While reading Lawrence Lessig’s blog, I came across an interesting paper by Tim Wu (Associate Professor of Law at the University of Virginia Law School) titled “Network Neutrality & Broadband Discrimination“.
The paper commented on an interesting view of the internet as an “end to end” idea where it is becoming increasingly under threat by network providers developing technologies to discriminate among network users. The interesting aspect of this is that it can have legal reprocusions in the future. Nevertheless, Wu’s proposal is for a different form of regulation aimed at neutrality.
Lessig comments also that “Open-access” has worked well in Japan but not in America, and recommends it strongly.
Laurence Lessig is Professor of Law at Stanford Law School, the Founder of the Stanford Center for Internet and Society and author of “The Future of Ideas” and “Code and Other Laws of Cyberspace“, he is also Chair of the Creative Commons project.
2 ActionScript BBEdit tools worth having
Todd Dominey and Brendan Hall comment on 2 ActionScript tools available for BBEdit. One is a Flash MX Glossary for BBEdit created by Chris Jenkins and the other an ActionScript BBEdit language module, which has been hard to find and made temporarily available from Brendan Halls website, www.waxpraxis.org
BBedit is a popular coding/developing text editing tool available for the Mac including OS 9 and OS X. It is available from the Barebones website.
Weapons of Mass Transit
Technology Review comment on Saddam’s biggest secret – his weapon of mass transit.
www.technologyreview.com/articles/wo_muller031403.asp
What is XHTML Basic?
XHTML Basic is a W3C Recommendation and a basic version of XHTML created specifically for mobile devices.
The document type includes the minimal set of modules required to be an XHTML host language document type including the use of images, forms, basic tables, and object support.
The standard is designed for Web clients that do not support the full set of XHTML features such as mobile phones, PDAs, pagers, and settop boxes.
www.w3.org/TR/xhtml-basic
Optimizing & developing for a mobile device
Mark Pilgrim (now an author for webstandards.org) has recapped on some of the reasons for providing a mobile feed of his website.
The post comments on the HTML tags understood by AvantGo‘s and a listing of some of the XHTML basic tags not supported, namely:
abbr, acronym, cite, code, dfn, kbd, q, samp, span, var, label, object, param, link, media & attribute.
In addition Mark comments on intentionally left out XHTML Basic tags for the Palm device which were deemed too difficult, but are supported by AvantGo:
b, i, center, font & Nested tables.
Some things I found interesting was that XHTML Basic has no provision for client-side scripting of any kind. Plus, Palm devices do not support any form of CSS; the link element (for linking to external stylesheets), style element and inline style attribute is not supported. Windows CE devices support the font tag.
The post also contains some interesting comments and a link to one of Brad Choate’s MT plug-ins, MT-Macros. Here is a permanent link to Mark Pilgrims post:
http://diveintomark.org/archives/2003/03/15/about_the_mobile_edition.html
Sites on developing for Pocket PC Flash 5
Here are some linked sites on Macromedia.com for developing of Pocket PC Flash 5 applications
www.macromedia.com/software/flashplayer/pocketpc/gallery/content_sites.html
Six rules for avoiding email tyranny
Cafedave posts an interesting link to a page which comments on the six rules for avoiding email tyranny
www.w-uh.com/articles/030308-tyranny_of_email.html
Cafedave comments on the Google Dance
Cafedave posts a great link to the Google Dance.
Google Dance – when the 10,000-odd servers that make up google are updated, and the search results vary.
Excerpt from Cafedave, Phillips D. (2003) [Online] Available: http://www.cafedave.net/v7/index.php
Expanding the Approaches to User Experience
There is a super interesting article in Boxes and Arrows this week by George Olsen, titled “Expanding the Approaches to User Experience”.
The article comments on the Jesse James Garrett Elements of User Experience model and covers some interesting points which the author feels is missing, namely the view of the web as interactive multimedia.
“Much of the argument over what the ?right? kind of website is, stems from people?s failure to appreciate that, as a medium, the web encompasses more than just the specific aspect they?re most comfortable with?and a failure to appreciate that users might be interested in more than one type of experience. It?s a question of finding an appropriate balance between these three types of experiences.”
Excerpt from the Boxes & Arrows article, Olsen, G. (2003) Expanding the Approaches to User Experience [Online] Available: www.boxesandarrows.com
Dr. Karl lecture at the University of Sydney
Dr Karl is doing a lecture next week for Science week, titled “Dr Karl’s Great Moments in Science”. The lecture will also be broadcast live from 5:30pm Wednesday March 19 on Triple J. Bookings for the lecture can be found at the Science faculty homepage or at the Dr Karl Triple J site: www.abc.net.au/science/k2
The Faculty of Science
Carslaw Building (F07)
The University of Sydney 2006
Email: p.buchanan@science.usyd.edu.au
Telephone: (02) 9351 5268
Fascimile: (02) 9351 4846
The oldest Human Footprints Found
New Scientist comments on the discovery of the world’s oldest footprints.
Found at the slope of a volcanic incline they are more than 350,000 years old and are the earliest know footprints from our Homo ancestors.
Update (2003):
National Geographic on the Roccamonfina footprints
Nature also reports on the Italian Volcano footprints
Logitech’s new Digital Pen
Shoshana Berger from Business2.0 comments on the new Logitech Digital Pen whose sole purpose is to get rid of paper and digitise everything you write.
www.business2.com/articles/web/0,1653,47314,00.html
Who controls the Wireless spectrum?
Kevin Lynch, posts an interesting blog post on the current Spectrum policy changes under way in the US and elsewhere.
McDonald’s begin to offer Wi-Fi access
McDonald’s will start to offer Wi-Fi internet access in their restaurants beginning tomorrow in the US. This service is similar to the one by Starbucks where they offer free internet access to all their customers. The Mcdonald’s service only grants you 1hr of access and is only available if you buy a burger meal.
www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20030311S0001
Using CSS2 and supporting PDAs/Handhelds
An interesting and useful guide by MacEdition on supporting PDAs/Handheld browsers using CSS2
www.macedition.com/cb/resources/handheldbrowsercsssupport.html
RichInStyle.com also have an interesting series of testpages, where they pretty much cover every aspect of CSS2. www.richinstyle.com/test