Saturday, 2nd August 2003
On Metadata
Tim Bray’s series On Search now has a table of contents page linking to each of the previous entries. The most recent article covers metadata, and includes some insightful commentary on the huge problem of gathering metadata from users in the first place.
Applications of RDF
Shelley Powers: RDF: Ready for Prime Time gives an overview of the many applications and services already deployed that use RDF in some way. Via that article, RDF in Mozilla Docs and RDF in fifty words or less, both published by the Mozilla project.
The Doomsday Algorithm
I always thought you had to be an idiot savant to be able to state the day of the week for any date in history, but it turns out there’s a reasonably simple trick to it. The Doomsday Algorithm was first invented by Dr John Conway, also famous for creating the game of life. Rudy Limeback’s detailed explanation provides everything you need to know about the algorithm, how it works and how to memorise it.
Page Readability Bookmarks
I’ve long been a proponent of flexible web pages rather than restricting sites to a hard coded width in pixels, but now that I’ve started surfing at 1280x1024 I’m beginning to realise how true the statements about an optimum width for readable text really are. The simple solution would be to surf with my browser window resized to a sensible size, but old habits die hard. Instead, I made myself the following bookmarklet:
[... 157 words]