcard to search for 'snowclones', do a count of each variant and display the results most-common-first
   
7. index comments separately, eg with search-keyword (reducing false hits, spam)
   
8. start compiling a separate 'page' of metadata for each webpage [post]
   

Wikipedia suggestions

1. composite 'mad-lib' microformats [post]
   
2. 'pluripedia' should support multiple versions of controversial articles [post]
   
3. subjects of biographical articles should be encouraged to post their version ('template': eg)
   

What it says.

GoogleSpreadsheets goofing around:

bag set list log sequence stream tree glossary dictionary thesaurus portal anthology info infobag infoset infolist infolog infosequence infostream infotree infoglossary infodictionary infothesaurus infoportal infoanthology data databag dataset datalist datalog datasequence datastream datatree dataglossary datadictionary datathesaurus dataportal dataanthology item itembag itemset itemlist itemlog itemsequence itemstream itemtree itemglossary itemdictionary itemthesaurus itemportal itemanthology element elementbag elementset elementlist elementlog elementsequence elementstream elementtree elementglossary elementdictionary elementthesaurus elementportal elementanthology object objectbag objectset objectlist objectlog objectsequence objectstream objecttree objectglossary objectdictionary objectthesaurus objectportal objectanthology symbol symbolbag symbolset symbollist symbollog symbolsequence symbolstream symboltree symbolglossary symboldictionary symbolthesaurus symbolportal symbolanthology number numberbag numberset numberlist numberlog numbersequence numberstream numbertree numberglossary numberdictionary numberthesaurus numberportal numberanthology type typebag typeset typelist typelog typesequence typestream typetree typeglossary typedictionary typethesaurus typeportal typeanthology character characterbag characterset characterlist characterlog charactersequence characterstream charactertree characterglossary characterdictionary characterthesaurus characterportal characteranthology word wordbag wordset wordlist wordlog wordsequence wordstream wordtree wordglossary worddictionary wordthesaurus wordportal wordanthology text textbag textset textlist textlog textsequence textstream texttree textglossary textdictionary textthesaurus textportal textanthology intuition intuitionbag intuitionset intuitionlist intuitionlog intuitionsequence intuitionstream intuitiontree intuitionglossary intuitiondictionary intuitionthesaurus intuitionportal intuitionanthology thought thoughtbag thoughtset thoughtlist thoughtlog thoughtsequence thoughtstream thoughttree thoughtglossary thoughtdictionary thoughtthesaurus thoughtportal thoughtanthology category categorybag categoryset categorylist categorylog categorysequence categorystream categorytree categoryglossary categorydictionary categorythesaurus categoryportal categoryanthology idea ideabag ideaset idealist idealog ideasequence ideastream ideatree ideaglossary ideadictionary ideathesaurus ideaportal ideaanthology concept conceptbag conceptset conceptlist conceptlog conceptsequence conceptstream concepttree conceptglossary conceptdictionary conceptthesaurus conceptportal conceptanthology image imagebag imageset imagelist imagelog imagesequence imagestream imagetree imageglossary imagedictionary imagethesaurus imageportal imageanthology description descriptionbag descriptionset descriptionlist descriptionlog descriptionsequence descriptionstream descriptiontree descriptionglossary descriptiondictionary descriptionthesaurus descriptionportal descriptionanthology allusion allusionbag allusionset allusionlist allusionlog allusionsequence allusionstream allusiontree allusionglossary allusiondictionary allusionthesaurus allusionportal allusionanthology

memory memorybag memoryset memorylist memorylog memorysequence memorystream memorytree memoryglossary memorydictionary memorythesaurus memoryportal memoryanthology stub stubbag stubset stublist stublog stubsequence stubstream stubtree stubglossary stubdictionary stubthesaurus stubportal stubanthology link linkbag linkset linklist linklog linksequence linkstream linktree linkglossary linkdictionary linkthesaurus linkportal linkanthology page pagebag pageset pagelist pagelog pagesequence pagestream pagetree pageglossary pagedictionary pagethesaurus pageportal pageanthology site sitebag siteset sitelist sitelog sitesequence sitestream sitetree siteglossary sitedictionary sitethesaurus siteportal siteanthology web webbag webset weblist weblog websequence webstream webtree webglossary webdictionary webthesaurus webportal webanthology rule rulebag ruleset rulelist rulelog rulesequence rulestream ruletree ruleglossary ruledictionary rulethesaurus ruleportal ruleanthology formula formulabag formulaset formulalist formulalog formulasequence formulastream formulatree formulaglossary formuladictionary formulathesaurus formulaportal formulaanthology

