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Tags: Database schemas
Recently, on del.icio.us mailinglist, I asked the question “Does anyone know the database schema of del.icio.us?†.
I got a few private responses so I wanted to share the knowledge with the world.
The Problem: You want to have a database schema where you can tag a bookmark (or a blog post or whatever) with as many tags as you want. Later then, you want to run queries to constrain the bookmarks to a union or intersection of tags. You also want to exclude (say: minus) some tags from the search result.
Apparently there are three different solutions:
After creating Montage-a-google, several people wrote to me suggesting I make a game based on the same technology. Montage-a-google is a simple web app that uses Google’s image search to generate a large gridded montage of images based on keywords (search terms) entered by the user. Guess-the-google reverses this process by picking the keywords for you, the player must then guess what keyword made up the image - it’s surprisingly addictive.
Design and software design and engineering aphorisms.
This paper reviews some current initiatives, as of early 2005, in providing public link management applications on the Web – utilities that are often referred to under the general moniker of ’social bookmarking tools’. There are a couple of things going on here: 1) server-side software aimed specifically at managing links with, crucially, a strong, social networking flavour, and 2) an unabashedly open and unstructured approach to tagging, or user classification, of those links.
Table 1. Reviewed Social Bookmarking Tools - Comparison
Why do the media keep running stories saying suits are back? Because PR firms tell them to. One of the most surprising things I discovered during my brief business career was the existence of the PR industry, lurking like a huge, quiet submarine beneath the news. Of the stories you read in traditional media that aren’t about politics, crimes, or disasters, more than half probably come from PR firms.
As I’ve mentioned before, two web-based tools I use extensively to keep track of important or interesting online information are Furl and del.icio.us. Both of these tools help me file links that I wish to remember or recommend, and allow me to share that information flexibly.
Over the last few months I’ve developed my own way of using these two tools together. It suits me, and I think it suits the unique strengths of each tool. So in case it’s useful to others, here’s how I use Furl and del.icio.us together…
Contentious » Furl and Del.icio.us: Almost Perfect Together
The distractions of constant emails, text and phone messages are a greater threat to IQ and concentration than taking cannabis, according to a survey of befuddled volunteers.
Doziness, lethargy and an increasing inability to focus reached “startling” levels in the trials by 1,100 people, who also demonstrated that emails in particular have an addictive, drug-like grip.
What I Believe I don’t believe in God, and I don’t believe in Adam Smith or Karl Marx, and I don’t believe in the abstractions of Capital or Labour or GAAP, and I don’t believe in the Nation or the Family or the Race or the Tribe.
I believe in truth.
Truth is Difficult Difficult to attain, and difficult to deliver. Truth is difficult to attain because the world is complicated; the further you go, along the paths of Physics or Economics or Logic, the weirder it gets.
Here is a list of important things where our grasp of the truth is not firm enough to make reliable predictions: inflation, unemployment, stock prices, love, acoustics, influenza, and speciation.
The truth would be hard enough to see even if other people weren’t routinely trying to hide it. Politicians, businessmen, lovers, siblings, and professional colleagues routinely tell us things that are not true. Untruths become lies when spoken knowingly.
Unwilful untruth is just ignorance and is to be overcome, like a river in one’s path or a sore muscle. Wilful untruth is the telling of lies; it should be fought with passion and without mercy, ripped flesh from bones and left to rot in the cold light of day.