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http://blog.jonudell.net/
Visual numeracy for collective survival
November 18 2008
In response to an item last week about regional sources of imported oil, @jesperfj wrote: Not sure what to conclude? Do informed people like Udell really not know that? I really didn’t. And the reaction to the item, plus my survey of friends and associates, tells me that while some… read moreTwine, del.icio.us, and event-driven service integration
November 17 2008
Last week on Interviews with Innovators I spoke with Nova Spivack about Twine, a service that’s been variously described as the first mainstream semantic web application and “just del.icio.us 2.0″. You’ll find support for both points of view in my conversation with Nova. It’s true that, unlike del.icio.us and other… read moreWhere the oil comes from: Not from where I thought
November 09 2008
At a party the other night, a friend mentioned that the country supplying us with the most oil is Canada. Maybe so, I said, but on a regional basis the Middle East dominates, right? He wasn’t sure, but didn’t think so. And it turns out he was right, at least… read moreNovember 07 2008
In July 1995 I wrote a column in BYTE with the same title as this blog post. It began: One day this spring, an HTTP request popped out the back of my old Swan 386/25, rattled through our LAN, jumped across an X.25 link to BIX, negotiated its way through… read moreWhen the lights go on at the New York Times, our work can start
November 06 2008
On election night, the most useful information display I found was the New York Times’ interactive election map. It’s another bravura performance from a team of talented designers and programmers who keep raising the bar. Back in May, two of them — Gabriel Dance and Shan Carter — joined me… read moreMy upcoming World Usability Day talk
November 03 2008
Next Thursday is World Usability Day, a distributed event that will happen in lots of places. One of them is Putney, Vermont, not far from my home, where I’ll be speaking at the New England venue, Landmark College. The program says: A description of Jon’s talk is forthcoming, but we’ve… read moreFor Granicus, transparent democracy is just business as usual
November 03 2008
This week’s Interviews with Innovators explores the Granicus solution for civic webcasting with CEO Tom Spengler. If you’re lucky enough to live in a city that is a Granicus client you’re already familiar with how it works. If not, take a look at the Newport Beach, CA site. It’s a… read moreURI, XML, HTTP, REST, and the Azure Services Platform
October 31 2008
When friends and family ask about the Professional Developers Conference I attended this week, I tell them it’s kind of like Microsoft’s State of the Union address. I’ve been to a number of these over the years. This was my first as an employee, and Microsoft’s first as a company… read moreKim Cameron’s excellent adventure
October 28 2008
I hope James Governor, Mary Branscombe, and Kim Cameron will triangulate on this, but here’s my report on a cosmically funny incident at a party last night. I walked up to James just as he witnessed Kim being forcibly denied access to the venue. He lacked the necessary identity token… read morePyAWS, Fermat’s Last Theorem, and search diversity
October 25 2008
I use the Amazon API to check wishlists programmatically, and back in March I mentioned that it was being upgraded in a way that would break the Python wrapper I’d been using for years. Readers pointed me to a new wrapper called PyAWS, but I found that it didn’t offer… read moreOctober 24 2008
What: Keene Pumpkin Festival When: Saturday, October 25, 2008 (all day) Where: Downtown Keene, New Hampshire read moreWhy and how to blurb your social bookmarks
October 22 2008
From a 2004 entry entitled Information Routing: To further my own self-interest in keeping track of things, I’ve made a minor extension to the del.icio.us bookmarklet, so that selected text on the target page is used for the (optional) extended description of the routed item. This makes the items I… read moreOctober 21 2008
The fun I’ve been having with DoubleSearch has reminded me how easy it is to create new search providers that plug into your browser’s dropdown list of search engines. Here’s an interesting one: FaceSearch. As the name suggests, it finds pictures of faces. This is nothing more than a Live… read moreTracks4Africa: Mapping and annotating Africa’s remote eco-destinations
October 20 2008
Back in 2005 I made a screencast that showed how the convergence of GPS and online mapping enables us to collectively annotate the planet. The Tracks4Africa folks have been doing that since 2000. On this week’s Innovators show, Johann Groenewald explains how some GPS enthusiasts who are passionate about exploring,… read moreOctober 16 2008
Paul Pival noticed a problem with the browser widget I made the other day to search Google and Live side-by-side. The service invoked by that widget, at dualsearch.atsites.net, fails when your query contains double-quoted phrases. It’s an easy fix as I’ll demonstrate here. There are three ingredients: A itty-bitty web… read more
