CogBlogged from ‘August, 2003’

Lines at the gas stations, tempers flaring… Wow- it is almost a flashback to the 1973 oil embargo but this is 2003 in Phoenix, Arizona where a pipeline shutdown fuels gas shortage. The events in ’73 are a bit fuzzy, but I recall my Dad waiting in long lines for hours to get gasoline that had spiked from 35 cents a gallon to (oh my gosh) more than $1.00 a gallon. But Phoenix citizens cannot balme the oil cartel here, although theories abound on other conspiracy theories. IN a nutshell- all of the gasoline that is consumed (and much is) in Phoenix, arrives by fuel lines from the west (LA and imports) and the east (the big refineries in Texas). The problem is a rupture midway between Phoenix and Tucson in the 50 year old pipe for the Texas supply, normally 35% of what we consume. Although the supply from [...]

This post is as tangential as the twisted web path it took to get there. The ending is at Allen Smith’s Web-A-Sketch, a detailed description and parts list for how he hooked up some motors to an original Etch-A-Sketch and made it so anyone could remotely control it via a web interface. An Etch-A-Sketch that can be controlled from a web page… first added stepper motors to this Etch-A-Sketch a couple of years ago. The stepper motors are from 5 1/4″ disk drives. These can be had at hamfests for a dollar or less and usually contain a nice 12 volt stepper motor. The belt and pulleys are from Small Parts They are called timing pulleys and timing belts, they cost less than $20 total. The motor bracket is a piece of sheet metal I cut with a hacksaw and bent into a right angle in a vice before drilling [...]

I am not in too many (or maybe zero) Yahoo Groups (and if so I never have them sent to clutter my email) but this Yahoo Groups RSS URI Generator is ideal for keeping updated on public groups without trudging through the Yahoo site. This page contains JavaScript that will accept a Yahoo group name and return a URI pointing to it’s RSS file.Yahoo Groups that have made their archive of messages publicly readable can automatically produce an RSS feed. It’s one of the little-known features of Yahoo Groups. It can be a handy way to ‘keep tabs’ on what’s happening in groups that you prefer not to read all the time. There are some groups that if you read them regularly you tend to waste a LOT of time. Using an RSS feed can help you avoid the temptations. Again- RSS lets me customize the stuff I want rather [...]

Building from the same path we have added RSS to 4 other resource web sites, we just added a feed to Multimedia Authoring Web. Get the feed (RSS 2.0) “AUTHORING” here refers to “programming by non-programmers.” This site is a resource collection of pointers to Internet sites for those that develop or “author” multimedia. This has been a site lingering (George recently found it) since about 1995- it began as a static series of web pages with categories of web sites of interest to people who created multimedia (I was doing CD-ROM/Director work then). There were very few websites in general (ass opposed to now), so if one came up, I would cut and paste it in. Web sites were novelties then. This became one of the first sites we converted into a searchable directory (using some archaic unix tools, a predecessor to WebGlimpse that still work 8 years later) [...]

Bless Joe Clark. Not only does he write a stunningly useful book, but he also provides all of the chapters (for free) to Building Accessible Websites. When you buy the book, you get the entire text (but no graphics) on the included CD-ROM, along with a few extras, like fonts and utilities. Now the whole book is available online, in individual chapters. I was led this way since in the section on accessibility in Zeldman’s Web Standards book, the mighty Z referenced Joe’s work with supreme praise. I’ve just dived in a little, but Joe writes extremely clearly with a little bite of humor. And it is practical stuff you can use. I am already reviewing my coding of web forms based on Chapter 12. If you think web accessibility is just tossing in some ALT tags or getting Bobby approval, you better dive in a little deeper. It is [...]

Yet another useful avenue for RSS- stay in tune with all or part of the open source software projects at

Regarding our RSS to JS demo (code that allows you to embed RSS into any web page using a script that returns RSS as a series of JavaScript write statements), Michelle appropriately noticed that this approach would leave in the dark anyone using a screen reader (or just having JavaScript turned off). Bad dog. The problem is that screen readers will skip the Javascript statements. A first cut solution I have just added is a suggestion for a NOSCRIPT tag that has a link to another script (rss2html.php) that takes the same feed and returns a normal HTML version of the feed. You pass this script the same parameters that are passed to the rss2js.php script. You can see it in action from our RSS2JS demo as well as the code builder form that is on that same site. Then, go to your browser preferences and turn off JavaScript, and [...]

Fresh off the press! See a take on blogging in Doonesbury. None of us would troll for search engines, would we? <tiphat>found via RSS aggregator feed from the Shifted Librarian</tiphat>

Chris Pirillo has a new comprehensive site on Lockergnome’s RSS Resource (tip of the blog hat to Will for this one). It features a wide range of stories on new types of RSS uses (e.g. notifying beta testers of software updates) and the latest in tools and technology, written by a team of contributers. We like its clean writing too… Who is RSS for? That all depends on who you ask. For end users, it’s an easier way to get the information they’re looking for. For bloggers, it’s a better way to keep track of their conversations. For publishers, it’s yet another opportunity to keep their audience in touch. For developers, it’s another way to use and interpret data. For marketers, it’s a way to maximize their business relationships. The publisher still controls the content. The subscriber finally controls the subscription. RSS is not an all-out replacement for other technologies. [...]

A little bit of echo to Brian’s analysis of our conference ending session on RSS and Learning Objects. You can find the paper there as well as a hefty 6 Mb PowerPoint (if I have time, I will at least post a MS mangled HTML version), plus there is a streaming quicktime version too. There seemed (from the front of the room) a buzz of interest and people were at least sitting forward in their chairs instead of snoozing. Stephen took in good humour our reference to “the oracle.” And hats off for Michelle for playing the part of “Lora” and showing up to the presentation. I really hope people can go back and start on the same discovery of the power of RSS for staying in tune first with information in their interest area, and then thinking about how it can be integrated into their online materials and/or use [...]