Microsoft confirms next XP service pack
ZDNET: Microsoft confirms next XP service pack. Next year and after Windows Vista is released.
Tools for Viewing OPML in your browser
There's been a LOT of buzz lately about OPML (Outline Processor Markup Language). TechCrunch did their awesome experiment using Dave Winer's OPML editor and that has fanned the flames as well. There's been lots of talk about the standard etc. etc. I haven't really done much with it except move feeds between RSS readers so I can't really weigh in on all the arguments yet.
I did find a VERY cool tool over on KBCafe called OPML Surfer. In short:
If you open an OPML file on the way, say, http://davenet.opml.org/index.opml you'll see it look like:
Ak! What the hell is all that? Don't Panic! Enter KBCafe's OPML Surfer. Copy the URL and go to http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/opmlsurfer.aspx where you can paste in the URL and click 'Surf'. You'll then see the OPML file magically open up below (similar to the way search results open up) and you can click through the links. Awesome!
Now, to take it to another level, I hacked up my Google Search Bookmarklet and changed the code to work with OPML Surfer. It helps stop all that messy copy and pasting. When you have an OPML page open in your browser you just click the 'Surf this OPML' link and a new window will open up containing the OPML in browsable form. Magical!
First, you need to drag this link to your browser's tool bar:
Surf this OPML
Now go to an OPML file like: http://hosting.opml.org/techcrunch.opml.org/techcrunch.opml and then click your new 'Surf this OPML' bookmarklet.
Technorati Tags : kbcafe, opml, techcrunch
I did find a VERY cool tool over on KBCafe called OPML Surfer. In short:
If you open an OPML file on the way, say, http://davenet.opml.org/index.opml you'll see it look like:
Ak! What the hell is all that? Don't Panic! Enter KBCafe's OPML Surfer. Copy the URL and go to http://www.kbcafe.com/rss/opmlsurfer.aspx where you can paste in the URL and click 'Surf'. You'll then see the OPML file magically open up below (similar to the way search results open up) and you can click through the links. Awesome!
Now, to take it to another level, I hacked up my Google Search Bookmarklet and changed the code to work with OPML Surfer. It helps stop all that messy copy and pasting. When you have an OPML page open in your browser you just click the 'Surf this OPML' link and a new window will open up containing the OPML in browsable form. Magical!
First, you need to drag this link to your browser's tool bar:
Surf this OPML
Now go to an OPML file like: http://hosting.opml.org/techcrunch.opml.org/techcrunch.opml and then click your new 'Surf this OPML' bookmarklet.
Technorati Tags : kbcafe, opml, techcrunch
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 Released
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.0.7 was released last night. Mostly for stability and security. And, best of all...it's 1 louder! Time to upgrade.
Tools for The Web-based Office
ZDnet has a nice round up of tools for The Web-based Office. Not calling the death of MS-Office yet but an interesting space to watch.
Here is the list they've seen so far:
Writely - "The Web Word Processor" (note that for creating documents, it uses an HTML editor and then converts to Word format)
FCKeditor is also an MS Word-like web app. It's open source too.
gOFFICE - "a browser-based online word processor and desktop publishing program"
Num Sum - web-based spreadsheets - except only the author of a spreadsheet can edit it.
Kiko - Online calendar solution powered by Ajax.
Gmail and now the new Yahoo! Mail (Microsoft is rumored to be working on a Hotmail upgrade, codenamed Kahuna)
called S5 - web-based Powerpoint
Webnote - web-based version of Microsoft's OneNote
thinkfree - online Office suite
Openomy - online file-system
Bindows
Gliffy
Meebo
Zimbra
What is Web 2.0?
What is Web 2.0? Everyone trys to define it. With the Web 2.0 conference coming up, business2blog has a nice slide they got from Tim O'Reilly that is the best I've seen as summing it up.
O'Reilly: What Is Firefox?
A new article from O'Reilly titled: What Is Firefox is worth a read. Even if you've used the browser for a while there are some interesting things in there. Discussion about web trends and standards as well as info about the upcoming version 1.5.
Padres: Western Division Champs!!
Congratulations Padres! 
