April 2004 Archives

  1. Apr30

    Gmail invitations auctioned on eBay

    A search for Gmail on eBay shows there are currently 47 auctions selling free e-mail accounts for Google's new mail service currently in beta testing. News.com reports $61 bids on some of these listings.

    Nelson Minar was kind enough to hook me up with a Gmail account a few weeks ago, but I have not been a heavy user. I have two invitations available, probably the same for these eBay users. There is nothing in the Gmail terms of use or Gmail program policies against selling these invitations.

    If this practice bothers you, the only e-mail address listed for feedback is privacymatters@google.com.

    [Update 6/9: Please do not e-mail me asking for Gmail invites. If I do not know you, and you came in off of a search engine, I do not plan on giving any out.]

  2. Apr30

    More on aggregators and feed distribution

    Dave Winer writes more and invites more comments regarding the issues raised in the Wired article.

    I have had some ideas regarding more community sharing of news feed resources. How can aggregator developers better publish their users subscriptions and activities? Would the end user be willing to have their data published? Share Your OPML is a start. What if aggregators had Share Your OPML functionality built-in? Locally stored and placed online as well. Most users have some online space available, either through their ISP, personal site, MSN, .Mac, etc.

    You have the dateModified field defined in the head. Expand the outline element to include a dateModified for the element. There is then a distributed format available to determine who has the latest goods. A trusted server would then need to connect the ownerName and ownerEmail to its client machine and aggregator, check for availability, and serve the location of the seed.

    Too complex? Other ideas?

  3. Apr30

    Wired News: Will RSS Readers Clog the Web?

    Ryan Singel of Wired News wonders if RSS readers will clog Web servers.

    The solution is HTTP status code 304 Not Modified. See section 10.3.5 of the HTTP 1.1 specification for more details.

    "If a cache uses a received 304 response to update a cache entry, the cache MUST update the entry to reflect any new field values given in the response." Date is a new field value. If no date found (clockless origin server) you use client date.

  4. Apr30

    Comparison shopping for prescription drugs

    Medicare.gov has a new comparison shopping search engine for prescription drugs. Search by zip code for prices for persons with or without Medicare benefits. Robert Pear and Milt Freudenheim of the New York Times profiled the new site today.
  5. Apr29

    Google files for initial public offering

    Google filed with the SEC today for an initial public offering. Some quotes from the Letter from the Founders, apparently written by Larry Page: "Google is not a conventional company. We do not intend to become one." "We encourage our employees, in addition to their regular projects, to spend 20% of their time working on what they think will most benefit Google." "As a public company, we believe a dual class voting structure will enable us to retain many of the positive aspects of being private." "We provide many unusual benefits for our employees, including meals free of charge, doctors and washing machines. We are careful to consider the long term advantages to the company of these benefits. Expect us to add benefits rather than pare them down over time. We believe it is easy to be penny wise and pound foolish with respect to benefits that can save employees considerable time and improve their health and productivity."
  6. Apr29

    Apache Geronimo 1.0M1

    Apache Geronimo, the Apache Software Foundation attempt at creating a J2EE compatible container, released its first milestone build. Source and binaries available on the CVS server.
  7. Apr29

    HiMPACT Sports Technology

    HiMPACT Sports Technology breaks down sports broadcasts into only the actual plays and highlights. NY Times reports on the technology. "[R]educes a three-hour baseball game to an eight-minute experience."

    Very useful for baseball coaches, but it seems like the soccer version could use some work before it can be used by staff. Highlights are not enough to evaluate play from a coaching point of view.

  8. Apr28

    Pepsi iTunes giveaway results in 5% redemption

    Pepsi drinkers had a one in three chance of winning a free iTunes download, but only 5% of all winners redeemed their winning code, according to News.com.
  9. Apr28

    French Laundry named best restaurant in the world

    Restaurant Magazine released its list of the world's top restaurants and French Laundry of Yountville takes top prize. Chez Panisse is #37. I have not eaten at any of these restaurants.
  10. Apr27

    St. Paul Saints professional baseball player for a day

    The St. Paul Saints of the Northern League are auctioning the opportunity to be a professional baseball player for a day. "[T]he winning bidder will work out with the team and will be guaranteed an official plate appearance." Bidding ends on May 3.

