TechLifeBlogged

How do you stay organized? PDA? Paper? Maybe, you're not and need to start? However you may organize yourself, you might what to have a look at this tool even, if just for the sheer beauty of the concept and implementation. It’s called PocketMod. PocketMod is a browser-based tool and the only requirement is that you have the Flash player plugin installed. Once there, click the Create PocketMod link and you’ll be able to build a portable paper organizer that gets printed on one page of paper. You then fold it in a special way to create a little book. There are grid pages, lined pages, calendar pages all the usual stuff you would find in an organizer. You choose your own layout. Try it out. Get organized!

Technorati Tags : PocketMod, GTD

• Lifehacker, the Productivity and Software Guide - Cool tips for getting along in this crazy world.
• The RSS Blog - Randy keeps up with all things RSS and blog search. Great resource.
• TechCrunch - Relatively new kid on the block, TechCrunch is turning out to be one of the first ones I check when my aggregator updates. They also have an awsome weekly review new things on the read/write web.
• InsideGoogle - Nathan keeps up with all Google and other search related goings on
• John Battelle's Searchblog - John was a co-founder of Wired, has a book about Search coming out in the Fall and generally has the industry inside scoop.

Technorati Tags : Google+Desktop, RSS, Feeds, Circulation, Feedburner

Podcast Expo is just around the corner. I anyone going? I'm going to try and be there to, at the very least, wander around and meet people. Haven't figured out yet if I'll be there both days.

Here's what I want: To be able to go to Gmail, notice I have an email from a buddy and, right next to the message, have an indicator that says my buddy is on line. Then I can use GoogleTalk to chat/call instead of the email mambo. It should notifiy i real time. If you are busy, it's yellow or something. Otherwise green or red. Lotus Notes/Sametime has this. Awareness in a good thing.

Anyone know if GoogleTalk is encrypted? Can it be? What do you need to do that?

Technorati Tags : Google, GoogleTalk, Gmail

• How do I configure GAIM for Google Talk?
• How do I configure iChat for Google Talk?
• How do I configure Adium for Google Talk?
• How do I configure Trillian Pro for Google Talk?
• How do I configure Psi for Google Talk?

I found a feature on Bloglines that they say is new. Not really sure how long it's been there but it is kind of cool. It runs along the lines of recent conversations about 'how do you find good blogs'. It's called Quick Pick Subscriptions. You get to it in Bloglines by going to your My Feeds tab and clicking the Add link. At the top of righthand pane you'lll see the Quick Pick Subscriptions link. It lets you find the 50 top feeds of the day as subscribed to by Bloglines members and also lists interesting links by genre. Check it out if you use Bloglines.

Nathan Weinberg over at Inside Google is tracking Google Desktop 2 developments. He’s got more details about the Sidebar.
Hopefully I'll get some time today to install it and try it out.

Handy site from ResearchBuzz: Cookin' With Google. Enter ingredients and the kind of recipe (atkins, diabetic, crockpot, seafood, etc) and then click 'Grab A Recipe' and you'll get your Google results.

Ok, so no sooner do I post than I find out that Desktop 2 is available for download. Go here: Google Desktop 2 . More details:

• Get all your personalized info in one place with Sidebar
• Launch applications and search instantly with Quick Find
• Find all your email, files, photos, web history, Gmail, and more
• Search conveniently in Outlook with the Outlook Toolbar

I got an email this afternoon from Blake Rhodes over at IceRocket. He told me that they were adding servers all weekend and that updates should be in the feeds now. Cool. I’m not going to change the Barcamp feed since it’s over if you want to check out barcamp on IceRocket then head over to this page.
Hope everyone had fun and gets home safely. I’m still sifting through all the news. I’m sure more will be posted as the week unfolds.
Note to self: Stop procrastinating and download Dave’s OPML editor (AKA his Purple Cow)

USAToday: Google updates search software with Desktop 2. New version due out Monday.Integrated email, stock prices, news, weather, RSS feeds. Some new deal called the Sidebar.
Guess it's time to do a bunch of new research and update my old GDS page.

The Air Force is podcasting!
Article: Podcasting a first for Air Force
 
Get the feed: www.af.mil/media/podcast/afradionews.xml
Technorati Tags : Air+Force, podcasting, rss

David Coursey: RSS Is a Label We Don't Need to See

I am weighing in on this because Microsoft is taking some heat from Winer, who invented RSS, and others for using the term "Web feeds" instead of RSS for a new feature in Internet Explorer 7. The new browser has a button that displays a site's RSS content.

