Ludoo

This one is the result of quite of a few minutes of digging in Google. To merge (join, combine, etc.) multiple Postscript files into a single one, just type this:

gs -sDEVICE=pswrite -sOutputFile=output.ps -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH file1.ps file2.ps file3.ps

You need Ghostscript, so if you have no access to a Unix box with gs preinstalled, grab a copy here.

Daniele, the author of the ASP blog engine Dblog, just sent me an email to announce the release of version 2.0. Being a Unix guy (even though I work in a mainly mainframe/Windows based company) I did not know about Dblog until tonight, but as it's one of the few Open Source projects developed in Italy I feel it my duty to announce it here. I hope Scoble notices it.

Everytime I connect remotely to a Windows system to use one of our legacy applications, I wonder why the XP team put such a useless feature on the date tray applet: how often do you need to modify your date and time, or change your timezone? And conversely, how often do you need to check a date in the past or future? This is one of the small usability things that Gnome does better, as you can see in this image.

Given that the legacy application I have to use the most is our timesheet app, some time ago I decided to look for a free calendar and after digging through quite a bit of Google search results I found the excellent (and free) Date In Tray by CrispyBytes Development. As you can see it's just a tiny application, but when you're checking dates it's a real time saver.

Reading Clay Shirky's A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy this morning for my proposal (BTW Ross, sorry for being late in replying to your thoughtful email, will do it soon), I was struck by how well Weblogs Inc's Star System implements three of Shirky's Four Things to Design For in Social Software:

The first thing you would design for is handles the user can invest in.

Second, you have to design a way for there to be members in good standing. [...] Have to design some way in which good works get recognized.

Three, you need barriers to participation.

WI's Star System has been running on a few of their blogs for the past couple of weeks, and it's a reputation system built on top of their readers' comments:

• users are identified (and comments approved) using their email addresses
• good comments have scores, and the system tracks and displays members with the highest score
• comments are approved only if the user's address is valid, by clicking on the comment approval link sent by email

The benefits for good commenters are not only in seeing their nickname listed in the blog's sidebar: if they provide a personal URL their nickname points to it with a link that shold bring some traffic (especially from the big blog like Engadget or Autoblog) and, missing the rel="nofollow" attribute, gives them ranking and linking status in search engines.

Jason is a not only a very smart businessman, but a real innovator. Now off to lunch. Update: Jason linked to this post.

I am sitting at an Internet Cafe in Macerata where we are spending the weekend, and there's only IE installed. I did not remember IE was such a pain to use, and since the owner claims that Firefox trashed one of his machines a while ago (uhm...), I have been forced to find a way to install it on Windows without administrative rights. Google is no help in this occasion, but if you resort to one of the basic principles of Unix systems administration ("it's always a permissions problem, stupid!") it turns out it's very easy: just select the Custom install, and select as a target folder one you can write to, such as a new "Firefox" folder on your Desktop.

Ned Batchelder is a (Python) programmer who has to deal daily with the autism that afflicts his oldest son:

For most people, the degree of examination is a matter of choice, a reflection of your interest in introspection and self-awareness. Most people can adjust their level of self-examination to balance the effort with the reward. With an autistic child, there is little room for laying back and letting things be. "Go with the flow" doesn't usually apply.

His wife Susan Senator is a writer and activist, who has just published the book Making Peace with Autism: One Family’s Story of Struggle, Discovery, and Unexpected Gifts. Ned is asking his friends, readers, and fellow programmers to help raise his wife's Google ranking:

Could I ask a favor? Susan's name makes Google searches difficult. Searching for "Susan Senator" tends to find Senators named Susan, and "Sue Senator" is worse: there are lots of news stories about people suing their senators. Here's the favor: make a link to Susan Senator to help Google find its way.

It's an easy favor to grant, and maybe reading Ned and Susan's experiences will make you stop for a while, and give some thought to many important things we all take for granted in our daily lives.

Nick Denton's New York Times interview mentioned today by Scoble gives me the occasion to write a few thoughts I have been ruminating after LesBlogs, which I have been discussing for the past week or so with David Tebbutt in an ongoing email exchange.

Is there a "blogging revolution"? Yes, despite what Denton says to the NYT reporter. But the revolution is over, what we are seeing now is its secularization. A few things struck me at LesBlogs, all distinctive characteristics of revolutionary movements that, having exhausted their innovative charge, turn themselves into institutions:

1. the emergence of a new, self-referential establishment with its periphery of sycophants and wannabes (including myself probably)
2. the superficiality and repetivity of many discussions, which showed a suspect resemblance to a political party's official doctrine (or a large company's vision)
3. the feel that much of what was being said was for the benefit of potential customers, or of the many journalists attending the conference

It's very clear to me that a new hierarchy/power structure has emerged, with lots of capital at its disposal with which to fuel enough hype to try and push social software in the enterprise. It won't be long before we see CEOs and top managers falling for the new buzzwords, and forcing blogs/wiki/etc, onto their users and IT departments, without having a clue what they're about.

As for LesBlogs, I have finally understood why Dave Winer insists that BloggerCon remains a users' conference...