http://writetheweb.com News for web users who write back en-US Edd Dumbill Copyright 1999-2003, WriteTheWeb team http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/tomwatson-weblog You know weblogs are passe when even politicians are jumping on the bandwagon... Weblogs http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/steveyost What do you use QuickTopic for? Discussing off-topic stuff that crops up on mailing lists? There's waaaay more to it than that, as our interview with founder Steve Yost reveals. Annotation Webapps http://writetheweb.com/Members/edd/Articles/2003-02-epiphany A new browser has emerged for the open source GNOME desktop platform. Epiphany seeks to live up to the claims of its name in terms of simplicity and intuition. Browsers http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/noahgrey Noah Grey wrote a piece of software called Greymatter, and with it helped the blogosphere take its first hesitant steps into the limelight. Then he kind of disappeared, and then he kind of came back again. Last week, he kindly agreed to spill his heart to WriteTheWeb, about Greymatter, blogs (and hating the word "blog"), copyright, and spirituality. Intellectual Property Webapps People http://writetheweb.com/Members/edd/Articles/2003-02-rss RSS has a troubled enough history already with respect to "standards compliance," but the trend for RSS aggregators leave bogus referrer information is becoming immensely irritating. Programming Syndication http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/jowalsh_spacenamespace Jo Walsh is creator and curator of the spacenamespace project, an adventure in collaborative mapping. As an ambitious first step, she is overseeing the building of an interactive map of London, accessible via an instant messaging bot. WriteTheWeb asked her to explain the roots of the idea, and how it is progressing. Her answer follows. Metadata Programming http://writetheweb.com/Members/edd/Articles/2003-01-relaunch Nearly three years after launching, we've given WtW a fresh look, and a new injection of content. In 2003 the issues that we set out to cover in 2000 are as relevant as ever: following and campaigning for the writeable web, where participation by creation is as important as reading. WriteTheWeb http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/brentsimmons NetNewsWire has become one of the most talked-about applications for Mac-owning webloggers. In its initial incarnation as a freeware RSS reader, it successfully boosted awareness and usage of RSS across the blogosphere. Just when people thought it couldn't get any better, the commercial version appeared offering built-in weblog editing too. WriteTheWeb spoke to NetNewsWire's creator, Brent Simmons. Programming http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/blognomicon When is a weblog not a weblog? When it's a game. Kevan Davies and friends have started up a web site whose purpose is nothing more than defining its own existence. Weblogs http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/blogging_fringe Meg Hourihan will be conducting a session at the Emerging Technology Conference on The Margins of the Writable Web. Weblogs http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/125 You must have noticed it - the fast-growing trend among content sites to start charging for content. But just because it works for some, it won't necessarily work for all, and there appear to be a lot of site owners who have not grasped that yet. Social http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/124 Small-time web publishers, fanzine writers, and webloggers have had little or no chance of standing up against The Man when sent a legal letter or email asking them to "cease and desist" with whatever it is they are publishing online. Not until now, that is, thanks to the arrival of Chilling Effects. Intellectual Property http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/123 Some people are taking the concept of weblogs and applying it to the wider concept of knowledge management. The result is k-logging ("knowledge-logging"). But will it catch on - will your employer dump Lotus Notes databases in favour of browsers and blog-style brain-dumps? Webapps http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/122 A prestigious digital history project conducted by the BBC in the 1980s is now just so much junk, because no-one can figure out a way to read the disks the data was stored on. What does this tell us about all the data we are committing to electronic storage now? Social http://writetheweb.com/Members/gilest/old/120 The movie industry wants to avoid getting Napstered at all costs. It is taking unprecedented steps to protect moving images from being digitally copied. Intellectual Property