But the thing is, David, you just had to explain the button. If it was labeled 'RSS' I'd know that it took me to a site's RSS content.

Some geek camping going in this weekend. The industy's brightest minds getting to gether. We'll watch and see what comes out of it.
 
FooCamp (invite only)
BarCamp (open)
 
Wish I could go but the following technorati tags will leed to the world's bloggers.
Technorati Tags : FooCamp, BarCamp

Blogger Buzz::"We've just introduced the option to require word verification for comments. This option (off by default) gives bloggers a tool to prevent the automatic creation of comments by nefarious ne'er-do-wells (e.g. spammers)."
 
This is a good thing. I noticed last night that Blogger is taking steps to prevent auto blog creation by having you enter text from a picture. That has a nifty name but I never remember what it is.

Technorati Tags : Blogger, Spam, Comments

Humorous flash movie. Check it out:
Why you should switch to...

In his article Finding needles in the growing Blog Haystack?, Jeremy Zawodny writes about a recent meme: important blogs and blogs that matter. Stats From Technorati.
 
Jeremy Zawodny: "..the reality is that I don't care. I don't care how many blogs there are and neither do most people. What matters is finding stuff you like and being able to subscribe to, right? Who is working on solving that problem?"
 
I agree. I find good blogs by reading other blogs, seeing who is commenting and having a look at their blog and subscribing to their RSS Feed. Additionally, I'll have a look at linking blogs if they use a nice service like Ice Rocket that provides me with info that others are linking.
 
You could also use a service like Findory and search for topics your are interested in and subscribe to the search results.Or try KBCafe search for an interesting way to skim through blogs looking for like-minded bloggers.

How do you find good blogs?
Technorati Tags : blogging, blog, findory, technorati, kbcafe
 
Powered By Qumana

For that last post I used a combination of Qumana and Blogger Toolbar for MS-Word. It seemed to work pretty good. Some may think it bit of overkill to use 2 tools for the job but the link and text collection is the Qumana desk pad is really cool.
Word to the wise…use copy/paste or save your Qumana file as HTML and open it in word. The RTF deal works but the results are a little messed up.
MS-Word make a nice link editor and Qumana makes it easy to add tags and collect  your info. A nice combo as the feature sets of Qumana continue to improve.
Technorati Tags : Qumana, Blogging, MS+Word
 

Business 2.0 -Free WiFi from Google?
This could get interesting.

"For the past year, it has quietly been shopping for miles and miles of "dark," or unused, fiber-optic cable across the country from wholesalers such as New York’s AboveNet. It's also acquiring superfast connections from Cogent Communications and WilTel, among others, between East Coast cities including Atlanta, Miami, and New York."

Via: Scripting News- 8-16-2005
Technorati Tags : Google, WiFi

You need block quoting and a way to see the html.

Technorati Tags : Qumana

This article points to Nielsen/NetRatings that say 11% of blog readers use RSS.
Do you?

UPDATE: The title field didn't get transfered. I had to log into Blogger to fix it. Huge problem. Not sure if that is the case on other blogging platforms. I've sent support and email.

The rumor mill has it that Technorati is being sold. No word yet on the buyer.
I haven't heard from John Battelle on this yet but his SearchBlog is the site I'd watch.

Ten Tips for Improving Your Podcasts by Jack Herrington -- Jack Herrington, author of Podcasting Hacks, offers his top ten suggestions for creating great podcasts. He starts with the basics: reducing noise, getting a good microphone, proper microphone technique, show prep, and format; and closes with tips that deal with improving the content of your show.

Via: Lifehacker

The President is podcasting. Actually it's just his weekly radio address brought into the 21st century. I really like this because I've always seen on the tv news that the president (and others before him) have a weekly radio address but I've never known when and where to find it. Now I do. It will be on my mp3 player and I don't have to sit around listening to it on a Saturday. Excellent.

Via: The RSS Blog

Bloomberg notes that the Oxford English Dictionary added new words including `podcast' and 'phishing,' saying they are now part of the English language, as it published its second edition today.
Via: The RSS Blog

It appears that RSS enclosures should not contain an FTP link. I tried
enclosure url="ftp://filename.mp3 and, while it looks ok on the web and you can click and down load the file, it doesn't work in podcatching clients.
Anyone else try this? Ways around it? The file isn't my file so I can't change that. I'm trying to bookmark a file in del.icio.us and have it in personal podcast feed. Works great for enclosure url="http://filename.mp3 type links but not ftp. Hmmm.

