Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Bryan Bell on the white-on-orange XML icon. Perfect illustration of the Principle Of Good Enough. 

At the movies yesterday, they had ads from television on before the previews. Actual TV ads. And when I went to the bathroom, on the wall above the urinals, ads for Immodium, a diarrhea medicine, asking if the explosions in here are louder than the ones in the auditorium. I kid you not. Then this on Engadget, a portable toilet with its own jet engine. Now I've seen everything, I'm comin to join you Lizbeth. 

I'm at Berkman talking about podcasting, and we did a demo, singing Kenny Rogers' famous tune The Gambler. 

Public Radio Exchange podcast feed. 

People always ask where the white-on-orange XML icons came from. Well, here's the requirements doc, written on this day in 2000. Bryan Bell read the doc and designed the graphic. 

BBC: Microsoft takes on desktop search. 

John Palfrey has the text of the email sent to the Harvard community re the work with Google, digitizing the libraries and making them searchable over the Web. 

Scoble has lots of links about the MSN Toolbar. Sorry I missed all the MS and Google news yesterday. I slept 15 hours, went to coffee with a new friend, went to a movie with an old friend, and slept some more. This is part of the recovery process, I'm getting better. I wasn't sleeping well before, all the coughing kept me up. It's great that the blogosphere has so many facets, so if I can't get you the news on a given day because of illness, there are others to pick up the slack. This morning I feel even better. Giving a seminar shortly at Berkman and then having a lunch at WGBH to talk about podcasting, then another movie. Busy, but fun stuff. 

Speaking of fun, I've now participated in three full-out BloggerCon-style unconferences. One of the things that isn't on the FAQ is that it helps to have a song, and every time we've had one, sometimes two. And when we're lucky we have The Accordion Guy, Joey deVilla, to lead us in song. Now I always forget how serious he is about his accordion, but to the rest of us, when the accordion comes out we laugh, because it's time to have fun! So at the end of our discussion on Saturday (pre-arranged) I asked Joey to come to the front of the room and lead us in song. I had no idea what we would sing. The song he chose is still in my head. "You gotta know when to hold em, know when to fold em, know when to walk away, know when to run. You don't count your money, when you're sittin at the table, there'll be time enough for countin when the dealin's done." Anyway, good work Joe!