The Necessary (Google) Web2.0 Consolidation

necessary web 1.0
was about content
and wikipedia has mostly solved
that problem

necessary web 2.0
will be about generalising
interface insights
so that all web2.0 apps share
all the predictable functionality

something google
could bootstrap into beta
within a year, i'd bet

starting from google pagecreator (GgPC)
for creating all manner of webpage
which offers authors
a private view of all their hosted pages
as a list or icon-grid
sorted by name or date

which ought to be available as well
as a public view
(effectively a changelog-blog)

and GgPC could/should also
automatically archive earlier versions
of each page, allowing authors
to reonstruct their state
on any given day

and if each created page
includes a short summary/description
and/or an illustrative pullquote
and/or a 'pull-image'
and/or a summary of recent changes

then that public blog-view
could also include
some or all of these

and the author herself
could customise a 'recommended' blog-view
of site updates
suppressing minor changes
promoting major ones
and even quoting short pages in full

which already cannibalises
most of the functionality
of blogger.com
(which should, itself
open to the public
the author's private, sortable
list-view of post titles)

but we can also add to each page
a set of topic designations or tags
which google could treat
as postings to GgGroups topic areas
(tag = topic = group)

and pages that refer/respond
to other pages
can include the URLs of those 'parent' pages
as topic/tag/groups, as well

so google can trace discussion threads
without the original authors even needing
to turn commenting on

and if this can be streamlined enough
google could let websurfers
rate every page they visit
(openly, or anonymously)
and aggregate these ratings as well

offering now a link-blog view
of all a surfer's ratings
(eg above a threshold level)

to support all this
the GgGroups interface needs to streamline
back to an ajax re-implementation
of the pre-WWW goldenage newsreader 'trn'

where you'd subscribe to
groups/topics/tags/urls/authors/communities

with killfile filters
to minimise annoying noise

and encouraging blogging-community experiments
like slashdot/digg/linkfilter/memepool

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
.

18 20+ miscellaneous conjectures

This is a companion to my 01Feb 2005 post on rec.arts.books, Fifty Joycean Conjectures. Percentages in parenthese are my estimates of probability (100% = certainty).

1. An atmosphere of one molecule will have an identical temperature profile, and a similar pressure profile, to atmospheres of any number of molecules. (95%)
   
2. Snowflakes are acoustic standing waves. (85%)
   
3. Any pure gas in zero-G can freeze into hexagonally symmetric flakes. (50%)
   
4. ATP is like a blasting cap, and enzymes are springy. (80%)
   
5. Muscle fibers don't need ratchets, they just use ATP's recoil. (70%)
   
6. The pattern of punctuated equilibria is a consequence of sexual stereotyping. (60%)
   
7. ESP involves sexuality, scent and low-frequency sound. (50%)
   
8. (added Oct2005) The ear is a megaphone/transmitter as well as a receiver. (20%)
   
9. (added August 2007) Eyebrows are 'virtual' representations of the shoulders, for signalling purposes; the mouth corresponds to the genitals. (80%/30%)
   
10. (added August 2007) Humans retain light body hair to amplify the movements of vermin. (50%)
    
11. Human males are closer genetically to chimp males than to human females. (80%)
    
12. The first firestarters used meteoritic iron. (30%)
    
13. Humans lost most of their sense of smell when they started cooking their food. (40%)
    
14. Preverbal language is wiser than verbal. (60%)
    
15. Science begins with play, description, and classification. (99%)
    
16. Minoan Crete was a brothel of sex slaves, not a goddess culture. (75%)
    
17. The Iliad recalls a quixotic Minoan attack on Egypt, not Troy. (25%)
    
18. Josiah founded Judaism in 621BC, based partly on Greek models. (40%)
    
19. Ezra c400BC reconciled (by duplication) the Jerusalem and Babylonian variants on creation, Adam and Eve, Deuteronomy vs Leviticus, and Kings vs Chronicles. (50%)
    
