Author: Martin

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The Microcontent Client

An interesting and important article on where “web content” is currently at, and where it is going. It takes in content creation, aggregation, tools, and the culture surrounding all of these. (Via DollarShort.org)

“The microcontent client is an extensible desktop application based around standard Internet protocols that leverages existing web technologies to find, navigate, collect, and author chunks of content for consumption by either the microcontent browser or a standard web browser. The primary advantage of the microcontent client over existing Internet technologies is that it will enable the sharing of meme-sized chunks of information using a consistent set of navigation, user interface, storage, and networking technologies. In short, a better user interface for task-based activities, and a more powerful system for reading, searching, annotating, reviewing, and other information-based activities on the Internet.”

I certainly find my web habits moving in the direction outlined in this article. I skim, I scan, and I have twenty-three browser tabs open as I’m writing this. Opera suits these browsing habits of mine: tabs, mouse gestures, opening new windows in the background, search functions integrated in the address bar, the ability to quickly turn images of/on… All of these functions make it a lean, mean, browsing machine.

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Linux: why?

Martin's Annual Linux Experience 2002I’ve been running with SuSE Linux 8.1 for just under three weeks now, and the niggles are definitely setting in. They were there from the start, really, but I was enjoying the challenge of dealing with them, finding workarounds, and tweaking the system.

But perpetual fiddling palls. I don’t own a computer so that I can spend all my time messing about with its innards. I do like to do some actual work on it every now and then. (“Work” includes simple stuff like browsing the web and email, as well as more serious projects.) It’s a question of content: do you love a tool for its own sake, or for what you can produce with it? Do you buy an Xbox because of its spiffy hardware, or do you go with the PS2 because it has the games you want to play?

So let me take a look at what I can do with Linux, versus what I normally do with Windows:

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RSS

Especially for Spence, I’ve put up an RSS (0.91) feed for this site.

To keep track of all of the blogs I read on a regular basis, I use the “Open all Folder Items” feature in Opera. I have all of my regular reading in a single bookmark folder, and the “Open all…” feature allows me to open all of these, in separate tabs, with a single mouse click.

But then I have to read them all, which is taking longer and longer the more new blogs I read…

RSS is the obvious solution to all of this. In theory, you have an application that scans the RSS feeds for each blog, and then displays all of the new headlines, in an easily scannable way. Then, you can click on a link to go to any entry that looks interesting.

The only problem is that I haven’t found an RSS aggregator that I like. I’ve tried AmphetaDesk and Aggie, but they just don’t strike me right. I think that for the moment, I’m just going to continue with the Opera way, until my list gets really unwieldy, and then I’ll put the effort into writing my own transforms and stylesheets to produce Aggie/AmphetaDesk output I can live with.

But just because I don’t use an aggregator, doesn’t mean that other people don’t. I imagine that if you use RSS as your primary blogscanning tool, you probably get a bit annoyed whenever you come across a blog that you want to follow, but that doesn’t have an XML feed. Especially when they’re so easy to implement. And especially when Movable Type provides you with a default RSS template already…

Ulp. Excuse the laziness please, and thanks to Spence for the prod.

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Dim Sum

For some time now, we’ve been looking for a good (or indeed any) Dim Sum restaurant in Edinburgh. Today, we visited the Hong Kong Martell restaurant on Newington Road. And, yum, was it good!

The restaurant used to be the Martell Casino, but it has been the Hong Kong Martell since June, and according to the owners it is now the largest Chinese restaurant in Edinburgh. They have a dedicated seafood room, a main dining room, a Karaoke room, and a function suite for parties.

We went along at about half past two this afternoon, and got a table for six easily–no need to book beforehand. The Dim Sum menu was extensive and varied, with prices ranging from £2-5 for most portions. We ordered a whole bunch of stuff, but the things that stick out for me were the sticky rice parcels, and the scallop parcels, but the vegetable spring rolls were quite special, too.

Their main menu looked equally tempting. We’re already making plans to leave Alex behind for an evening soon, so we can go back!