Sunday, August 31, 2003While many new news aggregators come with built in Feedster support, allowing you to monitor up the minute what blogworld...
[hebig.org/blog]
5:41:15 AM
comment [] trackback [] More on the Death of E-Mail
Steve Outing has expanded thoughts on the woes with e-mail and the potential of RSS to help out. Well worth...
[Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
5:19:23 AM
comment [] trackback [] Aggregation Synchronization (Part II)
I've gathered a number of comments and suggestions about the issues of synchronizing aggregation and here's an "aggregation" of tools and emerging ideas to deal with this problem. To revisit the issue, Dave Winer presented the simplest statement of the problem in describing the Subscriptions Harmonizer: I subscribe to a feed at home but my aggregator at work doesn't know about it, and vice versa. The problem is a bit more complex when you consider enterprise employees that are on the move, and I don't just mean while traveling. There are cases where even stationary information workers might be better off with server-based solutions. It seems that everyone, sometime, almost every day is going to be away from their desktop, perhaps in a conference room with a Bluetooth or 802.11 device. There's nothing better than up-to-the-minute information while trying to impress your boss. NewsGator is the only client-side tool that attends to the problem for corporate users, but it also requires an Exchange server in the mix, so it's really not just a client-side tool - the combination of NewsGator and Exchange create a hybrid solution. And while playing with AT&T's new OfficeOnline service for Web-enabled phones, I was able to push certain NewsGator-created Outlook folder items (containing RSS feeds) from my desktop to my Nokia 6350 with Outlook rules. Still a bit convoluted, but certainly useful in some situations. Pure server-based solutions for dealing with this issue include a new Mac OSX aggregator called Shrook which offers a centralized synchronization service. There's BlogStreet's Info Aggregator, an RSS-to-IMAP service. There's also Bloglines, a Web-based service for keeping track of your feeds, and MyWireService. My favorite - one of my first aggregators is AmphetaDesk. All of these server-based solutions are worth investigating. And one recent entry in this category - Awasu - which claims to have a client-side aggregator that can be used on two different systems that will keep each other in synch. I haven't tried this one yet, but it looks pretty good....
[Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
5:12:04 AM
comment [] trackback [] RSS Feeds are the Better Email Newsletters
According to Heinz Tschabitscher from About.com; "Email newsletters are great, but spam is not. The deluge of junk mail has made it increasingly painful to follow the news and what's happening on your favorite web sites via email." They also added; "Either the newsletter you're eager to read is hidden in a massive spam attack or it doesn't arrive because your ISP is blocking spam and your favorite newsletter falls victim to the filters, too (now you know why a 'false positive' is something negative)." Read the rest here......
[Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
5:08:17 AM
comment [] trackback [] Categorical indirection
Don Park's post on how to link blogs and wikis is actually an instance of the following. Take a category, or view (if you prefer database terminology) and send it off to somewhere else. This is cool, and another reason why multiple categorization would be useful. Each category can do its own rendering, transmission, etc.
[Ted Leung on the air]
4:35:21 AM
comment [] trackback [] Thursday, August 28, 2003...At evectors we are working on a reputation-based filtering system, where users of k-collector will be able to have their news filtered according to who is writing about some specific topic. It's still at a very early stage, but it sounds promising.
Whew... it looks like there's still a lot of stuff to invent and code to write, uh? 
[w4feed:RSS 2.0]
6:43:04 PM comment [] trackback []
MIT OpenCourseWare [Daypop Top 40]
6:31:28 PM comment [] trackback []
RSS - A Primer for Publishers and Content Providers
[Daypop Top 40]
6:28:45 PM comment [] trackback []
My.Yahoo is now an RSS Aggregator!
"Sneak peek: Yahoo RSS module
"The My Yahoo RSS module appeared briefly yesterday on the Choose Content page under Personal Information Management with the name "Blogs", but it seems to have disappeared now. Here is a screenshot of the config page for the module:"
(via Blogdigger, BloggingRoller, Arjun) [Blogdigger Development Blog]
5:03:27 PM comment [] trackback []
RSS and email(ing lists)
Nice piece on inessential.com talking about RSS and email. You ought to read it (and it builds on things Chris Pirillo has been talking about. I'll wait. Back? thanks. Brent asks: "But what about mailing lists? Mailing lists are many-to-many. I love mailing lists; I subscribe to quite a few. One possible solution is to have a weblog that people sign up to be able to post to."
Answer: rethink mailing lists..... [Teal Sunglasses]
4:53:00 PM comment [] trackback []
Wednesday, August 27, 2003...Popular (misconceptions) are: "Web services is just RPC for the Internet", or "You need HTTP to make web services work". Below I will try to address a number of the more popular misconceptions.... [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
5:54:51 PM
comment [] trackback [] Webalizer.conf hacking
I've been working on cleaning up my webalizer.conf file in order to get better statistics. Since I haven't seen anyone posting the following information, I figured I would, since it might interest people who are using the Webalizer stats tool. Adding the following lines to your webalizer configuration file (webalizer.conf) will allow you to get much cleaner reporting of user-agents.....
Enjoy! [TNL.net weblog]
4:31:40 PM
comment [] trackback [] Yahoo! News RSS Feeds Launched
This has been in the works for a while and it's finally up for for real. Visit http://news.yahoo.com/rss for details. RSS is alive and well at Yahoo. Watch for more in the future. :-) Congrats and thanks to Jeff and team for making it happen!...
[Jeremy Zawodny's blog]
4:27:44 PM
comment [] trackback [] Practical Unix & Internet Security
Charles McColm writes "At just under 1,000 pages the 3rd edition of Practical Unix & Internet Security might look intimidating on the shelf, but a quick ... [Slashdot]
5:46:18 AM
comment [] trackback [] eBay to RSS Generator
Via Tareq Tujjar: "I have been a subscriber to the Lockergenome for almost 2 years. Being a dedicated GEEK myself I find the content to be very useful. I particularly appreciate the new website about RSS. It actually gave me the motivation to finish this eBay to RSS generator. It is a FREE utility that generates RSS feeds for your favorite eBay search. I have been testing it for the past 5 days, and it seems to be doing good. This is a BETA version and could still have some bugs. I built it using .NET without using the COSTLY eBay API. Therefore, I can offer it for free. Please check it out, and let me know if you have any suggestions."
By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
5:02:44 AM
comment [] trackback [] blogs+im
Wikis, blogs, IM and other collaborative tools are going through a variety of trial matings as part of a grand experiment that is searching for new utility. I've been very interested in blogs and email (more precisely rss+news aggregator email)...
[tingilinde]
5:00:28 AM
comment [] trackback [] Distributed Wiki
Distributed Wiki is what you get when you take something like HTMLHelp and add Wiki-like editing capability and content synchronization via a central server or P2P.[Don Park's Daily Habit]More scattered bits. Manuals as whiteboards and discussion forum. Continually updated product documentation. Kill view and sliding filter bar. Admins updating and customizing contents especially terms by replacing generic terms with domain specific terms. Local cache of content with updates trickling in and out. Living documents.
Ray Ozzie's Groove is a good platform for this stuff. ShareDoc. HelpShare. LiveHelp?
4:49:40 AM
comment [] trackback [] PopHeadlines supports RSS enclosures
[Scripting News]
4:04:21 AM
comment [] trackback [] Internet Sales Rise as Share of All Sales
Online commerce totaled $12.5 billion, or 1.5 percent of all sales, in the second quarter, the Commerce Department reported. By Bloomberg News.
[New York Times: Technology]
12:30:14 AM
comment [] trackback [] Finding Comfort in Strangers With an Online Diet Journal
Hundreds of overweight people are sharing detailed reports of their calories and cravings on self-created Web sites. By Amy Harmon.
[New York Times: Technology]
12:28:09 AM
comment [] trackback [] Tuesday, August 26, 2003Two years ago, MIT "open sourced" its course-catalog, putting online the kind of course that most universities charge big bucks for as part of a "distance ed" program. Wired'd got a great piece on who uses MIT-free and why:
"Lam Vi Quoc negotiates his scooter through Ho Chi Minh City's relentless stream of pedal traffic and hangs a right down a crowded alley. He climbs the steep wooden stairs of the tiny house he shares with nine family members, passing by his mother, who is stooped on the floor of the second level preparing lunch. He ascends another set of even steeper steps to the third level and settles on a stool at a small desk, pushing aside the rolled-up mat he sleeps on with one of his brothers. To the smell of a chicken roasting on a grill in the alley and the clang of the next-door neighbor's metalworking operation, Lam turns on his Pentium 4 PC, and soon the screen displays Lecture 2 of Laboratory in Software Engineering, a course taught each semester on the campus of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Here," he says, pointing at the screen. "This is where I got the idea to use decoupling as a way of integrating two programs"."(Wired) [Boing Boing Blog]
10:29:14 PM
comment [] trackback [] Marc Canter
"The message we should all have tatooed on our forheads should read: Integration, aggregation and customization. Everything we need has been invented. Now it's just time to get it all to work together."