20. These represent the only pre-600BC Bible texts. (30%)
    
21. (added Oct2005) Jesus wasn't taken seriously, even by his acquaintances, until they seemed to be getting communications from him, after his death. (30%)
    
22. (added August 2007) The gospels confuse Jesus the Galilean with Jesus the Egyptian. (25%) [more]
    
23. could deodorant increase the divorce rate? [post]
    
24. (added August 2007) Phonographs incidentally record ambient sound as they play. (40%)
    
25. Von Neumann was wrong about hidden variables in QM, and he plagiarised Eckert and Mauchly's cpu-architecture. (75%)
    
26. A simple line is to orthogonal cartesian n-space as a simple hierarchy is to a fractal thicket. (100%)
    

[original date 24 sept 2005]

GooglePages link maintenance

to add value to Google Page Creator
they should offer
a link-maintenance feature
that regularly checks for linkrot linkrust
and either

automatically substitutes
a link to the waybacked version

or searches for similar pages
and offers the author a best-guess substitute
(or three)

or best
remembers the original searchpattern
(cf google search history)
that led you to the (now rusted) page
and runs that search anew
offering one-click link-substitution
of the best replacement-link available

.

Google and metadata

if google implements a keyword "meta:"

with syntax (maybe) "meta:author:james_joyce"

where webpage publishers are free
to add any 'meta' categories they like
in their html page-headers

then conventions should quickly emerge
to meet people's real needs

.

The crying of lot googolplex

it's forever been a commonplace
of internet culture
that microsoft's unspoken motto was
be as evil as possible

so it's gratifying lately
in an almost pinch-me fashion
to watch bill gates scratching his head
dude, where's my monopoly?

finessed by google
flying the opposite flag

until one begins to visualise
the subsequent crumbling
of the republicans
the neocons
the capitalists

satan's earthly army

until sergey
turns in his chair

removes his mask

.

Local 'mini-blogs' for Web2.0 sites

instead of simple
content-rating schemes
that aggregate/average ratings
down to least-common-denominator
mediocrity

i'd like to see web2.0 sites
widely implement local 'mini-blogs'

that reformat just the content
rated highly by those minibloggers
you choose to subscribe to

along with their comments on that content
and, as well
those comments of others
that they think worth blogging/passing-on

so instead of a
degrading popularity contest
you can seek out
local-to-that-site 'pre-surfers'
whose tastes resemble yours
to filter the content

and then pass on
in your own mini-blog
the best of those several
that you subscribe to




so flickr should turn their 'faves'
into feeds/blogs
with bloggable comments too

and slashdot and digg
could solve their
too-many-comments
cream-sinks problem
by allowing mini-blogs
that reformat both the best posts
and the best comments
on a single scrolling page

and the poems-of-the-day sites
(or any x-of-the-day)
if they allow mini-blogs
would be effectively allowing
mini-anthologies
that they might even charge to have
printed-on-demand

or google groups
could inject new life into netnews
(instead of bleeding it silly)
by encouraging netnews buffs
to 'promote' the best postings




and since these services
are more-or-less generalisable
perhaps a meta-web2.0-service
could supply customised mini-blogging
to sites that prefer not
to wrestle with it themselves...?

"Visit forum for site-feature"

google groups
and gmail
have yet to match
the 20+ year old conventions
of usenet-era email
for interleaving comments
with the '>' quoted text
being commented upon

gmail uses ajax
to hide the quotes
evidently presuming
most quotes are included
only accidentally
and so punishing
sophisticated writers
with unsophisticated readers

but how tortuous it is
to try to send them feedback

so it would be
super-classy
in a web2.0 way
(or better: web n+1)
if a rightclick on gmail's
'show quoted text' link
offered a popup menu that included
'visit forum for site-feature'
where you could read
others' comments on (eg)
this gmail design-feature
and add critiques of your own

