This article is about the current understanding of the word X

For reasons both unimportant and un-interesting relative to this present thought, I found myself looking the definition for Cynicism on wikipedia. It starts with the phrase "This article is about the current understanding of the word cynicism...".

The world would be a teeny-weeny bit better if all definitions of all words/phrases contained a similar preamble - establishing a time point for interpret. Language is not a static thing. It just moves slowly but move it does.

Here is a lovely example: stakeholder. Compare the older usage (from gambling-speak) with the newer usage from management-speak.

Ain't natural language a hoot?

Connecting A to B: an indirect approach

Connecting A to B: an indirect approach looks at achieving the business goals that often underly statements like "let's connect A and B" without, um. actually connecting A and B.

Linux on an Airbus airliner

XTech 2008

I am greatly looking forward to the closing keynote at XTech 2008

The programme looks great. Who could resist a conference sporting a paper on Javascript with a teaser that says:

In JavaScript there is a beautiful, highly expressive language that is buried under a steaming pile of good intentions and blunders.

Te heh heh.

Permanent URLs for legislation

Quoting Rick Jelliffe

"All documents, views and metadata at all significant levels of granularity and composition should be available in the best formats practical from their own permanent hierarchical URIs.”

As someone with more than a passing interest in legal and regulatory publishing I am in violent agreement with this.

Connecting A to B: APIs or data formats?

Connecting A to B: APIs or data formats?

Mashups, microformats and the mobile web Panel

That's me on the left, standing. Then comes Conor, Ben and Bill.

The panel was good fun. The big takeaway for me was the amazing amount of consensus that microformats are the way to go. Two years ago, I was getting shot down in flames for suggesting that the future of semantic markup lies *inside* existing schemas. Times have changed.