[Marc's Voice]10:23:58 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSSlets Are Just the Beginning
Phil had a nice post tonight about RSSlets from Eightlinks. I remember the Amazon RSS feeds hitting the ether about a month ago. RSSlets by themselves provide point functionality. I disagree with the location of the intelligence -- on a server. RSSlets in a MoveableType world can only be server based. In a Radio world, RSSlets are desktop based. Once you move this type of functionality to the desktop, a whole new world opens up. What is needed is a supervisory engine in Radio that provides a plug-in architecture for RSSlets. The rough structure is there with Tools, but this structure needs to be extended to provide management for RSSlets, a simple interface for creating RSSlets, interfaces that feed the news aggregator, and an engine capable of learning your preferences based on RSS subscriptions, RSSlet return data, and specific user input.
[Dann Sheridan's Weblog]
7:14:14 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS is/is not....
the point and a well-done counter-point on RSS. It shows that some people naturally see things as challenges to the status quo, while others see them as opportunities to disrupt the status quo. Which are you? Do you see things as threats to what you're doing? Or opportunities to improve...
[Teal Sunglasses]
7:12:12 PM
comment [] trackback [] AOL launches blogging service (News.Com) [Scripting News]
2:34:10 AM
comment [] trackback [] Monday, August 25, 2003bot writes "There have been a number of stories on Microsoft trying to do a 'Netscape' on Google.. what would a world in which Microsoft provides search look like?... [Slashdot]
12:50:40 AM
comment [] trackback [] Sunday, August 24, 2003"Here you can view over 6500 photos of 462 sites in seventeen countries, with background information and virtual tours." [MetaFilter]
11:36:08 PM
comment [] trackback [] My Boston Globe op-ed on net-politics
I've got an op-ed in today's Boston Globe about the relationship between the Internet and poltiics:
"When Trent Lott's revealing faux pas about Strom Thurmond was lightly touched upon by the press, the Internet's howling masses seized on the story, reviving it with a fresh angle -- Lott backhandedly endorses segregation! -- and kept the news cycle going long beyond its expected lifespan, until Lott crashed and burned and lost his post as Senate majority leader.Link Discuss [Boing Boing Blog]Huzzah. Of course, Lott is still a senator. In fact, every scandal exposed by or through the net -- INS witchhunts, stubbornly illusory WMDs, awarding of war-pork to Halliburton -- has yielded a decidedly hollow victory.
Information is power, but it's not enough. Modern emperors have learned the knack of spinning revelations of wrongdoing and bouncing back. Thus far, the Internet has lacked the follow-through necessary to make a lasting difference. That's changing. As the Internet matures as a place for political action, services like the Electronic Frontier Foundation's Action Center (punch in your ZIP and e-mail your lawmaker), MeetUp's coordinated nationwide kaffeeklatsches for every Democratic candidate (but especially Howard Dean) and MoveOn's thronged mailing list millions (who can conjure the budget for a major media-buy on 24 hours' notice) are providing the bodies, budget and means for advancing proposals and seeing them through to their ends."
10:05:25 PM
comment [] trackback [] Columbia Newsblaster
...just visited Newsblaster for the first time in a bit. Two new things jump out at me: a search engine, and more significantly, the ability to compare articles about an event written in different countries. [Puzzlepieces]
9:48:12 PM
comment [] trackback [] BBC to open up archive
BBC boss Greg Dyke plans to give the public full free online access to the corporation's archives.
[BBC News | Technology | World Edition]
8:39:55 PM
comment [] trackback [] Re: WIPO
Slashdot and Canada’s National Post have chimed in on Professor Lessig’s post about the World Intellectual Property Organization… [Lessig News]
4:36:11 AM
comment [] trackback [] Saturday, August 23, 2003Hey, the Europeans may be as dumb as the Americans when it comes to granting patents. The European Patent Office (EPO) in Munich has recently granted a patent to Amazon which covers all computerised methods of automatically delivering a gift to a third party. This patent is a descendant of the famous "Amazon One Click Patent" granted in the USA, but with a broader claim scope than the original US version. Read the rest of it. Yeah. There's no prior...
[Jeremy Zawodny's blog]
4:54:28 AM
comment [] trackback [] Using RSS to Deliver Newsletters
"Barbara J. Feldman publishes Surfing the Net with Kids and recently joined the growing list of publishers who have added Web-based RSS feeds to deliver newsletters without going through email. Ezine-Tips asked Barbara to explain why she added an RSS feed and to outline the process." By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
3:31:58 AM
comment [] trackback [] BBC online probe to begin
The BBC's websites contain more than two million pages and reach up to 43% of the UK population each month...
[BBC News | Technology | World Edition]
2:52:02 AM
comment [] trackback [] Keywords: To Buy or Not to Buy
Sellers of sponsored keyword results, the paid links that pop up in response to specific search queries, have been getting rich off small businesses over the last two years. But the party may not last.
Joanna Glasner reports from San Jose, California. [Wired News]
12:45:22 AM
comment [] trackback [] So you want to start your own web hosting company
(kuro5hin) [via PlasticThinking: Moe's Link Dump]
12:37:15 AM
comment [] trackback [] XML machine the successor to von Neumann
Really bring data and programs together.
(The Register) [via Der Schockwellenreiter]
12:31:05 AM
comment [] trackback [] Bogofilter..
"is a mail filter that classifies mail as spam or ham (non-spam) by a statistical analysis of the message's header and content (body). The program is able to learn from the user's classifications and corrections. [...] Bogofilter is written in C. Supported platforms: Linux, FreeBSD, Solaris, OS X, HP-UX, AIX, ..."
[via Der Schockwellenreiter]
12:25:04 AM
comment [] trackback [] Understanding Web Services [via Der Schockwellenreiter]
12:04:56 AM
comment [] trackback [] Friday, August 22, 2003Really good, lucid explanation of a technique for using protocol-by-protocol SSL security to prevent eavesdropping on public networks (like the Internet), as an alternative to IPSEC-based tunneling.
(via WiFi Networking News) [Boing Boing Blog]
2:49:32 AM
comment [] trackback [] RSS Feed Reader Extension for Mozilla Firebird
Seems like an XP-only installer so far :-(
[CSS-Technik-News]
2:15:01 AM
comment [] trackback [] Thursday, August 21, 2003Low Bandwidth SOAP: Using web services on low resource J2ME devices is possible through Enhydra.org's KSOAP classes. This article shows you how to create lightweight web service clients and servers.
[Der Schockwellenreiter]
12:28:13 PM
comment [] trackback [] SANS/FBI
The Twenty Most Critical Internet Security Vulnerabilities
[The Scobleizer Weblog]
11:53:43 AM
comment [] trackback [] Wednesday, August 20, 2003Very cool. In Perl
"Description: Intelli-Aggie is a proof-of-concept RSS feed aggregator and sorter that does the following:
* Fetches user defined RSS feeds.
* Categorises news items in the feeds into user defined categories
based on user defined keywords.
* Generates list of these news items grouped in various views. For an example output, check this earlier post of mine.
* The most novel thing about Intelli-Aggie is that the system tries to adapt according to the reader's reading preference, trying to show him/her more interesting and relevant news items first."
(via Coding Projects of Srijith) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:54:06 PM comment [] trackback []
Killer cartoon A new episode every 2 weeks(via coolios & flash) [MetaFilter]
11:28:58 PM comment [] trackback []
Worlwide IP traffic increases by 67 percent in 2003
The Global Internet Geography Database and Report is PriMetrica's expanded and completely updated guide to the global Internet with in-depth statistical coverage of the world's largest Internet backbones, the traffic they carry, and the providers who operate them. Founded on four years of deepening TeleGeography Internet research, this valuable resource combines the latest international IP bandwidth, pricing, and market data with proprietary IP traffic research and expert analysis...
[heise online news]
11:11:42 PM comment [] trackback []
WebJam!
Vector Lounge continues its journey around the digital world. Ten prententious, er prestigious web designers create some graphical works. More goodies than you can shake a stick figure at! My favorite dancing skeleton(s) wireframe from Amsterdam.
(via altdude) [MetaFilter]
2:32:25 PM comment [] trackback []
Steve Kirks's vision of a new kind of browser
RSS feed aware with intelligent filtering and Tivo "learn my interests" technlogy. Great vision!
"Create a different kind of aggregator, one that's a browser first and a RSS reader second. The browser has a preference page where you subscribe to feeds of interest. Second, add a list of keywords to find in the feeds. Third, add technology to monitor your site view habits (think Tivo without the privacy issues).(via house of warwick) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]When you launch this program, it displays a "customized home page" using the prefs from the paragraph above. Click a button on the page and the app opens news/info/entertainment of interest where each category is a window, each web page a tab. Info you wanted to know is highlighted (cues from CSS embedded in the feed or web page). Keywords are highlighted differently.
Wow...where did this post come from. Too much caffeine too early....
