MSN Spaces launched yesterday. Coverage: Metafilter, Slashdot, Scoble, Ross Mayfield, Jeff Jarvis. Post-launch comments from the MSN Spaces team: Dare Obasanjo, Channel 9 interview. My space. As with other Microsoft web apps, the blogs emit RSS 2.0 (here’s Dare’s RSS file from his Space).

Scripting News: Weblogs.com needs a rewrite. If I had C skillz, I’d be there, but I don’t. Surely there must be some folks out there in the blogging community who are ready to give back…

...they could do worse than a framed print of this New Yorker cartoon for me:

(Thanks to Tin Man for the link to the searchable database of New Yorker cartoons.) I remember bringing that cartoon up in my History of the English Language class when it first came out—but I think the date in the database is wrong, since I was taking that class in the spring of 1993. I still maintain that it’s the best illustration of the difference between signifier and thing itself that I’ve seen, though cookies, e-commerce sites, and other modern invasions of privacy have pretty much eroded the core message, which was very much true in 1993.

(Yes, it’s my birthday today. I’m 32.)