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December 10, 2003

Comments

Zeevveez

Long ago, while I was learning folk tales at the University, I came across the
Aarne-Thompson Index of "Motifs".
A motif may be an action, an item, a character, or even a direct quote from the
book. However, whatever that motif is, Aarne and Thompson have identified it as
an improtant characteristic of at least one folk tale. Their method involves
comparing the motifs present in the stories. Stories that have many of the same
motifs are then classified as related and given a number.
This idea of taking the smallest unit of an idea fascinated me ever since and the result is QTSaver, which arranges the same web motifs according to different needs.
Please see more details on my blog
http://qtsaver.blogspot.com/

Nova Spivack

Microcontent is defined because it is a paradigm shift -- but of course all content is part of a continuum of "content."

wonderyak

hm. your definition sounds good. but I don't see any reason in defining microcontent as a separate substance. What is it done for, huh?

John Abbe

So is xpath like purple numbers? Are paragraphs within microcontent nanocontent?

Some people seem to be searching for something to treat as atomic. It's all holonic (things made up of other things) of course, so in that framing we're looking for useful ways of chunking things. One weblog page can have multiple items per day, and someone will want to be able to look at each day *and* at each item in the day as pieces of microcontent.

A future with mix of explicitly and inferredly chunked stuff seems likely.

Will soon post a related item to http://ourpla.net/cgi/pikie?ObBlog

Lucas

False dichotomy. For example: use an xpath statement as a parameter in a URL get. Now the content can both be embedded and uniquely addressable.

Nova Spivack

Actually, I am thinking about this some more... I think that microcontent should have a URI because it should have a network identity. If it is merely marked up data then it cannot be located on the network and could not even be said to be distinct from other content that it is embedded in. There are many reasons why we might want microcontent to be distinct and addressible even when embedded in other content.

Nova Spivack

Yes you raise a good point. I am going to modify my definition!

adrian cuthbert

I am intrigued that you consider microcontent should necessarily have a URI. I have always thought that something like 'event details' expressed in a suitably marked-up way containing information such as a 'name', 'time' and 'place' was a good candidate for microcontent. Similarly its compactness also makes it a good candidate for copying around (as an email attachment for example 'passed by value') which could then be unpacked by a helper application that understands that particular type of microcontent.

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Nova's Trip to Edge of Space

  • Stepsedgestratosphere
    In 1999 I flew to the edge of space with the Russian air force, with Space Adventures. I made it to an altitude of just under 100,000 feet and flew at Mach 3 in a Mig-25 piloted by one of Russia's best test-pilots. These pics were taken by Space Adventures from similar flights to mine. I didn't take digital stills -- I got the whole flight on digital video, which was featured on the Discovery Channel.

Nova & Friends, Training For Space...

  • Img021
    In 1999 I was invited to Russia as a guest of the Russian Space Agency to participate in zero-gravity training on an Ilyushin-76 parabolic flight training aircraft. It was really fun!!!! Among other people on that adventure were Peter Diamandis (founder of the X-Prize and Zero-G Corporation), Bijal Trivedi (a good friend of mine, science journalist), and "Lord British" (creator of the Ultima games). Here are some pictures from that trip...

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