Anyway, all of the technology exists for this today. Apple's WebKit and Microsoft's integration of IE allow an app to be written that displays valid HTML correctly, but not be limited to a web browser app.
2:23:43 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSSlet - generate RSS feeds from dynamic pages generated via an HTTP POST or GET
Cool hack in progress.
"My ultimate vision for RSSlet is a service that allows users to generate dynamic RSS feeds that actually do something functional from any web page. I'm a big believer in iterative and interactive design and development. So in line with this, rather than developing the service in its entirety and then releasing it to the world, I'm starting with making some of my prototype explorations available for use and feedback. Since this is a work in progress everything here is labeled as use at your own risk. As I add more functionality and polish everything up into a useable standalone service, I'll post updates here.Other Alternatives
The ability to scrape web pages and make RSS feeds is not unique, NewsIsFree and MyRSS both currently offer the ability to do this in some fashion, but as far as I can tell, neither handle any of the following gracefully:
* pages generated dynamically from the contents of a form (or other source of parameters passed into a page via GET or POST) * password protected data sources
* keyword based filtering"
(via Eightlinks - Features: RSSlets - Functional RSS Feeds) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
2:17:55 PM comment [] trackback []
Marketing by RSS
Greg Reinacker:
"If you assign users an individual ID, you can track them to some extent. You can't just look at how many times the feed has been retrieved (not relevant), but by looking at all the data in aggregate, you can tell how many users you have subscribed, the date they subscribed, the approximate date they stopped reading, and other useful data. You can tell, with pretty decent accuracy, how many individual people are reading each post.By olivier_travers@scifan.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]And if you are lucky enough to know something about an individual subscriber, you can customize the feed just for them. For example, with the NewsGator Tips feed, we trickle out tips one per day, based on the date you subscribed. It's not hard - you just need a smart server, and your clients need to react correctly to certain HTTP status codes."
2:14:18 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Construction web sign museum
Website dedicated the kitschy art of "under construction" web signs.
Link, Discuss (Thanks, Jean-Luc) [Boing Boing Blog]
2:05:02 PM
comment [] trackback [] Net censorship in India?
"The thought police is gearing up to storm the virtual world. In what appears to be its first serious attempt to monitor the Internet, the Government of India has outlined an official procedure for blocking websites."
[Blogalization Community]
1:56:35 PM
comment [] trackback [] The world as a blog
Congrats to Mikel. Dave finally discovers Mikel Maron's Geoblog site..
"Weblogs.com + Geocoding + RSS." [Scripting News]
Congrats Mikel. You've finally made it. [Marc's Voice]
1:49:23 PM comment [] trackback []
Macromedia's Version of Weblogs.com
After seeing John's post about Macromedia weblogs, I took a closer look at the site and found this page. It look like they are attempting to replicate what you get from Weblogs.com. The problem is that they are using Cold Fusion on the backend, which can't scale to meet the demands of hundreds of thousands of weblogs pinging it with updates. Furthermore, the list appears to be dated or not yet set up to receive pings. [Dann Sheridan's Weblog]
1:46:01 PM comment [] trackback []
MP3s via RSS 
An experiment with RSS enclosures. If this works, users who subscribe to my feed with an enclosure-aware aggregator will have an MP3 of the interview Chris Lydon did with me last month, with no click-wait. [Scripting News]
Whoa!! I got it, Dave. Very nice. [Dann Sheridan's Weblog]
1:44:02 PM comment [] trackback []
Hey, nice links
Ben Hammersley's Dangerous Precedent: Nicely done.
Accessify Forum: Free to the public: talk about accessibility and design. ("Image replacement - accessible solutions?" and "Accessible sites: follow standards or follow browser bugs?" typify the fare.)
Bionic Ear Blog: Adventures of a woman gaining a new and improved ear.
Clip 'n Seal: Very cool bag closer mfrd by designer and blogger DL Byron.
GoodLogo!com: "World's finest selection of logos."
HTML Wish list: Designer Mike Pick dares to dream.
Meccapixel: Michael Cosentino's photos. Nicely done, sir.
Questia: "The world's largest online library of over 45,000 books and 360,000 journal, magazine, and newspaper articles."
zlog: Nicely done, old bean! Many more ..are readily available for your pleasure. :::
[Jeffrey Zeldman Presents: The Daily Report]
1:28:26 PM comment [] trackback []
Network Blackout
An anonymous reader writes "Renesys put together a special report on the effects of the recent blackout on routing and network reachability on the Internet. ... [Slashdot]
1:19:31 PM comment [] trackback []
Understanding RSS
You wanna know all about RSS? Fine. We're gonna help you figure out what's what! Scott Johnson (of Feedster fame) is officially under agreement to produce a tutorial on news aggregators and RSS. It'll be sold direct by Lockergnome and via Amazon. He recently came to me with the suggestion that there needed to be a good, comprehensive resource to help get people started. He suggested a "Mom's First Aggregator" sort of thing. I agreed, and let him have at it. He hopes to be finished with it before Halloween, covering: The Basics, How an Aggregator Can Change Your Life, Versions and Basic Terminology, RSS For Content Publishers, Developers, Users, & Marketers, Choosing an Aggregator, The World's Simplest Aggregator, etc. If you would like your tips, thoughts, or experiences added to the tome, please let us know immediately.
1:13:52 PM
comment [] trackback [] Roll your own Google feeds
Today I want to introduce you to three Google query solutions that are accomplishing incredible feats with RSS and Google search technology.
1) Google Alert - Track any search query from your favorite news aggregator. A variety of cool settings are available once you are signed up. My only gripe is that it is primarily focused on email alerts and I had to dig around before I found the RSS settings in the "toolkit".
2) "It's Google.rss" - I like this tool for query tracking better than Google Alert because I can get to making my RSS feed right away without the login interface and other annoyances. It is a great example of "no frills" ingenuity at work.
3) Gnews2RSS - The holy grail of RSS news feeds, in my opinion. You can finally get Google news without being bound to using MyRSS.com or any other ad supported RSS generator. The webmaster of Gnews2RSS encourages users to host their own version of this tool with his script. A link back to the script's author would be appropriate if used for personal use.
By matt@ctsdownloads.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:12:40 PM comment [] trackback []
Geeks Grapple With Virus Invasion
Security experts are finding plenty of targets to blame for an onslaught of worms and viruses over the last two weeks. Among the targets: ego-ridden hackers, bad Microsoft code and clueless users. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
12:59:16 PM comment [] trackback []
Tuesday, August 19, 2003Screen shots can only "say" so much, so if you're still unsure about how a news aggregator works, I'd recommend you take a look at this particular Flash application. Drop to the Tech Category and you'll quickly see how sites from all across the Internet can be scanned in seconds. This is a very powerful system that's sitting at your fingertips. With more programmers beginning to harness RSS and continuing to enhance the user experience, these types of utilities are becoming a commodity. Give this Monkey a banana!
By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:13:07 PM
comment [] trackback [] The RSS Weather Service
"This EXPERIMENTAL application is able to generate an RSS feed of the current and forecasted weather conditions for US, or international cities." This is an amazing idea, and I hope to see it mature quickly. Take a look at The Emergency Email Network and you'll start to understand that darn near every bit of content that can be passed to a cell phone can just as easily be passed through a news aggregator.(Via Smart Mobs)
By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:10:19 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS Explorer Toolbar for IE
RssExplorer is a Internet Explorer toolbar "that allows you easily find RSS feeds and subscribe to them using your favorite news aggregator / headline viewer."
By rss@freeblogistan.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:07:20 PM
comment [] trackback [] A Night at the RSSxbury
The night club scene just got geekier. All Night Clubs in New York City now offers RSS for the latest happenings. This feed includes interviews, articles, announcements and editorials. This bit of entertainment goodness comes from Matt:
An interesting twist to RSS night life has occurred recently, according to my sources. Students from the local college here in Bellingham, WA are using RSS to syndicate the latest locations / times of parties. Man, I can see it now... laptop in one arm and a case of brew in the other. I am going to encourage them to use RSS to sync up designated drivers. This way, students can see who is going long before the party ever starts. Implementation is not that complicated - and it is killer PR for my business. Then they can make arrangements with the driver of choice to get them home safely. It’s all about syndicating common sense folks... just syndicating common sense.No arguments here.
By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:05:11 PM
comment [] trackback [] Now *This* Will Make Me Subscribe to Rolling Stone's Feed!
RSS Artist Search
"RollingStone.com offers a search tool which creates an RSS feed for your favorite artist. For example, here's a Frank Zappa RSS feed."
Some of the Blogware they install is:
SSL-based virtual private networks explained with illustrations: I've been hearing quite a bit about using SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) or TLS (Transport Layer Security, the newer name for the same thing) for remote VPN access, but didn't fully understand how it worked until reading this article.
The traditional VPN requires a special client installed on each computer, or can use a built-in VPN client in many operating systems, such as Windows XP Professional (a couple standards) or Mac OS X 10.2 (PPTP). A VPN server/firewall terminates the connection on the enterprise side and allows access across the VPN encrypted tunnel to internal resources.