Tradecraft and faith in leCarre and Highsmith

le carre's new 'mission song'
is getting mostly positive reviews
praising its unprecedented good humor
but they neglect what seems to me
its happiest virtue:
tradecraft is back

for the first time since Smiley
JlC offers his special delight
of showing how things must work
behind the veil of official secrets

this time from the novel perspective
of the spies' own house translator




in my 11-dimensional
rating system for thrillers
tradecraft is collaped into infotainment

authors using their novels to make
unfamiliar domains
painlessly familiar
with Patk O'Brian the acknowledged titleholder

a related dimension
is 'texture'
which can be as mundane
as scents and sounds 'painted on'
to enhance realism

(Graham Greene famously
traced his characters' routes
in person
noting plausible details)

because it's a peculiarity
of human memory
that we can easily recognise
and appreciate
that a detail is appropriate

but only the rarest novelists' minds
can summon such credible details
(rather than obvious cliches)
on command

the 'nicely observed detail'
for an experienced reader of fiction
brightens the page

and even one such
detail per page
is an occasion for gratitude

so Patricia Highsmith's
1965 'The Story-teller'
is cause for celebration

profligately piling on
almost one detail per sentence
(did they come so easy for her?
or did she work that much harder?)
maintaining our fascination
thru an unhurried exposition of the plot

but the astonishing eventual payoff
is a profound parable
on The Artist's Faith

for the story recounts the
Job-like trials
of a writer of thrillers
who researches a plot
by walking thru the motions
of having murdered his wife

and then of course she's disappeared
and his playacting
increasingly incriminates him

but at any moment
he could defuse those growing suspicions
simply by explaining the truth
while he chooses instead
to live out the full drama
as if he were guilty

keeping true to his muse
and tracking events and reactions
as the whole world seems
to be rising up against him
real relationships destroyed
his future imperilled

so that the reader screams
'make this stop!
just tell them!'

and i'm reminded
of one of Joyce's paradoxical claims
that he had greater
faith
than any modern man

which the catholics
(against all evidence)
have used to argue
that he was always secretly catholic

and he contrasted faith with doubt
declaring the world to be
suspended in doubt

every choice an existential crisis
leading the world either
towards heaven or hell

and i think Joyce's Faith
(as the world screamed
'make finnegans wake stop!')
was simply that life
can become more heavenly

that Earth wasn't created
as an inevitable human hell
where an artist could only shrug
like vonnegut's cynical
'hi ho'

so it alarms me to see
lately across the blogosphere
a growing association between progressive politics
and the universal religion-bashing
of Dawkins&co

because real faith
is infinitely better than cynicism

Joycean epiphanies

the constructions
'had an epiphany' [350k hits]
or 'experienced an epiphany' [25k hits]
occur nowhere in joyce

because for joyce
it wasn't about
discovering something new

it was about
expressing one's true nature

so i find epiphanies
in flickrpix
not when the subject
is somehow wising up

but when they're
showing
their
selves

[more]

Communities on the 'Yahoo zodiac'

this new zodiac
differs from the old
'radial ontologies'
in that
the zodiac's 'stars'
are words and
strings of words

where the ontology postulated
ill-defined story-fragments

but they should map closely




now since every internet community
has its own favorite turns of phrase
they should each have a predominant 'sign'
on the zodiac



and someday no doubt
Google Trends
along with mapping places and times
of searches
will list the web communities
(slashdot, imdb, rigorous intuition)
that use each phrase
most often

AI as a design problem

a few weeks ago on slashdot
i experimentally re-tested the waters
of the semantic web community
that i'd mostly given up on ten years ago

and found them, still,

prescriptivist

trying to solve the problem
by spanking non-conformists
until they bought into a
semi-arbitrary
set of syntactic rules

which keeps them busy
and gives them someone to blame
but advances AI not a whit




a step above prescriptivism
is descriptivism
which is embodied by Lenat's Cyc
and perhaps also by 'The Sims'

trying to describe human behavior
with a definite constrained vocabulary
(Sim1 covets Furniture2)

but i fear the catch-22 of descriptivism
is that there isn't any platonic 'form', there,
waiting to be described
(as there more-or-less was
for physics, chemistry, astronomy,
and even biology)

