by gregoryheller | Apr 25, 2005 | Uncategorized
<p>This has been tagging week on my blog. The technology is really exciting and new. A few days ago i discovered [l:http://kevan.org/extispicious|extisp.icio.us] (interestingly the link is not <i>extisp.icio.us</i> it is actually <a href="http://kevan.org/extispicious" title="http://kevan.org/extispicious">http://kevan.org/extispicious</a>, but it would seem that anyone working on things related to tagging wnts to be like <i>del.icio.us</i> with their clever url. It almost seems like the format of the <i>del.icio.us</i> url has become synonymous with tagging. Is <i>del.icio.us</i> becomming a word? meaning, are people using it as a verb the way googling is? In our office we ask "Did you <i>del.icio.us</i> it?") </p> <p>Anyway, <i>extisp.icio.us</i> creates a graphical represenation of your del.icio.us tags. The larger the font, the more the tag is used, the closer 2 tags are to each other, the more often they are used ont he same bookmark.<br /> Check [l:http://kevan.org/extispicious.cgi?name=GregoryHeller|this] out.</p> <p>What is the real use of this technology? (not tagging, but showing tags in this graphical way?) I am not really certain. It definitely is cool though. I suppose that being visual creatures, being able to see our tags might help us to understand better how we are using them. If we have tons of tags that are piled on each other, and then a bunch that are out in the hinterlands, it would mean that we are not tagging strategically, in such a way that we can use faceted search like the [lk:fac.etio.us] technology or the new "add related" tag feature that [lk:del.icio.us] just introduced. These allow you to zero in on smaller and smaller sets of bookmarks.</p> <p>Everytime you refresh, or re-run the extisp.icio.us tool on your del.icio.us...
by gregoryheller | Apr 23, 2005 | Uncategorized
<p>My friend [lk:nonecknoel.com|Noel] pointed me towards [lk:upcoming.org] yesterday morning as I was in the middle of some data wrangling, and i didn't get to look into it much until later in the day at which point I was kind of BLOWN AWAY. What they have done almost seems to be inspired by an article that I earlier pointed out. Here is a quote:<cite><br /> [l:http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html|Your "use case" should be, there's a 22 year old college student living in the dorms. How will this software get him laid?] and then [l:http://www.jwz.org/doc/groupware.html|"Social software" is about making it easy for people to do other things that make them happy: meeting, communicating, and hooking up… I said, instead of trying to build some all-singing all-dancing "collaboration server" where you're going to throw in all kinds of ridiculous line items like bulletin boards and task tracking and other shit, let's suppose you narrow your focus to just calendars.] </cite></p> <p>This is what [lk:upcoming.org|upcoming] has done. It is a huge shared calendar of events. International! And it is well organized into "metros" which are basically cities, or smaller geographic units (there is one for NYU). And folks post events, then other users can "watch" and event, meaning stick it on a watch list, and then indicate that they are going to attend an event. Users can email event listings to friends so friends can then put it on their watch list or decide to attend it. The event listings can then be pulled via RSS onto a user's own website. </p> <p>Coming soon to my site: "events i am watching" and "events i am attending"...
by gregoryheller | Apr 23, 2005 | Uncategorized
<p>I think that tagging is the most exciting "new" "technology" to come around in a while. I have blogged about it before and have apodcast up about it, but jsut in this week alone I have been further exploring hte use of tagging ([wik:tagging|the second bullet] or [wik:folksonomy] for more information)</p> <p>You can see some of the sites that I have tagged on my delicious account in the block on the right. </p> <p>Among the really exciting stuff is [lk:del.icio.us] and [lk:fac.etio.us] and [l:http://kevan.org/extispicious|extispicious] a graphical representation of your tagss. [l:http://kevan.org/extispicious|Here] is an interesting article on tagging/del.icio.us.</p> <p>I was talking with [l:http://www.civicactions.com/article.php?story=20040719235711794|Dan Robinson] about tagging again this week, and as i told him my dream of never having to develop a coding taxonomy for a database again and instead use tagging to identify records in a contact database, he informed me that over at [lk:civicactions.com|CivicActions] they are working on a application that would let them share their contacts and tag them. So cool. i can't wait to see...
by gregoryheller | Apr 22, 2005 | Uncategorized
<p><a href="http://www.technorati.com/claim/isb87jdmq" rel="me">Check out my Technorati Profile</a></p> <p>Not sure what I am going to use my Technorati account for, but i figured i would never know if i didn't...
by gregoryheller | Apr 19, 2005 | Uncategorized
<p>I have been thinking more ad more about data security of late which leads to the larger concept of [l:http://www.eriders.net/model/stories/in/?id=35|security culture] particularly in non-profit and political realms.</p> <p>The recent incidents that have lead to me thinking about this relate to two clients of mine (these are just the two most recent incidents, it is true that at work we just finally instituted a computer use policy that staff must adhere to).</p> <p>So here is the deal. An group that i have done some work or in the past asked me to enhance their membership database by matching it to the voterfile for the area where they work. They provided me with the votrfile for this area and they provided me with their membershp list. The voterfile (being large) was sen to me physically. But the membership list (being smaller) was transmitted electronically.</p> <p>Here are the problems i see:<br /> 1) the file was not encrypted in anyway. Ecryption would have prevented protected against a 3rd party intercepting the data. Granted, no one thinks that smoe 3rd party is going to be looking for their data and going throuh the trouble of intercepting it but the more imortant and concerning problem follows…<br /> 2) this group has no paper on me. What i mean is we do not have a cotract, there fore we have no terms of agreement. i have not indicated how i secure their data when it is in my posession, nor what i do with their data when i am done performing the requested enhancement. I have phone numbers and email and names etc of their...
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