The SSL/TLS VPN uses a browser, any SSL/TLS capable one, as the front end, and delivers applications inside the browser terminating the connection behind a firewall at an SSL/TLS server which relays application data to appropriate internal resources.
[via Nick Bradbury]
[The Shifted Librarian]
12:35:09 PM comment [] trackback []
Images of Native Americans
from UC Berkeley's Bancroft Library, is comprehensive online exhibit of over 400 years of text and images of Native American history. [via a Berkleyan article that has sample images and more info] [MetaFilter]
3:33:04 AM comment [] trackback []
Syndicating Learning Objects with RSS and Trackback
»Customized collections of learning objects from multiple repositories are achieved with simple, existing RSS protocols, creating access to a wider range of objects than a single source. This provides discipline-specific windows into collections, contextual wrappers via blogging tools, and a system for connecting objects and implementations via TrackBack.« (by Alan Levine, Brian Lab and D'Arcy Norman)
[via BildungsBlog] By owrede@khm.de (Oliver Wrede). [owrede_log]
3:25:17 AM comment [] trackback []
Aggregators Attack Info Overload
Internet news addicts are turning in droves to so-called aggregator services, which relieve information overload by condensing multiple sites into a single feed.
By Ryan Singel. [Wired News]
2:57:15 AM comment [] trackback []
Personal Broadcasting Opens Yet Another Front for Journalists
(by J.D. Lasica) A camera, firewire and the ability to Webcast are all you need. Oh yeah, and don't forget that you have to like sticking a camera and microphone in people's faces.
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
2:24:14 AM comment [] trackback []
BlogHost - cheap blog hosting with blogging tools like MovableType pre-installed "Jace Herring of Bloghosts wrote me the following: "We are happy to do the install and setup of lots of different types of software including blog software, to image galleries, to whatever else you might need. We will assist in these installations completely free of charge by request after your account is activated. "Check out their Summer Special that end on August 31.
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
Plans start with Bronze: $3/mo:
* Total Disk Space: 75mb
* Bandwidth: 5gb/month
* Email Accounts: Unlimited
* FTP Accounts: Unlimited
* MySQL Databases: Unlimited
* Subdomains: Unlimited
* Mailing Lists: 4
* Hosting for one domain
* cPanel7 Control Panel
MovableType
Greymatter
Blogger
Textpattern
b2"
2:09:53 AM comment [] trackback []
SSL VPNs versus traditional VPNs
Excellent article and excellent summary by Glen F.
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
2:02:45 AM comment [] trackback []
Monday, August 18, 20032:45:59 AM
comment [] trackback [] Secure XSLT
If you thought you could just throw in an off-the-shelf XSLT engine into your software to enhance your output capabilites, you need a security wake up call. XML has its own set of potential security issues that must not be overlooked and XSLT is no exception.
Prajakta Joshi shows how to perform XSL transformations securely in Secure XSL Transformations in Microsoft .NET. If you are not a .NET programmer, ignore the .NET bits and concentrate of the issues. [Don Park's Daily Habit]
2:22:09 AM comment [] trackback []
XFree86 Fork Gets a Name, Website
Piethein Strengholt writes "Today the Xfree86 fork is a fact. A new project has started and is located at: xouvert.org. Xouvert has been started due to the corporate structure and the slow development of XFree86. They hope to reduce the risk to XFree86 of incorporating new drivers and features." [Slashdot]
2:02:31 AM comment [] trackback []
Online Readings in Psychology and Culture available at the Center for Cross-Cultural Research, Western Washington University, Bellingham, Washington U.S.A. [Oliver Wrede]
1:59:02 AM comment [] trackback []
Sunday, August 17, 2003FOAF Spec update. Dan Brickley's made a grand job of tidying up the spec, giving a nice introduction and then describing each of... [Raw Blog]
Dan Brickley's been a busy man. We now have an updated, official FOAF spec that's got LOTS of cool constructs in it. Time to pull up a chair, sit by a lake and do some deep reading. My favorite is the concept of Agents - which are people or groups that do something. [Marc's Voice]
3:42:35 PM comment [] trackback []
WEB 2.0
Personal Broadcast Networks is starting to get some traction. Adam Bosworth (the CTO of BEA) is writing extensively about the Web Services Browser and Kevin Lynch (Sr. VP at Macromedia) has written a white paper on rich Flash applications that utilize Web Services (he calls them Rich Internet Applications). Each takes a different approach to solving the same thing: how to build new client (desktop PC) software that realizes the vision of Web 2.0?
What is Web 2.0? It is a system that breaks with the old model of centralized Web sites and moves the power of the Web/Internet to the desktop. It includes three structural elements: 1) a source of content, data, or functionality (a website, a Web service, a desktop PC peer), 2) an open system of transport (RSS, XML-RPC, SOAP, P2P, and too an extent IM), and 3) a rich client (desktop software). Basically, a PBN puts the power of the Internet in the hands of the desktop PC user where it belongs.
So far, we have made excellent progress on the first two elements necessary for Web 2.0, yet the remaining element has undergone an abortive development path. The primary reason for this is due to Microsoft's dominance of the browser market which has resulted in stasis. Additionally, both VCs and developers have been frozen in fear of fighting Microsoft on the desktop. Regardless, the Web 2.0 desktop applications I had hoped for years ago haven't arrived in sufficient numbers. Fortunately, the tide is about to shift.
Three development paths are now in contention. The first is a desktop Web site approach (Radio). A second is an enhanced browser method (Flash, see picture). A third is a custom desktop application (.Net and nifty custom apps like Brent's NetNewsWire). I suspect that all three approaches will gain traction over the next couple of years, but my personal preference (for a myriad of reasons) is to put a CMS (Web site content management system) on the desktop and leverage the limitations of the browser to provide an enhanced experience. This makes it possible for a seamless transition for users from the Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. Regardless, it is extremely nice to see motion. [John Robb's Weblog]
3:37:16 PM comment [] trackback []
For Surfers, a Wave of Hotel Bargains
New competition among hotel booking Web sites is spurring improvements in all of them. By Bob Tedeschi. [New York Times: Technology]
12:52:38 PM comment [] trackback []
RSS Is Amazing!
Here's an example of the power of RSS. I posted my "Bye, Bye VCR" entry at 6:16pm. Between 6:16pm and 6:26pm, Dave Winer picked it up in his news aggregator and linked to in on Scripting News. Dave's post made it into my news aggregator at 6:26pm. If that's not powerful, I don't know what is. [Dann Sheridan's Weblog]
1:51:33 AM comment [] trackback []
Social Networks, Jobs & the Third Place
Joi Ito posts his reflections on strong and weak ties after reading Granovetter's original paper in the context of the job market. ...What I can see emerging is a way to amplify the strength of weak ties.
[Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
12:28:44 AM comment [] trackback []
So true, it hurts: the best Nigerian spam scam yet: a parody on SCO
[Ars Technica]
12:11:08 AM comment [] trackback []
Saturday, August 16, 2003Thanks to Don Park for the pointer to Flame Warriors, a fantastic taxonomy of various roles people play on mail lists, with excellent illustrations. [Scripting News]
7:40:46 PM
comment [] trackback [] Ontologists, do you eat your own dogfood?
EEK again: "In general, I've found that ontologists are very poor at explaining what an ontology is. This is somewhat ironic, given that ontologies are supposed to clarify meaning in ways that a simple glossary can not."
And then, just the kind of thing you'd expect Doug Engelbart to say.
He often asked, "How does the ontology community use ontologies?" If ontologies were so crucial to effective collaboration, then surely the ontology community used ontologies when collaborating with each other. Sadly, nobody ever answered his question.
Well, the Ontoweb ontology seems to be a first stab in that direction, thogh at the moment it appears as little more than a glorified directory.
[Seb's Open Research]
5:28:00 PM comment [] trackback []
Scott and Helen Are Married
Getting married is a big deal. But I think Scott and Helen may have gone a bit overboard when they set up an official web site for their marriage.
[The J-Walk Blog]
Just a bit overboard... themarriage.co.uk.... no kidding!
5:21:06 PM comment [] trackback []
Old Domain Names
Here's a list of the 100 oldest .com domain names that are currently registered. The oldest is symbolics.com, registered in March, 1985.
