April 28, 2007
Apollo Widget and Vista
That finetune.com Apollo widget I mentioned recently? Works like a charm on Windows XP, but not on Windows Vista. I downloaded it, installed it, and launched it. Weirdly, the process runs on Vista, but the GUI simply never appears. On XP, it is a nice little app from what I can see.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:03 PM
MathML 3.0 Working Draft Published
Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0: Working Draft
2007-04-27: The Math Working Group has published the First Public Working Draft of Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 3.0. MathML is an XML application for describing mathematical notation and capturing both its structure and content. The goal of MathML is to enable mathematics to be served, received, and processed on the World Wide Web, just as HTML has enabled this functionality for text.
In related news, the W3C has also published a MathML for CSS profile.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:33 PM
April 27, 2007
The Sound of One Hand Clapping?
Is the One Billion Clicks Project an example of Web 2.0?
I added seven clicks. No, eight. I can hear my mother saying, find something useful to do...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:42 PM
April 24, 2007
Multichannel Workflows in the Offing?
Over at the Really Strategies blog, Ed Stevenson comments on some print-CMS partnerships.
Last week, Lisa Bos posted on the fragmentation between different types of CMS. Interestingly, this morning I stumbled upon two announcements on partnerships between companies in different CMS spaces:
Found on Gilbane, "Managing Editor Inc. (MEI) announced a joint development with Clickability to integrate the SoftCare K4 Publishing System with Clickability’s cmPublish." So here we have an editorial and production system (or print CMS) integrating with a WebCMS.
And CMS Wire announces that Alfresco and WoodWing Software formed a partnership between WoodWing’s Smart Connection Enterprise editorial workflow system and the Alfresco 2.0 open source enterprise content management system.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:12 PM
April 22, 2007
CMS Watch is Hiring
Seeking Web Content Management Analyst
We're looking to hire a full-time Analyst to cover Web CMS technologies and trends. Get essential details here. Perhaps we already know you and you've always thought about working for CMS Watch. Perhaps we've never met you, but you really fit the bill. In any case, you'll see the person we seek is quite special indeed...
Posted by Bill Trippe at 2:51 PM
April 17, 2007
Pricing Trends for Scholarly Journals
DigitalKoans is alerting readers about a new report, Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000-2006
LISU, which is based in the Department of Information Science at Loughborough University, has released Trends in Scholarly Journal Prices 2000-2006, a report commissioned by Oxford Journals.
Here’s an excerpt from the press release:
The research updates the previous findings on pricing for biomedical journals, and has also been extended to analyze pricing for social science titles. Findings within the report show little variation to the original data published in 2004: there are continued trends in price variance across publishers, including median price increases ranging from 42% to 104% for biomedical titles, and 47% to 120% for social science titles.
The entire report can be downloaded for free here (PDF, 718K).
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:23 AM
April 16, 2007
eCommerce Benchmark Guide
Or, as MarketingSherpa calls it, the Ecommerce Benchmark Guide. In the interest of full disclosure, I am a marketing affiliate of MarketingSherpa--and get a small commission on sales of certain products. But I have always admired their work. The new guide is an impressive piece of research, based on a survey of 1913 professional marketers and 2449 online shoppers. The numbers are compelling. 2006 saw a 25% in eCommerce over the previous year, and online sales now account for 3% of all retail sales (up from 1% five years ago). It adds up to almost $30B in retail eCommerce, though the report also notes that "the era of hypergrowth might be slightly slowing in the US."
You can buy the report by clicking on the ad at the right. If you would like to read a free excerpt, you can download it here (PDF).
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:52 PM
April 12, 2007
Teleread Offers Kurt Vonnegut a Fond Goodbye
And includes a pointer to free downloads of some Vonnegut classics
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., a sci-fi writer and satirist who wrote about heroics, vanities and greater sins, inspiring comparisons with Mark Twain, died yesterday at 84 with a full head of hair. You can read a Google News roundup and his New York Times obit along with a link-rich Wikipedia item.Via Wowio, you can download free ad-supported copies of [a number of Vonnegut books].
I played around with Wowio, downloading Slaughter-House Five. Really, it is not much to write about--PDF files with ads stuffed in every so many pages. The ads are awkwardly placed--they look like full-page magazine ads--and in the default settings of the reader they are just disembodied page layouts. In Slaughter-House Five, it looked to me like the ads disrupted Vonnegut's intended pagination. In at least one place, an ad separates an illustration from Vonnegut's description. The effect is jarring, but if I were a starving college student again, I probably would put up with it in exchange for a free book.
