September 2004 Archives
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Sep30
XSS vulnerabilities in WordPress 1.2 Mingus
Thomas Waldegger discovered a pretty serious cross-site scripting vulnerability in WordPress. Dougal Campbell notes that WordPress developers are aware of the issue and working on a 1.2.1 release to help solve the problem. Secunia has issued an advisory (level 2 of 5) for all versions of WordPress. Be aware and ready to apply the new code! -
Sep30
Sort help for feed aggregators
As our lists of feeds grow it becomes more difficult to sort through the clutter that greets us as we fire up our news aggregators. The list of publishers of supported feeds continues to grow, as does the appetite for consumption. The next important step in the feed aggregation space will be how you tame the data available within the application. I propose sorting services that would allow developers to offer their own reclassification of a list of feeds or their content.
Pass a list of feeds in OPML and a web service will return the same OPML with an additional "sortorder" attribute for each
outlineelement. The aggregator consumes the OPML, sorts on sortorder ascending for the group, and the user receives a different representation of their subscribed feeds.Possible sort plug-ins include Google PageRank, Technorati source authority, degrees of separation through a social network, FOAF relations, blogroll, etc.
I sent NewsGator an e-mail asking if they would support sort plug-ins. If you develop a feed aggregator and would be interested in pursuing broad sorting solutions, let's start building. Do you have ideas about more ways to sort your feeds? Leave a comment or send a TrackBack.
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Sep30
Technorati Hackathon
Technorati is hosting a hackathon next Wednesday starting at 7 p.m. in their new offices in San Francisco. Parking should be ample. If you take the N Judah to SBC Park (3rd and King) Technorati's office is a one block walk. Tantek extends an invitation to web designers and web developers. it's not just a night of API developers. I created a wiki page on the developers site to track topics. I would like to work on a RSS aggregator plugin that sorts feeds by source authority. Anyone else interested in such a project and would like to collaborate? -
Sep30
NewsGator partners with Six Apart
NewsGator Technologies announced a co-marketing relationship with Six Apart yesterday. NewsGator will resell Movable Type and Six Apart will resell NewsGator for Outlook to its corporate customers. The two companies are also planning joint development work. NewsGator will release a plugin in the next week that lets NewsGator for Outlook users post to Movable Type and TypePad. From the NewsGator press release:NewsGator and Six Apart, the leading provider of weblog publishing software, announced a co-marketing relationship focused on enterprise sales of the two companies' leading technology platforms. NewsGator also announced that it will be releasing new plug-ins and other technology to make it simple to post feed content from NewsGator products to Six Apart blogs in Movable Type and TypePad. The companies plan significant future co-development work to enhance the experience for RSS and blog customers.
Andrew Anker, Executive Vice President of Six Apart, said "We're very pleased to partner with NewsGator as they continue to make it easy for their big installed base of weblog readers to become weblog creators. Tighter integration between NewsGator's products and Movable Type and TypePad will be great for our mutual customers."
Greg Reinacker, founder and CTO of NewsGator, said, "We're very excited about these strategic partnerships. Closer integration with other applications, including the leading desktop reader and the leading weblog publishing systems, will significantly enhance the RSS experience for consumers and enterprises, and our arrangement with Moreover strengthens our content offerings as well. Combined, these arrangements signify our ongoing investment as the leader in the RSS platform space to ensure that this technology penetrates as rapidly as possible."
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Sep30
Marketing via weblogs
Thomas Mucha of Business 2.0 takes a look at weblogs as a marketing tool. Some good quotes from Jonathan Schwartz of Sun Microsystems and David Sifry of Technorati. Technorati reports there are about 5,000 serious corporate blogs. Some good quotes. "[T]he blog is about competitive advantage." -Jonathan Schwartz "It's the same risk as giving someone a telephone." -Jonathan Schwartz on whether blogging poses a corporate risk "Bloggers were talking about Kryptonite's lock problems a week before the story hit the mainstream media. If Kryptonite had been paying attention to the blogosphere, they could have reacted sooner and smarter." -David Sifry (hinting at Watchlists) -
Sep30
Terry Gross interview on Salon.com
David Talbot of Salon.com interviewed Terry Gross about her 29 years hosting Fresh Air and her views on the journalistic process. She talks about the difficulties of interviewing Bill O'Reilly, Paul McCartney, and Sean Penn. It is interesting the work that goes into preparing each show such as reading a guest's book and knowing the right way to work yourself into a subject area they might not want to spend too much time addressing. Terry Gross is currently new book, "All I Did Was Ask."I think of myself as being a member of the first generation of women who genuinely had a choice about whether to have children or not. And genuinely had a choice for two reasons -- one, the reproductive technology, the Pill or the diaphragm or something, and two, a social climate in which you could make that choice and not be a pariah, someone we should all feel real sorry for, who could never be a part of the mainstream.
