scribblings & musings @ sgs online is my colleague StÈfan Sinclair’s new blog. (More properly it is a blog he has had for a while which he is bringing out into the open.) Readers of my blog will recognize StÈfan as one of the people who introduces me to neat stuff.
StÈfam recently joined McMaster so I am fortunate to also have him as a colleague. Check out his blog and his neat HyperPo project.
Jerry McDonough: METS
Metadata Encoding and Transmission Standard (METS) is a hub standard that links metadata and files. Jerry McDonough of the New York University Libraries presented on METS at the TEI Members’ Meeting. He showed a neat use of METS to joint an MPEG video clip to a TEI transcript, but the heart of his talk was about the proliferation and interaction of standards like TEI, EAD, METS, IMS, and so on. There is a temptation to think that with a bit more a standard like the TEI can embrace (swallow) other standards giving us one instead of many. He argued that a) we don’t technically need to merge related standards, and b) it is not right to do that. He pointed to the politics and histories of these groups/standards. We need a sociology of standards.
Continue reading Jerry McDonough: METS
TEI Members’ Meeting, Daniel Pitti opening on TEI and EAD
I am at the 2004 TEI Annual Members’ Meeting at John Hopkins in Baltimore. We just got wireless so I can post notes on the talks.
Daniel Pitti from IATH gave the opening on the TEI and EAD.
Continue reading TEI Members’ Meeting, Daniel Pitti opening on TEI and EAD
Utterback: Text Rain
Camille Utterback is an artist who, with Romy Achituv, in 1999 developed an interactive installation, Text Rain where text rains down on your video image and gathers/spills off your video presence. Simple, beautiful (at least as seen online) and an early text play visualization.
How to use a book
http://homepages.nyu.edu/~mz34/helpdesk.WMV is a video clip in Danish that is a very funny look at the technology of the book. One of the funniest things I have seen in a while and I don’t understand Danish. This came via the TEI-L and Matthew Zimmerman. We need an English version.
Update: Philip sent me a link to a YouTube version with English subtitles. Somehow it isn’t quite as funny.
Reading the election
Current Electoral Vote Predictor 2004 is my favorite site for the upcoming presidential election in the USA. The site tells a simple story based on an image of the US with the states coloured by the most recent polls. From the home page you can link to all sorts of basic information.
Web advertising begins to pay
A story in the Guardian Unlimited title, Online cashes in at last by Own Gibson (Oct. 18, 2004) reports on new UK data that shows that internet advertising has risen past Cinema to challenge radio.
According to research due to be unveiled today by Microsoft’s internet arm MSN, confidence is higher than ever among sales staff at major sites such as MSN, AOL and Yahoo! and the agencies that buy space on them. After years of trying, and in some cases under-delivering, it looks as if the internet’s accountability, measurability and targeting is finally making an impression on the big brands. In certain sectors, notably cars and finance, online ads are now an integral part of any big campaign, rather than an afterthought.
I wonder what percentage of this is Google ads?
DomainKeys for Spam
DomainKeys is an idea for sender authentication that has legs to help with spam. According to a Slashdot story Google Gmail is signing email with Yahoo’s domainkeys. This is thanks to Matt Patey.
Retailers to ID buyers of mature games in Canada
canada.com in a story “Want game? Bring your ID, retailers ward”, reports that major retailers like Walmart, The Bay, Zellers, Blockbuster and Radio Shack will ask for ID when selling mature games. The game business in Canada is about $1 billion and retail chains account for 90% of sales according to the Retail Council of Canada. The ratings system being used is the Entertainmenet Software Rating Board in New York.
Croquet Project
The Croquet Project is developing an architecture for educational 3D networked computing. The idea is an OS that supports multiuser 3D shared worlds. Could this be an architecture for game studies to use?
Croquet is a combination of computer software and network architecture that supports deep collaboration and resource sharing among large numbers of users within the context of a large-scale distributed information system. Along with its ability to deliver compelling 3D visualization and simulations, the Croquet system’s components are designed with a focus on enabling massively multi-user peer-to-peer collaboration and communication. (Introduction, http://croquetproject.org/About_Croquet/about.html)