Many, many publishing blogs weighed in on Vonnegut today, and for good reason. He was an oversized talent, and many people of my age and a little older read every Vonnegut book, often more than once. He will be missed.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 4:26 PM | TrackBack
Supple Cord
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 107
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
Naomi Shihab Nye is one of my favorite poets. She lives in San Antonio, Texas, and travels widely, an ambassador for poetry. Here she captures a lovely moment from her childhood.
Supple Cord
My brother, in his small white bed,
held one end.
I tugged the other
to signal I was still awake.
We could have spoken,
could have sung
to one another,
we were in the same room
for five years,
but the soft cord
with its little frayed ends
connected us
in the dark,
gave comfort
even if we had been bickering
all day.
When he fell asleep first
and his end of the cord
dropped to the floor,
I missed him terribly,
though I could hear his even breath
and we had such long and separate lives
ahead.
Reprinted from A MAZE ME, Greenwillow, 2005, by permission of the author. Copyright (c) Naomi Shihab Nye, whose most recent book of poetry is You and Yours, BOA Editions, Ltd., 2005. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:08 AM | TrackBack
April 11, 2007
Can Blogs Persist in the Way Scholarly Information Does?
Jon Udell interviews Geoffrey Builder, Director of Strategic Initiatives at CrossRef, and a veteran in the scholarly technology world. They discuss CrossRef's critical role in the scholarly information world, how Digital Object Identifiers (DOIs) work, and what this kind of technology means for blogs and other content.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:16 PM
April 10, 2007
A Well Deserved Webby Nomination to PaidContent.org
Webby Nominations Announced; We’re On The List
Funny thing about awards: we diss them publicly all the time, but as soon we get nominated, we become an award whore (well, more specifically me). This time it is the Webby, so I think it is justified. The nominations were announced today, and we’re among the five in the Best Blog: Business category along with some other great names like TechDirt and Dealbook (by NYTimes.com).
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:43 PM
April 9, 2007
Coming Soon to Widget Near You
Advertising. Proving once again there is no such thing as a free lunch.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:15 PM
A Great Question
Over at PersonaNonData, Michael Cairns asks, Why don't Libraries Have Publishing Programs?
My introduction to Charles Bukowski occurred via the display cases inside the Boston University library lobby, and I was drawn to them because I happened to be working in the library's special collections department at the time. The special collections department at BU is quite renowned and was established by Dr. Howard Gotlieb who recently died. (Gotlieb actually wrote one of my recommendations for business school). My job was less intellectual than hired muscle since the library was becoming so overwhelmed with boxed submissions they needed someone to unload the stuff and place the materials in uniform boxes on shelves. I didn't have too much time to peruse the material in some of these boxes but I do recall a wealth of material from from Herbert Swope and Fletcher Knebel, who's boxes were filled with photos of JFK and his family while they were all in the White House.
Some of the material deposited wasn't quite so moving or important (at least to my eyes) and in many cases it was clear that entire desk draws had been upended into a box and sent off to BU. These boxes often included things like gum, blank paper, pens, pennies, paper clips and other detritus which had minimal residual value to scholars. BU did have several archivists responsible for cataloging the vast amount of stuff that was deposited. They seemed to work fairly methodically (slowly) to identify the important material and provide tables of content for scholars. Increasingly, the material in formal special collections libraries like BU and in local libraries is being digitized and there is little doubt that this will accelerate.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:53 AM
A Tip of the Cap to...
... Project Gutenberg, for all its work, including a newly posted "eBook," The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 100, February, 1866, which brings us, among other things, passages from Nathaniel Hawthorne's notebooks. Here, Hawthorne offers some thoughts about a trip along Maine's Kennebec River.
Saw by the river-side, late in the afternoon, one of the above-described boats going into the stream, with the water rippling at the prow, from the strength of the current and of the boat's motion. By-and-by comes down a raft, perhaps twenty yards long, guided by two men, one at each end,—the raft itself of boards sawed at Waterville, and laden with square bundles of shingles and round bundles of clapboards. "Friend," says one man, "how is the tide now?"—this being important to the onward progress. They make fast to a tree, in order to wait for the tide to rise a little higher. It would be pleasant enough to float down the Kennebec on one of these rafts, letting the[Pg 178] river conduct you onward at its own pace, leisurely displaying to you all the wild or ordered beauties along its banks, and perhaps running you aground in some peculiarly picturesque spot, for your longer enjoyment of it. Another object, perhaps, is a solitary man paddling himself down the river in a small canoe, the light, lonely touch of his paddle in the water making the silence seem deeper. Every few minutes a sturgeon leaps forth, sometimes behind you, so that you merely hear the splash, and, turning hastily around, see nothing but the disturbed water. Sometimes he darts straight on end out of a quiet black spot on which your eyes happen to be fixed, and, when even his tail is clear of the surface, he falls down on his side, and disappears.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:41 AM
April 7, 2007
Jazz Favorites
Some jazz, brought to you by the princess, Smudgie, a cool cat by any definition.
