Pascal Van Hecke - Daily Links

Useful snippet on wiki use for fact gathering versus oponion building (documentation versus discussion). My own version of this is: "wiki's only work when there's an implicit consensus"

"Zolang het daarbij gaat over feitelijke zaken heeft dat kans van slagen. 'Een olifant is immers een olifant en niet een eend'. Natuurlijk zullen er allerlei misverstanden over bestaan en uit de weg geruimd moeten worden. Maar uiteindelijk komt een steeds vollediger beeld van die 'olifant' tot stand.
Alle aanwijzingen bevatten een kern van waarheid en centreren zich daarom rond een zeker gemiddelde.

Anders wordt het wanneer men gezamelijk een mening in een wiki wil vormgeven.
Meningen kunnen alle kanten opgaan; zij zijn een kwestie van smaak en onderhevig aan allerlei emoties. Zij centreren zich dus niet (altijd) rond een gemiddelde."

Of course Stallman is right… but unable to stop it…

Viviane Reding emphasizes the positive aspects of Social Networking sites in a first statement on SNSes:

"Because of the open nature of social networking sites and the fact that they offer cultural diversity and enhanced interactivity, they can serve several different audiences with minimum financial effort and bring about new economic opportunities for the European industry. Customer service, advertising, mobile phone industry, human resources, entertainment are only a few sectors that have been changed by the raise of the social networking sites.
Social networking sites also turn people into active users of new technologies and empower them to make active choices about their environment by offering the opportunity to create new creative content."

"Social software" seems to be a Western concept… In Japan, higher social control and social pressure cause people to be very reluctant to post details and pictures about themselves out of fear for embarrassment and bullying.

Tutorials, handbooks, cheat sheets, modules, design tips…
Put together by Smashing Magazine

"takes your MS-Word generated HTML and strips out all the junk while preserving the links and basic formatting"

(beta) ser vice that emulates an Exchange server to sync webbased contacts and calendar (Google, Plaxo supported) to your Iphone.
Works fine, but I prefer Google Calendar over mobile web: has a better oversight, especially if you use multiple (in Google Cal differently coloured) overlaying calendars.

Dutch effort to bring Web2.0 and public service together.Tip by @alper at #picnic08
Ning-hosted network.

Tool to collect and prioritize questions by public voting (e.g. in a panel discussion, interview, or in preparation of these). Appspot-hosted (so you need a Google account)

"De voorstellen van het ministerie van VWS gaan uit van een pre-internettijdperk, terwijl volgens Otten en Van Rijen het Web 3.0 al aanstaande is [...] de privacy bij een landelijk EPD onvoldoende gewaarborgd …] wie is eigenaar van het dossier: patiënt of zorgverlener?"

Centralised overview and link hub with the many ways you can distribute and promote your content (sites, address info, rich media, geo data, databases and lists…) via Google services.

report by a detoxicating information junkie:
"I took a three month break from blogging and social media sites so that I could focus 100% on a critical project at work. Strangely enough I didn’t miss the flow of information"

"Data Portability leaders lined up for this call: Chris Saad (Co-founder, DataPortability.org), Daniela Barbosa (Chair, DataPortability.org), Eran Hammer-Lahav (Open Standards Evangelist, Yahoo), and Angus Logan (Technical Product Manager for Windows Live Platform, Microsoft)."
(recorded September 22nd with live calls)

"Scientific American editor in chief, John Rennie, discusses the future of privacy and security, the subject of the September single-topic issue of Scientific American magazine. Plus, we'll test your knowledge of some recent science in the news."

WP-related resources (tutorials, cheat sheets, how-tos), by Smashing Magazine

lightweight alternative to phpMyAdmin, consists of only one file

Research project by IBM, similar to Evernote (or the LifeBits project by Microsoft Research). They seem to plan to license it to mobile operators, who will be the guardians of our memory… The accompanying video _really_ looks old-fashioned….
"To help people remember key facts, today, IBM (NYSE: IBM) unveiled a software technology created in its Research Labs that uses the images, sounds, and text recorded on everyday mobile devices to help people recall names, faces, conversations and other important information."

Totally missed this fascinating story: Google news crawler categorizes a 2002 story on UAL bancruptcy as news … and the share price drops 75%! It had appeared (by accident?) in the "popular stories" section of a (local?) newspaper and did not contain a date in the story itself - only the system date

"The Portable Contacts specification is designed to make it easier for developers to give their users a secure way to access the address books and friends lists they have built up all over the web. Specifically, it seeks to create a common access pattern and contact schema that any site can provide, well-specified authentication and access rules, standard libraries that can work with any site, and absolutely minimal complexity, with the lightest possible toolchain requirements for developers."