This podcast is not canonical, but the Daily Source Code will be part of the canon

Today we have a request from Will Simpson. The word is Canonical and it came up in a recent episode of the Gillmor Gang.

In this clip Jon Udell used canonical to describe a standard permanent link.

Two side notes: This Gillmor Gang, from July 2nd 2005, is very interesting. They discuss some of the emerging issues with podcasting and audio blogging. For example how do you properly site an audio clip you play in you podcast. Unlike a text entry I can't very easily give you a link back to the entire Gillmor Gang episode.

I would also like to praise John Udell. He does some great screencasts of interesting Internet phenomena. Tune in later this week for more on screencasts.

Back to canonical. It is an interesting word with a rich history and many definitions that vary based on the context. They include:

• Appearing in a Biblical canon.
• Related to canon law- the laws of the Roman Catholic and/or Anglican churches.
• Conforming to orthodox or recognized rules.
• In math canonical refers to the standard form or the simplest form.
• In linguistics it is the simplest form possible without loss of generality. Opposite of nonstandard.
• Pertaining to or resembling a musical or literary canon.
• Authoritative.
• Standard.

This is a seemingly diverse group of definitions but in short canonical is an adjective that means standard, generally accepted, essential or a significant part of the history. If you decide to do a little more research on canonical and it's root canon at Wikipedia be prepared for a lot of disambiguation pages.

Obviously a word this rich has rich etymology too. It made it way from the ancient Greek kanon to the Old English and Old French to the Middle English to modern English. The Greek kanon means rule or rod.

Will, thank you for the great suggestion. Will has an a wonderful portfolio of photographs available at PalousePhotography.com. My favorite is the "Palouse Morning on Linville Road." Check out last weeks post to learn about the Palouse.

Will also reminded me "there is a popular Linux distro, Ubuntu, available from [a] philanthropic organization called Canonical -Canonical.com/ which is doing great work."

I would now like to welcome all the new iTunes subscribers. I hope you are enjoying Today's Podcast and podcasting in general. Please tell you friends about podcasting.