At some point things in life seem to converge. The lines blur and each thing becomes part of the other. Life becomes a nearly seemless mix of thoughts, actions, and dreams. Each part playing an invaluable role in our personal ecosystem. The more we learn of Truth, the more focused and productive our life becomes. The New Life grows deeper and overwhelms the temporal everyday until the mundane becomes subline. It's a constant move upward.
"Further up and further in."
Namespaces are confusing, but if you don't think of them as attributes they get much easier. 8o)
I believe that technology should be easily accessible to the average user.
Markup languages are.
Hyperlinks are.
Namespaces are... ...NOT!
For those of you who haven't heard yet, there is a blogger in Baghdad.
Here is the link to a mirror of the site that BlogSpot set up for him (Google has one too): http://dearraed.blogspot.com/.
According to The World on NPR, he has millions of readers. On the 26th, The World had a short commentary about him at the end of their program (the paragraph about it is at the very bottom).
I found this whole thing very inspiring. Here is a man (with a blog) that has a readership numbering in the millions. Maybe my blogs or the blogs of my friends won't ever get read by anyone other than people I already know, but, Lord willing, they will get read. Because they are read, each entry is an opportunity to convey truth. I for one can't pass an opportunity like that up.
The Sematic Web came into the public consciousness through the publications of this article: Scientific American: The Semantic Web.
Communication (auditory and visual) is the method through which ideas are expressed and propagated through the general consciousness of humanity. (duh!) 8o)
...and suddenly life seems very organized. 8o)
Peace, tranquility, structure... 8o)
...or at least the stream of web information.
I find it exciting to look back over a web wander and think of how I got to where I am now (which in this case is writing this blog). Today, it started out by updating OmniGraffle. OmniGraffle is a handy dandy, Mac OS X application for flow charting. Anyway, here's the stream that I followed to get to writing this blog.
OmniGraffle update
Began looking at the new objects available
Found one named Garrett IA
Followed the "About Garrett IA..." link in OmniGraffle
Read the "Elements of User Experience" PDF
Wondered what "Tuftean" meant
Searched Google, dictionary.com, and m-w.com
Found many pages that use the word, but none that link to its full meaning
Found out that "Tuftean" means basically "in the style of Edward Tufte."
Found his web site http://www.edwardtufte.com/
Decided that I'd wandered far enough to justify a blog.
So that's how I got to this blog. 8o) I also learned a ton about Information Architecture and it's various subdivisions a long the way.
If you take the time to read some of this article, you'll find many things I've mentioned on this blog before. Honestly, I just found this link today. 8o) I knew someone else had to be thinking the same way, I just didn't think it was Tim Berners-Lee (the guy who really made the internet).
Realising the Full Potential of the Web
XML.com: Standards: Optional Features or Law? [Mar. 19, 2003]
This recent article by XML.com covers the issue of standards compliance. Currently on the web there are plenty of standards (existing and in the works), but they are not all supported and few are supported well.
The last couple paragraphs of the article ("Testing for Standards Compliance is Important") give a good overview of why standards and their accurate implementations are important.
Dave and John,
I haven't forgotten about your comments. I will reply to them in the not so distant future. 8o)
The comments were great, and have got me thinking more deeply about the whole field and the changes that need to be made to technology for the sake of the user.
Feel free to comment again with any more questions/thoughts. I am listening. 8o)
If there were an error catching, request processing, "redirect" script in the root of the web server, then all requests could be edited for their "correctness".
What if there were a web publishing system that wouldn't let you delete pages. One could "remove" pages, but not without giving a reason for it's removal (to be displayed to the user) and (if appropriate) a place for the user to go instead.
It would also be ideal for the system to keep a log of changes, so that the site owner (or possibly even users) could link to a page from the past.
We've created machines that can "remember" things for us, even protect us from ourselves, but we let our own short comings cascade into their existence as well as hamper ours.
Somedays on the web, you wander to a site you know to find that... THEY'VE CHANGED EVERYTHING!!! Obviously they didn't ask your permission or advise. But why?!? It was so nice before. The colors fit, the product designs flowed nicely with the page. It was clean, sleek... ...you liked it.
Now? Now your not sure what to think. It's like a bad mix of trends from different sectors of the design community.
Solid colors here,
gradients there.
Tans and gray-blues here,
solid whites and deep primary colors there.
I don't like it Macromedia, I just don't like it!