Their record wasn't great but hey, after waiting for 7 years to get back to the post season I'll take it!
Their record wasn't great but hey, after waiting for 7 years to get back to the post season I'll take it!
The Star Wars: Episode III DVD Features
Revenge of the Sith due out Nov 1: "The deleted scenes include one that fans have been waiting a long time to see, one that shows Yoda arriving on the swamp-planet of Dagobah, where Luke Skywalker meets him in 'The Empire Strikes Back,'" Ward said. "George worked with Industrial Light & Magic and Episode III Producer Rick McCallum to finish most of these scenes with complete visual effects and sound design, and they bring a new perspective to the movie."
Sweet! Of course still have hours of watching to catch up with the Lord of the Rings series.
Hey friends, want to see some movies?
Blockbuster sent me an email offering a free month for all my friends. My readers are my friends, right? The deatils are here:FREE MONTH for FRIENDS and FAMILY
The email said: "Pass along the special Promotional Code word "friends" to anyone you wish."
I'm taking "anyone you wish" to mean I can blog about it :o)
Digtal Photography Blog
I happend across this page that lists tips for Night and Low Light Digital Photography Tips. And discovered there is a Digital Photography Blog. Looks like they do reviews of cameras and softward and throw in some tips as well. Cool.
Technorati Tags : Digtal, Photography, Blog
Feedburner adds pinging service
FeedBurner continues to rock on. They introduced a new service earlier in the week called PingShot.
FeedBurner:"If you use FeedBurner, we now provide a service that notifies aggregators, search engines, and directories about your content updates as quickly as possible. When you use the new PingShot service, we will 'ping' a collection of services that you choose whenever we detect that your feed has new content. It's that simple. Select the new PingShot service for your feed from the "Publicize" tab, and you're done."
Very cool. I had been using Blogomatic from Kbcafe. That service has been shut down. Randy says about PingShot: "provides the same features at the same price (free) and are better capable of filtering the SMOG (a.k.a. splogs, a.k.a. SPAM blogs)."
These 2 are checked by default:
* Technorati
* My Yahoo
You can also select these services:
* PubSub
* Ping-o-matic
* Newsgator
… plus up to four additional services.
* Feedster
* icerocket
* Weblogs.Com
* TailRank
Now if you've ever used Ping-o-Matic you'll know that it allows you to ping many different services. So when I say that on the list I got a bit curious because it didn't seem to me how they would let Ping-o-matic know which services I wanted to ping. Turns out that if you ping Ping-o-matic via the API it will automatically ping all the services that they include. Seems like multiple pinging will probably happen.
You noticed TailRank on the list? It's new and not quite out yet. Read TechCrunch's profile: TailRank - A Tool for the Long Tail
12 sided calendar project
Interesting site to help you build a12 sided calendar. You input a few parameters and select from 30 languages (including Esperanto!). Saves to PDF or Postscript. Pre-holiday project for the kids.
New way to find popular blogs
Here's a new way to find the top blogs. Randy Charles Morin over on the RSS Blog is working on a new tool called KBCafe Profiles. He is using Google blog (link) search, Technorati Top 100 rankings, Blogrolling Top 500 rankings, FeedBurner subscription data, Feedster Top 500 rankings, Rmail subscription data to compile a list of the top 200 blogs.
The top 10 at the moment, no giant surprises. Mixture of tech and politics. Of course lately, the line between the two seems to blur:
The service is still going through beta process but it looks cool.
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 Released
Mozilla Firefox 1.0.7 Released. Patch your browsers people.
Personally, I'm running 1.5 beta 1 and I'll have more details on my experience soon.
Reuters experiment: Podcasting
Reuters Labs is trying out podcasts. They have top stories of various topics and are experimenting with text to speech. It sounds pretty good to me. In the tests I listened to there wasn't much detail to the stroy but it could be a quick way of getting headlines digested quickly.
I like how they have a British accent :)
Here is a story to try: Google wifi story
Google Secure Access
Here's something interesting from our friends at Google....Google Secure Access
You download a utility (Windows only as far as I can tell) and it allows you to establish a more secure connection while using Google WiFi.
Google Secure Access is a VPN tool. It ecnrypts you internet traffic, preventing others from viewing the information you transmit.
