Sean McGrath has an interesting column on ITworld this week in which he muses on dishing out Web content not based on what's new to the site that minute, but on what's new to the individual consumer of that content since his last visit. One suggestion he has for getting around the limits of 'RSS/Atom feeds that only hold a finite amount of history' is to adopt a naming convention that includes YYYY/MM/DD/HH/MM. The tradeoff, of course, is that your 'website just gets bigger and bigger.'

Recently it has become even more apparent to me that experts and editors play an important role, and nowhere is this more obvious than in Slashdot's own Firehose section. While the democratic method of choosing top stories seems to be largely effective, with the best stuff generally getting the most votes, the crowd often skips over the hidden gem that an editor would find, fact check, polish, and post to the front page. My little Firehose rant aside, this is the sort of thing I've been pondering since Wikipedia's Essjay was found not to be the expert he claimed. Call me old fashioned, but I think there is still a call for bona fide subject matter experts and the editors who are savvy enough to find them.

Security consultant Brent Huston has a great article in ITworld this week in which he lays out the contents of his backpack -- the things he carries with him wherever he goes. Some highlights from the list: Altec Lansing headphones, a Kensington steel cable lock, the most recent copies of 2600: The Hacker Quarterly and Blacklisted 411, and an Apple PowerBook G4. Personally, I only carry my laptop, cell phone, and assorted analog items (e.g., pen and paper). What's in your pack?

Your tax dollars at work.... The U.S. Federal Trade Commission has launched an online quiz-show style game called Buddy Builder to test users' abilities to spot potential threats on social networking Web sites. Naturally, the teen audience this is intended to reach wouldn't go near the game except as a joke.

Today in Philadelphia a federal trial got underway that will decide whether the Child Online Protection Act (COPA) is constitutional. The outcome will determine whether operators of Web sites can be held accountable for failing to block children's access to inappropriate materials. An article on ITworld outlines the arguments of the foes in the battle: the DOJ and the ACLU. If I were a betting woman, I'd put my money on the ACLU. Parents, schools, etc. have to take responsibility for the internet usage of children in their charge.

So many Web 2.0 apps seem like a natural fit for use on mobile phones -- more so, in fact, than the PCs they were written for. Take for example, Google maps or Flickr or any of the myriad social networking sites. Frankly, I wonder why anyone would even want to use them while sitting at a desk. And yet the reality of using those apps on cell phones is solidly disappointing because of the inherent constraints of mobile phones and networks. This article gets deeper into the ups and downs of reworking Web 2.0 apps for use on mobile phones.