August 2004 archives

  1. Congressman Ed Shrock quits over weblog accusations

    Ed Schrock, United States Congressman for Virginia's 2nd District, announced yesterday he would not seek a third term in November. He faced homosexual allegations that surfaced on weblogs such as Michael Rogers' blogACTIVE. He received a 100 percent rating from the Christian Coalition in 2002 and was one of 233 lawmakers who supported the Marriage Protection Act. The 63-year-old Schrock is married and has one son. Ed Shrock not seeking a third term is the first instance I know of where webloggers have pushed someone out of federal office. Trent Lott is often cited as an example of the power...

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  2. Safari RSS at Apple Expo 2004

    Today during the Apple keynote at the Apple Expo in Philip Schiller, Apple's senior vice president of Worldwide Product Marketing, spent about 6 minutes discussing Safari RSS and why users should be excited about interacting with RSS instead of their standard HTML sites. Check out the keynote in QuickTime and skip to the 59th minute to watch the Safari RSS demo....

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  3. Movable Type 3.1 released

    Movable Type 3.1 has been released and is now powering this weblog. :) The new Movable Type Plugin Directory is live as is the Six Apart Professional Network....

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  4. Six Apart Professional Network

    The Six Apart Professional Network is live but bare bones at the moment. Plugins directory will relaunch soon. Some interesting things to note. Plugins tested with Movable Type 3 will receive a special mark. Yes! It looks like the TypePad account will no longer happen and will instead be discounts available for "Network members who qualify." Movable Type 3.1 should be released this afternoon....

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  5. Apple announces new iMac design

    Apple announced the new 17" and 20" G5 iMac this morning. 1.6GHz or 1.8GHz PowerPC G5, widescreen LCD, and a NVIDIA GeForce FX 5200 Ultra graphics card. This computer is just what the "it just works" families have been waiting for. I know this computer will make my parents happy and cut down on a lot of office clutter. Add a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse for a complete wireless experience you can tuck in a drawer when not in use. The biggest issue Apple needs to overcome is the price difference over a starter Dell. I priced a Dell...

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  6. Economist on Microsoft search

    The Economist takes a look at Ask MSR, Dr. Eric Brill's attempt to deliver a direct answer to a search question. "Ask MSR is still a prototype, although Microsoft is trying to improve it and it may be launched commercially under the name AnswerBot." Eric Brill and Radu Soricut recently authored a paper on factoid questions. We build our QA system around a noisy-channel architecture which exploits both a language model for answers and a transformation model for answer/question terms, trained on a corpus of 1 million question/answer pairs collected from the Web. Our evaluations show that our system achieves...

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  7. What would you like to see in the next version of Movable Type?

    Movable Type 3.1 is four days from release. The Six Apart Professional Network will launch concurrently. After the Labor Day weekend work will inevitably start on the next version of Movable Type. What would you like to see in the next version of Movable Type? If Six Apart does not build your wish list item, a member of the professional network just might build it for the community and/or profit. If your feature is already present in other software, please provide a pointer for background information....

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  8. Gene Simmons on Queer Eye for the Straight Guy?

    In an August 24, 2004 entry Gene Simmons says "Talked today about a possible (..gulp) QUEER EYE FOR THE STRAIGHT GUY appearance. They called and asked me if I would do it. I'm a fan of the show. We may shoot on the 28th of Sept." How will Gene be involved in Queer Eye for the Straight Guy? My guess is he will surprise a KISS fan after their makeover. It would be hilarious to see Gene Simmons get some grooming or culture tips, but the show's mission is "to transform a style-deficient and culture-deprived straight man."...

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  9. Segway GT golf transporter

    This fall Segway will introduce a customized version of their i Series: the GT, or golf transporter. According to Nick Kaye of The New York Times the new Segway "will come customized with a golf bag, cooler, ball and scorecard holders, seat and G.P.S." The Segway's batteries may not last an entire 18-hole round....

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