Thursday, November 16, 2006

Spiders, Past and Present

Orb weaving spider on goldenrod

I came across this on Slashdot the other day: "Build a Web spider on Linux: A simple spider and scraper collects Internet content." After reading through, I thought, "Wow! I could do that!" It's now on my (excessively long and ambitious) list of "Do It Yourself" projects. I was surprised to find that IBM's Web site includes developerWorks: IBM's resource for developers, and that this includes interesting how-to's and projects for a hobby-hacker such as myself. I was particularly interested in Web development: Resources for Web 2.0, Ajax, wikis, PHP, mashups, and other Web projects." It's quite a change from my mental picture of "Big Blue" as a bloated, arrogant presence sucking the blood out of small businesses and individual computer users. (Based on my experiences in the 1980's and early 1990's.) Thanks, IBM!

Orb weaving spider on goldenrod

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