Of late, I have been dreaming about IHTML. IHTML is, as I define it, HTML for highly interactive web applications. It defines new high-level tags for defining new interactive behaviors and for replacing all those custom DHTML+CSS+JavaScript-based widgets with 'native' components. It also supports weblets, client-side web applications that extends browsers.
To make IHTML a reality, I have embedded Python and PythonCOM into Internet Explorer. That was hard, but the hard part is over and the fun part begins. Beyond replacing IHTML tags with native parts on the fly, I am playing with the idea of Persistent Page which are web pages with persistance and mutates over its lifetime: changes you make on the page are permanent. Sounds weird, but is no different from writing on your newspaper. The kicker is that these pages are smart and task-oriented. Fun stuff.
In case you are wondering, I have little interest in what W3C might say about IHTML.
NewsGator 1.0 is released and its real cool. It extends Outlook with RSS news aggregation feature. Integration is really smooth without apparent seams. I played around with something real similar sometime back, but got sidetracked into Python. Its a mixed feeling to see my own idea realized by someone else, but I like NewsGator.
A little exploration into how blogs and newspapers can be combined to create a new type of journalism. Your comments are immensely welcome.
Online games are so popular in Korea that its having a major impact on the young generation. Online game items sells at as much as $10K although most good items are in the more affordable hundreds to thousands of dollars. Also, items for sex is not unheard of.
I couldn't find any fantasy and science fiction books in Korea few years ago, but they are now commonplace thanks to online games. Most of the popular fantasy and science fiction books are written by Korean kids and young adults who learned English words like 'item', 'inventory', 'fireball', and 'levitate', not from the English dictionary, but from the games they played.
'Avatar', another online game word, is also well known in Korea. The word now means 'a manga-style character representing a person online'. You can get a free generic one or buy a custom drawn one to use on your cellphones, in online chatrooms, or online games itself as textures. Many well-known Korean figures, from politicians to CEOs, now have their own avatar as part of their publicity. This is just one of newly elected Korean President Roh Moo-Hyun's avatar.
Books, mangas, animations, clothes, songs, and hairstyles in Korea are all affected by online games. Its just mind boggling. I haven't figured out whether its some peculiar trait in Korean culture that made this happen or some duplicatable factors. Spread of 'PC-Bang' (Korean style Internet Cafe) in China and LA suggests that it can be duplicated, although those places haven't gone as crazy as Korea.
I wrote about bloggers being ants without realizing that Joi Ito and others were having similar thoughts almost at the same time: synchrony in blogspace. Individual thoughts, shared in the past over blogs, combine to become the environment itself like the sky and the weather over ants, gently coaxing all of us to have same thoughts at the same time. Come to think of it, intellects may be as vain as people who feel compelled to follow the latest fashion.
When I travel, I avoid travel guides like the flu. Still, I miss not learning about the history and details only locals and fellow exploreres might know. Here is a fun application of moblog and audiolog that could solve that problem.
With location service-enabled cellphones, post audiologs about the location and its surroundings for other mobloggers to listen to when they are in the area. Now mobloggers will not have to follow travel guides around when they visit tourist spots. Imagine standing in some remote spot and listening to a GuideLog post that turns out to be a suicide audiolog. Hmm. Are those bones or what?
The death toll in recent Korean subway fire tragedy is expected to be over 200. Most of the dead were on train 1080, not on train 1079 where the fire started. Unbelievably, train 1080 pulled into the station while train 1079 was visibly engulfed in flame and stopped right next to it as you can see below.
After parking train 1080 next to train 1079, the driver talked with subway headquarter and was told to shutdown the train and leave. The driver was repeated told to take the key used to activate the train. No mention was made of the passengers. Tragically, the train doors were closed when he took the key out and left, leaving the passengers inside. While train doors can be opened manually in a few minutes, tests have shown that untrained person can take as much as 30 minutes to open a door. Result is what you see below.
Knowing Korean society well, I think it is almost certain that at least one more person will die, if not suicide then by homicide. Can anyone live with so much guilt?
Three Degrees is way cool. Its website is also cool. Its so cool, its creeping me out. Why? Because its a Microsoft product. I am used to Microsoft putting out a shitty product and then polish it into a monster product while everyone is laughing at the first release. I am not used to Microsoft putting out really creative product like Three Degree. Its freaking scary!
So here I go - anxiously downloading the beta version of Microsoft's new Three Degrees product - and OOOooops - it only works with XP. This is what I've been trying to tell people - Microsoft has no intention of supporting anything before XP. [Marc's Voice]
Marc seems upset that Three Degrees works only on XP. Why not? New machines and new platforms are where the money is flowing fastest. Those outdated 800 million PCs out there are owned by folks who are either happy with what they have or can't afford to buy latest machines. Neither group are likely to buy new software. Sure its a Swiss Cheese of an argument, but I have been a consultant for 20 years and I know where consulting dollars are being readily spent: at the bleeding edge.