    Step out to the plate in front of 6,000 fans and take a few swings against the Sioux Falls Canaries.

  11. Apr27

    AOL Journals update

    AOL updated its AOL Journals service today. News.com has a report. Members will be able to add to their journals by sending instant messages or text messages from a mobile phone. AOL claims over 33 million subscribers, but only 220,000 journal creations. 0.7% of all subscribers start a journal? Seems discouraging, but maybe AOL is not marketing the service well enough.
  12. Apr27

    Chris Pratley on the history of Word

    Chris Pratley writes a history of Microsoft Word from his point of view.

    Details like great design were not critical to most customers, so that didn’t really make it into the products, except where it mattered to the customer.

    Understand the market, and the customers, and then go pedal to the metal, with release after release focused on what the customers need, incorporating their feedback. That puts the competition into reaction mode.

  13. Apr26

    Jenna Cooper, University of Nebraska captain, dead from gunshot

    Jenna Cooper, captain of the University of Nebraska women's soccer team and member of the U21 player pool, died yesterday from a gunshot wound in her throat. The Nebraska soccer team was celebrating the close of its spring training season.
  14. Apr26

    Slate: Our Hidden WMD program

    Fred Kaplan of Slate breaks down the United States budget for nuclear weapons.

    [T]his year's spending on nuclear activities is equal to what Ronald Reagan spent at the height of the U.S.-Soviet standoff. It exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2 billion) that the United States spent—again, in real dollars—throughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War.

  15. Apr23

    Women increase productivity in single gender groups?

    Alex Tabarrok writes in the Marginal Revolution weblog about competitive differences between males and females. His writing is based on an article in the August 2003 issue (Vol. 118, Issue 3) of The Quarterly Journal of Economics written by Uri Gneezy, Muriel Niederle and Aldo Rustichini. Very interesting implications for sports as well as business.

    [I]n the single-sex tournaments the women's performance improves considerably relative to both their performance in the piece rate system and to their performance in the mixed tournament. Women do like to compete just not against men!

  16. Apr23

    MacMice MicFlex USB microphone

    MacMice has a new USB microphone shipping May 7: the MicFlex. Bend it around the back of your screen and aim it at your recording subject. (via Gizmodo) I would like to record more of the technical presentations I attend with the online world, and this new microphone might be a good portable answer! If you have a better solution for audio recording presentations from the crowd, please let me know.
  17. Apr22

    Wal-Mart Microtel PC with Sun Java Desktop System

    Wal-Mart is now selling PCs using Sun's Java Desktop System through their online store. 1.6 GHz, 128 MB of DDR RAM, and a 40 GB hard drive for $298.
  18. Apr22

    Opera 7.5 supports RSS newsfeeds

    Opera 7.50 beta 1 is now available. Opera Mail now supports RSS newsfeeds. Integrates with Opera address book so you can see custom avatars for weblog publishers and even their IRC nicks. You can also add the blog publisher as a contact direct from the RSS reader. Supports CSS Level 2 revision 1 with few exceptions.

    • "Newsfeeds" added as access point in the e-mail panel
    • RSS 0.9x, 1.0 and 2.0 are supported
    • Clicking RSS links automatically adds newsfeed to Opera Mail
    • Auto-detection of RSS file (link rel="alternate") displayed in navigation bar
  19. Apr22

    Independent : Decreasing life of a CD-R

    Why do different CD-R media claim different shelf lives? Dutch personal computer magazine PC Active put 30 brands to the test by placing them in a dark cupboard for two years and retesting. Independent (U.K.) reports on the CD-R test results. 10 percent showed aging problems after two years.
  20. Apr22

    Business 2.0 : Creative Commons

    Andy Raskin of Business 2.0: "Creative Commons encourages artists to share and distribute their work for free. And that could be the key to a new multibillion-dollar industry."
  21. Apr21

    College interns : you get what you pay for

    Laura Vanderkam of USA Today writes about the market for college interns in the United States and concludes "unpaid internships are rarely in employers' best interests." (via MetaFilter)
  22. Apr21

    NetStumbler 0.4.0

    NetStumbler 0.4.0 is now available. Adds support for new devices and new scripting features.
  23. Apr20

    OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview

    Microsoft released the OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview today. Chris Pratley is a much better source for the intricacies. SP1 includes an API and SP1 will be the new OneNote baseline.

