Saturday, August 09, 2003

Steve Kirks from house of warwick has a great wish list of features for Radio. In response to this post on Paolo's website, here's my list of wishes for Radio (in order of importance): #1-- Like TypePad, add an easy way for me to list what I'm reading and what I'm listening to--all linked to my Amazon Associate ID--to allow visitors to buy something and I get a commission. If nothing else, the groovy book/album covers are great. See my TypePad test site. #2--Easy remote hosting/domain hosting. FTP is fine, but I'd like the referrer rankings to work outside of Userland's servers. Include in this feature the ability to run Radio on a computer at home and post easily, just by checking a box. I'm doing it now, but I had to do this. #3--Alternate servers for comments, chosen from a drop down list on the pref page. Apple provides three time servers for all of it's customers world wide. It would help during times when servers are overloaded. #4--Auto-generation of aggregator "home page": What is this? Well, you set Radio to subscribe to sources. It generates a *publicly* accessible page on your site so you can view the content. #5--Aggregator can import OMPL files (like from NNW) to allow easy additions of subscriptions #6--Theme packs for sale #7--Theme building functions Update: Here's another short list. Cristian, I'm with you on HTML. I can do it, but I bought Radio to skip it. 9:01:52 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Dewayne Says: Should I stick with Radio or move on to typepad? I've been using one form or another of Userland products for 3 plus years and been very happy with all of my experiences. However with Dave moving on I am not sure what is going to happen to Userland. The pace of Radio's changes has dramatically declined and my requirements increase at the same old pace. Source: house of warwick Steve Kirks says: Why I will not sign up for TypePad. TypePad is a wonderful idea whose time has finally come. UserLand started this with the right idea some time ago, but couldn't make a go of it. Now that the rest of the world is ready, Ben and Mena of Six Apart, developer of Movable Type, have rolled out TypePad. I was ready to purchase the service, but I stopped to take an inventory of my blogging self. I have a server-based weblog product. It has multiple categories, scripting, automation, no recurring fees, supports multiple standards and is frequently updated and fixed. I'm sticking with Radio, and I'm ready to evaluate Frontier and Manila. I want to create websites, give 'blog space to friends (through Manilla) and have a place to experiment and evangelize RSS and weblogs. [house of warwick] 8:56:26 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: house of warwick Steve Kirks says: I was reading André Venter's post about Technorati, linked from This archive post has the details about the Technorati pinger. I read through the second post, found the wiki link and read through the Radio Userland posts (all two of them). I wondered if, with the new implementation of Trackback in Radio, the code exists to ping Technorati, too. I started perusing Radio.root and I think I found the right place: system.verbs.apps.weblogsCom Maybe if Jake Savin is reading this... :> ...he can look at this and see if this can be added as a user pref, something like "Ping Technorati?" with a checkbox. As for now, people who use the web interface of Radio, just add this: http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping to the "URLs to Ping:" box on the Radio home page. If your Radio subscription has run out, re-up now to get Trackback. It's worth it! P.S.> Why not be able to ping a person? I know that's Trackback, but I want "Track-before". I guess that's email. I read a post this morning about that, but now I can't remember where it came from. [house of warwick] 8:44:13 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Note to Dewayne, put this on the To Read list! Source: Russell Beattie Notebook says: I just read Rich Dad, Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki. I've been meaning to get to it for a while, but it's been just sitting on the shelf. It's really short and not filled with any real specific advice, but still, I wish I read it years ago. I wouldn't have paid attention because I was an idiot years ago, but still... it would've been nice to have in my head. The basic tenent of the book is that the rich think about money differently than the middle class or the poor do and they teach that understanding to their children, but the rest of us remain clueless. I remember when I went to college having conversations with roomates who were from much better to-do families, amazed at the things they knew and talked about when it came to money. It makes sense... Most of the people I grew up with, money was something to be avoided, because you never had enough. Money meant bills, and it was generally better to avoid the whole subject. People with money, however, know what to do with that money and how to invest that money to make it grow. That's something that the rest of us learn waaay to late in life, I think. Anyways, the book goes on to talk about how in order to escape the circle of earn/pay taxes/pay bills you need to start investing in "assets". These are basically anything that will return money to you. The author made his cash in real estate, but assets can also be stocks or investments in companies, etc. Basically he says that you can *never* earn enough money to be financially secure with just a job and basic investments like 401ks, and other "safe" investments. He makes a pretty great case for it. First, unlike a corporation, people have to pay taxes on their earnings *first* rather than last. That means in order to invest $100, you normally have to earn $150 before taxes. Secondly, the cycle of consumerism in the U.S. makes in impossible to get out of that earn more/spend more loop. Everyone thinks that the solution to their problems is just to go up that corporate ladder - or change jobs - so that you can earn more money and then you'll be fine. But what happens is that you always end up spending. Anyways, like Suzy Ormond and the other financial self-help gurus, Kiyosaki gies the basic advice that you need to pay yourself first. Tend to your assets (and your home, by the way, isn't one) first, grow them to the point that they are generating enough income so that you can then buy the luxuries. People who go out and buy the BMW on credit, then hope they get the raise to help get them out of debt will never escape that vicious circle. He doesn't suggest starting your own company - which he