The Jeopardy host discussion

My wife and I are big fans of Jeopardy. We were sad to see Alex Trebek pass away, and the series of guest hosts this past year have been interesting and fun. We enjoying critiquing their efforts and had some favorites, but we knew a decision on the hosting job would be made sometime.

With the decision by Sony Pictures to choose Mike Richards and Mayim Bialik as the new hosts, it looks like the new direction was set. However, there has been an amazing amount of “protest” of the decision by fans of other guest hosts. How did these people think they were going to influence the decision? No one ever said this was a popularity contest or reality show where the audience (or a large group online) chooses the new host. It is both amusing and sad, but it was said best by a number of guest hosts: the contestants are the stars of the show. Let’s try to keep that in mind as the new season begins.

Booklist Browser app update

This weekend, I moved my cut at Booklist Browser app requirements from the Github issue to its own page. Next, I took a cut at defining the possible domains for the Booklist Browser app, using concepts as described in “How to Engineer Software” by Steve Tockey (https://www.construx.com/books/how-to-engineer-software/). My next step will be to define use cases based on the domain definition and requirements.

Another OPML viewer for Federated Bookshelves

I am playing with a new toolkit from Dave Winer for working with OPML (https://github.com/scripting/opmlPackage), and modified the client example to read my booklist file – nice!

A reader wanted instructions on how I did this, so here they are:

  • Download the zip file from the Github repo
  • Edit code.js in the client folder to provide a URL for an OPML file that is available on the web
  • Upload the files to some web hosting
  • Go to index.html to view the OPML file

Father’s Day gifts – let the podcasting/screencasting begin!

Requirement brainstorm and some tools for Federated Bookshelves

I summarized requirement-type information from a number of posts on the Federated Bookshelves/Library JSON idea, see the Github repo for details. If anyone is interested in participating in a conversation on this topic, I have created a Github issue to capture comments.

Also, I found two tools today to more easily view OPML and JSON files:

  • OPML Viewer  – Can open an OPML file (local or online) and show original text and XML tree view
  • JSON Viewer   – Can open a JSON file (local or online) and show original text and object view

I added these to the tools section on the main Federated Bookshelves repo file.

Library JSON test viewer now available

I have created a test viewer for the Library JSON format as defined by Tom Critchlow. It reads a JSON file following the format and displays the elements in the JSON file. I have a working one on my website reading Tom Critchlow’s test file. I have added the HTML file for the viewer to the Federated Bookshelves Github repo.

Now that we have a simple way to view both OPML and Library JSON files, I am going to put some thoughts together on Github about the next items to work on….