The FT on OOXML: Dr Johnson Applies

On Open Enterprise blog.

Crowdsourcing the Language Ark

Samuel Johnson famously wrote an early English dictionary entirely on his own. But a far better approach today would be to write one collaboratively across the Internet, with people offering and refining definitions. And given the global nature of the Net, better make that a multilingual dictionary, too.

That's what LingoZ is trying to do. At the moment, the number of languages covered is relatively small; what I'd like to see is this widened to hundreds and then thousands of languages. As well as a useful resource in terms of translation, it could also play another important role: preserving the hundreds of languages faced with extinction as a kind of virtual ark. I'm not sure that LingoZ has the vision to do that, but somebody should. (Via eHub.)

(Rezzed) Signs of the Times

This comes into the "dog walking on hind legs" category: it's not so much that it's done well, as that it's done at all.

Someone is offering signs in Second Life linked to Web pages: changing the latter updates the former. Certainly, a sign of things to come. (Via eHub.)

Update: Here's an post about why there are other reasons this is interesting.