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Sep29
Java.net moves to Movable Type
Java.net is a Sun Microsystems site serving as a common area for conversations and development projects related to Java technology. As of last Monday the site is now powered by Movable Type. Movable Type provides the features weblog authors were requesting such as XML-RPC. -
Sep28
J2SE 5.0 launch on Thursday
Sun is throwing a launch party for J2SE 5.0 this Thursday at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View. I plan on being there to talk Java with lots of interesting people. I have never been to the Computer History Museum but I have been meaning to check it out. If you are wondering when J2SE 5.0 will finally be released, the answer seems to be Thursday. I have been using some of the new features of J2SE 5.0 for the past few months. Generics, autoboxing, enhanced for loop (thinkforeach) and many more new features available. -
Sep27
Bay Area Mobility Forum on BREW
On Saturday I attended the second meeting of the Bay Area Mobility Forum. Ray Rischpater spoke about BREW development and how to get your application into the carriers' mobile shop. I learned there are a lot of gatekeepers in the world of BREW and as a result individual developers usually do not have the financial resources to develop for the platform. You need to purchase a VeriSign document ID, submit your code for independent testing, and convince the carrier your application is unique and worth inclusion in their mobile shop. Some applications receive special placement and reap the rewards of featured status. The lure of Verizon's 40 million subscribers is enough to get software publishers excited enough to play this restricted game.
I received permission from Ray to record and post his presentation. The presentation is available in MP3 format (28.1 MB, 1:01:49).
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Sep27
Gender promescuity tracked through DNA
Michael Hammer at the University of Arizona in Tucson tracked the DNA of three separate populations and found there was less variation in the male chromosome DNA. His findings, published in Nature Genetics, suggest that over the years half as many men as women have passed on their genes.
[F]emales also tend to be similar in their tastes, which means some males get chosen far more often than others, and therefore have more offspring. Females, by contrast, tend to have about the same number of offspring each.
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Sep26
AlwaysOn the magazine
AlwaysOn will introduce a quarterly print magazine. Over "50 percent of the content in the issues come either from AO members or will be posts that our members considered the most valuable. In this way, our community is both transparent and plays an active editorial role in the content we publish." AlwaysOn is the first weblog site to spin into a magazine. -
Sep24
Breast enlarging ringtone
Hideto Tomabechi claims to have developed a ringtone to increase breast size. He uses sounds "that make the brain and body move unconsciously. It's a technique involving subliminal effects." Tomabechi is famous for his work reversing the brainwashing of the AUM Shinrikyo doomsday cult. (via Engadget) [Update: Engadget has posted an MP3 of the ringtone. -
Sep23
Andrew Anker joins VA Software board
Andrew Anker, Executive Vice President of Corporate Development for Six Apart, joined the board of directors of VA Software. VA Software owns Slashdot and SourceForge. -
Sep23
Why bloggers are good for profits
Paul Carr of The Guardian writes about how The Guardian and other media outlets have embraced bloggers and seen monetary results. Free content for partners equals more traffic, profit, and credibility for the paper.The trial came about when we modified our site to allow Google news users to access one free article from our paid archive before they hit our subscription wall. The system worked brilliantly, and we realised very quickly that it could be modified to allow single-page access to visitors from any site we chose. We emailed a few of our blog buddies inviting them to try it out - and of course they were delighted to be able to link to content that was previously out of bounds. Since implementing the system, our traffic has gone up alarmingly and our weekly paid subscriptions have increased by 20%. And we're just small fry.
