Don Box of Microsoft, responsible for Longhorn Indigo (communications tech for building Web services, or “the SOAP messaging stack” that Don works on), is talking about how Microsoft is going to support standards, really this time. He says the following:

WordML, the current Word format, is optimal if you’re a Word author, but is unusable if you are trying to do interesting XML-y things with it, like write an app to process it. It’s designed to work well for Word. When Microsoft shipped it, people had a normal, human, emotional reaction: They hated it. Microsoft said that it didn’t expect you to author it, only to process it.

[A whole bunch of stuff I don’t understand it, and then:] We will be able to extend the Microsoft file system by providing our own schema. (Marc Cantor calls out that this is “really coolio, dude.”) “This isn’t just about the API. This is about data extensibility,” says Don.

Indigo is about “service-orientation” rather than object orientation. “We don’t want you to run .Net on your Linux box.”

[More stuff I didn’t understand. I’m not complaining, mind you.]

[Since I am obviously in over my head – feel free to explain it to me – I should perhaps report that both Bob Frankston and Marc Canter, off line, were favorably impressed with the direction Don sketched.]

10 Comments »

I have an idea! Let’s all get together and not care!

15 Comments »

David Isenberg has posted more about his free-form gathering of interesting people. It’s called WTF and it doesn’t stand for anything yet.

Be the first to comment »

Declan reports on a bad idea put forward by Dean 15 months before he announced his run for the presidency (and six months after 9/11): Requiring users to insert an identity card — presented as an upgrade of today’s drivers license — into a computer in order to log on. Apparently, the campaign is not responding to questions about this. It’s certainly not an idea I’ve heard bruited about by the campaign, but I’m certainly not privy to every bruiting. (Thanks to Eric for the link.)

Dana Blankenhorn responds. (Ignore the nice thing he says about me.)

3 Comments »

Hugo, I’m trying to respond to your email but my msgs keep bouncing. If you read this, could you please send me a msg with another way to reach you? Thanks.

Be the first to comment »

A sad, funny, beautiful response to Spalding Gray’s absence.

38 Comments »

Thanks to some hard work by a couple of folks, especially Boris, and a new version of MovableType released specially to fight comment spam, you can once again leave comments.

3 Comments »

I just posted this at Corante Many2Many:

I like Skype. It lets me make phone calls for free to the other 4M people who have signed up for the service. The calls go through my computer and they work real good.

But I’ve just gotten my second random phone call from some well-intentioned stranger who wants to know if I want to chat. Actually, I don’t. If you call my Skype number randomly, the odds are just about perfect that you’re going to be interrupting something that I’d rather be doing than speaking with a stranger. And here’s how you know that: If I wanted to be speaking with a stranger now, I’d be on the Skype phone calling one. If you can get through to me on my Skype line it’s because I don’t want to be speaking with a stranger now.

Thank you for your attention.

6 Comments »

Here’s a list of the various top ten lists posted at BlogCritics. That is, both this list and the entries on the list point to entries at BlogCritics. Oh, the hell with it.

1 Comment »

Miles over at the TinyApps blog points us to the Helloworld Project:

“Send in your message, and see how it is projected by a laserbeam onto a mountain overlooking Ipanema Beach in Rio de Janeiro, onto the UN building in New York City, onto the most prominent building in downtown Mumbai or onto a 140 metre tall water fountain in Geneva.”

1 Comment »