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Wow - this is sooo cool. I found this site in my referer logs - a Taiwanese message board linking my Google and Blogs article. (Note red circles - a hover over the link. Anyone know what the link says? "Click here"?)
Acidman throws in the towel! Apparently because of confusion over his convoluted ritual de-linking of blogrollers. Too bad, if true; I did enjoy his blogging, even if he occasionally crossed every line. Rob Smith is one of those people who put themselves out there, who truly talk about what they feel. In his case I think it was therapeutic, he's going through a tough time adjusting to being divorced. I hope he knows he can come back any time he wants, or needs to.
It is tough to avoid the "more hits make me a better person" cycle. The cool thing about web sites is that you can log everything (like the link from the Taiwanese site above). The bogus thing is you can count everything, so you have a running scoreboard of your "success". I know I only have six visitors - you're one of them, so thank you - and therefore I don't worry about this too much :)
Jon Udell just gave a keynote speech at OSCOM (Open Source COntent Management Conference). His first slide:
Some lessons you learned in grade school:
- Write effective titles and topic sentences
- Neatness counts
- Share with others
- No hitting
This sounds like great advice for a blogger! Of course, "no hitting" doesn't mean "no linking"... :)
Here's a terrific chart which shows the evolutionary history of all computer languages, from Fortran in 1954 to C++, Java, Perl, Python, etc. The "health" of each language is color-coded: Green = active, Orange = available, Red = endangered, and Black = extinct. On the chart are listed seven reasons a language endures (with example):
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- Appeals to a wide audience - C
- Gets a job done - Cobol
- Delivers new functionality - Java
- Fills a niche - Mathematica
- Offers a modicum of elegance - Icon
- Has a powerful user base or backer - C#
- Has a charismatic leader - Perl
This brings to mind Paul Graham's musings on the hundred-year language. Interesting to speculate whether today's prominent language (C++, Java) will persist, or whether an entirely new language will emerge...
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