roy

I think I just *got* what Dave Winer's been talking about with OPML. It's a very subtle shift in the idea that certain types of people do not like the rigid anti-chronological, title, and long entry format of most journaling software. For example, when posting shorter snippets of a longer entry (like I'm doing), it might be beneficial to use an OPML-type outliner (although for this case, the topics are completely unrelated).

This is a fascinating idea, although I'm not sure how well current blogging software could be adopted for this. Although there's a big change in the backend (RSS to OPML), I think the hardest shift will be along the UI front.

. . .

(Source)

There's been a lot of talk about Google's recent decision to "censor" results. Basically if you go to http://www.google.cn/ and compare results from the main google.com, you get different results. (try 'tianamen square' and do an image search to see the differences).

Now, MSN and Yahoo! have both done this in the past (MSN Spaces [the MS version of Tabulas (LOL)] has recently even censored a chinese blogger. Why wasn't there any backlash when they did that?

A LOT of people have been sipping the Google Kool-Aid, thinking that they wouldn't sell out their values for the sake of business. I mean, look at their old FAQ on censoring results (which has now been taken down):

They even stated in their IPO filing that they will "Do no evil."

People bought into that idea and believed it. And now that Google has sold their values out for the sake of expanding to China, people feel betrayed. Yucks.

In any case, I personally believe Google was in between a rock and a hard place. I think they did the right thing (this covers some of the reasons) - I never sipped that Google idealist kool-aid to start with anyways ;)

In regards to the link to calacanis above, I really don't buy into that "spread of democracy' argument. Democracy is simply an ends to a mean - the ends being the right for people to live their lives at an accetpable standard of living. There's no reason why this can't be accomplished with some hybrid of Socialism with free-market principles (it does seem to contrast, but I think China's been demonstrating a willingness to combine the two, and they've been pretty successful).