"One of our engineers recognized that secure WiFi was virtually non-existent at most locations. As a result, he used his 20% project time to begin an initiative to offer users more secure WiFi access. Google Secure Access is the result of this endeavor."
Hmmm... the installer didn't run for me. Maybe this isn't 'baked' yet? Maybe it's bogus?
Update: InsideGoogle has this as well.
[via: MakeBlog]
Ruby and Rails Bullet Points
If you are looking to get a handle on what all this Ruby and Rails talk is about, have a look at Ruby and Rails Bullet Points. The article is a little bit technical but if you are familiar with programming and web terminology it should be beneficial. It's geared toward CIOs.
Talk Like a Pirate Day
Ahoy! It snuck up on me this year! Avast! It'sTalk Like a Pirate Day!
Hoist the main sails! Tip back some grog ye land lubbers! Arrr!
Technorati Tags : pirate+day
Google Blog Search Bookmarklet
Now that Google has released their new Blog Search tool I'm often curious who is writing about a popular page I may be visiting. I hacked up an old bookmarklet to make it use Google Blog Search. All you have to do is drag the following link to the favorites or bookmark bar in your browser. When you are on a page you want to check and see if anyone has blogged about it, just click the bookmark. Your results will be built in a separate browser window. Drag this link to your toolbar --> Google for Blog Links
Technorati Tags : google, blogsearch, bookmarklet, search
Update 9-19-05: Cross post at TipMonkies
Finding ruins via Google Earth
news @ nature.com has a story about an Italian computer programmer who was expoloring his neighborhood via Google earth and he discovered something odd. Further investigation lead to what are the ruins of a roman villa. Cool stuff!
[via: BoingBoing]
John Battelle on 'Search' and Google's Future
John Battelle is interviewed on NPR about his new book The Search. Talking about past, present and future Google.
Streaming audio worth a listen.
Happy b-day del.icio.us!
If you hadn't noticed this:
Del.icio.us is now 2 years old. Do you use it? Something else? Let me know. I love it for keeping track of sites I'd otherwise lose track of.
Del.icio.us is now 2 years old. Do you use it? Something else? Let me know. I love it for keeping track of sites I'd otherwise lose track of.Happy b-day!
Technorati Tags : del.icio.us
New Feature on the Blog
I had IceRocket providing me with the number of links to an article. Nice feature but it didn't work very well. I took it out and replaced it with "Google For Links To This Article". Clicking it will perform the search for you via Google's new BlogSearch tool.
There is probably a way to get the number of results before a person clicks but that would require use of the Google API or something. If anyone figures that out, let me know. That was the main reason for the the IceRocket code I had in there before.
I'm trying to get closer to the uncommenting feature I talked about a few months back.
How do I blog a big story?
Tris Hussey over on the Qumana blog has a nice piece on how to blog a big story. Essentially, wait, read everyone else, look the news, form an opinion and write.
Technorati Tags : Blogging
More on Google's Blog Search
Randy, over on the RSS blog notes that Google's new blog search is good but it didn't find a link to his site. He surmises that it's because that blog publishes only partial feeds. Huge pet peev of mine as well. Stop with the partial feeds. I've unsubbed from feeds because of that.
[via: The RSS Blog]
Google Launches Blogsearch
InsideGoogle: "I’m already envisioning the perfect feature for Google Blog Search: a conversation tracker, one that arranges back-and-forth posts in a conversation view not unlike Gmail’s. Basically, that you could click on any post, anywhere, and follow the conversation from that backwards and forwards in a threaded view simply derived from the links traveling between blogs. If Google were to implement a feature like that, they win."
I agree, that would be really cool. Check out the InsideGoogle link for more details about the new service. It has some nice features like being able to subscribe to the results via Atom and RSS.
Google Hurricane Katrina
Google now has a search for people affected by Hurricane Katrina:Google's Hurricane Katrina people search. It searches across several different databases.