says is full of headaches and even more risks, but says that even while you have your real job, you need to be tending your real business. That means making sure you're saving, investing, etc. I would normally be skeptical of this sort of advice, because if you have zero to invest, you're not going to get very far. But the idea is that even small amounts invested in the right opportunities can be the basis for more investments later. He talks about investments of $2000 or $5000 which many people can put together. The key is to have some money ready to invest when the opportunity arises, and then take that opportunity when it presents itself. After reading the book and chatting about with Ana, we realized some of the opportunities we missed because we weren't open to them. A relative of Ana's was selling a one bedroom apartment for about $35,000. It was a dump, but not in a bad neighborhood or anything. The prices here in Madrid for apartments are obscene... so even though the place was a dump inside, by buying, spending a bit of money to restore it, then selling it, we could have litterally trippled our investment or more. The more we thought about it, the more we realized that it would've been possible, and easy to do - even with all the red tape and taxes, etc. involved. These are the things you've got to be aware of - but not long shots. Like Kiyosaki says at one point, profits are made at the time of purchase. Anyways, lots of food for thought. I mean, you definitely need your bullshit detector on for any of these types of books, but the author never claims its a quick and easy solution, just that it's the way it works, and you can see the kernel of truth in it. -Russ LOL... So much for what I know. Thanks to Dominic for pointing out this link about Kiyosaki: The guy's a con artist. Gotta love it. The sad thing is that I read the book, found it sorta uninteresting, but at least somewhat educational... sad, sad, sad. Comment [Russell Beattie Notebook] 1:40:44 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: Steve Eichert One of the advantages of using DataSets is their support for Xml. By using the ReadXml() and WriteXml() methods on the DataSet developers can quickly retrieve an Xml representation of a DataSet, as well as re-hydrate a DataSet with data from an Xml file. By default our custom written business objects don't have support for such features. The Xml Serialization features in the .NET Framework allow us to add Xml support to our objects with very minimal effort. The code below shows an example implementation of a ToXml() method for returning an Xml representation of a business object, and a FromXml() method that returns an entity object re-hydrated with values from an Xml string. /// <summary> /// Retrieve a Xml representation of the business object. /// </summary> /// <returns>String of xml representing the object.</returns> public virtual string ToXml() { string xml; System.IO.MemoryStream stream = new System.IO.MemoryStream(); System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(this.GetType()); serializer.Serialize(stream, this);  xml = System.Text.Encoding.UTF8.GetString(stream.ToArray()); stream.Close(); return xml; } /// <summary> /// Re-hydrate an entity object from an Xml string. /// </summary> /// <param name=XML>The xml representation of the object</param> /// <returns>The re-hydrated IEntityObject</returns> public IEntityObject FromXml(string xml) { IEntityObject entity = null; System.IO.StringReader reader = null; try { System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer serializer = new System.Xml.Serialization.XmlSerializer(this.GetType()); reader = new System.IO.StringReader(xml); entity = (IEntityObject)serializer.Deserialize(reader); } finally { if(reader!=null) reader.Close(); } return entity; } [Steve Eichert] 1:28:37 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: Audioblog/Mobileblogging News Marc Says: I was gonna try and answer the question, but Sifry beat me to it. :-). Clearly the coolest (to me) feature of the blogosphere is to reach out and directly ask questions of the creators of the technology.  So when Lilia Efimova asked this simple clarification of how Technorati works, Dave Sifrey bellied up to the bar and answered the question. How Technorati works? (2). David Sifry answers my question about Technorati: Here's the basics: 1) We spider blogs, and match up their links to your blog - to anywhere on your blog 2) In the inbound blog list, we use the outbound links from the blog homepage, not from the archives 3) We do process RSS feeds an other metadata, but that doesn't affect your inbound blog stats 4) Nightly, we go through the database and re-calculate the number of inbound blogs and links, which helps us double-check our work and also allows us to create the interesting newcomers list, the interesting recent blogs list, etc. We strice to be accurate all the time. Sometimes things slip through. For example, one of the reasons why your inbound blog count may be down today is because we were doing maintenance of the database last night to remove duplicate blogs - for example, Radio Userland has an obnoxious habit of sending pings to www.weblogs.com for each weblog "category" if you use multiple categories on your blog. Same information, same author, just link spam, basically. So, last night we cleaned out a bunch of that stuff. If you were linked from a bunch of people's blog categories, then you lost those inbound blogs. Then again, so did everyone else. :-) The last thing to remember is that while we strive for accuracy and completeness, we still do have bugs and have to fix things. If you notice something strange, please don't hesitate to send us feedback (feedback@technorati.com) and let us know. Thanks for fast reply! And for fixing the category problem (I had it in my stats). I suggest that you add this explanation somewhere, so people know that inbound blog/link statistics are calculated based on links from homepages of other weblogs. (I guess I'm getting spoiled as a researcher: I want to know the method to trust results :) [Mathemagenic] Even with mispellings, Sifry's scribe is true and authentic. In fact you could argue that the mispellings are a brand of trueness - almost akind of encryption/certification "amatuer created" [don't mind the typoesssss] And besdies I strice to be authentic all teh time = 2. [Marc's Voice] [Audioblog/Mobileblogging News] 10:44:41 AM    trackback []     Articulate []

Source: GotDotNet: Workspaces Web-based Project Management. Complete project management application using ASP.NET. [GotDotNet: Workspaces] 10:36:34 AM    trackback []     Articulate []