Author: thisduck

hungry. eat. feed.

Feeds have changed the way we use the internet. They fit right into that Web 2.0 turn table where instead of going to the content, people fetch the content. RSS, Atom, microformats or whatever works for you, they all feed.

Google Reader is my kitchen, it is where I see what is being served and what others are cooking. The Kitchen satisfies my hunger. Content was, and is still, king.

This Kitchen is a place where I can cook my food for thought, the content delivered to me comes in various forms: appetizers, main courses, deserts… sometimes certain bits are just ingredients that I survey and choose to include in what I will make. You can even freeze (store for later) content.

Interestingly enough, I had heard about google reader before, but only started using it after yasmine blogged about it. Sometimes I can’t keep up, just a few days ago I had to mark everything as read because I had fallen behind for a few weeks and had over 2000 unread items.

Feeds are fascinating, because not only do they distribute individualized content, they allow for mashups. There are plenty of good mashups out there, one of my favourites now is : TTC Google Maps.

Some folk may not like the idea of distributing content as that may mean losing traffic to their site. I think that’s just silly. Distributing good content will generate both interest and traffic. And the more channels you can use to distribute content, the better.

Feeds are good, because they’re changing the world.

Unbelievable, the power of collective collaboration.

Go now and search for something common on Google, first page of results has to have the wikipedia article.

The fact that wikipedia even exists and works is unreal. Anyone can add or change any article, opening itself to mischief from the unforgiving world, and yet it works. I love its self-healing nature. I like self-healing systems.

This is an open, free, social self-healing system. Even better. This is good design.

I was browsing edge.org’s world question, “what have you changed your mind about?”, Kevin Kelly’s response was wikipedia, one particular run of sentences I found interesting:

“The Wikipedia is impossible, but here it is. It is one of those things impossible in theory, but possible in practice. Once you confront the fact that it works, you have to shift your expectation of what else that is impossible in theory might work in practice.

I am not the only one who has had his mind changed about this. The reality of a working Wikipedia has made a type of communitarian socialism not only thinkable, but desirable. Along with other tools such as open-source software and open-source everything, this communitarian bias runs deep in the online world.”

Sudoku is for people with crossword puzzle envy.

Wikipedia will tell you about the history of the game and the rules. I will tell you why I like it.

I like sudoku because it’s a simple game. You don’t have to know a thousand words and their quirky meanings. You simply need to know:

1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9

Not even zero. You think in horizontal, vertical and box. Here, you must think inside, outside and yes even around the box. 🙂

The easy ones can be done within 5 minutes, most of them within 12 minutes, and then there are challenging ones that are nearly impossible to get.

I, personally, use the dot notation and it seems to be working well for me. I don’t like guessing, so if I have exhausted all options and have to guess a number for a box, I won’t bother completing the puzzle, will move on to the next one.

Simple is good. Sudoku is good.