Rambles Blog at Star Chamber

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.

Jorn Barger, of Robot Wisdom fame, has a pet project (he has a bunch of pet projects, actually) called the Internet Timelines Project. I find the concept intriguing. I’ve often thought about how I would construct a lifeline hypertext construct. It reminds me of David Gelernter’s Scopeware concept, where time is the predominant organizing force. Speaking of Gelernter, here is his keynote address (PDF) to the PCExpo in New York, along with a very fond piece by the New York Times (PDF) on the same topic. Interesting stuff.