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Having spent the last few days playing around with this RDF database, various skills have been important - specifically knowledge of the syntax of PHP, knowing how to " created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 20:18:49 GMT"/>		<outline text="Also, my college has now filtered the word &quot;partner&quot; in URLs. A bit strange - I was going to the &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.technorati.com/search/http://blog.opiumfield.com/?partner=wordpress&quot;&gt;link&lt;/a&gt; in my WordPress Dashboard (?partner=wordpress). It is listed as a &quot;custom expression&quot; filter. Yet more proof of the utter futility of web filtering applications. Another link thats filtered at my college is &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.best.com/~ddfr/Academic/Price_Theory/PThy_Chapter_21/PThy_Chap_21.html&quot;&gt;this one&lt;/a&gt; about the economics of love and marriage (it is categorised - along with all documents on the server - as 'porn'). All academic institutions should either provide unfiltered access to the Internet to all students over 18 or make their filtering criteria explicit. It also took me only one minute to sneak around the filter." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 15:11:25 GMT"/>		<outline text="Grr. My college has just redesigned it's website. This is good in one sense - no more pointless Flash widgets. It's bad in another sense - they've just gone and broken all the links to their old site. Somebody needs to learn about permalinks." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 12:01:15 GMT"/>		<outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.scriptorium.com/palimpsest/2006/12/liveblogging-xml-2006-keynote.html&quot;&gt;Sarah at Palimpsest&lt;/a&gt; and &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.oreillynet.com/xml/blog/2006/12/xml_conf_2006_first_day.html&quot;&gt;Keith Fahlgren at XML.com&lt;/a&gt; have been liveblogging the keynote from XML 2006. I presume that the conclusion from the keynote is that XML is making database design easier. If that is the conclusion, I agree with it. With my RDF database, I design the database as I go along. I design it in my text editor. I don't even have to write SQL - only SPARQL. &quot;;-&gt;&quot;" created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 17:34:27 GMT"/>		<outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.snee.com/bobdc.blog/2006/12/settled_in_at_xml_2006.html&quot;&gt;Bob DuCharme&lt;/a&gt; is at XML 2006 in Boston. He's &lt;a href=&quot;http://2006.xmlconference.org/programme/presentations/188.html&quot;&gt;giving a talk on Thursday about RDF/OWL with relational databases&lt;/a&gt;. Funny, I'm playing with that at the moment. Please could XML-ers at the conference please tag their stuff, or at the very least make sure they link to the XML conference website. Blog blog blog blog blog it! Podcast it! I wanna hear it all! &quot;;-&gt;&quot;" created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:21:09 GMT"/>		<outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/virtual_shopping_comeback.php&quot;&gt;Richard MacManus&lt;/a&gt; has a post about a virtual shopping mall. Smart move, honeys. I expect the 'tenants' will just love not being indexed by Google and it taking five minutes to find what you want rather than fifteen seconds. Seriously, this kind of shit proves that nobody gets it. If you want to bring the shopping mall on the Internet, here's how you can do it - provide a comprehensive listing of where the shops are in the real world. Make that data available widely in XML - hCard, RDF etc. Make it easy for me to find out where my local &lt;i&gt;x&lt;/i&gt; is. And then make the real life shops worth visiting. It's not that hard now, is it?" created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:15:39 GMT"/>		<outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/12/05/0025208&amp;from=rss&quot;&gt;Slashdot&lt;/a&gt; is pointing to &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.tbray.org/ongoing/When/200x/2006/11/27/Choose-Relax&quot;&gt;Tim Bray's post on RELAX-NG&lt;/a&gt;." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 11:09:56 GMT"/>		<outline text="Again, briefly restated: what we need is not a new MP3 player - but an open source, open vendor platform for portable software development. The PDA needs someone to come along and play the role that Compaq played in the development of the PC and the Internet played for the open source movement. Throw the gates open and let the users play. Of course, all the current players fear this heavily - because their DRM strategies will fall apart if users take charge. If an open source platform PDA existed 7-9 years ago, the whole category of MP3 player wouldn't exist. It'd just be a piece of software you'd download and install on your PDA." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 10:02:17 GMT"/>		<outline text="The podcast player" created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 08:29:01 GMT">			<outline text="I'm goingto record a podcast about my ideal MP3 player later, but I'll write about it here first." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:17:26 GMT"/>			<outline text="I started listening to the Calacanis, Rojas and Winer show late last night. Got about half way through. Put it on this morning only to remember it was strong panned left and right. Sorry, but it's 9am and I've got a headache - having Dave Winer blaring through one ear and Jason blaring through the other was too much. &quot;;-&gt;&quot;" created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:17:49 GMT"/>			<outline text="So, I haven't listened to the whole show, but I'll say this." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:19:23 GMT"/>			<outline text="I think they downplay the quality of the iPod. I've got an iPod and a Palm TX. The Palm has wi-fi, Bluetooth, reads SD cards and there is a piece of software called Quick News available which lets you subscribe to RSS feeds and downloads the enclosures." