InstantNews is an idea that combines Instant Messaging with News.  A quick search on Google doesn't show up anything similar, but it is such an obvious twist of IM technology that it must be hiding behind all the noise surrounding common words like instant and news.

A news source such as MarketWatch avails itself as an InstantNews source by running one or more InstantNews server and by listing IM handle for each news category on their website, possibly situated near related news articles.  Interested users subscribe to an InstantNews category by adding appropriate InstantNews handle to their IM buddy list.  At this point, InstantNews server acts like a bot playing the role of a news anchor, discussion MC, pollster, and publisher.  Here are some of things it will do:

1. Report news so that each new event is assigned a persistent group chat room.

2. Subevents may create sub chat rooms.

3. All discussions are logged.

4. One or more registered volunteer or payed experts on news subject are invited to join the chat room automatically.

5. Tabulate popularity of opinions or interest by allowing participants to click on a statement or question entered by others.  Popularity of statements serve as an alternative form of polls.  Popularity of questions are used by experts to focus on popular issues.

6. Results are edited semi-automatically by a human editor and InstantNews to serve as a reactive component of a news event.

7. Serves ad banners, ad audio or blurts out tasteful textual propaganda like "Radio Rocks!".

Hmm.  Still missing something.  I'll address it later.  So far, only possibly unique idea is #5.  Its a neat way to implement informal polling and open-mike in IM.

MasterType and Typing Tutor

Back when Applet II was fresh, I was working for a company named Lightning Software, a small single-product company in Palo Alto.  Lightning's lone product was MasterType, a typing instruction game.  I initially didn't think much of MasterType because it was a simple graphics game showing a screen with up to four monsters moving from corner to center of screen where you typed the name of monsters to destroy them (monsters wore name tag of sort).  It sold incredibly well, but I didn't fully understand its magic until a competing product appeared: Typing Tutor.

Typing Tutor was a big thing back then because it was supposed to be the opening bell of large book publishers entering the software publishing market.  The publisher, Simon & Schuster, threw obscene amount of money after Typing Tutor and played the media Hollywood-style.  Most software people feared the worst since large book publishers had lots of money, huge distribution network (aka bookstores), and marketing savvy.  In comparison, software companies had to fight for shelf space (most computer stores were tiny and had very little shelf space) and played the media like talented dorks.  But, when I played with Typing Tutor, I realized there was nothing to worry about: it didn't have the Magic.  The difference was that, while one used Typing Tutor, one played MasterType.  Typing Tutor had loads of features, but all boring.  MasterType had short list of features, but fun to play.  When using MasterType, I entered a trance similar to the way Tetris grabs your brain and make you dance to its rhythm.  That is Magic.  My thanks to Bruce Zweig, author of MasterType, for that magic.

Adventure

During similar timeframe, there was a game called Adventure for the old Atari console.  Its a graphical adventure game where primary object was to move from room to room killing monsters and gathering treasures.  You got to see only one room at a time so something had to be done to help players keep track of dungeon layout.  Its creator (Robinette I think, sorry) solved the problem by reducing the time between when you exited a room to when you appeared in the next room.  Net result was almost like moving between rooms in real life and keeping track of location became effortless.  Magic!

A similar problem was solved differently in another classic game called Wizardry on Apple II.  In Wizardry, the viewport was kept small for speed and movement was intentionally limited to one square per move and 90 degree turns.  Movement was controlled using four keys, two for step forward and backward, two for turn left and turn right.  Whatever the magic was, people were able to immerse themselves through a small vector graphics view and four keys.  I remember rapidly moving across the large multi-level dungeons although reality was me typing 200 words per minute using only four keys.  Magic!

Magic in Blogging

There is similar magic in blogging.  No wonder people like Dave Winer, Dan Bricklin, and Ray Ozzie are fascinated by blogging.  Technically, a weblog system is just a simple content management system which a decent programmer can put together over a weekend.  In fact, I was thinking about writing one myself.  But I chose to use Radio because the magic of blogging is not in the technology, but in the act blogging and in the blogging community.  Radio community is one of the best I have seen and every Radio user becomes its member as soon as they install Radio.  Blogger has a great community as well, but Dave is a friend so Radio was a natural choice.