but instead a mathematically intractable
neural 'chaos'
an everchanging hierarchy
of human moods and motives

crudely reflected in 'ontologies' like the classic
Yahoo top menu
(currently:
Arts&Humanities, Business&Economy, Computers&Internet,
Education, Entertainment, Government, Health, News&Media,
Recreation&Sports, Reference, Regional, Science,
Social Science, Society)

designed entirely
to meet the instantaneous needs
of (yesterday's) web surfers




which is why i'm exploring heraldic barcodes
that try to map the top levels
of this semantic hierarchy
(for a specific subdomain)
onto an intuitive graphical equivalent

whose strengths and weaknesses
not only declare themselves openly
but also
hint at how to improve them
in graphical tweaks
that better fit the human users

Search-engines on the Tree of Life

one class of stories
all web-surfers partake of

is searching for info

and the usual startingpoint
is google or another search-engine

and one or more typed-in query-strings

which should eventually lead to
the info sought




many searchers may pursue the same info
perhaps by different routes

or related info

which could all be aggregated into a FAQ

with the best search-engine
then being defined
as the one that leads you quickest
to the proper FAQ




wikipedia
is filling the FAQ-role
for ever-increasing numbers of queries

but their policy unfortunately
still eschews
extensive linking of
available web resources

which to my way of thinking
is the natural successor to
google-style page-hit-lists




for example

i held off researching
snapshot indexing-schemes
while i was formulating my
heraldic barcode approach

because past experience suggested
the available web resources
would be more frustrating and confusing
than enlightening

but this morning
i felt i'd progressed enough
to dip a toe into google

trying various combos of
snapshot photographs
ontology classifying metadata etc

and sorely regretting that wikipedia
doesn't yet have
an annotated history on this topic

because what i got was all dead ends

not a single proposal that overlapped mine

which doesn't remotely imply
that these don't exist

only that keyword search is inefficient
for tracking them down




one especially frustrating thing
is that google still doesn't
give any hint of the document types
of the page-hits

article or abstract
project proposal or specific ontology

and this topic is especially messy
because academics are busy poisoning the well
generating clouds of ink
meant to create an illusion of expertise

instead of humbly acknowledging
that the hardest question, as always
involves indexing human behavior...

Daniel Edwards' new fertility goddess

the most memorable comment i heard
during the Serrano "Piss Christ" controversy
was Frank Moore's
noting that the image itself was
beautiful (end of argument)

so the current "Britney Spears Pro-life"
hullabaloo [GoogleNews]
first makes me study the work itself
[flickr, 3pix]

and while i regret not yet finding
an unembarrassed photo
of the action end

i have to say
as art
i think it may be
the most powerful fertility image
of the last 20,000 years

the sculptor is evidently
school of Koons

playing the media
with serious intent
[2005 NYT] [mp3 interview]
but that won't matter
ten years from now

GoogleParse metadata

i predict
that sooner rather than later
google will have to create
(and will choose to publish)
a metadocument
for every webpage it indexes

that expands on the traditional semantics
of META headers
identifying author, date, topic, etc

by condensing
the most useful results
of a thorough ai-parsing
of the page

breaking out its subsections:
subtopics
author info
host info
site-navigation
site news
recommended followup readings
etc etc etc

providing guideposts
that will allow the page
to be re-parsed
as efficiently as possible

(eg if a small edit
changes the position
of previously parsed data)

perhaps gradually lengthening
as new categories of semantics
are added

and encouraging web publishers
to post their own version
of these metadocuments
that google can spider
to doublecheck their own parser



with site metadata
as well
that summarizes
sitewide
markup-style:

which tags-n-attributes are most used
how section-divisions are marked

maybe even a vocabulary of regexps
optimised for that site's style




the xml/sgml people used to argue that
this metadata should be
embedded
in the document

under the illusion that
each semantic category
could indulge in its own stylesheet style

but i don't even think the
page-creation tools
support this yet




where it's probably already begun
is with Google News
and Google Blog Search

which need to know
how different news sites
and blog hosts
mark up their dates
and titles
and links
etc