Rambles Blog at Star Chamber

What a shame… the “cool new stuff” weblog Rapidly Changing Face of Computing has gone away. It appears to have been a surprise to author Jeffrey Harrow, based on the publication schedule that he was publishing only a few weeks ago. Compaq must be tightening the old corporate belt. Too bad. We’ll miss you, Jeffrey. :-(

I like the idea of magazine called Small Times. They must save a bundle on postage. Small Times: News about MEMS, Nanotechnology and Microsystems

Now a computer can sound just like you: see Software Called Capable of Copying Any Human Voice in the NY Times. I predict one byproduct of all this soul-stealing will be an increased appreciation of intimacy. Or not.

James Lileks has a great web site and a magnificent eye for collectible retro. Take a look at his American Postcards collection.

XML developer news from XMLhack: by and for the XML community.

It was only a matter of time before the Media Lab did something with blogs. blogdex is that something. It’s a sort of meta-blog zeitgeist filter. Punchline: if it appears on a lot of blogs, it must be cool. It’s a good idea, but only just now getting off the ground.

An interview with Evan Williams of blogger fame appears on WriteTheWeb. A quick peek around the site reveals it to be a fun blog of its own.

Make A Shorter Link is a clever site that helps you shorten those ridiculously long links to places like Yahoo maps and Amazon books.

Fun pictures of bad designs posted by perceptive observer Michael Darnell. The file cabinet handle is one good example of many.

Darwin in a test tube: Avida is an artificial life software package from the Digital Life Laboratory at Caltech. Computer simulations are now able to hit “magic thresholds” of complexity that allow them to model something that looks an awful lot like life. We’re going to be learning a lot from artificial life in the near future.