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Sep22
Secret of iPod's scroll wheel
Eliot Van Buskirk of MP3.com provided a history of the iPod scroll wheel on News.com. The scroll wheel is created by Synaptics. Synaptics also makes the scroll technology in the Creative Zen Touch. -
Sep22
Feedster plugin project for Movable Type
Feedster would like to contract hire a Movable Type plugin developer to "inject new content into the feed creation process." Check out the full posting on the Six Apart Professional Network. What would Feedster like to inject into a feed? My guess is advertising. -
Sep22
Saturday events
There are a lot of cool technology events in San Francisco this Saturday. I plan to attend the Bay Area Mobility Forum and the geek dinner.
- At 2 p.m. the Bay Area Mobility Forum features a presentation by Ray Rischpater on BREW development.
- At 4 p.m. the San Francisco WordPress Meetup may be happening at Cafe Royale. So far the event has no confirmed attendees.
- Michael Creasy and Robert Scoble are hosting a geek dinner at Barney's Gourmet Hamburgers in Noe Valley. These geek dinners are always a fun and informal way to get to know other technology folk in the area.
If you have been a bad geek you may need to attend the Folsom Street Fair on Sunday.
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Sep22
Yahoo! web services wishlist
Jeremy asks about web services I would like to Yahoo! offer. How about being the my online storage and synchronization center? I could add an entry to my OS X address book and the entry is reflected in my Yahoo! Address Book. I could easily add photos to Yahoo! Photos from my desktop. Notepad becomes a general note center and I can even download the contents to an iPod. Briefcase can store some documents. Yahoo! makes money by selling extra storage. -
Sep21
The State of Online Journalism presentation
Tonight I attended The State of Online Journalism event hosted by the Online News Association and held at CNET headquarters. I recorded each presentation and took a few pictures. The audience was a mixed crowd of technical knowledge. Jeff Veen made a comment about DRM and a few audience members were not sure what that term meant. I uploaded my pictures of the speakers to Flickr. The first presenter was Jeff Veen of Adaptive Path. Jeff talked about weblogs and personal publishing as a distributed and real-time news source. He used an example of his personal investigation into the source of some smoke over downtown San Francisco that was not covered by traditional media outlets. He used good examples of companies still around today (radio, travel agents) that had to adapt to the way technology changed their business. I recorded Jeff's speech (23:35, MP3). Next Mary Hodder of Technorati talked about how bloggers affect journalism. Jackson West of SFist.com talked about collaborative journalism on his site and the process involved with getting SFist started. Jackson referred to blogging as seventy-five percent white males, because those are the people who can afford computers, know how to read, and who can spend some time writing. Definitely not politically correct and he did not provide any data to back up his claim. I recorded Mary's speech (10:32, MP3). The last session covered the role and impact of news aggregators. Jeff Pelline, editor of News.com, mentioned that News.com is currently working on restructuring its story pages because they are the first point of entry for so many visits due to linking and RSS feeds. News.com has incorporated what it calls "swarming features" influenced by Slashdot. Bill Gannon, editorial director of Yahoo! News, mentioned that the birth of Yahoo! News was when Jerry Garcia died (August 9, 1995) and they felt a need to feature such news prominently on Yahoo's home page and provide a way for visitors to learn more. Bill embraces Yahoo's pop culture news status and dismisses Google News as a direct competitor. Scott Rosenberg of Salon thinks the terms "aggregator" and "RSS" are terms of confusion and the industry is in need of new ways of referring to this technology. He thinks aggregation is at the same point now as the Web was in 1994. Tim Olsen, director of KQED Interactive, mentioned some of the ways his organization works with local businesses to produce content in ways that are mutually beneficial. I recorded the entire panel session complete with questions and answers (39:25, MP3). -
Sep21
NetNewsWire 2.0b3
The first public beta of NetNewsWire 2.0 is now available from Ranchero Software. Searching, enclosures, persistence, smart lists, and Rendezvous subscription sharing are the new features I use the most. -
Sep21
R.E.M. Around the Sun available on MySpace
MySpace.com now has R.E.M.'s "Around the Sun" album audio and lyrics available on its site. The album will be officially released on October 5. The album was made available through a partnership with R.E.M.'s label, Warner Bros. Music.