I included the current artists and songs in the play list below, but it was too much work, cutting and pasting and adding the HTML code. But I wanted the information in there for the search engines. Finetune.com should make it easier. I don't know Flash, but perhaps that information is in the client already and could somehow be exposed to the search engines?
The play list includes Alberta Hunter, The Darktown Strutters' Ball; Bill Evans, 'Round Midnight, Autumn Leaves, and Stella By Starlight; Billie Holiday, Darn That Dream, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, and They Can't Take That Away From Me; Blossom Dearie, I Won't Dance, Love Is Here To Stay, and Manhattan; Charlie Parker, Bloomdido, Ko Ko and Salt Peanuts; Clifford Brown, Daahoud, Jordu, and Joy Spring; Count Basie, It's Only a Paper Moon and Sing for Your Supper; Duke Ellington, Satin Doll and Take The "A" Train; Ella Fitzgerald, Don't Get Around Much Anymore, I've Got You Under My Skin, and Misty; Frank Sinatra, I Get A Kick Out Of You, I've Got You Under My Skin (yes, again), Fly Me to the Moon, Summer Wind, and The Way You Look Tonight; John Coltrane (with vocals by Johnny Hartman), Dedicated to You, My One and Only Love, and You Are Too Beautiful; Les McCann and Eddie Harris, Cold Duck Time and Compared To What; Louis Armstrong, Ain't Misbehavin', Dream A Little Dream Of Me, and Our Love Is Here To Stay (with Ella); Louis Prima, Embraceable You/I Got It Bad And That Ain't Good (Medley)(Live), Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, and Jump, Jive, An' Wail; Miles Davis, Budo, Moon Dreams, and Rocker (all from The Complete Birth Of The Cool); Nat King Cole, Almost Like Being In Love and Let's Fall In Love; and Tony Bennett, This Can't Be Love.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:25 AM
April 6, 2007
eBooks No, But ePaper Yes?
"Electronic paper" edging toward reality
"Electronic paper" has long been hyped as the future of newspapers and books, but products like e-books have been slow to take off. That may soon change, say executives involved in the pioneering technology. While Internet companies are scanning libraries of books and making them available online, E Ink Corp., which emerged out of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology a decade ago, is seeing a surge in orders for its portable, foldable displays that mimic conventional paper to carry such books. Nine different companies launched products last year based on the technology," said Russell Wilcox, E Ink president. "In the last nine months we've gone from manufacturing tens of thousands of parts to millions of parts."
Posted by Bill Trippe at 7:03 PM | TrackBack
Catching the Moles
Here is the latest installment in the American Life in Poetry series.
American Life in Poetry: Column 106
BY TED KOOSER, U.S. POET LAUREATE, 2004-2006
By describing the relocation of the moles which ravaged her yard, Washington poet Judith Kitchen presents an experience that resonates beyond the simple details, and suggests that children can learn important lessons through observation of the natural world.
Catching the Moles
First we tamp down the ridges
that criss-cross the yard
then wait for the ground
to move again.
I hold the shoe box,
you, the trowel.
When I give you the signal
you dig in behind
and flip forward.
Out he pops into daylight,
blind velvet.
We nudge him into the box,
carry him down the hill.
Four times we've done it.
The children worry.
Have we let them all go
at the very same spot?
Will they find each other?
We can't be sure ourselves,
only just beginning to learn
the fragile rules of uprooting.
Poem copyright (c) 1986 by Judith Kitchen, whose most recent book is the novel, The House on Eccles Road, Graywolf Press, 2004. Reprinted from "Perennials," Anhinga Press, 1986, with permission of the author. This weekly column is supported by The Poetry Foundation, The Library of Congress, and the Department of English at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln. This column does not accept unsolicited poetry.
******************************
American Life in Poetry provides newspapers and online publications with a free weekly column featuring contemporary American poems. The sole mission of this project is to promote poetry: American Life in Poetry seeks to create a vigorous presence for poetry in our culture. There are no costs for reprinting the columns; we do require that you register your publication here and that the text of the column be reproduced without alteration.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:31 PM
April 5, 2007
DRM-Free EMI: Microsoft Joins Apple
Over at DRMWatch, Bill Rosenblatt weighs in on DRM-Free music, EMI, Microsoft, and Apple.
As far as EMI is concerned, the deal was shortsighted, risky, and possibly irresponsible to the company's shareholders. EMI is the smallest of the four majors, enjoys no synergies with corporate siblings, and is undergoing financial hard times. This move with Apple was a lunge for near-term revenue, at the quite possible expense of longer term revenue for EMI and the rest of the industry. EMI gets a cash advance of US $5 Million from Apple. It should enjoy a short-term revenue spurt as some consumers respond to the hype and purchase DRM-free tracks for $1.29 (in the US market).
