Chandler, an open source personal information manager (PIM) written in python. Still under development.
Mimi Yim on hierarchy systems. Brilliant comparison of different methods of organization. There are hierarchies, facets and tagsonomies. Her conclusion is that facets are the most flexible methods of organization, although they have this flaw:
(Facets) fail to go that final mile so crucial to storytelling: a linear dictation of what order to experience the facets in. Instead Faceted systems are designed to allow the user to construct their own storyline.
I’m really going to ponder this piece for a while. But the first thing that struck me after reading this is how agile Windows folders (with Details) are. If you set the folders to have details, you have three columns: filename, last modified and file size. By clicking on the top bar, you can indicate whether it should go in ascending/descending order, and which columns takes precedence in making a sequence. More importantly, you can also add columns (or facets, to use Mimi’s terminology) for other fields (bitrate, album, time, etc). That is an awfully robust way to customize your view, although it doesn’t allow introspection inside subfolders.
(If you haven’t read it already, check out Shirky’s Ontologies are Overrated).
Strategies for commenting your code
Facade, an interactive natural-language based dramatic game. See the NYT article about it and this glorious gamasutra review. Shoot, I just realized that my old computer doesn’t meet the minimum specs for the game. I’ve been delaying a purchase of a new computer until I figure out my requirements for my video production, although I have a feeling I might be buying something in the next month or so. It is an odd feeling, having the means to buy a video camera or computer without having the time or desire to. Never make a decision that you can’t delay until tomorrow. At the moment, my self-built 2000 computer works fine for me, though I will soon be upgrading.
Discussion on GrandTextAuto about whether to charge for interactive stories. Grandtextauto has always been one of the best groupblogs out there, and I’ve ignored it recently because I haven’t had time to follow online gaming. I’ll try to cover it more often.
Harry Potter copyrighters overreach in preventing content from leaking out.
Webartist Edward Picot has written some articles about the paying for content question. Also, does some fun multimedia pieces for children. See Chicks