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Sep21
Fantasy sports at work
Challenger, Gray & Christmas, an outplacement company, estimates fantasy sports leagues cost U.S. employers $36.7 million every day. The estimate assumes 14 million people play fantasy sports and each of those players spends 10 minutes every workday managing his or her team. Multiply 14 million by $2.62, the average amount an American worker gets paid in 10 minutes, and you reach the estimated number. What's the total cost of blogging? I am sure a study will come out and sites such as TypePad, LiveJournal, and Blogger will be on corporate block lists just as Yahoo! Mail and Yahoo! Groups is blocked by employers now. -
Sep21
Moreover partners with FeedDemon
RSS feeds from Moreover Technologies will be featured in FeedDemon's default configuration. Although the press release and Nick's entry do not mention any payments, I have to assume this was a paid inclusion. Currently FeedDemon provides preconfigured channel groups to help users get started with an application full of feeds. The first time a user launches FeedDemon he or she is presented with a list of preconfigured Channel Groups to include if they would like. The user can deselect each group if they would like to have no default feeds. The free Moreover feeds include advertising. I spoke with Nick last year about the inevitable financial offers for default feed inclusions. At the time he was more interested in providing users the feeds he reads all the time. The move to paid inclusion seemed inevitable and here it is. It will be interesting to see how the integrated Moreover search will work. Moreover provides atitleand a source and publish time in thedescriptiontext of my current feeds. All links are redirects. I assume the search will query the Moreover database for the full text of the linked articles instead of small amount of headline and source information in the free feeds. -
Sep20
Women want compassion?
What do women want in a man? NPR's Lori Gottlieb tackles the question of do women really want a sensitive man or do they just say that and date the beer guzzling NASCAR guy? I like Lori's take on the subject. Women want someone to be sensitive to her problems but not sensitive about his own problems. He is in control and she can rely on him emotionally. There should be a follow up piece focused on the men. -
Sep20
Relief organization using weblog and RSS
Compassion International uses RSS to share stories on how the organization is making a difference in the lives of children in 23 developing countries. The organization posts their content to a private TypePad weblog and uses NewsGator to keep its staff informed around the world. -
Sep20
Powered off?
Bill Machrone of PC Magazine decided to investigate how much power his gadgets were consuming when turned off or not in use. He found 80 watts were in use even though all of his devices were not in use. At 876 kilowatt-hours per year, the powered down gadgets account for over 9 percent of Bill's yearly electric bill. (via Engadget)- Cable box
- 15 watts
- Small three-piece speaker system
- 6 watts
- Larger three-piece speaker system
- 12 watts
- Router
- 6 watts
- Cable modem
- 7.5 watts
- Laptop charger
- 2.5 watts
- iPod charger
- 0.6 watts
- HP OfficeJet multifucntion printer
- 7 watts
- 19-inch Dell Trinitron display
- 6 watts
- HP Pavillion desktop
- 6 watts
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Sep19
Google Browser employees
NY Post: "Based on the half-dozen hires in recent weeks, Google appears to be planning to launch its own Web browser and other software products to challenge Microsoft." -
Sep17
NPR on wireless networks at the ballpark
John McChesney of NPR recently visited SBC Park in San Francisco and reported on the use of wireless networks as an emerging trend in public space. The San Francisco Giants have covered the ballpark in WiFi using 123 wireless hotpots. Fans can access special on-site features such as individual pitch placement and player statistics. Office workers can attend day games and still answer e-mails as if they were sitting at the office. He also conducted a test of wireless security and approached a laptop user after he had placed a purchase online. -
Sep16
Mars infrared laser project
New Scientist covers NASA's planned Mars-Earth communication by infrared laser. The Mars Telecommunications Orbiter will transmit an infrared laser with a wavelength of 1.06 microns from a 0.3-meter telescope. The tough part is picking up that signal on Earth. Even with a spread of a few hundred kilometers and clear skies the aim would have to be very accurate or the data could be lost. The laser will undergo a design review early next year. -
Sep16
Johnny Ramone is dead
Johnny Ramone died yesterday afternoon after a five-year battle with prostate cancer. Charles Young of Rolling Stone published an article based on recent interviews with Johnny. Eddie Vedder and Rob Zombie were at his bedside.
From Pet Sematary on the Brain Drain album:
Follow victor to the sacred place This ain’t a dream, I can’t escape Molars and fangs, the clicking of bones, Spirits moaning among the tombstones, And the night, when the moon is bright, Someone cries, something ain’t right.
I don’t want to be buried in a pet sematary I don’t want to live my life again, I don’t want to be buried in a pet sematary I don’t want to live my life again.