    OneNote now has real-time note sharing. It would be great if we were able to discover available documents similar to SubEthaEdit instead of negotiating IP addresses. At least they did not require Passport logons.

    You can also take video notes. My favorite feature of OneNote is the ability to synchronize your notes to a point in an audio recording. That ability is now expanded to video.

  24. Apr20

    San Jose Sharks use Tablet PCs on the sideline

    Katie Dean of Wired writes about the San Jose Sharks use of Tablet PCs and software by XOS Technologies to follow game plays.

    A digital video recorder hooked up to a server records the game and then wirelessly transmits the data to a tablet PC. Hunter can then use a stylus or a remote to mark key moments in the game -- like a goal for, goal against, power play or penalty kill -- so that he can return to them with a quick click. He can diagram over the video as well

  25. Apr19

    Sony Music RSS

    Sony Music has artist RSS feeds for artists such as Beyonce Knowles, Five For Fighting, Jessica Simpson, and Nas.
  26. Apr19

    Gucci iPod case

    Just in case your iPod is not sexy enough naked, Gucci has an iPod case for you. (via Cult of Mac)
  27. Apr19

    North Pole soccer

    Two nuclear submarines, the HMS Tireless and USS Hampton, surfaced near the North Pole today for a game of soccer.
  28. Apr19

    Pearl Jam video creation with Apple

    Pearl Jam creates its own live concert DVDs using Apple software and hardware. Apple profiles Pearl Jam's content production process.

    I don’t know that there would be three Pearl Jam DVDs if not for this type of technology. It allows people to do on their own what they were previously forced to hire from experts.

  29. Apr16

    Conflict Archive on the Internet on Northern Ireland.

    The CAIN Web Service provides information and source material on politics, society, and the struggle between Catholics and Protestants in the region since 1968. Sponsored by the University of Ulster, Queen's University of Belfast, and the Linen Hall Library, among others. (via MetaFilter)
  30. Apr16

    Sports Illustrated's digital workflow

    Eamon Hickey follows the path of Sports Illustrated photography from the 2004 Super Bowl from the time the images leave the photographer's camera. "16,183 digital pictures shot in Houston's Reliant Stadium by eleven of the magazine's staff photographers over the course of about six hours" reviewed and then sent to New York. He covers the different equipment used and the staff's switch from film to digital. (via Tim Bray)
  31. Apr16

    Eric Wynalda : Focus on the core fans

    Eric Wynalda says "our core fans are the only ones who matter." Stark contrast to Mark Cuban's comments I mentioned on Wednesday. "Our fans now know our names, and it's time we start doing a better job of learning theirs, because there will come a time when that might not be possible."
  32. Apr16

    Tiffany stylus

    1837 Collection stylus

    Tiffany & Co. has a sterling silver stylus for $70. It might work with the new Tablet PCs that do not require a battery in the stylus, but I am not sure. Luxury digitized ink!

  33. Apr15

    Salon : Warriors for hire in Iraq

    P.W. Singer of Salon details the use of private military firms (PMFs) in Iraq and elsewhere.

    "[T]here are more private military contractors on the ground in Iraq than troops from any one ally, including Britain"

    "Soldiers within the private military field typically make between two to 10 times what they make with their home-state military. Much as in regular industry, those at the higher end have an elite background, except that in the PMF world, having been in a Green Beret, SEAL or Special Air Service unit supplants being an Harvard or Wharton MBA as a point of distinction."

  34. Apr15

    Travel Sentry certified TSA locks

    Want to lock your luggage but know it will be busted open by the TSA and its purpose rendered useless? Travel Sentry certified TSA locks can open be opened by the TSA without breaking open your lock. You lock and unlock your suitcase own suitcase, but there's a special TSA key that allows airport security to unlock your bags as well. (via Crypto-Gram)
  35. Apr15

    First person shooter in 96k!

