Things have been quiet here for a few days: I’ve moved to NYC and started a new job. Things will probably stay quiet a little bit longer while I get settled.

I think Surf*Mind*Musings is the second site that sports that lovely purple XFML button (in the right hand bar).

TRANSLATE.org.za: Mozilla available in Zulu, Venda and Xhosa. (South African languages)

Wired News: AOL Stops the Pop-Up (via Victor): “In a bid to make its customers happy, America Online is eliminating pop-up ads for the most part.” So this won’t be neede anymore.

The Weblog MetaData Initiative: “But never fear: we’re still in business, and very shortly will be asking for continued help from folks to do some down-and-dirty, real-world testing of some of the concepts that we’ve been hashing out in the forum. We’ll be looking for folks to actually start marking up their weblogs with what we should probably call an “alpha” (or maybe even “pre-alpha”) release version of a proposed spec, and also asking for all those of you who are codingly-inclined to cut loose and start hacking away.”

Introduction to XFML Core concepts. (Evolt.org)

I just realised (yes I’m slow) an RSS reader is an excellent way of following a discussion board.

The Shifted Librarian on XFML

a day late and a :: dollarshort.org: lovely redesign. Good to see something creative being done with weblogs.

Usage Statistics for xfml.org – October 2002: 84 visits/169 pages avg per day.

Chicago Libraries Rock!

Surf*Mind*Musings: “Jumping on the XFML bandwagon, here’s a syndication of what’s new in the top surf*mind*web categories in XFML.”

Novissio – liveTopics: note the XFML Core compatible logo :) First time I’ve seen that anywhere.

Blogorroico, elucubrazioni quotidiane discovers XFML

Catalogablog (via IASlash)

the Information Awareness Office: “Suppose you’re devising a logo for a new wing of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, an office charged with developing intelligence tools and integrating the government’s existing surveillance networks. Suppose that it has a vaguely sinister name – say, the Information Awareness Office – and that it’s to be run by a former Iran-contra conspirator. What would your design be?” (via afongen)

Ha’aretz: “It does not bother Rosalind Duke that some people regard her lifetime’s work as “one of the most boring things they can think of.” […] “Almost every book brings its own problems and needs,” she says when explaining why she finds the cataloging process so engaging. “They are like people in that sense.” […] Take [Dutch philosopher] Spinoza, she says. “All over the world he’s known as Benedict, but he’s entered in our catalog as Baruch [his Hebrew name], so there is a cross-reference to Benedict, Benedictus and Benedict de. There’s a particular book, Opera Posthuma from 1677, and on its title page [the author’s name] is simply written `B. d. S.’ The cataloger is going to have to do some work on that – they might think it’s Spinoza, but they have to verify it and find the publisher.”

End User’s Corner – March 1998: “So, was Ranganathan a Yahoo!? Perhaps it’s a matter of semantics. Considering his complex notation scheme developed for the Colon Classification, as well as his principles of facet analysis as applied to the organization of digital information, I would say yes.” What I want to know is: what have librarians been doing since then? Is faceted classification as good as it gets from the librarian corner?

Excerpts from Ranganathan’s Prolegomena to Library Classification: “These are some definitions and principles taken from S.R. Ranganathan’s Prolegomena to Library Classification (2e) (1957). The terminology isn’t easy to crack without some examples, but just keep in mind that he’s talking about how classification schemes like the Dewey and Library of Congress systems work. They organize knowledge (in books and other things) by deciding what the book is about and then giving it a call number and putting it in order with other books. How that aboutness is decided, to what level of detail, and how the call numbers are made, is what he’s discussing. He’s setting out the basic rules he thinks all classification schemes should use.”

Scripting News: “So, is your brain really hierarchic? I think it is. Here’s the informal demo.”

No, the brain doesn’t think in hierarchies. Categories in the human mind aren’t organised in hierarchies. That’s why hierarchical taxonomies ultimately always fail: we don’t think that way, and the world definitely doesn’t work that way (and even if it did it wouldn’t matter since we still wouldn’t think that way). That’s how I understand George Lakoff anyway.

Browse Tanya’s pixelcharmer weblog at FacetMap, using the facets “process”, “topic”, “format” and “date”. Very cool. Tanya implemented an XFML export in Moveabletype and imported that in Facetmap.

Surfmind has a beta XFML feed.

XFMLManager: authoring hierarchical faceted classification: “XFMLManager is a free authoring tool for hierarchical, faceted metadata. We will also host the upcoming Hierarchical Faceted Metadata Authoring Experiment.”

IBM flushes restroom patent: “IBM has quietly eliminated a patent it received on a method for determining who gets to use the bathroom next.”

A Perl script for generating a date hierarchy in XFML.

XFML Libraries: “XFML libraries are existing libraries with facets and topics you can easily copy when creating a new XFML file.” Starting with an IPTC library.

ContextualAnalysis – Indexing Using Faceted Classification: “No matter what your style of indexing, no matter what software you own, no matter whether you’re a full- or part-time indexer, be you in-house or freelancer, you may find that using facets as an aid to indexing can help you produce better, more consistent indexes.”

This is surprisingly cool, in a twisted kind of way.

TRANSLATE.org.za: “South Africa has eleven official languages – an indication of cultural and language diversity of our nation. Yet most computer software is only available in one language (English) and is poorly supported in another language (Afrikaans), the other 9 languages have no translation. The translation project of translate.org.za plans to address this by coordinating, initiating, sustaining and focusing the efforts of South African translation teams. This project aims to give learners, pensioners and all citizens of South Africa access to computers in their mother tongue. “

A proposal for a general Syndication Subscription Service: no more searching for XFML buttons and pasting URL’s in your newsreader.