RSS feeds are everywhere now, and for a good reason! It can be a really powerful tool for those who want to stay savvy, but don’t have much time to browse all of their favorite sites (yeah, I just described the entire population of Earth there).
Here’s an overview of what RSS is, how you can use it to save your precious time and also some additional nifty tricks I frequently use (top secret stuff).
After having studied publications and information on Radar Networks for a recent blog post, I decided I might as well write a Wikipedia article on them while I’m at it. Less than an hour (one hour!) after my initial publication of the article somebody had come along and tagged it, suggesting that it was written as an “advertisement”. Is it just my inexperience with Wikipedia, or does it seem a bit strange for someone to instantly slap a tag on it … even while I’m still doing modifications?
I’ve been following the news and rumors on Radar Networks for a few years now, a company that’s about to unveil a new semantic web application. What originally brought it to my attention was the fact that my brother was the chief architect of the underlying system during its conception, and is now on the board of advisors. But it’s not blood relation that’s perpetuating my interest; it’s the potential revolutionary nature of the product they’re about to release. As we get closer to their beta, the shroud of secrecy is gradually being lifted.
I was recently given the Thinking Blogger Award, but work has been keeping me too busy to write en entry on it. Chip of Chip’s Quips named me for the award — which has been making its round memetically for some time now on the blogosphere. The award is given by bloggers to their peers that make them think. I’m very happy to hear I’m inciting thought and give my humble thanks to Chip for the award.
Finally I got a better idea of how I might look in my old age. The Face Transformer Java Applet can morph your face into several different types — including old age, child, manga, Botticelli and others. Check it out. Here’s me — the first one is my actual face, followed by my asian version, old age and finally manga.
An excellent debate has been raging in comment threads the past few days, on the potential dangers and fear of artificial intelligence. In the last round, the following point was raised:
An AI destroying all of humanity might solve our currently existing problems, but I’m not sure if I’d like that to happen. I’d much rather take the Friendly ones – but those won’t be developed if nobody fears the possible consequences of AIs. Therefore, I can only hope for more fear.
Read more…
I decided this deserved a blog entry and here we are. My answer is this:
Over six thousand people have voted in the Who’s Afraid of Robots? poll (which will remain open indefinitely). Many people supported this effort (see below), propelling the entry to the frontpage of Digg, as I had hoped, which increased the number of voters and brought a heap of varying opinions on the matter. The survey’s results are quite intriguing.
A few entries ago I decided on regularly presenting an entry featuring interesting articles by friendly commenters here, along with short reviews. To be featured here, you just need to do two things, number one is writing an intelligent article, number two is commenting here to let me know you exist.
Matt of the Bowl of Stupid blog, delivers a blatant and humorous coverage of psychotic sports fanatics.
Broc deciphers the online social networks out there. Or as he puts it himself:
If you haven’t noticed already, I dig patterns. In this post I am going to attempt to recognize the patterns of a few different online communities and see how they relate to each other.
Jakob Knudsen dissects the issue of dream analyzation. I find dream analyzation ridiculous, another child of the perpetually pattern matching human brain. So he had me at the title. But it’s fun to see the examples of dream interpretation and his lucid dreaming argument is great (okay, and I wanted to have mention of lucid dreaming here as a reminder to start practicing).
Enjoy the reading.
Some keen readers might have noticed the new Spotplex icon in the Networking section of the sidebar. I just got accepted into their beta trials today. I was a bit surprised as I only heard about Spotplex after they’d closed down their limited open window for beta applicants — but decided to go for it anyway. I consider it flattering to be let in so late.
In case you haven’t heard of Spotplex, it’s a new online service that automatically registers how often blog articles are read. They are then arranged in order of popularity on the pages of Spotplex so you can quickly catch a glimpse of what’s hot and glamorous on the blogosphere.
Due to the fact that it’s the reader-count that determines which articles make it to the frontpages, Spotplex has been hailed by some as the Digg-killer. While I’m sure that Digg now has such a cult-like following that Digg-killer is an overstatement, I do think the automatic-rating system has some pros over Digg. For example, I’m guessing that we can safely assume there will be no Spotplex mafia that has more control than other users of Spotplex. However, the nature of Digg and Spotplex is completely different — so I really think they shouldn’t be compared. Digg uses votes, Spotplex uses hitcount.
I’m still unsure whether Spotplex registers reader-hits from Spotplex itself in addition to regular inkblot readers — or if only regular readers are counted. If it’s the latter, then I’m unsure of whether inkblot earth has enough traffic (yet) to compete against some of the heavier hitters registered on Spotplex. A nice overview article on TechBuzz refers to that model as The Rich getting Richer. But in any case it’s always fun to participate in new kinds of online tech.
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