    .theprodukkt produced a first person shooter, .kkrieger, with the entire code under fitting into 96k! Impressive. (via Slashdot)

  36. Apr15

    ATT Wireless music recognition service

    "AT&T Wireless announced the availability of a new music recognition service today that allows customers to identify songs simply by placing their phones near a music speaker." Customers dial "#ID" from any AT&T wireless phone and provide a 15 second sample. They then receive a text message on their phone with the artist and song.
  37. Apr15

    NY Times : Glamour gadgets

    Seth Schiesel writes in today's New York Times about the new market for expensive gadgets. The article focuses on Sony's premium brand: Qualia. "People want their name monogrammed in diamonds on the cellphone or they want the pagers entirely encrusted in diamonds. We had the wife of one rapper who had a pink phone and she wanted it encrusted in pink diamonds."
  38. Apr14

    Amazon A9 Search launches

    Amazon's search engine, A9, launched in beta. Also includes yet another toolbar. Pages are cached and you can view Alexa data directly from the results page. You can log on using your Amazon account and view search history as well. "You can take notes on any web page, and reference them whenever you visit that page, on any computer that you use. Your entries are automatically saved whenever you stop typing or when you go to another page."
  39. Apr14

    The business of basketball is fun

    Mark Cuban writes about the true business of basketball. The purists are the minority, and in order to survive as a business you must provide entertainment value. The purists hate the arena crew shooting t-shirts and music over the loudspeakers.

    I am a soccer purist. I attend a game and detest the constant barrage of marketing. If basketball purists are a minority, soccer purists are an even greater minority. I see the kids stretching out their hands for an autograph from a player they do not even know. They try to figure out who he is from his signature. At the end of the night they feel like they were close to a star, and part of a roaring crowd, and that's what sticks.

    "[T]here should be no doubt in anyone’s mind that the business of basketball is not, and will never again be basketball, it is fun."

    Reality is that basketball is not the business of the NBA. Entertainment is the business of the NBA. Every single night of the week we battle movies, books, restaurants, TV and Cable programs, talking a walk, everything and anything that is an alternative to going to or watching an NBA game.

  40. Apr13

    Technorati Cosmos for each post

    I added a link for each post to its Tecnhorati cosmos. I followed the howto detailed by Dave Sifry. You want to change the ampersands to XHTML compliant of course. Why is there a blank rank parameter? Omitting this parameter seems to work fine, so I took it out. Most links will probably lead to "Ouch! No results found." but it is still a good thing to have and more powerful than a TrackBack.
  41. Apr12

    Mulrooney Soccer Academy

    Mulrooney Soccer Academy is a soccer day camp in San Jose featuring professional soccer players as coaches. Richard Mulrooney, Landon Donovan, Craig Waibel, Pat Onstad, and other professional soccer coaches will teach 90 kids per session. Formerly Cannon Mulrooney soccer camps, but with Joe Cannon in Denver it makes sense to rebrand.
  42. Apr12

    Perks for pro athletes

    Patrick Hruby of ESPN writes about the perks available to professional athletes.

    Barry Bonds, for example, lords over four lockers and a $3,000 black leather massage recliner in the San Francisco Giants' clubhouse; his teammates enjoy single lockers and standard-issue folding chairs

    Barry's locker room setup is a big deal here in San Francisco. While other players may receive perks such as a luxury box or a limo ride to every game, it is not as visible as locker room pampering. Stars such as MVP Jeff Kent had to look at Barry's setup every day.

  43. Apr12

    Sun Java Studio Creator Early Access release

    Sun released an early access version of Java Studio Creator, formerly known as "Project Rave." Sun hopes this tool will provide an easy to use interface similar to Visual Studio and maybe even convert some Visual Studio developers to Java developers.
  44. Apr08

    Wired News : Turning Search Into Science

    Wired News : "Scirus is a search engine for scientists that allows them to dig through not just scientific journals, but also unpublished research, university websites, corporate Internet sites, conference agendas and minutes, discussion groups and mailing-list archives."
  45. Apr07

    Lots happening for eBay developers

    eBay has some new Java and SOAP APIs and is not afraid to let the world know. Jeffrey McManus has an article on MSDN on creating an eBay search application using VB .NET and the eBay SDK for Windows.

    On April 20 Jeffrey will show the Bay.NET user's group how to create eBay applications using .NET. The meeting takes place at Microsoft's San Francisco office.

