Ironick

Zemanta

I'm trying our Zemanta, an add on to Windows Live Writer. Zemanta is supposedly a semantic web application that automagically enriches your blog posts with suggested links, tags, related articles, pictures, etc.

For example, if I type the phrase mars lander, Zemanta will automatically do wonderful things. Well it's supposed to do amazing things, but I don't see anything happening. Would the concept of Gartner make a difference. Or the happenings in Iran. Nada. The movie, The Watchmen seems pretty cool.

It’s working now as you can see. The problem was that I was running an old version of Windows Live Writer. Now let’s see if it can handle more obscure terms like meiosis, or stigmergy, or tsallis entropy. Wow, it did all of them except for stigmergy, even though stigmergy is in Wikipedia.

Hmmn… It looks as if pictures is not working. I’d love to see a picture of Dolphins, or some Transformers, or maybe even Spider-Man.

I think I’ll try it for a while…

Related articles by Zemanta

• Zemanta is a good social media tool (zemanta.com)

I have another blog

Just to let everyone know: The Gartner Blog Network went live today. Here is my Gartner blog. I'm going to try to find someway to dual post for the near future. It's good to be back. Here is a link to my first Gartner Blog Network post (testing if pingback is working).

Update 2008-10-01: I am reposting this to re-establish the pingback connection. My original post on my Gartner blog was accidentally deleted.

My first post from my mobile phone

This is my first mobile phone blog entry. I'm using the Jott.com service to speak this blog entry and have it transcribed and sent to TypePad. Hope it works. Click here to listen Powered by Jott

Migration Complete

I just finished migrating all my Radio Userland blog posts to TypePad. Nontrivial. One post had an HTML error in it that caused an import error. Many entries needed manual creation of categories. Multiple categories did not work (each turned into one long semicolon filled category). All in all it took 4-6 hours of import file massaging and category cleanup. I haven't even looked at most of the entries to see if they formatted correctly.

But at least I'm basically migrated.

Posting from Zoho Writer

I am typing this post using Zoho Writer, another Web-based word processor. It has much easier integration with TypePad and it will automatically add Technorati Tags to your entries (but as far as I can tell, not TypePad Categories).

The paragraph vs. break tag issue seems better (formatting text as Normal converts breaks to paragraphs). Also the HTML editing mode seems higher fidelity (it doesn't pretty print the HMTL is ways that make it difficult to cut and paste).

Technorati Tags     Zoho,TypePad

A Post From Writely

I am writing this post in Writely.

Supposedly I can post directly from Writely to Typepad. To do this you have to configure Writely with your blog API settings. I didn't find the API documentation the first time around, so I'm linking to it here.

One thing I'm trying to figure out is the spacing between paragraphs. As I edit in Writely, I see my paragraphs with no blank lines between them. This post is really a test to see if they show up that way in Typepad.

This time I am posting with paragraphs separated by <p> </p> tags (previously Writely was inserting <br/> tags). And indeed, the paragraphs now display on Typepad with blank lines between. Strange. Why isn't Writely displaying them the same way?

It works; sort of. I'm having lots of trouble/confusion with Writely inserting paragraph and break tags. I can't figure out when it inserts which.

My First TypePad Post

I am moving from Radio Userland to TypePad. While RU was great for getting me started, its client-based architecture became such a resource hog that I was afraid to start it. Making entries felt so clunky that it induced writer's block. I'm hoping TypePad's ease of use will enable me to post more frequently.

All posted dated earlier than this one (June 9, 2006) are posts that I migrated from Radio Userland.

Goodbye META, hello Gartner.

I haven't written much about my life at META Group, Inc. in this blog, because I like to keep my avocation (Information Technology, Philosophy, Evolution) separate from my vocation (IT Industry Analyst).

I make an exception today to commemorate my nine years with META (April 15th would have been my 9th anniversary) and to announce that I have accepted a position at Gartner as part of its acquisition of META Group.

I will continue to blog as always, with one restriction. In light of Gartner's brand-management policies, other than this posting, I will not discuss Gartner or my activities at Gartner. As an ex-attorney, I appreciate bright lines.

My other blog.

While I may not post an entry to my home page everday, I do post interesting web resources that I run across to Furl (my online bookmark service) virtually every day. You can see my latest Furl postings in the Navigation box on the right of my home page:

Also, if you are interested in some of the same issues that I am (mass innovation, SOA, modularity, Web services, Evolution, Philosophy, etc.) I urge you to subscribe to the RSS feed for my Furl bookmarks. You will then receive a steady stream of link to interesting resources (with my brief descriptions). Simply click on this Subscribe to my Furl Archive link, or the one directly beneath my list of Furled pages in the Navigation box.

Back and rad'er than ever.

Seven and one-half weeks between posts to the blogosphere. How shameful. My last such hiatus was just about a year ago, and it only ran five and one-half weeks. That time it was due to hardware failure. This time it was due to METAmorphosis--literally and I suppose figuratively.

I was cranking away around the clock trying to cram into two presentations (a keynote--SOA Principles: Carving a Deep Path Across the Enterprise and a breakout--Software as Infrastructure and Metadata as Application see agenda) all my insights into Service-Oriented Architecture. Of course, in the course of doing all this cramming, I came up with dozens of other insights, which had to be crammed in. At one point, my draft deck was 80+ slides!

Suffice it to say, I didn't have a lot of free time to blog before METAmorphosis on March 1 (the day after my birthday, so I had to work on my birthday, boo hoo) and I've been catching up on everything else I put aside to devote myself to these pitches.

I don't know about other analysts, but the reason I put so much into my METAmorphosis pitches is that I treat it as my annual "big update". It's when I take all of the insights I've gained through a year of conversations with users and vendors and I do a major update to my slideware. I guess the equivalent is a major software version release vs. a point release.

The other reason is of course inertia. As those of you who blog regularly know, its easier to blog regularly once you get into a rhythm, and once you get out of it, its hard to get back in. Here's hoping I quickly find my rhythm again.

BTW, the lame title of this post is a play on the title of the post I wrote after my last hiatus: "Back and Badder Than Ever". It also alludes to some of the radically new thoughts I have about SOA (at least radically new to me). I'll be sharing them in upcoming posts.