Category: Stuff that doesn’t fit

Stuff that doesn’t fit in any category, or leftover posts from the big category revolution of 2009.

Ripoff [en]

Now if this isn’t a ripoff of this…

See pirated-sites for more copycat fun.

Fun With Spammers [en]

Michael Fraase is currently being threatened by lawsuit by a spammer.

A few months ago, under the title Fun with spammers, Michael published an article detailing how he suggests dealing with spammers. He included the email exchange which took place when he put his method in practice with one particular spammer.

Enjoy.

Independent Web [en]

Things are moving over at Independents Day.

The Future Independents Web: Visions of What’s to Come presents a series of essays about what the future of the independent web might be; one essay published every six hours – or every 250 .beats.

Keep checking. The .beat of the web is pulsing.

Knowledge Management [en]

Seth does a rather good job of explaining knowledge management to us, in two articles (more coming!) on the subject.

Knowledge management is an attempt to do with the collective knowledge of an organization — the individuals within the organization — what an individual does with his own knowledge. That includes storing, cross-linking, categorizing, contextualizing, retrieving, and of course presenting.

KM requires computer technology, because it can’t be done any other way. Remember, this isn’t the knowledge of a single individual being available to that individual whenver its needed, we’re talking about the knowledge of at least one individual being usable by at least one.

Static? Dynamic? [en]

I had a conversation with Karl the other day, about static vs. dynamic implementations for a website.

Depending on how many page views you have per hour on the server, a dynamic implementation could slow down a site unnecessarily.

The important analysis is this one: divide the number of content changes in a given time by the number of page view requests for a given page. The closer that number is to zero, the more static your content is. The closer it is to one, the more dynamic it is.

My content is definitely more on the static side. I add pages every now and again, edit them every now and again, and of course, update my weblog fairly regularly. I don’t use a database back-end, but I do use a fair amount of PHP to hold things together.

I use PHP because it makes maintenance easier. I don’t really use it because my content is dynamic – so it could be seen as “abusive” use of a dynamic implementation. However, I don’t have so many visitors that it does make a difference to the server.

If the server load did become too important, however, I would certainly consider putting in place a script that would generate a static version of the site (each day or on demand). Visitors would access the static version, but it would be easily produced by the “generator script” on the basis of the easy-to-maintain dynamic version.

What is your opinion on the subject? Are “dynamic” website implementions being used abusively? Under what conditions do you consider using a database as a back-end? Do you have any numbers or statistics which either validate or invalidate the theories exposed above?

I’d love to hear from you. Add your comments below.

Article [en]

Do you remember that I met a journalist while I was in Pune? If you’re on the notify list you will probably have seen the online article already, but might be curious to see exactly what it looked like in the paper…

De Mozilla aux wikis [en]

Mozilla, qu’est-ce que c’est donc que cet animal?

Mozilla, c’est la version open-source de Netscape, le principal concurrent de Microsoft sur le marché des navigateurs. Vous pouvez bien entendu télécharger Mozilla en français (même si cela veut dire que vous n’aurez pas forcément la dernière version).

Et open source, alors, ça veut dire quoi? En fait, ça veut dire que le code source du programme est rendu public. N’importe qui peut le voir, mais surtout, proposer des modifications. Cela permet un effort collaboratif beaucoup plus grand (quoiqu’un peu anarchique) que lors du développement d’un programme de façon traditionnelle.

Linux est un des programmes open source les plus populaires. Il s’agit d’un système opératoire comme Windows. L’open source est souvent associé à  la gratuité des programmes et à  l’absence de copyright – remplacé pour l’occasion par le copyleft.

Si pour la programmation on a le mouvement open source, il existe un équivalent dans le domaine de la création de contenu: le wiki. C’est un site qui permet à  chacun de modifier n’importe quelle page, ou d’en créer des nouvelles. Cela marche parce qu’il est tout à  fait facile à  n’importe qui de “revenir en arrière” pour annuler des actes de vandalisme (très rares).

AllMyFAQs, auquel je contribue, est un wiki. L’idée est d’en faire un “FAQ des FAQs” pour tout ce qui touche au webdesign. Il y a également un projet d’encyclopédie sous forme de wiki. Allez y jeter un oeil, et ajouter votre contribution s’il y a lieu, il y a même une branche française (même si elle n’est pas vraiment très fournie… voici l’occasion de devenir “célèbre”!)

Mozilla [en]

Last week, I did something I had been longing to do for a long time. I downloaded the latest version of Mozilla, and I’ve been using the navigator and the mail client ever since. It feels so good to be one step further away from Micro land.

Having gone through it, here are my recommendations.

  • Download the “talkback” build for your platform. The links are on the home page, in the right column.
  • Choose custom install and install everything. I can’t recall exactly in which way, but I recall it does things slightly differently if you choose full install.
  • If you have to reinstall (it may happen), do it in a different directory – otherwise Mozilla retains heaps of previous installation settings that you’ll probably not want (if you had to reinstall, the settings probably weren’t exactly how you wanted them…)
  • Be patient at first. You need time to get used to your new tool. If you would like some moderate assistance, feel free to get in touch (but I’m no specialist!)
  • Be it known that “shift-click” on IE becomes “ctrl-click” in Mozilla (to open a link in a new window).
  • Be patient at first. You need time to get used to your new tool. If you would like some moderate assistance, feel free to get in touch (but I’m no specialist!)

Good luck!

Memes [en]

A meme is an idea which propagates somewhat like a virus:

Memetics is vital to the understanding of cults, ideologies, and marketing campaigns of all kinds, and it can help to provide immunity from dangerous information-contagions.