Feedster Update

A couple of new things:

• Searches for three letter words are now working again.  Hey you didn't think the KDE folks would be interested if we couldn't search for them, did you?  Examples:
• Search for KDE
• Search for MP3
• Search for Sex (may as well give you the link, you will anyway)
• Hit highlighting is done within the results -- click above and see

The obligatory back end stuff continues as well but that's just boring.

6:30:51 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

And that's Not All Folks: Welcome to KDE Enhanced by Feedster

And wait !  There's more.  And this one is just plain damn wonderful.  If you are a user of KDE, Feedster has now been integrated into KDE.  For right now you have to install it yourself but it has already been checked into the CVS tree for the 3.2 release.  Let me quote from the documentation:

Not really eye-candy, but I had to place this somewhere. I have commited a .desktop file for Konqueror's shortcuts to CVS HEAD. If you can't wait for KDE 3.2, you can download the .desktop file here. [_Go_]

Here's how it works:

1. In a url bar you can now type something like this: rss:Canadian or blog:Canadian or feedster:Canadian 
2. The search is automagically sent to Feedster and you get the results!

Feedster + KDE -- Two Great Tastes that Taste Great Together !

What is KDE ?

In case you're not a part of the Open Source community, you may wonder "What's he saying?"  Or "What's KDE?" Or the ever popular "Is he on crack?".  To quote from the KDE.org site:

KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system. [_Go_]

KDE runs on top of Linux / Unix and provides the windows, menus, overall environment, the look and feel, etc.  Please note that is a simplified explanation that doesn't take into account lots of things.  I know its not 100% accurate. 

Depending on how you measure it, KDE is the #1 or #2 windowing environment for Linux.  Now do you see why I'm excited?

How this Happened

Now I'd love to tell you this was my idea.  It wasn't.  I'd also love to tell you that this was part of our strategy.  Nope.  Like so many *good* things, it was actually kind of random.  Yesterday out of the blue, I got an IM from a fellow blogger, the.amazing.us / Rob Kaper, who also works on KDE.  He came up with idea, implemented the idea and the committed it to the CVS repository for KDE 3.2 (due year end).  Wow!  And to think, we released Feedster last Thursday, got Slashdotted on Sunday and changed the name on Tuesday.  And now its already embedded in KDE ?

The Thank Yous

Thank you to everyone who pitched in:

• Rob Kaper who did all the work and really deserves all the credit (Netherlands)
• Ditesh who tested it (Malaysia)
• Sooz who pointed out that not everyone knows what KDE is
• A few folks who I don't have urls for (unfortunately but particular thanks to Macandyed, Jasonlotito and Traumwind)

1:39:44 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Welcome to the RSS Search Engine Formerly Known as Roogle -- I Give you Feedster !

Well I've got two very good pieces of news for today.  The first one is the new name: feedster.com.  The site is up and working.  Feel free to stop on by.

Logo help from Etation Media and I know about the swoosh...

The Name

I know we're going to get comments on the name.  Its ok folks.  A name is a name and this one is short (8 chars), .com and has at least something to do with the concept (RSS is a feed after all) but unique enough to be brandable.  Also at this point I think everyone would rather have us making you the best possible RSS search engine NOT doing the corporate naming exercise.  I've done those and they aren't pretty.

New Feature

Search results are now subscribable via RSS.  Lets say you want see daily results for a search on 'feedster' then just search for that on Feedster and then subscribe to the RSS icon at the bottom of the page.  Brent from Net News Wire pushed me on this and helped me understand the <SOURCE> element which is now supported.  Thanks Brent!  I also tested this in AmphetaDesk which worked like a champ.

Known Issues

Here are a couple of things:

• I'm not 100% certain if this RSS of search queries works correctly in Radio.  I've had problems but it could be me.  Or it could be content encoding on RSS feeds that tell me they are in English when they're really in Russian.  Until we get language detection in place, this is probably going to be an issue.  Working on it.
• The CSS tabs look horrible at least on my OSX box.  Anyone have a thought?  They work on IE 5.5 (pc), IE 6 (pc), Opera 7, Konqueror (more on that next post) and Mozilla.

If You Find a Problem

We could use the help getting any issues addressed.  There is a mechanism for reporting issues (and easily capturing the page on which the problem exists).   Let's say you do a search and notice that your blog title isn't correct (as they aren't for all too many blogs; mostly my bad).  Click on the Report Problem link and just tell us about it.  Since query results can change, you might want to paste in the blog's url.  I'll look into adding that at the result list element level but no promises since that would mean making an icon.

12:38:05 PM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Update: Wanted Unix Command Line Binary to Convert Windows Icon Files to PNG

The title really says it all.  Either this means something to you or it doesn't.  It must handle 24 bit icon files.  Example File.  Any thoughts?

Note: if this means nothing to you then no worry.

More in a bit.

10:38:48 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This   

Wanted: KDE User

If anyone out there has a KDE box handy, I've got something cool for them to test.  Aim me at fuzzygroup or Yahoo me at fuzzygroup or Jabber me at fuzzygroup @ jabber.com.  And if you have experience with IE CSS problems under OS-X, I've got something interesting to ask you about.  (I'd like to get this fixed before publicly posting the new url).  And, note, that the problem show up after we made the home page html xhtml compliant.  Sigh.

5:49:47 AM      Google It!   comment []    IM Me About This