(via Gammatron) [The J-Walk Blog]
5:17:21 PM comment [] trackback []
Translation Wizard [Puzzlepieces]
4:59:20 PM comment [] trackback []
Friday, August 15, 20037:00:24 PM
comment [] trackback [] Thursday, August 14, 2003Ben Discoe has created a system to "spider" Friendster.com and build diagrams of the results. His website points to source code and binaries, so you can dink around with it yourself:
"I wrote a spider (a.k.a. "crawler", "scraper", "robot") to browse the Friendster site, recording the following information for each person: id (e.g. 867412), nickname (e.g. "Ben"), address (they call it "Location"), type (valid or suspended), friends (array of friend IDs). My spider program starts with a given node, and walks outward through the network (breadth-first) for as long as you tell it. It writes its output to an ad-hoc text file. On the day that i first run it, i have around 14 friends and 220,000 people in my "Personal Network". I run the spider until i have around 1000 of the people (friendsters) closest to me. The spider is then tweaked to write output that can be used for graphing the friend network...."Link, Discuss , (Thanks, Rob!) [Boing Boing Blog]
1:09:50 PM
comment [] trackback [] Net views:
meet Mitch, Shelley, AKMA, JD.... Pixelview is an ongoing series of interviews with independent Web designers and developers. And Christopher Lydon has been conducting fascinating audio interviews with a slightly different bunch of people who have also been soaking in the Internet for a while. [Seb's Open Research]
12:51:43 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS advertising and respect
No sooner did Chuq finish with e-mail, but then he turned his attention to advertising in RSS. A lot of what he says resonates with me. Partially it resonated with me because I was flipping through the September 2003 Fast Company while taking a break. Seth Godin's column (sorry, too early for a link), is titled "Contempt of Consumer: It's a Real Crime". In a nutshell, its about how companies don't respect their customers anymore, and of course, it cites spam as an example. It struck me that they way Lockergnome's client wants to use RSS isn't very respectful either. They just want to cram stuff down my throat. They don't want to cultivate a relationship with me. I'd be happy to subscribe to RSS feeds regarding products that I had purchased. Key phrase: "I subscribe". If the company could use that feed to deliver real value (not just junk) then it would go a long way toward building a relationship with me.
Companies don't get it anymore. You respect me. I learn to trust you. When I trust you, I keep buying from you. If I really trust you, I go out of my way to buy from you. I recommend you to my friends. But if you don't respect me? I had a telemarketer persistently call me about fixing my unbroken auto glass. I finally told him, "I know your company's name very well now. I'll be sure that I go anywhere except to you when I need my auto glass needs fixing". I told a Qwest telemarketer I wasn't interested. She climbed down my throat, asking me angrily "Didn't I want to save money?". I told her that if it meant having to deal with her, that I'd rather pay more. These companies are doing themselves a world of hurt, and they don't even know it.
One of the feeds that I subscribe to is More Stuff 4 Less Bargain Blog. I would *never* opt in to a mailing list like this, because in an hour I'll be getting spam from all over. But I can watch the feed, and if something looks good, I can act on it. (Note: I have not yet purchased anything via these folks, but I like them, because they get it). This is another song that has the same refrain: "If you don't have an RSS feed, you don't exist". [Ted Leung on the air]
12:26:44 PM comment [] trackback []
Web Design Postcards
This is one of the best ideas I've seen in a long time: Postcards that contain web design tips. Look through these postcards for coding, design and content tips for your own sites, and if one of the sites you visit regularly doesn't measure up, why not show them you care by emailing them the URL of an applicable card?
[The J-Walk Blog]
1:59:58 AM comment [] trackback []
Microsoft's Blogging Future revealed through employment ads ?!?
Hmm. It's only logical that MS would get involved in this. No conspiracy. Just good business sense.
"Chuq Von Rospach sends along the following employment links at Microsoft. All use the word "blog" or "blogging" in the description of the position:
# Software Development Engineer
# Software Development Engineer
# Site Manager (MSDN)
# Software Development Engineer (MSN Messenger)
Read them carefully and you get a flavor of what Microsoft is up to in this space. There's a clear intention to bake it into MSN and Messenger, and to go against AOL Journals.
Interesting, to say the least" [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
1:37:09 AM comment [] trackback []
The GNU Projects FTP-Server hacked
Article in German [heise online news]
1:31:19 AM comment [] trackback []
Nutch: An Open Source Search Engine
Anonymous Coward writes "Someone forwarded me this site working to create an open source search engine called Nutch. In the age of weighted rankings on search ... [Slashdot]
1:02:55 AM comment [] trackback []
Google and the Fabulous Googlettes
This Craigslist job posting (via Anil) describes a new initiative within Google called Googlettes: What is a Googlette? It's a new business inside of Google that is just getting started [^] the start-up within the start-up. We're looking for an experienced, entrepreneurial manager capable of offering direction to a team of PMs working on a wide array of Googlettes. You will define Google's innovation engine and grow the leaders of...... [kottke.org]
12:50:04 AM comment [] trackback []
Adam Curry: To Collect and Serve [Scripting News]
12:24:04 AM comment [] trackback []
Wednesday, August 13, 2003And now please welcome President Abraham Lincoln.
Good morning. Just a second while I get this connection to work. Do I press this button here? Function-F7? No, that's not right. Hmmm. Maybe I'll have to reboot. Hold on a minute. Um, my name is Abe Lincoln and I'm your president. While we're waiting, I want to thank Judge David Wills, chairman of the committee supervising the dedication of the Gettysburg cemetery. It's great to be here, Dave, and you and the committee are doing a great job. Gee, sometimes this new technology does have glitches, but we couldn't live without it, could we? Oh - is it ready? OK, here we go:....
"It stands to reason that the Net would embrace Mill, and not only because his text is now in the public domain: The Internet is the vastest marketplace of ideas that mankind has yet managed to create. It's an unbounded and still growing embodiment of Mill's ideals."
(via Teal Sunglasses) [via Christopher Ireland's Fresh Perspectives]
3:09:23 PM comment [] trackback []
Walk the Great Wall of China
or rather, take a virtual stroll through the use of a QTVR-esque java applet along a good stretch of the Wall that seems to be in pretty fair shape. For the vast majority of us that will never get there in person, this is an interesting close up. [MetaFilter]
2:23:45 PM comment [] trackback []
Prague Spring
The Soviet Invasion of Czechoslovakia. Posters, pamphlets, social protest material. 'In the morning hours of August 21, 1968, the Soviet army invaded Czechoslovakia along with troops from four other Warsaw Pact countries. The occupation was the beginning of the end for the Czechoslovak reform movement known as the Prague Spring. This web site contains material from the days immediately following the invasion, and they reflect the atmosphere in Czechoslovakia at the time: tense, chaotic, uncertain, full of pathos, fear, and expectation... '
Related :- the Berlin Wall and East Side Gallery; A Concrete Curtain: The Life and Death of the Berlin Wall; Szoborpark in Budapest, with its gigantic Cold War-era statues. [MetaFilter]
2:21:54 PM comment [] trackback []
"On Liberty" (1859)
John Stuart Mill's classic, is all over the Web, says this article in Salon.
6:45:12 AM comment [] trackback []
Earth Station 5 (ES5)
Via Doc Searls, I learned about Earth Station 5, a new P2P application and network. In general, like the approach, though the UI needs work (or perhaps just a cleaner skin). One of the interesting things about ES5 is that...
(via Web Dawn - Rebirth of the Social Marketplace) [Channel 'social_software']
6:21:00 AM comment [] trackback []
DECAFBAD Quick links
- DOSEMU Synchronet DOORS HOWTO
- Usurper Home Page (BBS door game)
- Download DoorMUD (BBS door game)
- Way.Nu: Hacking the Watchers
- ssh & rendevous & afp
- I keep doing work, why do they keep yelling at me?
- muteblog
- Understanding the Accelerating Rate of Change
- http://cr.yp.to/cdb.html
6:12:25 AM
comment [] trackback [] Shooting Ourselves in the Foot:
Robert X. Cringely: Grandiose Schemes for Electronic Eavesdropping May Hurt More Than They Help What do you say? [Hack the Planet]
I say: "..not may hurt..."
5:58:32 AM comment [] trackback []
Monday, August 11, 2003European laws due to come into force by the end of October will shake up the way businesses are allowed to use cookies on their Web sites.
[The Register]
10:47:43 PM
comment [] trackback [] Search Engine Learns From User Feedback
An anonymous reader writes "Ian Clarke, founder of the Freenet project, has set up a web search engine that allows users to rate each of the search results it ... [Slashdot]
10:21:57 PM
comment [] trackback [] Get Iconized!
Iconize Me!: It's easy, it's fun and it starts at only $15! All you need to do is... place your order, send your picture and within two weeks you'll have yourself a custom icon! [Industrial Technology & Witchcraft]
8:26:41 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Whiteness of the Whale - the Semantic Web
Whenever I read about the Semantic Web, I am reminded of Herman Melville's classic novel Moby Dick. One of my favourite chapters of Moby Dick is chapter 42: The Whiteness of the Whale. Here's an excerpt:
"Aside from those more obvious considerations touching Moby Dick, which could not but occasionally awaken in any man's soul some alarm, there was another thought, or rather vague, nameless horror concerning him, which at times by its intensity completely overpowered all the rest; and yet so mystical and well nigh ineffable was it, that I almost despair of putting it in a comprehensible form. It was the whiteness of the whale that above all things appalled me."
