CrossTech

So the other day Noel O'Boyle made me feel guilty when he pinged me and asked about the possibility using one of the CrossRef APIs for creating a Ubiquity extension. You see, I had played with the idea myself and had not gotten around to doing much about it. This seemed inexcusable- particularly given how easy it is to build such extensions using the API we developed for the WordPress and Moveable Type plugins that we announced earlier in the year. So I dug up my half-finished code, cleaned it up a bit and have posted the results.

Note that the back-end that supports the plugins has been moved to more stable machines and the index is now being automatically updated with journal and conference proceeding deposits (sorry, no books yet).

Also note that we are hoping that others will look at the code for the WordPress, Moveable Type and Ubiquity plugins and create more such extensions. If you do, please let us know about them at citation-plugin@crossref.org.

Posted by Geoffrey Bilder at 02:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Not specifically publishing-related, but here is a fun rant interview with Alan Kay titled The PC Must Be Revamped—Now.

My favorite bit...

"...in the last few years I've been asking computer scientists and programmers whether they've ever typed E-N-G-E-L-B-A-R-T into Google-and none of them have. I don't think you could find a physicist who has not gone back and tried to find out what Newton actually did. It's unimaginable. Yet the computing profession acts as if there isn't anything to learn from the past, so most people haven't gone back and referenced what Engelbart thought. "

Posted by at 09:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Rob Cornelius has a practical little demo of using Yahoo! pipes against some Ingenta feeds.

Like Tony, I keep experiencing speed/stability problems while accessing pipes so I haven't yet become a crack-pipes-head.

Posted by at 08:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Um, well. Seems according to O'Reilly Ruby that Ruby is now a mainstream language.

"The Ruby programming language just made the A-list on the TIOBE Programming Community Index, and Ruby is now listed as a mainstream programming language. For the past three or four years Ruby has consistently placed in the high 20’s in this index, but is now placed as the 13th most popular programming language!"

(No language wars, but I am, I will confess, a big admirer - for some time.)

Posted by Tony Hammond at 06:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)