There's a good article at O'Reilly Net that introduces Zeroconf ("Rendezvous" for all you Apple fans), Mutlicast DNS, and talks a bit about Microsoft's push for Universial Plug n Play (UPnP).
From the sound of things, Rendezvous has a chance of becoming the standard. But it's a bit too early to know anything for sure.
So I've been wondering why Google doesn't setup a URL that weblog software can "ping" each time a new entry is posted. I already ping weblogs.com and moveabletype.org each time a new entry is posted. Why not rig up Google to do nearly real-time weblog indexing?
Now, I already know from my own stats that Google crawls my blog daily. Certainly we can improve on that.
Why does this matter? Simple. Virtually all of the traffic coming to my weblog that is not the result of someone else pointing at my weblog is from a Google search. I'd guess that Google generates 80-90% of my non-directly-linked hits. (Yahoo is a distant second place.)
Sure, Dave has suggested that Google use the info available at weblogs.com to do this, but why not eliminate the middle-man entirely? (No offense, Dave.)
Hmm. This gives me an idea for work that's sorta related to another idea I had after a co-worker showed me something that is best described as the opposite of Google Sets. Well, sort of. Lots of fun stuff to hack on there.
The Star Destroyer has to be the coolest lego set ever. And it's big too--3,000 pieces. Kasia pointed me at this the other day and mentioned that someone at work got one. The instruction manual is literally a book. It's roughly 200 pages long.
Oh, how I want one. But I still think I'd rather buy an iPod with that money.
Wow, it would seem that I'm #61 in Technorati's top 100 list. Strangely, I'm one slot above The FuzzyBlog (hi, Scott!).
I'm rather surprised that I'm in the top 100 at all, let alone being ahead of Scott.
Oh, here's my cosmos link. It's interesting to see some of the links there. Lots of stuff that I've missed in looking at my referer data.
There's a good story over at NewsForge about a Linux-based Conference Registration System. It uses LAMP, iOpeners, LTSP, and some custom-built Java code. Very cool.
Over at Infoworld, Russell recounts his predictions for 2002 to see how accurate he was. While he was pretty good for 2002, I'm really interested to hear what he thinks 2003 will bring Tux fans.
This has been bothering me for a long time. Ever since my local Albertson's starting suggesting that I get one of their little tracking cards so that I could still get low prices. What they didn't realize is that I'd just walk across the street--literally, and shop at the local chain rather than big, bad Albertson's.
Well, I was glad to see that Phil Windley felt the same way:
Doing the Thanksgiving shopping at Albertson's, I was once again slightly enraged to find I'd picked up something, thinking it was a great price (in this case a 12 pack of soda for $1.99), only to find out at the check out stand that I only got that price if I used their "value card." The regular price was $4.50. Of course, that's just a way to convince me to let Albertson's add my purchases to their collection of marketing data.
And now there's a long discussion forming on Brent's weblog as well. He mentions nocards.org and says:
Remember, folks, fighting the future begins with your local grocery store.
Note to Albertson's: You lost a customer for life. I liked your store util you told me how little you value my business by asking me to do your dirty work for you..
Phil announces his new computer:
This week, my new 1GHz, 1Gb RAM, Gbe, Powerbook arrived. I've spent a few days moving all my data and work from the XP machine I used. I'm now pretty much completely switched over and the XP box has been relegated to a single purpose: Groupwise for the few remaining emails I'll get from the State. The week after next, I'll return it to the State and bid it good riddance.
I can appreciate that. I haven't booted my XP machine in a few weeks. I just keep using the TiBook at home and my Linux box at work. Maybe I should sell that ThinkPad T23 rather than let it collect dust? It's such a nice machine. I could put Linux on it, but what's the point? If I add a bit of RAM to this TiBook, it'll totally rock.