The Semantic Web is, in the words of Tim Berners-Lee, "an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning". I've been following its progress in the context of the weblogging world (aka the blogosphere). With this bias in mind, I've decided there are 3 main types of activity for people who are developing the Semantic Web:
-
Building the foundation. For example, defining what is a URI. This is a deep level of granularity and it is where the Architects of the Web are playing. It's not recommended you get involved at this level, unless your first name is Tim and your second name is Berners-Lee or Bray.
-
Developing applications for the Semantic Web. This is where most of the tech blogging world is at. Unfortunately, it is riven with political and personal battles. On one side are the people who promote Simplicity and ease-of-use in web development - e.g. Dave Winer and Jon Udell. On the other side are those that prefer Complexity, so that they may build more abstract applications. Danny Ayers and Bill Kearney are good examples. NB: if you're looking for tech bloggers who can interpret both sides for you, you can't go past Marc Canter and Don Park.
-
Describing the concepts of the Semantic Web. There are many magazine and website articles that wax poetical about the Semantic Web. It's at a high level of abstraction and essentially it's creating 'buy-in' for the Semantic Web. Examples range from an article in BusinessWeek, to a description of Chandler (an open source web application driven by Mitch Kapor), to the poetic but deeply granular essays of Shelley Powers.
The Semantic Web is being gradually developed in the above 3 ways - laying the architectural foundation, building web applications, and defining it conceptually.
So where does Moby Dick come into it? It's because, like the great Whale, the Semantic Web is an awe-inspiring vision that both attracts and repels people. Some people, like Tim Berners-Lee, see the Semantic Web as a logical and inevitable extension of the Web. Other people dismiss it as not practical and they reckon it never will be. Most people are just confused. What exactly is the Semantic Web?
One way to describe it is that the Semantic Web must be meaningful for both humans and computers. As Shelley Powers' writes on Semantic Web for Poets:
"To be a Semantic Web, it must be mechanical, and therefore precise, mathematical, and ultimately unambiguous. But to be a Semantic Web, it must also encapsulate meaning, context, and embrace ambiguity. Ignore the discontinuities, embrace the discontinuities."
Semantic means "of or relating to meaning". But the problem is, we can't easily define what we mean by a Semantic Web! It's the semanticness of the Semantic Web that appalls me :-0
But what we do know is that the Semantic Web symbolises the future of the World Wide Web. It is our notion of what the Web can and should be, so we continue to hunt it. As Chapter 42 of Moby Dick concludes:
[Read/Write Web]"And of all these things the Albino whale was the symbol. Wonder ye then at the fiery hunt?"
2:23:11 PM
comment [] trackback [] Can RSS Save the Day?
Steve Outing tells us of This is True's recent leap: "For Cassingham, offering RSS gives him an additional way to reach readers without e-mail filters getting in the way or having them remember to visit a website. As spam filters do additional damage to ethical e-mail publishers, perhaps RSS will save the day - but first the web masses need to catch on to using RSS readers." Well, there's no time like the present to start! By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
2:09:50 PM
comment [] trackback [] Password Protected RSS Feeds
Both Erik Porter and Jason Nadal would be wise to read up on support for security in aggregators. Depending on the interpreter, HTTPS (SSL) and authentification over HTTP are possible. If you intend on making your OPML file public, you'd be wise to stick with safer URLs - leaving account information transmissions to the client. By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:41:23 PM
comment [] trackback [] Sunday, August 10, 2003For .NET developers: "My previous article, 'Translating RSS With XSLT,' went over the steps of changing RSS into HTML. In this article I will discuss the ability to convert XML into RSS using XSLT. You may be thinking, 'Why would I want to do that?.' With the example in this article, I hope to answer that question." By chris@pirillo.com. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:57:57 PM
comment [] trackback [] Interview with RSSJobs Creator
Phil Wolff interviews Steve Rose: “I started playing with the RSS format, creating some feeds for my own personal use, and I thought this would be useful for checking a local University’s job board. I wrote a quick java servlet to parse the new job listing and return the results as RSS. It was so cool! [ranchero.com]
1:13:10 PM
comment [] trackback [] Saturday, August 09, 2003Edd Dumbill: If you don't care about decentralized interoperability, it's hard to see how you can ever agree with web technology. [Sam Ruby]
6:03:55 PM
comment [] trackback [] Namespace training wheels
In general, we don't have much experience creating and using simple XML vocabularies, never mind mixed ones. InfoPath, the first application making a serious bid to enable mainstream folks to routinely gather and use XML data, hasn't even shipped. I think the creators of InfoPath and similar tools -- who hope that use of modular XML vocabularies will turn out to be like riding a bicycle -- ought to provide some training wheels. [Full story at InfoWorld.com] ... [Jon's Radio]
6:02:02 PM
comment [] trackback [] Arachnophobia
The Itsy-Bitsy Spider. I was looking online to try and identify the freaking huge spiders I saw today (possibly wolf spiders), and I came across this hand spider identification chart. Slightly unnerving when the spiders randomly wiggle. Perhaps more so if you have a problem with spiders. [MetaFilter]
2:06:53 PM
comment [] trackback [] Science revisits Kevin Bacon
"An experiment in which Internet users were asked to find any one of 18 strangers by using their online connections, showed that it took, on average, only five to seven steps by using friends and acquaintances. The results, published this week in the journal Science, illustrate how social networks operate and how they have become truly global, the team at Columbia University said. See Reuters. [onlineblog.com]
1:44:52 PM
comment [] trackback [] RSS Resource - Readme
For a while now, you've probably been hearing all sorts of things about RSS; we are just beginning to see its power and potential. Information on this "new" syndication format has (to this point) been scattered and somewhat tricky to understand. We're aiming to change that trend with this particular Lockergnome resource.
This was designed to be driven by several contributors, but only fellow evangelists and technologists need apply. Experts and novices should be able to turn here for the latest updates, and we'll keep expanding and fine-tuning the "About" page until our fingers bleed.
Ultimately, the desktop news aggregator (read: software) will decide which syndication standard comes out on top. RSS or ATOM, the focus for this effort will always be to illustrate the use of syndication technology to make personal and professional lives easier. [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:30:09 PM comment [] trackback []
Flash Aggregator
Oliver Steele has created an RSS reader in Flash
"The aggregator was based on a suggestion by Marc Cantor. It's a widget intended for the gutter of a blog. Like a blogroll, it displays a list of blog titles. Like a full-page aggregator, it displays the last few items within each blog. And since it's a Laszlo application, it can be driven by an XML feed, and animates smoothly between visual states." [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:28:00 PM comment [] trackback []
Comic RSS Feeds
If Tapestry isn't doing it for ya, Brian Desmond is working on something else: "Once I get the system debugged and beautified, I'll put it up on my server, and provide a system whereby one can subscribe to a comic strip in their RSS aggregator." [Lockergnome's RSS Resource]
1:26:39 PM comment [] trackback []
The Quest for the Next Big Thing
This is why blogging, wikis and other forms of 'social software' are important. They change and enhance our soical practices.
"Says Rheingold, who thinks this wave will be as big as the PC and the Net: "The killer apps of tomorrow will not be hardware or software, but social practices." It sounds a little scary. But maybe that's a mark of something big."
(via The Quest for the Next Big Thing)[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
1:20:35 PM comment [] trackback []
Dutch isp uses rss for trouble tickets
(via Adam Curry's Weblog)-Cool! E-xact has developed a similar system. [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
1:13:26 PM comment [] trackback []
Security Risks: A Look into the Future
Last month, a crazed call from a customer I was about to reel in with a hosting deal gave me another glance into the woeful state of internet security. A debian machine, acting as a proxy for some of his most important customer websites, had gone haywire. It refused to deliver mail and there was trouble getting in through ftp. A quick look over SSH confirmed a nasty suspicion: The machine had been compromised and run over by a rootkit. Although the break-in and installation of the rootkit had been done clumsily, the potential of deception that the software had, were it installed by an able person instead of a script kiddy, was chilling. [kuro5hin.org]
1:07:36 PM comment [] trackback []
RSS resource
If you want to learn how RSS can help you or keep track of new RSS tools and services head over to Lockergnome's RSS Resource.
[Kalsey Consulting Group :: Measure Twice]
12:57:07 PM comment [] trackback []
Microsoft's Blogging Intentions
Just got a note from a Microsoft PR person, answering some questions I had about how the company plans to... [Dan Gillmor's eJournal]
12:45:22 PM comment [] trackback []
BlogShares Hostile Takeovers are really very fun
Just had another hostile takeover of one of my portfolio blogs. Lawrence Lessig was taken by Ron Shelton using a Legal Brief (artefact). Very appropriate if you ask me. This is a very interesting portion of the game that I have just learned about courtesy of Joe Jenett and Joe's Crazy Game. If you have not participated in Joe's Game head on over as quick as you can, Phase 5 will be open over the weekend for your sharing pleasure.