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:23 PM
The Word of the Day...
is Daisuke.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 5:18 PM
April 4, 2007
Is Print Dying?
Ed Stevenson of Really Strategies has a roundup of recent news.
A small handful of publishers made recent announcements on their decisions to cease publishing in print and move to sole digital content delivery.
The most notable is, of course, InfoWorld's cessation of print this month.
We are merely embracing a more efficient delivery mechanism --the Web -- at InfoWorld.com. You can still get all the news coverage, reviews, analysis, opinion, and commentary that InfoWorld is known for. You'll just have to access it in a browser (or RSS reader) -- something more than a million of you already do every month.
We also heard Time's announcement that it will discontinue the LIFE newspaper supplement, but still look to build online product offerings under the LIFE brand.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 9:42 PM
April 3, 2007
Free New York Times Select for Students?
Maybe, Maybe Not.
This problem has been just around the corner since NYT.com first offered academic discounts on premium TimesSelect last year but it didn’t become a real issue until the move to free for students and educators. Prodded by librarians irked at spending large chunks of money to gain access to the whole NYT database through services like Lexis-Nexis, the NYT is changing the offer: only students at colleges that subscribe to the databases will have access to the full archives, according to the Chronicle of Higher Education. The change is being made “out of respect and compliance with these agreements that we already have in place,” Vivian Schiller, VP/GM, NYtimes.com, told the Chronicle. One library director said database provider ProQuest was surprised by the paper’s decision to make the archives available to student subscribers for free. Barbara Fister of Gustavus Adolphus College was among those raising the issue online; she told the Chronicle she was torn between wanting all students to have access to the Times online and the fact that she just spent nearly $20,000 to provide archives access through ProQuest.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 10:38 PM
More from Finetune.com
I'm having perhaps a little too much fun with finetune.com in the interest of "research." After producing my first playlist of acoustic favorites, I came up with another one, rock favorites.
The icon this time? My girl, Cleo, who, behind her gentle exterior, is a rocker at heart.
I am looking forward to trying the Apollo client that I mentioned earlier. Having the widget bound to a particular HTML page is a pain in the neck.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 3:00 PM | TrackBack
April 2, 2007
Gilbane San Francisco
I have been so busy that I have failed to blog about Gilbane San Francisco, which is next week (conference grid here and registration here). It's a big event for Gilbane, collocated with LISA Forum USA and the Content Management Professionals Spring Summit. It should be a great event. Plus I love San Francisco, and I get to see my nephew Max's new restaurant, which is getting great reviews (here and here).
Posted by Bill Trippe at 1:41 PM
Philly XML User Group
Philadelphia has an active XML user group, with monthly meetings in Center City. The next meeting is next Wednesday, April 11 at 6:00 p.m., at a new location for the group, Wolters Kluwer Health, 520 Walnut Street (the Penn Mutual building).
This month's meeting will feature a presentation, "RSuite CMS: Native XML Content Management," from Michael Puscar of Really Strategies, Inc. RSuite is the CMS developed by Really that uses the MarkLogic Server XML repository. According to the announcement for the event.
Publishers struggle with the same problems as they embark on their XML-based content management solutions. Current CMS solutions don’t offer true native XML management and search. Some call themselves “native XML databases” but they really support XQuery compilation and execution inside an existing RDBMS. This approach does not harness the power of XQuery, limits the use of hierarchical queries, and contributes to major performance issues later when you need to reconstitute XML data scattered across the database into a document for export. So what’s an appropriate definition for “native XML database”? And what does “native” really mean? Let’s discuss this concept and take a look at Really Strategies' RSuite CMS, which offers features like node-level XML management, layered metadata, and true content reuse.
You can register for the event here; it's free!
Posted by Bill Trippe at 8:44 AM
Currently Reading
One of the takeaways, er, giveaways from the Adobe Analyst Meetings last week was a nice little book, Apollo for Adobe Flex Developers Pocket Guide. I read most of it on the train ride home (the narrative parts anyway, a chunk of it is reference), and it made sense, though I am not a Flex developer. Note that it is indeed specifically for Flex developers, and it is indeed a pocket guide.
Posted by Bill Trippe at 12:06 AM
April 1, 2007
Hope springs eternal!
Baseball's opening day is here.
Baseball will take our people out-of-doors, fill them with oxygen, give them a larger physical stoicism. Tend to relieve us from being a nervous, dyspeptic set. Repair these losses, and be a blessing to us.
--Walt Whitman
Posted by Bill Trippe at 11:42 AM
