Doubt's Log

I am learning some things from this SmartTag fiasco
a) Every build that ends up outside Redmond is immediately assumed to be how the final product will work, things like removing audio drivers in a build to test dynamic update will lead people to believe that Microsoft will ship an os without audio drivers in an attempt to get everyone to connect to Microsoft’s update site
b) People can get so caught up in a use of a technology that they completely ignore what the tech is really meant to do
c) This is an why PR and secrecy exists and are important

One more note this morning on smart tags.

Smart tags as more easily useful for the part of the web that is functional instead of the part that litterary. And both do exist.

I emailed Dave Winer last night with the distinction between a smart tag and a smart link. Where a Smart Tag is just some more markup that lets actions get associated depending on what the client is capable of. I pointed him to my example of a smart tag. Smart Links is a “feature” that does a specific set of recognizers run inside of web pages as you browse.

The answer I got back from him was what I would have expected as a responce to a post to something on /. . But he's way in the lead since he has said more intresting things then I have.

While I won't touch smart links with a ten foot poll, I still believe smart tags are a useful thing that will find its way into other web browsers. Mark an address as an address, and let the client decide how they want to map it or use it, instead of limiting the user to your own system. I imagine being in my car with some sort of fancy navigation system (which I don't own) and trying to get to a party or a restaurant that I have the address to. Right now all I could do is go to what ever link the person who made the page thought might be convenient to link to. I as a user I’ve got to type the address into my car’s system, or do some cut and pasting to get the data to another service. If they just marked the data as a smart tag, then my local client being aware of the car and being able to talk to it with something like SOAP could do something intelligent and tell the car that this is an interesting address. The car navigation system can pick it up from there.

Quick Quiz: What is a Smart Tag really?
Answer: It’s an island of XML in an HTML document that the client decides how to work with. Ideally the page should suggest some actions, but I the page viewer should be in control.

This is opt-in for both the client and the server as I’ve described. However it’s not quite completely realistic that everyone will magically start attaching address smart tags to their addresses. What’s a power user to do? I’d probably write a script that searches the page for addresses, and then lets me work with them. But now I’m getting dangerously close to recognizers in the page.

This also looks intresting: XML for Visio Scenarios [MSDN by Stapler]

The MSDN article about how to develop Simple Smart Tags [MSDN by Stapler]

As usual... for lee: :)This Modern World. What oil crisis? It's just our capitalist system operating at peak efficiency! [Salon.com]

This is why software monopolies suck. Microsoft has the power to alter our content. This is unacceptable. I've had so many MS people want to debate this with me. They play the usual tricks, try to walk me around the trap door, but it's totally impossible to miss. Sanford, quoted above, states the problem quite clearly. Microsoft thinks they can improve my writing. This makes me want to get a gun and go to war.

Sigh... It think it's best that we look at smart tags in parts. Everyone is so pigeonholed in one part of smarttag's that they can't weight the potential of abuse with the benifits.
SmartTags are based on two peices (if they are simular to the office ones) A recogniser and actionprovider. The Recogniser either looks for keywords, or has something more complex and code driven. Once it recognizes something it gives it tags it with what it is. The actionproviders when the see the tags will associate a multidementional hyperlink to the word. It is possible to trigger smart tags without the recogniser if the tags for the action are already present. Some of these tags would come from office documents or emails, so that one can use a generated smart tag fom office without owning office. Let's look at an example: The most classic one would be finding an address in a document. A few good actions for the smart tag would be "map this", "driving directions", "add to address book". Prehaps there is an email address without a mailto:, then the smarttag would give you a mailto:, and add to address book, etc.

oh ... and dave, if you ever read me: Go to war with this! [Scripting News]

Something I'm going to want to play with when I start playing with soap

SalCentral points at a SOAP service which generates Shakespearean Insults. Here's the WSDL, describing the service, originally written in Delphi, by Nick Hodges.
7:44:25 PM  

[Jake's Brainpan]

Lee... You are not alone :)Gates strip joint secret out?. MS billionaire named in Gold Club trial [via The Register] [Adam Curry: CurryDotCom]

Salon reports about some of the white house assistants from clinton days trying to get thier name cleared from alleged vandalization during the presidential transition.