[Dewayne Mikkelson and his Radio WebDog, Shadow]
12:37:05 PM comment [] trackback []
An RSS/RDF epiphany
Some fascinating conversations have been weaving their way through blogspace and email in the last few days. As a result, I think I've reached a new understanding of the seemingly endless debate about whether and how to use RDF (Resource Description Framework) and RSS together. I mentioned Dan Brickley's comments the other day. He expands on his remarks over on Shelley Powers' blog: [Jon's Radio]
2:46:41 AM comment [] trackback []
Two types of aggregators
Ziv talks about two types of weblogs - "take that" and "phone home". I
think the distinction is more subtle than that, and deserves further
exploration. ... [Sam Ruby]
2:44:00 AM comment [] trackback []
The other syndication format [Daypop Top 40]
2:27:24 AM comment [] trackback []
Nuremberg Papers to Be on Web
Harvard Law School is planning to put more than a million documents from the Nuremberg trials on the Internet, allowing ready access to records of hearings into the war crimes of Adolf Hitler's Third Reich. Newsday [Follow Me Here...]
2:20:37 AM comment [] trackback []
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]2:18:38 AM
comment [] trackback [] Authentication for RSS and Atom: Basic over HTTPS and digest over HTTP
We only have 2 mechanisms in 2003: 1. Basic Authentication over HTTPS 2. digest authentication over HTTP
We need something better but that's all we have today.
2. The auth mechanism chosen does matter on the server-side, but it depends on how big you are. A. If you are large then security matters, you have control over your servers, and because of that you can implement the security mechanism of your choice. (AOL, Blogger, TypePad, LiveJournal) B. If, on the other hand, you are a smaller site, like a single user install of MT, then either auth:
1. Isn't as high of a concern.
2. It is a concern and you are a power user and would choose a hosting vendor with such things in mind.
In particular I want to note that:
1. I'm offering up this categorization to generate a discussion, I *want*
people to poke holes in it.
2. SixApart has the unique position of living in two worlds, as it were,
with MT and TypePad.
1. The auth mechanism chosen doesn't really matter for the client side. Let's be realistic, if AOL Journals goes with Digest authentication only and you are a vendor of client side tools, *you will find a way support Digest*.
(via Re: Authentication) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
2:12:30 AM comment [] trackback []
Thursday, August 07, 2003Jeff Jarvis: Hoder, the pioneering Iranian blogger, has an interesting idea: using RSS with peer-to-peer distribution to get around government censorship. One of his comments points out that this is what Freenet is intended to do. The difference, I imagine, is that using RSS allows any weblog to be published or read as is, around censors. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
1:33:55 PM
comment [] trackback [] Karl Marx: Capital in Lithographs [Der Schockwellenreiter]
1:29:53 PM
comment [] trackback [] Branch Out
ecotonoha [medium high bandwidth flash link] [via Abstract Dynamics]... [Ross Mayfield's Weblog]
12:37:29 PM
comment [] trackback [] Google for Privacy Conscious Users
Viswanath Gondi: [Scripting News]
4:00:37 AM
comment [] trackback [] The-Numbers.com
A site jammed packed with financial stats on movies. Great for trading on the Hollywood Stock Exchange (HSX). The success of HSX implies that Blogshares will have a long life. [John Robb's Weblog]
3:31:15 AM
comment [] trackback [] Google News Alerts [Daypop Top 40]
3:08:06 AM
comment [] trackback [] Filtered by experience
Linkfilter, an occasional source of MetaFilter material, takes community weblogging to a new level, granting experience points for participation and requiring contribution points to "keep one user from hogging the whole site on any given day." [MetaFilter]
3:02:58 AM
comment [] trackback [] Phil Wolff interviews Steve Rose, the author of RSSJobs. [Scripting News]
12:06:06 AM
comment [] trackback [] I'm Not Doing the Ad Thing
(...)
Publishers take note: You will not pollute my aggregator and remain on my source list. There is a boundary of decorum you should not cross. When I see an interesting article I will go to your site and read it, seeing your ads. It is sufficient that you do not put the full text of your articles into the RSS feed. That will draw me to the site and the ads if I choose to read it.
To subject me to a litany of ads to read your headlines and single-sentence intro is absurd. I refuse to participate. F**k You Very Much. Strong letter to follow. [b.cognosco]
Yep, as inevitable as advertising in RSS may be... there is a limit.
12:01:05 AM comment [] trackback []
Wednesday, August 06, 2003Another free centralized RSS reader.
Instead of going to all the different news sites and weblogs that you like to read daily (weekly or just occassionally) and hunting around to see what is new (if anything), MyWireService delivers the headlines and summaries to you in an easy to scan page. You'll always be up-to-date.
* just the headlines you want
* from ALL the news sources and weblogs you like
* in one page you can access from anywhere
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
11:09:50 AM
comment [] trackback [] Hey buddy. Everything costs. You a communiss or something?....
Future of the Net: "Information wants to be free" vs. "truth costs extra" "...a coalition that included Amazon.com, Microsoft, Yahoo, Apple, Disney and others....spoke of "tiered" service, where consumers would be charged according to "gold, silver and bronze" levels of bandwidth use. The days where lawmakers once spoke about eradicating the "Digital Divide" in America has come full circle. Under the scenario presented by the lobbyists, people on fixed incomes would have to accept a stripped-down Internet, full of personally targeted advertising. Other users could get a price break if they receive bundled content -- news, music, games -- from one telecom or media company. Anybody interested in other "non-mainstream" news, software or higher-volume usage, could pay for the privilege. The panel's response was warm, suggesting that the industry should work this out with little federal intrusion. That approach has already been embraced by the industry-friendly Federal Communications Commission." For more, see The Center For Digital Democracy [MetaFilter]
10:31:26 AM
comment [] trackback [] Tuesday, August 05, 2003Some have argued that we can address the spam problem by redesigning SMTP, the basic email-handling protocol used on the Net. Eric Rescorla rebuts that argument with a clear and cogent explanation of why the real problems lie elsewhere. Required... [Freedom to Tinker]
10:05:05 PM
comment [] trackback [] Hacker hit parade goes live
A list of the top security problems on the internet which is updated regularly has been published. [BBC News | Technology | World Edition]
9:56:28 PM
comment [] trackback [] Big News! New Google Operator
(Google Weblog) [Daypop Top 40]
8:40:04 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Web's Favorite Color
This site attempts to determine the Web's favorite color. Take a photo of your favourite colour - it works best if it's close-up so the colour fills the picture - and send in it... You can tell the colours of pictures people have sent in with the spectrum along the top of the page. The taller the bar, the more photos there have been. The bar also responds to the brightness of the pictures, so some bars are quite dim when the photos have all been dim. (via Right Ho!) [The J-Walk Blog]
8:26:05 PM
comment [] trackback [] Okay, if you don't like to think about porn, avert your eyes...
There's going to be a big for-pay business around sex movies delivered via RSS, using enclosures and Adam Curry's brilliant idea for time-shifted downloads. The algorithm is implemented in Radio, and probably no other aggregator, at this time. Instead of grainy little postage-stamp-size Quicktimes that take forever to download, you'll get full-screen digital movies and no click-wait. There's real money to be made here. [Scripting News] 8:20:15 PM
comment [] trackback [] Dan Gillmor
"I'm spending several days at the Vermont headquarters of the Howard Dean presidential campaign, studying a breakthrough in American politics." [Scripting News]
8:18:43 PM
comment [] trackback [] Using RSS 2.0 and RDF together
I've been working on a series of issue analyses for the RSS 2.0 site. One of the questions I've been wanting to explore is whether RDF might be used in conjunction with RSS 2.0, and if so how. Today, in the comments section of the site, Dan Brickley pointed me to the example I've been looking for. He writes:
This week, a new 'RSS and jobs' site is getting some interest. http://www.rssjobs.com/rssjobs/index.jsp There is a similiar effort at http://jobs.perl.org/rss/ (eg. see http://jobs.perl.org/rss/telecommute.rss) and an old example scenario that Libby and I worked on at http://ilrt.org/discovery/2000/11/rss-query/.Suppose you wanted to do an RSS 2.0 feed that would expose those job fields as first-class XML. And suppose further that you wanted to express the job data in terms of RDF. What might that look like? ... [Jon's Radio]
I hope we all agree that such applications are an exciting part of the future of RSS and RSS-like technology. To my mind, the big question is, how can we partition the work so that we have a Web of complementary namespaces which fit together to give us better descriptions in our XML feeds.
Looking at the feeds currently served by rssjobs.com, all the structure is hidden, entity escaped, inside the 'description' tag. Date, job title, employer, location, blurb... all crushed into a single field.
8:13:25 PM
comment [] trackback [] New Law Blogs Ahoy!!!
Robert Unterberger, a lawyer and legal writing instructor, has started a bevy of blogs: Law Student Writing Blog, Delaware Personal Injury Lawyer Blog, New Jersey Personal Injury Lawyer Blog, and Pennsylvannia Personal Injury Blog. I'm guessing that Robert probably is a personal injury lawyer. I'm also guessing that he is taking advantage of the newly relaxed FCC rules that allow for concentrated ownership of media.
