Since this came out a week ago (I feel so behind!), I suspect a lot of you have seen this but for those that haven't, here's a good article on DreamWeaver and PHP:
... but MX finally offered a simple tool for rapidly building database-driven sites using two widely-supported open source technologies: PHP and MySQL.
Unfortunately, if you've used Dreamweaver MX to build ASP, ColdFusion, or JSP sites, you'll notice that the program's PHP offerings fall a bit short. Some standard features, such as password-protecting web pages, or options for formatting dates and numbers, are missing from Dreamweaver's PHP server model. To add insult to injury, if you want to get some of that missing functionality, you'll have to shell out $99 for Macromedia's Developer Resource Kit Volume 2--an add-on that also includes new tools for other Macromedia products such as Flash, Fireworks, and ColdFusion MX.
But there's no need to settle for less, or shell out money for features that should have come with the program. With a little time spent browsing the web, you'll be able to bring Dreamweaver's PHP support up to speed, for free. [_Go_]
Microcontent is information published in short form, with its length dictated by the constraint of a single main topic and by the physical and technical limitations of the software and devices that we use to view digital content today. We've discovered in the last few years that navigating the web in meme-sized chunks is the natural idiom of the Internet. So it's time to create a tool that's designed for the job of viewing, managing, and publishing microcontent. This tool is the microcontent client.
Why is this important? Why is it more than an alphabet soup of technology? Because it's about managing time and attention, and organizing your ideas.
"All of a sudden people could narrate their work. Watch Jake as he reports his progress on the next project he does."
This is the key. It's not about XML, or HTTP, or outlining. It's about people evolving to the point where they publish what they're doing, and subscribe to what other people are doing, in just the right proportions, so that there's maximum awareness of shared purpose but minimal demand on the scarce resource of attention.
Don't just focus on the outliner. Look at how the people who are proficient with it structure their work. That's the endgame. Software tools (like the one being boostrapped here) are a necessary, but not sufficient, means to that end. Once people figure out how networked communication is really supposed to work, though, software's going to get much more interesting than it ever has been.
"Power law distribution" captures this idea nicely for me. The term "scale-free networks" is less intuitive. In this context, "scale" refers to the connectivity "embodied by the average node and fixed by the peak of the degree distribution." Thus, a bell curve has intrinsic scale. In contrast, a "scale-free" network -- whose graph asymptotically approaches many weakly-connected nodes at one end, and a few highly-connected nodes at the other -- has no intrinsic scale.
