I've entered into the blogging scene recently and there are two themes that seem to be recursive showing up at almost any tech oriented blog. These themes are RSS (and RDF) and URI design.

RSS seems to be the "Alma Mater" of the cyberspace. The blogging phenomena created an entirely different cyberculture. Actually, it originated multiple sub-cultures organized in neighbourhoods without loosing cohesion in the so called blogosphere.
A new dialect was created and I faced myself with expressions I had never seen before: blogosphere, "bellysphere" (this is used in portugal - umbigoesfera - to denominate blogs that are nothing more than personnal diaries), syndication, RSS, trackback, pingback, permalink, etc.
This terms are not necessarily originated from blogging communities but are quite merged in this environment.

I like reading blogs, but they must encompass some shred of intelligence (mine probably doesn't have it but I'm not pretentious about it). I enjoy technical blogs like Simon Willison's blog or a random choice from Weblogs@asp.net, humurous ones such as portuguese Blogue dos Marretas or Gato Fedorento or general ones such as Scripting News.

There's also a number of different platforms where to place and evolve one's blog. When I started this I thought blogger.com was about it because most of the portuguese blogs are implemented with this framework. It was some days later that I found MoveableType and Radio.
I'm now in gathering strength and time to move my blog to a more capable framework so that I can gt backtrack, syndication and the stuff with the funny words ;).

I have a doubt that remains in my head. Why use RDF in some places and RSS in others. RDF, in the way I see it, is a bit more generic that RSS.
I start to see all kings of applications using RSS, such as instant messaging services and stuff like that ... humpf !

Google introduced a new operator in their search engine. For now on the symbol ~ in front of the keywork also finds for that word's synonyms.

It's OK.

However I must note that lately their PageRank system seems to be rusty. The blogging community seems to contribute to this because there is a large number of links between the sites and the most well known blogs receive lot's of links.
Knowing that this bloggers normally write about general topics, it's normal that when you're looking for a piece of news you get a personnal weblog instead of an institucional journal, tv or whatever site.
For example, if you search for "Schwarzenegger for governor" you get an entry to Jeremy Zawodny's blog.

Probably a little bit nerdy but still worth the read. kuro5hin.org || Your Guide to Looking Busy at Work

The computer has irreversibly changed the workplace. E-mail has replaced memos, Winamp has replaced the portable FM radio and stupid Far Side desktop wallpapers have replaced stupid Far Side wall calendars.

With all these changes, we often overlook the single greatest boon that computers have brough to the employed masses: the ability to look busy.

Check it out here.

Macromedia launched Coldfusion MX 6.1, previously codenamed "Red Sky", 3 days ago.
In their press released they give enphasis to performance and migration capabilities.

Performance benchmarks of Macromedia ColdFusion MX 6.1 demonstrate runtime improvements of up to 172 percent over ColdFusion 5, which translates into a better end-user experience and reduced infrastructure costs over time. In addition, dynamic e-mail generation has been dramatically enhanced, enabling users to deliver messages more than 50 times faster than with previous releases.

Pricing starts at $1299 per server.

... the firemen and families of the victim's (15) of Portugal's forest fires. More than 160 thousand acres are gone and it hasn't stopped yet.

From BBC

First, it is accused of unfairly promoting its own media player at the expense of competitors such as Real Player and Apple Quicktime.

The Commission either wants Microsoft to offer a version of Windows without its own media player attached, or offer rival services within its Windows package.

I don't agree with this. It would only require me to download WMP whenever I installed Windows. An Operating System, as in the Microsoft concept, Is supposed to be a bundle that includes a number of applications. The media player is one of them, a quite a good one if I may say.
Wouldn't this be the same as being able to record cd's without 3rd party software, or ziping and unziping files without winzip, winrar, winace or whatever. It's the same to me.

Second, Microsoft is accused of leveraging its dominant position from PCs into low-end servers, the computers which provide core services to PCs in corporate networks.

The EU wants Microsoft to disclose more code to its competitors, to allow them to make sure their systems can work together with Microsoft's rather than being disadvantaged by Microsoft's dominant market position.

This really isn't abusing its dominant position. Isn't it normal for a company to extend it's market.

There is a number of points EU could attack but they don't, this is too vague.

(People are gona call me pro-MS again, and maybe I am ...)

It's taking place from October 26 to October 30 the Microsoft Professional Developers Conference 2003.

You can check the available conferences here.

The problem is the price, almost $2000 is a bit too much.

I gave up developing the "blog community application" I announced due to lack of support and because I have now noticed that there are anough programs floating around the web that offer the same/similar functionalities I was proposing to achieve.

Well, thinking what to do next ... :(

Novell has acquired Ximian in what seems to be a weakening move to the open source movement.

The good news is that this news led me to Mono's page - Ximian's .NET implementation for linux - and, for my surprise, the project is at a rather advanced stage. Most of the main classes in .NET have been implemented and some new functionalities were added.

There is, however, a large number of TODO's and I wait hoping for a larger variety of languages, besides c#, vb.net and GTK#.