2005/01/05

Webcams and web authoring

1) Look at these Thousands and thousands of webcams.

Why this is cool:

  1. The random pictures combine to create an indescribable impression. Someone building a boat. A Pagoda. A mock CCTV control center. An Izaka bar. A deserted street. A harbour blanketed in snow. The list goes on.
  2. This is real life, uncut. This is a tiny, jerky window onto the future of mass media. Mass broadcasting, not mass market.
  3. The Architect's office decoration. A web-page could be put up containing nothing but a wall of random videos.

2) WYSIWYG web editing sucks, but then so does editing the stuff by hand, due to its verbosity. Taking a page from XPath, and the type-ahead find features of Mozilla, I'd like to be able to type and edit something like this:

html/head/title>foo<;style[type="text/css"];../body/h1#header>My
site<;div#contents;div#main/p>Welcome<;p(3)>bla bla bla<
And have this generated: 


<html>

<head>

<title>foo</title>

<style type="text/css">

</style>

<body>

<h1 id="header>My site</h1>

<div id="contents">

</div>

<div id="main">

<p>Welcome</p>

<p>bla bla bla</p>

<p>bla bla bla</p>

<p>bla bla bla</p>

</div>

</body>

</html>
Combined with the web development bookmarklets, "edit styles" in particular, why, HTML might even become a joy to write.

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