Also, spotted on the horizon is a blog by C.E. Petit (also a practicing attorney) called Scrivener's Error. His focus is on law and publishing from the author's often sarcastic perspective.
Steph over at BlueBlanket has a new blawg called The Blawg Review that focuses on new developments in academia, such as new law journal articles.
Finally, James Carruth is a 2L at BYU Law School and he has a blog that he'd like ya'll to know about. Enjoy!
[Ernie the Attorney]8:08:44 PM
comment [] trackback [] Syndigator
Syndigator is an RSS reader for Linux that uses the familiar three-pane layout. [ranchero.com]
7:59:46 PM
comment [] trackback [] Monday, August 04, 200311:32:03 PM
comment [] trackback [] Feed Express: Yet Another news aggregator Open Source. Built on .NET. Windows. Ali likes it. [The Scobleizer Weblog]
11:30:39 PM
comment [] trackback [] If You Liked the Web Page, You'll Love the Ad Online publishers are beginning to sense the possibilities of having Google or Overture serve ads to their audiences. By Bob Tedeschi. [New York Times: Technology]
11:28:18 PM
comment [] trackback [] Blurring the Line Between Blogs and News
"Bloggers love to talk about how this RSS-empowered medium is changing journalism forever. What's already clear to me is that blogs and 'traditional' news journalism are ideal partners for delivering, aggregating and analyzing news.For example, I'm subscribed to around 50 RSS feeds that deliver content to my news aggregator on a daily basis. What's happening here is that you quickly notice patterns where breaking news around the web feeds blog discussions, and vice versa. So in that context, Tech Watch is a natural fit for InfoWorld's news team. Expect to see us blog from events like trade shows, and link to enterprise IT news around the web with our spin. Some of us might even try to be funny (but don't hold your breath).
So what makes Tech Watch unique?
1. Every InfoWorld news reporter has been issued a username and password for posting to this site.
2. Some news stories will get blogged, others will run in the news section. If we develop a formula for exactly how those decisions are made I'll let you know.
4. The copy desk is cut out of the loop. Goodbye production latency, and hello group editing!" [InfoWorld, via Jon's Radio]
It will be interesting to watch how these reporters decide what is "news" and what is a blog entry. Will InfoWorld's famous RSS ads run in blog entries, too? And how does the copy desk (and the higher-ups) feel about being cut out of the loop? When InfoWorld evaluates this project in a few months, what will the consequences of cutting out the copy desk be? Will there be extra rewards or recognition (internally or externally) for those reporters that post more (or less) to the blog than to the news section?
InfoWorld is definitely doing some interesting things these days... [The Shifted Librarian]11:21:35 PM
comment [] trackback [] Extending Movable Type into University Courses
"One of the most active entries I've posted this year was my wish for a good open-source courseware package. I ended up looking at a few of the suggestions, but to get what I wanted, all would have required too steep a learning curve and customization process.
So, today I decided to see if I could leverage my existing knowledge of MovableType to generate something that met my basic needs for courseware. I plan on keeping the grades in our Prometheus-based courseware (saves me the hassle of dealing with password-protected stuff, and importing class lists), but putting everything else into a customized course blog. That allows me to make the course content easily accessible to students, colleagues, and other interested parties--and to allow comments and ideas from people outside of the class to become part of the [sic]
The beginnings of the course site can be found at http://www.it.rit.edu/~ell/320/320-031/. I've done nothing yet with aesthetics, obviously, because I wanted to first think through functionality...." [mamamusings]
How cool is it that Liz Lawley is extending Movable Type to become basic courseware and documenting how she's doing it via her personal blog?! The next time someone questions the value of blogging, show them this entry!
Of course, it would be interesting if Liz could work the school's library into the course blog, too - assignments, resources, links to live help if available, etc. The key is for librarians to work with professors on these kinds of projects and then promote these services to the entire faculty.
On a side note, let's see how quickly trackback works to show this post to Liz. It will be yet another wonderful example of how blogs open the lines of communication, collaboration, and good-old-fashioned brainstorming!
[The Shifted Librarian]11:17:04 PM
comment [] trackback [] Job Ads Go RSS
"Are you looking for a new job? Are you using the internet? Do you have search agents saved on Monster, Dice, HotJobs, and countless others? Do you have the time and patience to weed through all the job listings on all the job boards you would like to check on a daily basis?Imagine creating all of your search agents in one place, and viewing the results all at once. Imagine knowing at a glance which listings are new, and which you have already seen. Imagine spending less time checking more job boards than you do now. Imagine doing this throughout the day, when you want to, and on your schedule.
RSSJobs allows you to create and save searches for Monster, Dice, HotJobs,and more in one location, then delivers the results to your favorite RSS Reader." [via The Scobleizer Weblog]
No "about us" page, but it's an interesting idea, especially since you can throw the feeds into the aggregator of your choice.
[The Shifted Librarian]11:13:48 PM
comment [] trackback [] New ring: voice calls over Net
SJ Mercury: Dan Gillmor. But my move into what's called "voice over Internet Protocol" (VoIP) -- making voice calls on the Net as opposed to the long-established circuit-switched system -- is a lot better for me than for the traditional phone companies whose services I've replaced. [Tomalak's Realm]
2:35:36 AM
comment [] trackback [] Sunday, August 03, 2003
A series of very bizarre Flash animations by H. Hoogerbrugge. Via Dublog.[The Cartoonist]
5:46:33 AM
comment [] trackback [] 26things
For then entire month of July, the folks at sh1ft.org have been holding an international photographic scavenger hunt called 26 things. The hunt involves taking pictures of abstract topics such as love or symmetry. With over 300 sets so far, they have lots of great pics, any MeFi users do this? [MetaFilter]
5:04:37 AM
comment [] trackback [] An Interview with Ethan Diamond - creator of Oddpost
Great behind the curtain peek at this Windows IE only email and RSS reader app. Oddpost debuted last year to a great fanfare in the web design community. With its desktop-quality experience and simple design, this web-based email application was unlike anything anyone had ever seen.
[Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
12:04:37 AM
comment [] trackback [] Saturday, August 02, 2003...Another possible one that E-xact can use.
The RSS Magic component provides developers an easy way to download, read, write, and manipulate RSS data. Check out the following features:
- No knowledge of XML required.
- No need to write socket/TCP/download code.
- No file I/O code required.
- Easily create your own weblogger, news aggregator, or RSS creator.
3:25:35 PM
comment [] trackback [] The Genecast News Service - server based RSS aggregator
Very cool: The Genecast News Service is a news aggregator. It is collecting news and weblog updates 24 hours per day, from around the world. If you have a newsfeed that's not already available -- just add it. Subscribe and GO! (...) This means you do not have to download and install special software. Unlike other news aggregators, there's no need to stay on-line for longer periods of time, and wait for software to scan the web. The Genecast News Service is up-to-date when you connect, and synchronizes your newsreader in seconds.
(via Scobleizer Radio Weblog) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
3:19:30 PM
comment [] trackback [] HubLog: OpenAm linking
... no more convoluted Amazon URLs. This is great! Now if we could only get rid of the url.cgi bit. How about www.openam.com/book?title=smart%20mobs instead?
It's always been difficult to link to Amazon, because you have to find the ASIN (product code) to put in the URL. To avoid this, the OpenAm service lets anyone link directly to Amazon product pages, just by using the title (and the author if the title's not precise enough).
For example, to link to Stephen Wolfram's 'A New Kind Of Science', you can use the URL http://www.openam.com/url.cgi?title=a%20new%20kind%20of%20science (the %20 is the encoding for a space).
To link to Howard Rheingold's 'Smart Mobs', you could use http://www.openam.com/url.cgi?title=smart%20mobs or http://www.openam.com/url.cgi?title=smart%20mobs&author=rheingold
and to link to 'The Life Of Pi' using your associates ID (to get sales commission), just use http://www.openam.com/url.cgi?title=life%20of%20pi&ref=exampleid
If that's still too complicated, you can use this OpenAm bookmarklet to generate the links automatically.
(via Marc's Voice) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
3:14:38 PM comment [] trackback []
NewsGator Case Study: Triple Point Technology
Wow! NewsGator + MovableType + SharePoint RSS feeds ...(via Jon Husband's Wirearchy) [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
3:09:58 PM comment [] trackback []
20 Questions [Daypop Top 40]
5:44:23 AM comment [] trackback []
REDpaper: "Publishing for the Little Folks" [Daypop Top 40]
5:42:44 AM comment [] trackback []
Software archeology
Prowling the ruins of ancient software. Famous programs from just a generation or two ago are in danger of disappearing from human ken, forever. [Der Schockwellenreiter]
5:26:06 AM comment [] trackback []
Friday, August 01, 2003knifee writes "New scientist is running an article explaining how hackers can use Google's cache to quickly hunt down sensitive pages, for example ... [Slashdot]
5:27:38 AM
comment [] trackback [] East German Propaganda Archive Have fun. [The Cartoonist]
4:34:07 AM
comment [] trackback []
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