  46. Apr07

    Leander Kahney Wired blog : Cult of the Mac

    Wired author Leander Kahney now has an Apple blog, Cult of Mac available in Wired's Web space. Should be a good way to promote his new book, The Cult of Mac published by No Starch Press, due in September.
  47. Apr06

    Bay Area Linkup

    "Bay Area Linkup is a unique, private place where you can quickly make professional and personal connections with others in the SF Bay Area."
  48. Apr06

    Slate: Who's got the acid? These days, almost nobody

    Ryan Grim of Slate writes about the decline in use of lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD). The Drug Enforcement Administration claims it reduced the LSD supply by 95 percent with the arrest and conviction of Clyde Apperson and William Leonard Pickard in rural Kansas in November 2000. The article also mentions the correlation between Grateful Dead and Phish tours and the use of LSD. (via BoingBoing)
  49. Apr06

    No more Manchester United autographs on collector's items

    Manchester United has declared a ban on players signing memorabilia. "[T]he players will refuse to sign footballs, shirts, posters, portraits or anything else that could constitute a collector's item." The club suspects that dealers are paying children to wait outside the training grounds all day for sale on the Internet.
  50. Apr05

    BitTorrent 3.4.2

    Bram Cohen released BitTorrent 3.4.2 yesterday. Trackers can now send non-fatal human readable messages to clients. See Rerequester for details. New array-based bitfield for memory efficiency.
  51. Apr05

    The Secret Source of Google's Power

    Rick Skrenta's latest blog entry comments on the scalability of Google's service offerings. "[T]he story is about seemingly incremental features that are actually massively expensive for others to match, and the platform that Google is building which makes it cheaper and easier for them to develop and run web-scale applications than anyone else."
  52. Apr04

    NY Times : Cruise Control So Last Century

    Danny Hakim of The New York Times writes about the new safety technologies making their way into today's cars. Americans in general still want to control their cars, and are wary of even a train that drives itself. Japan gets to tryout this technology first while the marketers figure out how to sell the idea to Americans. The Prius in Japan can park itself. An Infiniti can keep itself in the center of the lane. I would like to see car manufacturers abandon what they think we want and instead give us great products. Who would have thought the Prius would have a nine month waiting list?
  53. Apr02

    Mechanized robot parking

    Josh Levin of Slate writes about the Multiparker MP 710, an automatic parking system. The car engine is off, so there is no need for ventilation. Cars can be parked in tight space without need for illumination. Sounds cool! Does it save any money or is it just a cool gadget?
  54. Apr01

    News.com interviews MSN head Yusuf Mehdi

    Stefanie Olsen of News.com interviewed Yusuf Mehdi, Microsoft's Corporate Vice President, MSN Information Services & Merchant Platform.

    We think the sun has not set on even the first day of the search opportunity. In all our research, one out of every two people searching for something do not even get an answer.

    MSN Messenger is just effectively a couple of simple tweaks away from becoming a social network, because you have all your buddies and your buddies know who their buddies are. This is the ability to actually connect the two, and it's very, very close.

  55. Apr01

    NY Times: Photo sharing, desktop to desktop

    David Pogue has an article in today's New York Times about peer-to-peer photo sharing, free of charge.

    ShareALot and OurPictures, are designed to shoot your photo files directly to the desktops of designated friends and family members, completely bypassing e-mail and Web sites.

    ShareALot appears to be the better product since it is free and supports Windows, Mac, and soon Linux.

  56. Apr01

    Google Copernicus Center is hiring

    Obviously an April Fool's joke, but Google is hiring for their new lunar center. Lengthy for a prank. "The Googlunaplex will house 35 engineers, 27,000 low cost web servers, 2 massage therapists and a sushi chef formerly employed by the pop group Hanson." "What happens to PageRank in the proximity of a black hole? Is there distortion that might result in link relevancy reduction or popularity warping? Could this somehow be harnessed to generate more dates for engineers?"

Niall Kennedy Niall Kennedy is a web technologist in San Francisco, California in the United States. I am very interested in the world of... MORE »

Search this weblog:

Subscribe:

Latest feature: Widget development

  1. Web widget formats
  2. Widget data update formats
  3. Web widget optimization
  4. Scale Google Gadget content

Archives: Popular Categories

  1. Widgets
  2. Programming
  3. Business
  4. Feed Aggregators
  5. Search

Sites: More from Niall