Friday, January 31, 2003

FeedExpress open source code Finished build 247 of FeedExpress today. From this release on, the sourcecode has been released under LGPL license. Sourcecode and binary is available from http://www.cramon.dk/feedexpress.asp Later on it will be avialable on sourceforge http://www.sf.net/projects/feedexpress Enjoy! /Jeppe [Aspects of Software Development] 2:27:07 PM

More On Data Extinction knowledge management is both a personal and an organizational issue. Personally, I want to store and retrieve all my notes, my photos, my movies, etc. Organizationally, I want to do the same thing. Hopefully, XML will sustain us for quite some time. In one sense, weblogs are just a way to control the creation and storage of knowledge over time. There have been a bunch of articles in the past few months discussing the concept of "data extinction". I'm guessing that we've reached the point where we've gone through enough formats and systems that more and more people are "suddenly" realizing that a lot of old data on old machines is unreadable. While this article doesn't discuss solutions as much as past articles, it is still an interesting look at how people assume that digital data will last throughout the ages, simply because you can make a perfect copy. The problem, of course, is that the applications to read that data go away. As more and more of our lives go digital, this becomes a bigger and bigger problem. [Techdirt] 11:47:25 AM

Tripod now has weblogs .... Tripod now has weblogs. [Scripting News] 11:44:15 AM

Guardian UK on blogs and business Where's the money in blogging? The only money in websites was tools, and I think this will be true for weblogs as well. The Guardian UK has an article on the business of blogging that shows us the money. Other companies are trying to bring blogging to the business world in a more practical way. Userland Software, the company behind Radio, a popular weblog publishing tool, has been trying to sell blogging to businesses. Over the past year, Userland president John Robb has talked about the k-log, a weblog used within a company to manage knowledge. The idea is that blogs can help a business present information and develop new ideas. They can bring out and spread the expertise within a company. [Blogroots] 11:41:30 AM

Blogads Blogads is a business that empowers webloggers to put ads on their websites. Note that this does NOT put ads in the RSS feeds. Two posts of interest for Blogads users this morning. In the Guardian, Jim McClellan surveys the prospects for commercial blogging and features Blogads. From the grassroots, Ken Layne blogs: "My BlogAds make me happy. Currently, this site is offering a gun T-shirt, an Arizona politics... [Blogads.org -- where money meets the blog] 11:32:39 AM

Google dating. Bingo! Weblogs as a personal marketing/branding device... Seth Godin, has been thinking about online dating too. In the last twenty-four hours, I've read about the big services launching huge ad campaigns, I've seen stickers on store windows and heard about people using services like Match.com. Must be a trend. [...] What's this all about? And why should we care? Well, if we add to this phenomenon the huge growth of monster.com (and the death of the newspaper classifieds) its seems as if personal marketing is now officially important. You market yourself to get a job (not wait to find a classified for a job you're qualified for and actually want.) You market yourself to find a mate (not wait until someone finds you in a singles bar or adores your cute little dog in the park). What used to be the exclusive province of Coca Cola or Amway is now at the heart of just about everyone's life. Marketing, after all, is about putting a product out there and finding an audience for it. So... When you market yourself, are you boring? Invisible? Easy to pass up? Just as companies have no choice but to depend on the Purple Cow, on remarkable products and on word of mouth, I think the lesson of all this personal advertising is NOT that you can advertise yourself to a happy home and job, but that it's ultimately word of mouth that's going to make it work. It's word of mouth that points people to your singles page or word of mouth that forwards your resume to the right guy. The difference now is that this digital word of mouth (call it an ideavirus if you want) is aided by a personal web site with your religion and desires on it, or a hotjobs website with your Linux skills outlined. [more...] So let me bring this back to a few of my themes: Weblogs are vital to branding yourself. For work. And for life. Their linking reflects social networks. Google likes this. Matching engines specialize in scoring compatibility of every combination in an n-n space. Fast, where Oracle grinds to a halt. ELISE, iXmatch, NCorp, Triplehop, Burning Glass. But they need at least partially structured data. RSS 2.0 supports adding structure. Personal profiles: I want..., I offer.... Professional profiles: I want...., I offer..... Traditionally "resumes", CVs, and career profiles. So if you want love and money, build tools that add structure to blogs, RSS, and RSS readers. [Phil Wolff: klogs] 11:30:23 AM

Blogs open doors for developers More blogs as marketing vehicles... Business software developers are learning what gamemakers have long known: Using Web logs and online tools to gather feedback can help strengthen products--and pull in customers. [CNET News.com] 11:25:52 AM

Brobeck collapses This seems like a huge story for SF and for the legal industry. Paulette tells stories of when she moves to SF ten years ago... too many lawyers, not enough work. Now we may be there again. I wonder of if the local economy, eps. the housing market, will be further depressed by this. Brobeck, a massive technology/finance corporate law-firm, has collapsed. Three years ago, Brobeck recorded the highest profits in the city for a firm its size, each partner taking in $850,000, according to the Recorder, a San Francisco legal publication. Its total revenue topped $300 million. And Brobeck handled hundreds of merger deals and IPOs, such as Juno Online Services, the free Internet service provider, and DoubleClick, the online ad company. LinkDiscuss (Thanks, ronks!) [Boing Boing] 11:24:14 AM