2006-01-16 at 3:43am
Plastic have pretty much got 2005 pegged.
Dave Cross has a useful list of RSS feeds for UK national newspapers, and he publishes OPML of that list too.
Travis Ennis is looking for an OPML file for feeds of library bloggers.
Ask MetaFilter are discussing one of the worst habits in political argument - the “if you don’t like it, fuck off” argument. The funny thing is that it’s usually put forward by people who are naive and idealistic about democracy unlike me (democracy must be tempered with strong civil liberties, a government the size of my little finger and a constitution that’s worth a damn).
If you go in for this, you’re being badly ripped off. Come on folks, it’s not like it’s difficult to use an iPod. They’re designed to be the simplest MP3 players in the world. And they are!
Only in America can they turn not having sex in to a fashion accessory.
Due to my phone, I haven’t been GPRS blogging this morning. I’m now more than half way to London, and I still haven’t got round to connecting. What went wrong? My phone was refusing to take Bluetooth connections this morning.
Dave Winer picked up my link to Dave Cross and is using it to illustrate Reading Lists: “Reading lists are not a new format, any list of exported subscriptions will work… The key is what the list contains. Suppose you were going to move to the UK in a few months and wanted to get in the flow of news of your new country. Then it would make total sense to subscribe to this reading list. And if any new UK news sources show up, hopefully Dave over in the UK will add them, and if URLs should change, we hope he updates them”. That makes it completely clear. It’s basically delegating your subscriptions to others. Dave’s World Outline lists some Reading Lists.
Right Thinking from the Left Coast: “Remember folks, guns don¹t kill people, guns in the hands of British Olympic athletes kill people.”
We can all fantasise about the decline of superstition. The trick is to help bring it about.
Dave has new things to show newsRiver.root users. Very cool.
I’ve got messed up sleep patterns too. As has my mother, though she has it far worse than me.
Google have launched a handy little page for us mobile users. Now if only they could find a way of fixing tunnels, we’d be sorted.
Media Watch Watch are talking about Iqbal Sacranie. My opinion? He’s a homophobic idiot, but that’s no reason to investigate or prosecute him. His idiocy is his punishment. But of course, it is interesting that the same people who are now defending Sacranie’s freedom of speech are also willing to piss it away by supporting the Incitement to Religious Hatred law.
Doc Searls has a good post on MLK’s “I have a dream”.
Ask MetaFilter has a post on Reagan’s “Armageddon Policy”. Weird, weird stuff. Thank god that our current politicians aren’t consulting theologians and waiting for the end times. I mean, we’re so much more advanced now!
Having kids is bad for your mental health. And the earth goes round the sun. Next?
Now that I understand Reading Lists, my mind is swarming with ideas of what one could do with the technology. Here are some of the ideas: city guides, technology guides, niche political movement lists, book blog lists, some interaction of Reading Lists and upcoming.org.
Not only are ‘City Academies’ bought and sold with the promise of unbridled creation science, they also hand out some old fashioned bribery too. Make a donation! School for sale! £2 million quid, the lot. Free knighthood! Free knighthood! He never did it!
Oooh, new BugMeNot Firefox plugin. Very handy!
There’s still hope! The Lords might block the cards! And here I was, quite happy to eat mine. A bit of ketchup and some jalapeno chillis and it’s tough plasticy shell and biometric goodiness would go down a treat.
Dave’s talking about Reading Lists. I’m aching to play with it, and I’ll probably be clicking “Get Latest Code” every five minutes until I can.
I’m just about to give a talk. I hope they let me sit down when I present it. I speak far better when seated than when standing. Wish me luck. I’m gonna need it! “;->”
The Open Rights Group has launched properly.
Watch the Church slip and slide! Though I dislike religion, I’d rather like the Church of England to keep rolling on for the purpose of humour.
Here we go. Talk time approaches…
Kosso has some hand hints for those exploring the world of Reading Lists. Just added it, and it works. Now I’m going to build a nice little reading list.
There’s a man behind me (on the train) with a terrible snore. I’m sure under Mr Blair’s new laws, he will be getting an ASBO and some public sleep etiquette classes.
Two thoughts about Reading Lists: firstly, I’m having difficulty working out how Reading Lists fit in to the mundane old three panel news readers and Bloglines and the like. Secondly: how do they cope with children? I mean, if I make an outline, can I include sub-folders? If I include another outline, will NewsRiver (for instance) grab the contents of that outline and include them in my reading lists? Once I get my head around the answers to these questions, the power of this will probably become apparent. I’m thinking a personal outline listing “everything you need to read about me” which would include del.icio.us, Flickr, blog(s) and the such. Kind of a provider-independent version of suprglu. Then someone could make a file called wafflyPhilosophyStudents.opml, include tomMorrisFeeds.opml, then the end user subscribes to the former and gets (to their detriment) the latter. This is damn powerful!
I upgraded newsRiver.root (I had to hack it back to my custom settings - basically switching 127.0.0.1 out so that I can access newsRiver from other machines on my LAN). I can now make Reading Lists, though it doesn’t seem to let me subscribe to them.
Green Fairy is absolutely correct about the Observer Women’s Monthly: “Mentions of politics, of any description: 0. Mention of the arts: 0. Mentions of business, money or jobs: 0. Mentions of science or technology, 0. Difference from any number of glossy women’s magazines available that peddle emancipation and freedom because they can say ‘blow job’ while fetishing a level of forever unattainable perfect living that maybe, just maybe, next month’s edition will have the secret to cracking: 0.” And so it goes on, that bandwagon.
Dave Winer explains what Reading Lists are going to do. I hate to hype technology but it looks like they’re going to make you sexier, better looking and turn you in to a millionaire. Maybe not, but they should make reading feeds a bit more interesting!
