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 12 Feb 2003 @ 18:01, by ming. Internet
My e-mail program is a constant element of annoyance in my life, because it doesn't do the things I'd need it to do, and I get way too much mail for it to work right. It is Eudora 5.2, which is a fine e-mail program as it goes, but I need a whole other level of functionality. These are things I need:
- I need to keep track of my correspondence with different people. It should be easy to immediately see all prior incoming and outgoing messages in chronological order between me and a certain other person.
- I shouldn't have to create special mailboxes and filters to do that.
- Some people have several e-mail addresses, and I might have several e-mail addresses. I still want to be able to see my conversations with one person in one place, no matter what address we used, and no matter how we spelled our name that day.
- When I get a message, my e-mail program should know whether this is somebody I know or not. Certainly it should know right away whether it is somebody I've ever exchanged e-mails with, and it should tell me somehow.
- It should preferably also know if it is a known member of some group I'm in. There are 7000 people in the NCN directory. I'd like my e-mail program to recognize one of those people if they write to me, even if we didn't exchange e-mail before.
- I'd like my e-mail program to have a reasonable assurance that an e-mail really is from the person it says it is. The SMTP protocol allows anybody to enter whatever they like as sender, so I need some kind of ID mechanism built in here.
- I need SPAM recognition that I can train, like Apple's Mail program. I don't want centralized anti-SPAM blacklists, because they work badly and block things that shouldn't be blocked.
- Any message that isn't from somebody I probably know, and that doesn't have proper digital ID, should go into a totally different place than messages that are from real people.
- I need to be able to put a given message into any number of folders at the same time, without creating several copies. I need more dimensions. I want to always remember that a certain message was sent or received, so in principle it shouldn't actually leave my outbox or inbox, but at the same time I might want to file it under several different subjects, and give it various flags, and find it according to any of those keys.
- I want statistics. How many messages do I get per day, how many did I answer, how many did I send, etc.
None of those things are overly hard. Hardest part is probably the digital ID. The rest I could probably program myself, if I had a few weeks with nothing else to do, which isn't very likely. I need similar things for my Instant Messager programs. Actually I want continuity in my conversations across several different applications and platforms. Has anybody solved these things well in a program I don't know about?
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 6 Feb 2003 @ 20:41, by bushman. Internet
Some of you may have heard of Mplayer.com. They closed couple of years ago, and basicly tossed 1000's of people out into cyberspace, like dust in the wind we landed all over the net, some in yahoo, msn, the whole list of online chat and gamming places. Still, Mplayer was the place, maybe the last bastion of freedom. Some people didn't give up, some people decided to show Mplayer, god rest thier soul for selling out to gamespy, lol. Build it and they will come? And they did, took a few years, and loosing 2 main investors in the WTC, they fought on. I don't know much about how .NET framework, works, but thats what they built SeeMePlayMe around. Being that its new, there are a few things that could be fixed, like, the program is set up for gammers, which I am, lol, But I don't play too many games on the net these days since Im on dial up, lucky to get 26.4. So basicly this program likes fast connection and XP machines the best. Everyone Ive talked to in SMPM love it if they have fast conection and XP. The people that run win 98 do fine if they have fast connection, but some problems in the voice chat and in the cams, like you only hear one person, usualy the one that made the room, same with the cam stuff, for me it wont load the cam at all, but people with 28.8 and above have better luck with the voice than the cam. They will fix these flaws. If your intrested in gamming and you see a game you like you should try it out. If your into meeting people, the chat is awsome sound quality, even if it breaks up bad for me, but it sounds good for those with fast connections, lol. The big differance between Mplayer and SMPM is that SMPM is built with .NET framework, 10 times more secure than Mplayer could ever be made. There are a bunch of game that havent been launched yet, so if you don't see your game, send them an email and ask for it. Yes, you have to pay if you want the power to make a game room, see the cams and voice, turn off the banner/popup adds, and to change your font and font color. If you are useing win 98 and have a slow connection like me, a gold account is the best deal, you get voice/cam, you can put up a url in your room, and get the font controls, but cant block adds, you also get 3 sub accounts. :}
Well heres the address: www.seemeplayme.com I would go to windows update first and get the .NET framework, some win98 users may have to get and install the soap tool kit, it will tell you if you need it. I also sugest that you run your scan disc and defragmenter, before getting the .NET framework, and after. Then go to www.seemeplayme.com and download the software. If you have a fast connection and or XP, you can just go and download direct from SMPM if you want. Remember this is new, never been done in this way. Out of the dust and ash of Mplayer, SMPM rears its ugly head, to give all a place to play/compeet, chat and to be who they are, or not who they are, lol. P.S. Its free, to use the software, so you dont have to get an account to type chat or join someones game. Also if you see a guy named albert who is the owner, Albert with a red star next to his name , just page him, and ask nicely, he will give you a trial gold account :} More >
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13 Jan 2003 @ 03:36, by ming. Internet
If you have a website and your browser does Java, you can go to the TouchGraph GoogleBrowser and see what sites are linked with yours, or with any other site you want to look at. Above is what I saw when I put in ming.tv. Very cool. I'm not entirely sure what it means. I suppose it shows the most highly linked, or most recently linked sites most prominently, but I really don't know. Now, I'd love to actually navigate around cyberspace in a more spatial sense like that. I just haven't seen any technology yet that makes it truly useful. This is cool, and I might see some things I hadn't noticed, but I wouldn't think of treversing the net this way if I actually were looking for something. Showing websites as blobs with lines between them still doesn't add up to visualizing the actual information stored on the net. More >
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4 Dec 2002 @ 16:38, by ming. Internet
Several of my good friends are trying to get around to starting their weblog, but have a hard time finding the time and courage to get going. Here is some good advice from Ross Mayfield from the Ryze Blog & Bloggers tribe:"They say you play soccer the way you are. I think blogging is similar to this self-organizing sport. You blog the way you are.