[via: Lifehacker]
Rails Playground
If you are a web developer you might want to check this out. Railsplayground is offering free hosting. I don't know much abou this stuff so it might be a fun place to try things out.Details from their site:
- 20 MB Disk Space
- 500 MB/Month Bandwidth
- 1 MySQL Database, 1 PostgreSQL Database
- FastCGI Ruby On Rails Support
- PHP 4.4.0, PERL 5.8.7
- FREE Setup, No Monthly Fee, No Ads on your site.
Technorati Tags : ruby, rails, rubyonrails, hosting, free
eWeek's First Look at Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta...
MozillaZine - USA
eWeek has a first-look review of Mozilla Firefox 1.5 Beta 1, which it describes as "pretty darn good".
Great Sites for Developers
All kinds of web developer links today:
A List Apart - "For people who make websites"
ZDNet Windows Vista blog - ok, not necessarily a developers blog but still worth following as the next gen Windows OS goes through beta cycles.
[via: Scoble]
Yahoo's Katrina People Finder
Hurricane Katrina People Finder - "All-in-one search for Katrina boards and lists from Yahoo!, The Red Cross, Nola.com, Gulf Coast News, CNN, MSNBC, Earthlink, Operation Get-In Touch, Public People Locator, CastPost, Family Messages, and Gulf Coast Hurricane."
Hurricane Katrina Google Maps sites
Google Maps Mania has a list of all kinds of Hurricane Katrina Google Maps sites.
Useful for survivors and those searching.
PDC Bloggers site
The Microsoft Professional Developers Conference (PDC05) starts next week (13-16th with preconferenct 11 and 12). Keep up with all the news from bloggers via the PDC Bloggers site
[Via: Scobleizer]
Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 Released
On the heels of the new Firefox beta,Mozilla Thunderbird 1.5 Beta 1 Released
Preceed with caution until the full release is out.
Technorati Tags : mozilla, thunderbird
Protecting against Post-Katrina Identity Theft
NPR:" In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, many personal financial documents have been lost. Evan Hendricks, editor of Privacy Times, about the growing threat of hurricane survivors becoming victims of identity theft. "
Audio file worth a listen.
Free Linspire Download
Linspire (Linux distro) is available for free (if you act FAST) the offer was supposed to end 9/6 but looks like it's still going. I've not tried it yet so this is a nice opportunity. Normally $50. Go get Linspire here. Be sure to follow the details. There are a couple hoops to jump through but it's easy.[Via: Make Blog]
Recovering PC Data after Flood Damage
NPR:"Many people whose houses were flooded by Katrina thought they lost data stored in their computers. Technology consultants say the best thing to do with flood damaged PCs is to send the equipment immediately to the experts, wrapped in plastic -- and not to wait until the device is dry.
Recovering PC Data after Flood Damage. There is an audio file worth a listen.
Gmail is down
Rare.
Technorati Tags : Gmail
more cowbell!
Kaye Trammell: "According to the news, every time a cowbell sounds in the Houston Astrodome an evacuated person has reunited with a loved one. "
We gotta have more cow bell!
We gotta have more cow bell!
Mozilla's magic pixie dust
Open Democracy.net: "Firefox is more than just a browser: it is a symbol of the democratic use of the internet."
Make Firefox start up almost instantly
There is a new tool called Firefox Preloader. This helps Firefox get the advantage that IE has by preloading some code into memory so that the browser starts faster.
Give it a try.
Via TipMonkies:Make Firefox start up almost instantly
ThinkNOLA
The other day I mentioned my wiki about katrina help. It was fun to build but not enough. There is a great effort going on over at ThinkNOLA that I have decided to join and help out. The site have been up for a several days and if you've been there you may notice a redesign. We're getting the direction down, writing mission statements and generally reorganizing the information.
Essentially, we are a community portal that is going to teach New Orleans how to keep their communities together using the web, and doing so by helping them work with whatever web tools work for them. When we see people struggling to communicate, we step in an estbalish a social network.
Donate to Red Cross and get a chance to win Visual Studio 2005
Charlie Owen at Microsoft is offering a chance to win Visual Studio 2005 if you donate $100 to the Red Cross then let him know about it. Check out the link for more details.
My Katrina Help Wiki is now live
I've set up a wiki with info about Hurricane Katrina. This is for survivors as well as those wanting to help out. If you have any information you think I should add please let me know via email.
