Indeed it has been known for many centuries that the written word could depose rulers more swiftly than any sword. "The indispensable catalyst is the word, the explanatory idea. More than petards or stilettos, therefore, words - uncontrolled words, circulating freely, underground, rebelliously, not gotten up in dress uniforms, uncertified - frighten tyrants." -- Ryszard Kapuscinski, Shah of Shahs In the modern world however the typed word and even the encoded word has become the more powerful entity. Newspapers yield their control of popular media to an internet of blogs and the world finds itself more dependent upon technology than ever...

It's a tricky problem and one that I'm currently researching. I began with an investigation into MathML, which I have written up here: http://devblog.stuartthompson.net/2009/08/mathnotationontheweb/

I had a realization this afternoon that I may have twitted my last tweet on twitter (say that six times fast!)  The social networking phenomenon that I've contributed to over the last year has become less and less interesting to me as time has passed.  I can see where the service delivers incredible value for some people, I'm just not certain I'm that audience.  In fact, I found myself having to actively become that audience in order for the service to make sense in my life.  That's altogether the wrong way round. I still like the idea of updating my status...

I think this is the best description I've come across for Web 2.0.  I found this in the monthly dreamhosts.com newsletter: "Ajaxy-Javascript-Web 2.0-itude" Yeah baby...hail to the king!

As the popularity of Web 2.0 is growing, so is the ability for others to observe and evaluate your story and your personal online brand.  This article from JASE marketing reports that a "survey of 500 top colleges found that 10 percent of admissions officers said they look at MySpace and Facebook to evaluate applicants." I've always lived by two golden rules with regards to blogging: 1) Blog only something you would wish to see printed and cited at any time in the future. 2) Do not edit or update a blog assuming that a printed/archived/cached copy of the original does not...

I'm not sure what changed.  FireFox used to be one of the most stable browsers I'd ever used.  However, since the upgrade to the 3.x track I've had nothing but problems.  The browser is still functionally great, but the stability has taken a nose-dive.  I've had crashes and lockups on both XP and Vista and despite getting the latest updates and fixes in both environments, the problems continue.  I'd switch to Chrome if it weren't for concerns over security vulnerabilities.  It's a new browser that's still in beta so I'm not surprised there are a few kinks to iron out;...

I discovered today, way behind the blogosphere eight-ball, a site that provides online avatars: gravatar.com.  A gravatar is a Globally Recognizable avatar, which means an 80x80 image is associated with an email address.  The gravatar service will serve images from its database for use on blogs where you post comments or any other location where an avatar-accompanied email address makes the content a little more personal.  The service is very simple, to see the image associated with an email address, you add the MD5 hash of that email address (I use this utility) as a querystring parameter named gravatar_id to the url: http://www.gravatar.com/avatar.php. In...