We history
T-salon:
Not sure whether it was Marc Bloch who said that everyone is a historian; however there are some qualities that made “professional” or at least a trained historian different from those who weren’t trained in the craft of history.
I have the similar discussion with Tian months ago. Grassroots historian and archivest(?) are emerging, along with the blogging and other new formats of online collaboration works. There will be more detail things be recorded with grassroots publishing behaviors. It just like that since microscope was invented by Anton van Leeuwenhoek, people can know more detail things than ever before. The scale of history research will be downsized to minutes in digital age. Andrew Lih mentioned the gap between history book and news, I think we can put “we history” here. It’s just happening every minutes, either in blogging or wiki coauthoring. …
我在找一些不错的Flash RIA应用，看到了GE的这个绘图白板很酷，随手画了几笔，可惜不能保存成为JPG之类的文件（只能邮寄链接），也不能输出为“毕加索”那样的贴片放在网页上。其实我想找的是一个多人可以同时绘图的白板，似乎Macromedia Communication Server 支持这样的应用，还没有试验过。DigitalBoy在Communication Server上尝试很多，他的Video Blog不知道是否会有人爱玩（似乎儿童不宜，链接删除）。
RIA更适合于放在网页之中作为一个点缀，这一点Flickr发挥恰到好处，无论是图片显示、管理组织，还是图片秀，Flash的作用都是画龙点睛，没有强加给用户的感觉。而把RIA当作应用的容器，则似乎并不惹人爱，微软的实验室作品Wallop和Macromedia的Central都差不多如此，虽然Fans不少，可是不实用。
Xiao Qiang: Chinese Whispers
Another good piece on China’s blogosphere from Xiao Qiang, published on “New Scientist”(Cover date 27 November 04):
“Blog services are now sprouting all over China. By the end of October 2004, China had more than 45 large blog-hosting services. A Google search for bo ke will return more than 2 million results, from blogs for football fans to blogs for Christians. And while the larger hosting companies, like blogcn.com, blogdriver.com and blogbus,com, have become subject to censorship regulations themselves, smaller companies and individuals do not face the same pressures. Any tech-savvy user can download and install blogging software themselves, bypassing the controls.”
More could be seen on “New Scientist” paper edition.