Hey all you college types (actually any adult could benefit) I found a nice set of Guides to Student Success.
Topics covered include:
Study Skills
Reading Comprehension
Vocabulary
Spelling
Critical Thinking
Textbook Study Strategies
Mathematics

From eWeek: Spyware Researchers Discover ID Theft Ring:

"'I'm not being dramatic. This is the most repulsive thing I've ever seen. It's very painful to see what's in these log files that are being uploaded in real time. We're seeing a lot of bank information and usernames and passwords to get in,' Eckelberry said."

Very scary. Go get the tool to remove it here.

Don't get me wrong, I like Dave Winer. I follow his blog because he's on the cutting edge of tech and I find it interesting. Today when he posted about Google News feeds he said:

"Like it or not Google, the format is RSS 2.0. Look at how your position is eroding. Go all the way, and just give it up, and accept the gift, the way it was presented, without trying to edit, revise, fold, spindle or mutilate."

Here's where I need some help understanding his position. To me it appears that Google is supporting RSS 2.0. Is it the link to Atom that he doesn't like? Is it their non-use of the little orange XML icon? Or maybe Google is hacking up the feed on the backend and I didn't notice.
See, to me it doesn't matter as a consumer. Back in the pre-xml days, if you wanted to move data from say Excel to some database then you exported to CSV or maybe where you were importing needed tab delimited. Did you care? Did you look at the output? No. You picked up the conduit that was required and carried out the transaction.
Now of course if a feed only gives me titles and not the whole content of the post I definately have a problem. Motley Fool does that. Really annoying and worth unsubscribing. I know why they do, I won't see their ads. Now, of course, I won't see anything because it completely sucks and I won't use their service at all.
I digress. Help enlighten me.

Google News Feeds will let you subscribe to either RSS or Atom feeds from Google News.
Also, any search on Google News now will give you a link to subscribe to it as a feed.
Finally.
One thing that is really cool is that if you use Google News Customizations feature and then click the RSS feed link your feed will be customized. Nice touch Google.

Slashdot article is an interview with Bill Hilf, Microsoft's Linux Lab Manager. Worth a read.

Business2Blog points to an article that says Chris Anderson who wrote the Wired article about the Long Tail now says the Long Tail was overstated and and not near as long as thought before.

That sound you here is the air being let out of an overhyped concept.

I dunno. I like the idea. Besides marketing, it is really the key draw behind podcasts. Especially the so called "indie" (whatever, Apple) podcasts.

Bella Vista
Originally uploaded by jurvetson.

Beta means beta...don't run it in your production systems. LOL.
(Probably a hacked up joke but still funny)

We ran this tip a few days ago over on Tip Monkies. Worth following so you don't get annoying popups: TipMonkies » Blog Archive » Kill Firefox popups once and for all

TechCrunch looks pretty cool. They are all about Web 2.0. And they have a nice Week in Review.

TechCrunch is a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing every newly launched web 2.0 business, product and service.

Subscribed.
Via: Scobel

This would have been handy for my vacation last month. It's called the Universal Packing List. It lets you pick off a few items then generate a packing list.

Via: Life Hacker

Interesting Wired News article about AJAX (for asynchronous JavaScript and XML). It's been popping up all over the place. Users get a rich web experience and developers should thinking about adding it to their tool kit. Find out more in Wired News: You Say You Want a Web Revolution:

"'The deep trend here is that we are really starting to figure out what the web is good for,' he explained in an interview with Wired News. 'This is the web coming into its own as a medium for software applications.'

"While AJAX is clearly improvement over less rich HTML stuff, it is really just a step in direction, in terms, in what users want to experience," Key said. "AJAX is nothing compared to what is coming."

I just posted over on TipMonkies a review of the GreatNews RSS reader.
Review: GreatNews RSS Reader

Press Release: First TIGER Biosensor System shipped
This is a great day. Everyone should keep an eye on this because the parctice of medicine and early disease detection is going to be radically changed.

The TIGER (Triangulation Identification for Genetic Evaluation of Risks) biosensor system is a revolutionary system that can simultaneously identify thousands of infectious organisms without needing to know what might be present in a sample.

