Albert Tanutama

Finally, I’ve completed all required examinations. Crossing my fingers for the result. Left with my good ol’ dissertation. I guess I’d better get myself going this time. Seriously.

This time I shall read Daniel Henry’s proposed Streaming Document Format - SDF in order to unify the syndication war.

Streaming Document Format (SDF) is a dialect of XML that is completely described in this specification. Its goal is to enable streaming news feeds and electronic publications to be served, received, and processed on the web in a standard manner. SDF has been designed for ease of implementation and for interoperability with XML Parsers, HTML & XHTML.

From the forum, it appears that the format is rather proprietary (copyrighted). This might hinder the future development though.

Must. Concentrate. Must. Focus.

Well, I think I could still afford to post one insightful answer from our Digital Preservation class here. It’s about the difference between digital and non-digital document. Obvious? Sort of. But it is more meaningful with framework attached. (more…)

Tom Green write about “The Art of Interactive Story Telling”

This is something I make abundantly clear to every student applying to the Multimedia program at Humber College : “If you can’t tell a story, don’t even think of being accepted to the program.” Think about it. Where do web sites start? With a story board. Where do films start? With a book. All have their roots in a simple thing called a “story”. I find it fascinating that we are part an industry that really doesn’t have a history, yet the foundation of what we do stretches back to prehistory.

I found it pretty fascinating article. Inspiring. Does story-telling model contribute to the large use of blogs? Is linear model of blog working better than parallel? I think this could be an interesting research issue…

Found this new software called HTTrack

It allows you to download a World Wide Web site from the Internet to a local directory, building recursively all directories, getting HTML, images, and other files from the server to your computer. HTTrack arranges the original site’s relative link-structure. Simply open a page of the “mirrored” website in your browser, and you can browse the site from link to link, as if you were viewing it online. HTTrack can also update an existing mirrored site, and resume interrupted downloads. HTTrack is fully configurable, and has an integrated help system.

Why am I interested in this software? Well, it allows me to create a local copy of a website for offline viewing. It’s much much better than offline mode in IE. It also results in faster browsing. And finally? It’s simplifies preservation of web. Of course, it is important to note legal issues that might be involved.

Sounds strange? Well, that’s one stall that I’ve been visiting for the past three days. Auntie Winnie’s Lok-Lok is located at Jurong Point, Basement floor. They are selling BBQ style of Yong Tau Foo in skewers. It has surprisingly indonesian taste (the sambal is pretty nice). Hmmm…maybe because of its ‘burning’ taste…

My recommendation? The chicken skewer, the ‘nugget’ with seaweed, the salmon nugget, and the crab roll…

Well, this is kind of interesting issue discussed by Scoble. He decided to stop his experimental [Quote]blog because of copyright issue. Russell Beattie has strong opinion on it

When I make an effort to write my thoughts here, put my time and sweat into analysis (I can spend hours and hours getting some of the longer posts written) I do not want them copied wholesale by another site where they get the credit for them by readers and search engines.

Well, I should say that by reading their article, I appreciate more about copyright. Yep. And that should be reflected in my daily posts.

eWeek has an interview with Google’s Sergey Brin where he talks about the future of Gmail. I particularly drawn into the part where Brin mentioned about RSS…

Part of the things we’ve seen why blogs and RSS feeds are such a success is that you can actually read it?you don’t have to stop, click back and forth, collect bits and pieces here and there?but it is all presented to you as one… There are a whole bunch of challenges getting e-mail all the way to that point, but one of the nice things that you can do with the conversations is that you know when you’re in a conversation. As long as you’re interested in one of the messages, then you should be interested in all.

I got a nice surprise this evening, a letter from NTU regarding acceptance to MSc in Digital Media Technology.

M.Sc. in Digital Media Technology, is designed for students who wish to develop, design and implement projects in the fast growing field of digital media. The program emphasizes on the techniques and tools used in digital media rather than the creative design or content of such media. Both theoretical and activity-based learning are provided for graduates who wish to upgrade their competencies and skills. Core modules focus on the basic areas of computer graphics, multimedia, virtual reality and animation.

Gosh! It’s cool! Now, if only I could deal with some (but important) administrative issues…

A digital preservation article from The Independent

An investigation by a Dutch personal computer magazine, PC Active, has shown that some CD-Rs are unreadable in as little as two years, because the dyes in the CD’s recording layer fade. There’s no way to assess CD-R longevity at home. All you can do is check periodically.

I’d better look at my CDs again…

SocialText has compiled quite comprehensive RSS resources. They are categorized into studies, book chapters, media studies, white papers, articles, posts, etc.