When confronted with the chronological format of a blog, the pressure to post is at first extreme. How do I start? What if I don't keep it up? Does this go on my permanent record? But the reality is there is no shame in an empty calendar. Post daily, weekly, monthly or occassionally. You blog when you can.
The question that is most personal is what to blog. As one blogger said, "Find a topic and own it." Finding focus is a sure time saver, but it also contributes to the medium, as its one of specialized voices. The more you post on your domain the better. You blog what you are.
The other part, indeed what this tribe is about, is community. When you have others reading, others you know, their feedback and their own posts spark your own. You don't blog alone.
Make a little plan on how you will start, just begin and you will find your rhythm." I guess what mostly can be intimidating is if one feels the pressure to produce posts very regularly, like every day, or one feels a pressure to share parts of oneself that one maybe isn't ready for. And, as he says, you can really post whenever it fits your rhythm. And you can post whatever makes sense for you. It doesn't have to be super-smart or super-personal or anything. And in the NewsLogs in NCN it should be even more gentle for you than in most other places, as you don't have to reveal it for the whole world right away, and you have a supportive community around you. More >
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21 Jun 2002 @ 16:30, by ming. Internet
Long and technical but very interesting article from The Economist about emerging wireless technologies. In brief, it covers these technologies:
1. Smart Antennas for improved cellphone base-station capacity
2. Mesh Networks to make each wireless receiver also be a relay. I.e. each device connects to the device next to it, and the network gets extended to wherever there are people with antennas.
3. Ad hoc networking, which allows a network to form even where there's no centralized infrastructure. Existing devices just start talking with each other, and routing traffic between each other.
4. Ultra wideband, which currently can transmit 100 mbs wirelessly, but is only allowed to do it for a distance of 10ft.
In brief, it is becoming possible to have a very high speed wireless Internet, which is not dependent on any Internet Providers, but which will form itself wherever there are people with access points.
MeshNetworks is one of the companies working on this stuff. They have a nice presentation showing it. More >
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 19 Mar 2002 @ 01:13, by ming. Internet
It is interesting how different environments inspire different kinds of things to go on in them. Now, I'm particularly thinking about that in terms of online programs. Like, this News Log program is structured so that when one posts something it is a bit of an event. That is, one has an article or a poem or something, or at least a link to it somewhere else. And one posts it and everybody notices it, and a bunch of people comment on it, etc.
You know, that is contrasted to an environment where it makes more sense to post many little items. I'm comparing with some of the other programs in the class that the News Log program is in: Web Log programs. Logs made with tools by Userland or Blogger are more suited to mentioning many little tidbits that one might be interested in during the day, without any of them having to be any very big item. More >
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 17 Mar 2002 @ 17:06, by ming. Internet
I'm excited about the possibilities in syndication of web content through open web standards. In part because I have a vision of creating better wiring for the global brain, and this stuff fits right in there.
In short, there are simple wide-spread protocols that make it possible for different websites to pick up content from each other, and to contribute to news feeds of various kinds.
In part what is cool is that the most workable schemes have been developed by small groups of creative people and have been adopted on a grassroots basis. More >
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 11 Mar 2002 @ 15:13, by ming. Internet
Another Internet technology that mysteriously didn't quite happen when it was expected to is video conferencing. 5 years ago I was frequently hanging out in video chat rooms with groups of other people, all of whom I could see live video of. And that was when I had a dial-up connection and a computer that had about 20 times less capacity than what I use today. And yet, today, I don't really know anybody who's using their cameras for anything. At the time I was using CU-SeeMe for the software. And when I now research it a little bit, it turns out that nothing much better has replaced it, and it still appears to be the most easily available video conferencing program that will work on different platforms. Even though no new versions have been developed for quite some time. More >
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 6 Mar 2002 @ 23:03, by ming. Internet
This is technical, so probably not for everybody.
I was looking around for whatever happened to the rush towards 3D virtual reality on the web 5 years ago. At that time it looked like all sorts of things would end up in VRML pretty quickly. Virtual Reality Modeling Language was a standard for representing and exchanging 3D objects or worlds, which you could access with a plugin in your browser.
The action seems to now be in X3D - Extensible 3D Graphics, which is a standard being developed by the Web3D Consortium, which is superseeding VRML. More >
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 5 Mar 2002 @ 20:02, by ming. Internet
Another type of place to meet in is virtual reality. My favorite place so far is a place called AlphaWorld. About 3-4 years ago I had a lot of fun there and built an NCN Information Center and various other buildings there. And a few other NCN people, like Roan Carratu were hanging out there too, and building buildings next to it. And my kids and all the kids on my street were busy building there. Anyway, all of that still exists, and it could very well be an environment for exploring new civilizations. So, come by and visit if you have a chance. The software unfortunately only works on Windows, but you get it at Active Worlds. It doesn't cost anything if you're only a "tourist" there, but you can't build. The coordinates of our little village is in AlphaWorld at 895N 814W. Let me know if you succeed in going there and I'll meet you. More >
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