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:19:38 GMT"/>			<outline text="My Palm Pilot seems to have all of the things which the Winer-Rojas-Calacanis plan seems to ask for. But I still prefer listening on my iPod to listening on my Palm Pilot." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:20:05 GMT"/>			<outline text="It's not the hardware. Wi-fi doesn't matter - what matters is software and the playing experience." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:21:35 GMT"/>			<outline text="The whole thing about podcasts for me is that I've got hundreds more than I can ever listen to. This doesn't bother me - scarcity is for atoms not bits, remember." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:22:03 GMT"/>			<outline text="It means that when I'm walking down the street, I've got more choice in entertainment than I do in breakfast cereals." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:22:39 GMT"/>			<outline text="The one thing which keeps me an iPod customer is that if you are listening to a podcast and you stop it half way through to listen to something else, when you come back it starts playing from where you left off. If an MP3 player does not have this functionality, it is totally useless for me." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:23:18 GMT"/>			<outline text="Dave talks about &quot;getting run over&quot; while using his iPod. Sorry, but I don't get this. He seems to want an MP3 player that gets rid of the nuisance of - er - choosing what MP3 you want to listen to. Dave, if you are using the iPod, you can always set up a podcast playlist. Here's how you do it:" created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:23:49 GMT"/>			<outline text="Go to File &gt; New Smart Playlist. Now set the following options. Tick the first checkbox, choose &quot;all&quot; rather than any. For rules, you need &quot;Podcast&quot; &quot;is true&quot;. Press add. &quot;Play Count&quot; &quot;is&quot; 0. Add another: &quot;Kind&quot; &quot;contains&quot; audio. Now hit &quot;Live updating&quot; at the bottom. Push OK. Give the new playlist a name (I like Unlistened Podcasts). Now go to the iPod preferences and make the playlist sync to your iPod." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:25:08 GMT"/>			<outline text="You might want to add the &quot;Date Added&quot; column to your Unlistened Podcast playlist and sort that in ascending order." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:27:43 GMT"/>			<outline text="Now when you want to listen to podcasts, all you've got to do is load this list up in your iPod, press play and start listening." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:28:10 GMT"/>			<outline text="If you don't like what you hear, all you've got to do is press next (this will not mark it as listened, which means you can listen to it later - if you want to mark it as listened, just fast forward right to the end of the track and let the last few seconds play out." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:28:30 GMT"/>			<outline text="There you go - it's a River of Podcasts. Takes all of three minutes to set up." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:29:40 GMT"/>			<outline text="The broader point that the Winer-Calacanis-Rojas thing brings up is perfectly valid. Apple &lt;i&gt;should&lt;/i&gt; talk to users. They really ought to let the iPod division's employees run a blog. The people who run the Apple blogs and hang out on Mac forums may find speculation and Apple 'inside baseball' stuff fun and interesting. I find it dull 98% of the time and infuriating 2% of the time (the infuriating bit is when my Mac is doing something stupid and I go in to an Apple forum and the only response is &lt;i&gt;it's supposed to be like that&lt;/i&gt;)." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:30:10 GMT"/>			<outline text="What Apple needs to understand is that there's more to this game than just making the product - listening to the customers and saying occasionally, &quot;you know, you're right about that - we're going to add that feature to the next version&quot;." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:33:16 GMT"/>			<outline text="Apple's support used to be the best around - when the European tech support was based in Ireland. I actually looked forward to calling Apple's tech support in Cork. They then moved it to India and it's &lt;a href=&quot;http://tommorris.org/blog/2006/06/05#When:08:42:06&quot;&gt;got a &lt;i&gt;lot&lt;/i&gt; worse&lt;/a&gt;. If only the person in charge of that decision had a blog and asked the readers to comment." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:35:48 GMT"/>			<outline text="To conclude: the hardware isn't very important in an MP3 player. The software is what matters. Apple have got the software right in various ways, but there is still scope for improvement. Make synchronisation work with multiple computers. Put the podcast database stuff on the player and make it so yo can hook the iPod up to any device that has an Internet connection. What would that involve? Writing a software update and releasing it to the user - and making a few USB cables so that one can attach it to devices like mobile phones, Palm Pilots etc. Maybe make a little wifi card that plugs in to the bottom of the iPod using USB." created="Tue, 05 Dec 2006 09:42:52 GMT"/>			<outline text="&lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haloscan.com/comments/tommorris/thePodcastPlayer65209/&quot;&gt;&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;postCount('thePodcastPlayer65209');&lt;/script&gt;&lt;/a&gt; | &lt;a href=&quot;http://www.haloscan.com/tb/tommorris/thePodcastPlayer65209/&quot;&gt;&lt;script type=&quot;text/javascript&quot;&gt;postCountTB('thePodcastPlayer65209'); &lt;/script&gt;&lt;/a&gt;"/>			</outline>		</body>	</opml>