While convenience is a necessary ingredient of blogging, the magic happens when a blogger start to post and receives feedback.  Slowly you start to weave blogging into your daily routine until blogging becomes part of who you are (I subscribe to you are what you do meme).  Similarly, the blogging community slowly weave you into it until you are an essential part of it.

Greater Magic

I feel that there is greater magic hiding behind blogging.  I think I have seen glimpses of it and have some fragments I am trying to put together into a whole that could become as great as the Web has become.  Business Browser is one of those fragments.  I am keeping my fingers crossed as well as taking longer showers for that elusive clarity.  <g>

 

A Plan for Spam describes how Bayesian filters be applied to spam e-mail (more technical paper on the subject is Native-Bayes vs. Rule Learning in Classification of Email.)  Pretty neat stuff even though statistics was one area I intentionally neglected during my physics days.  Microsoft was big on Bayesian a few years ago, so it makes me wonder why Outlook doesn't have a built-in Bayesian filter for spam instead of that annoying and undependable Rules Wizard.  I am tempted to write one myself, except companies like GiantCompany sells spam filters with similar result.  So I turned to the problem of blocking adult sites and pop-ups (pop-unders are no problem since Z-order of browser window is a good indicator.)

All one needs is a BHO (Browser-Helper Object) that applies Bayesian filter to web page contents.  If this is implemented already, let me know.

I have contributed my share of sweat to the Open Source community over the past five years with emotionally rewarding stacks of thank you letters.  But I can't shake the feeling that Open Source movement is the return of 60's Flower Children, this time with a keyboard instead of a joint in their hands.  Open Source sounds right but smells wrong to me.  Between Microsoft monopoly and Open Source religion, I fear software market is between a rock and a hard place.

I am buying far less software now than 10 years ago.  How about you?

Deleted Entry

I deleted a log entry I made today titled "Corruption in Korea: Part 2".  I did so because it contained references to my father's personal experiences with corruption in Korean politics and I didn't feel comfortable afterward.  Its not that I am afraid of any backlash, for my ass has hardened long time ago.  Its just discomfort without a reason.

Speaking of reasons, one of the reasons I blog is because I think too much.  I get too many ideas most of which I have no time to execute.  Ideas want to be explored and realized.  Not doing either creates pressure in my head like children screaming for attention does.  Writing about these ideas, even briefly in my blog, reduces that pressure because those ideas are on their way to infect others.  Most will die off but some will mutate and live on.

Both IE and Mozilla has built-in XML support, but they are not as well supported as DHTML.  Everyone talks about XHTML as the future yet there is no clear path from malformed HTML infested world to well-formed and extensible XHTML world.  While everyone raves about how SVG is better than Flash, no one has a clear idea when SVG will be available ubiquitously.  Aside from XHTML and SVG, there are literally stacks of XML-based standards that goes either unused or used only on the server-side.

The client-side has stopped evolving and has stagnated to the point of being nothing more than a dumb terminal.  Meanwhile, heavy reliance on the server-side solutions resulted in obscene workaround solutions.  Advent of web services will not change this picture.  Well, I believe it is time to stop wishing and start breaking new grounds on the client side.

Take either Mozilla or IE and extend it into a rich web application client with XHTML, XML, SVG/Flash, Java, local storage and wallet, digital identity built-in.  Normal web applications are handled in a sandbox of sort to keep them away from secure web apps.  Advertising and user tracking is supported directly under user control using page-transition periods in return for banning other forms of advertising and tracking.  IBM's Sash is nice, but it doesn't go far enough.  Local storage alone will affect e-commerce a great deal…

Extremism can be useful when used appropriately, but is not normally effective in its usual form which attempts to pull opinions from the middle toward one of the two edges or extremes.  More effective form of extremism is Inverse Extremism which attempts to push opinions away from the opposite extreme.  Inverse Extremism is effective because it relies on [negative] emotions to repulse subjects instead of logic or inference to attract subjects.

For example, instead of lobbying against abortion, one could form an Inverse Lobbying organization that propagates extreme abortionist views.  In religious terms, this is equivalent to becoming the demon instead of demonizing others.

disclaimer: Inverse Extremism, as I have described it here, is entirely of my imagination.  If this concept has already been describe somewhere else before, please let me know.