You can find the wiki at: http://katrinahelp.pbwiki.com/
The wiki is run on pbwiki which is a free wiki service. TechCrunch recently ran an article about Free Wiki Solutions you might want to check out.
Technorati Tags : wiki, hurricane+katrina, help, resource
You can find the wiki at: http://katrinahelp.pbwiki.com/
The wiki is run on pbwiki which is a free wiki service. TechCrunch recently ran an article about Free Wiki Solutions you might want to check out.
Technorati Tags : wiki, hurricane+katrina, help, resource
Support the Red Cross and pick up some great music too
My favorite band of late is donating all of their porceeds from CD sales onCDBaby to the American Red Cross.
Have you hear them? You should. Here is your chance to pick up some great music and support a worthy cause as well.
Click the picture to go to a page with a couple mp3's if you want to listen.
Powered By Qumana
Review: PodSpider
The other day I mentioned a new podcatching client called Podspider. I finally got the code to download it (after a little mishap of GMail classifying their email as spam) and have spent some time with it. I'll take you through it's paces.
PodSpider is Windows software and the download is relatively small, about 1.5MB. On install, a feature I liked, is that it asks if you want an icon on your desktop and/or your Quick Launch toolbar.
On first run you get a box that asks if you want to buy or run the demo. Not that intuitive, but a code arrived with my download link so I clicked buy. That lead me to a box to enter the code they had sent. Code entered, I was on my way to the application and presented with a choice to download the current directory. I did so. An approximately 2MB download.
The interface consists of a row of buttons: Browse, Add URL, Unsubscribe, Update, Download, Stop and Options. Underneath that is a row of tabs: Subscribed Podcasts, Downloads, MP3s.
The directory is a list of all the podcasts. You click the Browse icon at the top of your PodSpider screen and you can then search (or filter as they call it) to the one you are looking for. You can narrow things down by Theme, Category and Subcategory. Theme is top level (eg. Computers and Internet) and Category refines further (eg. Mobile). Once you find one you want to subscribe to, just double click on the entry or highlight it and click the subscribe button. If you can't fnd the podcast you are looking for there is an Add URL button that lets you manually subscribe. This shouldn't happen if the podcast has been around for a while because the directory is extensive.
Once you subscribe to some podcasts, they appear as a list in the Podcasts tab. Clicking on one of them shows the list of current items in the feed in the right hand pane. The feeds are sorted oldest to newest.
To down load a show, double-click on one of the entries in the list and downloading will begin. As they are downloading, the progress shows under the Downloads tab. Once on your computer they show on the MP3s tab.
From the MP3s tab you can play the show within PodSpider or export it to another folder or an attached MP3 device.
Nice interface, but here is where everything breaks down and the annoyances start:
In the list of shows under each podcast, you can sort but the sort doesn't 'stick' between sessions.
By default, the client only checks for new shows once a week! Yes, you can change it in the options but still, weak.
No auto-download of new shows.
And no tie-in with Windows Media Player 10 or iTunes.
No OPML import or export. You have to have that. Even with a slick interface for filtering and adding shows, if it's too painful to switch I won't.
If you want a download manager for new podcasts, as this really is what this is, then I'd say give it a try. However, if you want true podcast automation where the software take care of keeping you updated from start to finish the is not what you need. We need to move forward, make it easy for people to get content from the net to their devices. Until they add these features, this is a step backward.
Free Domino disaster recovery services
Connectria is offering free services to businesses that have lost their
Notes/Domino infrastructure. Please pass this along if you know
anyone who has been affected.
Notes/Domino infrastructure. Please pass this along if you know
anyone who has been affected.
Hurricane Katrina I'm OK registry
Pass the word around:
Registry for survivors and friends and family searching for information
Via: comments on TechCrunch
Cheat Sheets for Developers
Pete Freitag cas compiled a list of 30 Cheatsheets for developers. The list includes:
- Language Cheat Sheets
- Version Control Cheat Sheets
- Web Development Cheat Sheets
- Databases / SQL Cheat Sheets
- Commercially Printed CheatSheets
Technorati Tags : CheatSheets, database, sql, web, cheat