Read more about TIGER

I should say that, while not directly involved, I work for the company that is developing this system. I decided to post about it because most of my readers are into technology and this is really exciting news.

A while back I wrote an article on hacking your blogger template for linking to Bloglines Citations. Here is a similar hack for the new IceRocket Link Tracker.

Update 08/04/05 1:00am: The code I posted yesterday didn't work correctly. Here is the updated version that uses iFrames in Blogger. You need to mess a bit witht he CSS in the header to work with your template so the links look nice.

Put the following lines in the Head section of your Blogger template:

<script language=javascript>
// 2005 (c) Blogs.IceRocket.com.
// JAVASCRIPT for the feature "Number of Linking Posts"
// you can edit next section

///////////// STYLE VARIABLES ------------------->
// Following parameters determine appearance of returned document
// in the frame.
//
// Link does have following scheme in the returned document:
// <a style='[LINK_STYLE]' class='[LINK_CLASS]' href="...">XX Linking Posts</a>
//
// You have two options to customize look&feel of links in the document:
//
// 1. Specify STYLE of the link:
//
// Style for the link (e.g. "color:white" or "font-size:1.0em;font-color:red"
// Use any CSS value for the style:
var linkStyle = "font-size:80%;color: #06c;text-decoration: none;";
// leave variable empty if you do not want to have this attribute in the frame's document
// var linkStyle = "";
//
// 2. Specify CLASS of the link and pass URL to CSS file
// which has defined style for the CLASS of the link
//
// Class name for the link
var linkClass = "citation";
// leave variable empty if you do not want to have this attribute in the frame's document
// var linkClass = "";
//
// Full URL to CSS document (Cascade Style Sheets), which will be inserted into returned document
// <link rel="stylesheet" href="[FRAME_URL_CSS]">
// e.g. : http://your.site.com/style.css
// var frameUrlCSS = "http://your-site.com/style.css";
// leave variable empty if you do not want to have this attribute in the frame's document
var frameUrlCSS = "";
//
/////////////// <------------------- END OF SECTION

///////////// FRAME PARAMETERS ------------------->
// These parameter determine style of iframe element
var iframeStyle = "width: 120px;height:1.5em;border: 0px gray solid";
/////////////// <------------------- END OF SECTION

// PLEASE, Do not edit this code. Thanks :)
escapedStyle = encodeURIComponent(linkStyle);
escapedClass = encodeURIComponent(linkClass);
escapedUrlCSS = encodeURIComponent(frameUrlCSS);

function writeCitationsFrame(permanentLink){
document.write('<IFRAME SRC="http:\/\/blogs.icerocket.com\/citations?f=frame&style='+
escapedStyle+'&class='+escapedClass+'&css='+escapedUrlCSS+'&q='+
permanentLink+'" ALLOWTRANSPARENCY="true" frameborder=0 style="'+iframeStyle+'" align=top marginwidth=0 marginheight=0 scrolling=no title="Linking Posts From IceRocket"><a href="http:\/\/blogs.icerocket.com\/search?q='+permanentLink+'">Linking posts</a><\/IFRAME>');
}
</script>


This next bit is the actual link that shows the number of links to your article. I put this part down near the comments section:
<script language=javascript>writeCitationsFrame("<$BlogItemPermalinkURL$>");
</script>

IceRocket is similar to Technorati. They've introduced a new service that you can make part of your blogging template to provide a number of posts that link to your post. Technorati's similar widget just provides a link as does the one I wrote recently for Bloglines.
I've decided to implement this on my blog and we'll see how it goes. Providing of course that I get linked to.
Here are the instructions for IceRocket Link Tracker: http://www.icerocket.com/c?p=linktracker

Via: The RSS Blog

I haven't tried this yet but according to this post on TheDamnBlog.com you can try speeding an elevator to a particular floor by pressing the [doorclose]+[floor#] buttons at the same time.
I'm not around tall buildings much so I haven't tried it. If you try it let me know what your results were and, if possible, what kind of elevator you were in.

eWeek Article:Greasemonkey Gets Security Makeover
Essentially, if you use the Greasemonkey extension for Firefox, stop what you are doing right now and go get the latest version. Versions prior to the latest could leave your computer open to attack.

Edited: In case Mozdev is down (which it was earlier) you can get the extension from http://userscript.org/greasemonkey-0.5.xpi