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Sep15
Mediathink RSS White Paper
Mediathink produced a white paper on RSS publishing. The study takes a look at the current aggregator space for the Windows operating system. The study found RSS to be a strong threat to e-mail and established search companies slow to respond the corporate intelligence and product research uses of RSS. Rich media RSS is discussed as an inevitable next step and integrated into TiVo-like devices (with BitTorrent possibilities).
One of the challenges listed in the white paper is the inability to track how many subscribers are receiving a given RSS feed. Subscriber measurement is no different than tracking Web site statistics. Requests for a RSS file will appear in your log files just as a request for a HTML page appears now.We see RSS as the single best method available to receive information from selected sources. RSS possesses the unique ability to eliminate the usual chores of search, navigation, and interruptive marketing avoidance currently required to receive most of today's valuable news content. By its virtues, we see RSS disrupting email’s current hold on point-to-point communication and growing its share of user attention faster than any web technology preceding it.
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Sep14
A9.com version 1.0
Amazon introduces new features to its A9.com search engine tonight. The New York Times reports A9.com will offer users the ability to edit and store bookmarks, keep track of visited links, and take notes on Web pages. -
Sep14
Google biodiesel San Francisco shuttle
Google now offers shuttle service from San Francisco to Mountain View every day. The shuttle averages 155 employees a day and has wireless Internet access onboard. Sweet! Makes all the city folk want work at Google even more than before. -
Sep14
War Against Comment Spam
Mark Glaser wrote about the war against comment spam in Online Journalism Review. He does a good job of gathering various examples and viewpoints from well-known bloggers and publishers. -
Sep14
Comments fixed
I thought it was a little odd that I had no comments on the site for a week. Turns out an error in MT-Blacklist prevented any comment submission good or bad. I have dumped MT-Blacklist and comments should now be submitted for approval as usual. -
Sep14
Java powered BMW
The current Business Week features a special report on automotive technology. Jim Kerstetter writes about the new automotive software capable of updates and upgrades such as Siemens VDO Automotive's Top Level Architecture based on Java.
I have tested the iDrive on the latest BMW and it is very slick. Frequently used functions accessible by buttons and adjusted by the knob. I could pull up automotive diagnostics easily for real-time trip feedback. Given an Internet connection over a cellular network and a Java computer on board, any commute could be more interesting. I could record any radio program as it happens, or log a GPS location I found particularly interesting. My car could send pictures of the road to a server for detailed traffic information. Open platforms create cool tools!BMW can continually write updates and add-ons that work together without testing, thanks to the underlying Java. Every time a car owner visits a BMW dealer, new software, like a new navigation system, can be added. Partners that know how to program in Java could also write software to run on iDrive. A rental-car company, for example, could automatically send information such as updated mileage rates to its customer via an on-board computer.
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Sep14
Firefox Live Bookmarks
I just downloaded the Firefox 1.0 Preview Release. A new feature called Live Bookmarks allows you to subscribe and read RSS and Atom feeds in your bookmarks. A button
appears in your status bar to let you know there has been an alternate source detected and the MIME type is supported by Live Bookmarks. A blue folder appears in your bookmark folder with an individual bookmark for each item or entry in your feed.
I like the placement of the icon in the status bar instead of in the address bar like Safari RSS. Another branding win for the RSS format as well. It is good to see alterate link tags being used. Features such as Live Bookmarks should help motivate site developers to include more machine readable information in their code to allow for easier user access.
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Sep13
RFC3229 for partial feed retrieval
Bob Wyman, CTO of PubSub, details how RFC3229, "Delta Encoding in HTTP," could be used to help solve the bandwidth problem of syndicated feeds.In order to allow the number of entries returned in a feed to be no more than the total number of new or modified inserted into the feed since the last time any specific client retrieved the feed, I propose that we rely on RFC3229 "Delta encoding in HTML" with a new instance-manipulation method defined to provide feed specific delta encoding.
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Sep11
FeedMesh
There is some interesting work going on at Camp Foo this weekend. A peering network for weblog or site update notifications as well as a method for pulling down new entries from a server instead of the entire feed.
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Sep10
Klip for Movable Type
I just added a Klip template to my Movable Type installation. The Klip file is defines a RSS file location as one of its elements and adds descriptive tags for consumption by the Serence KlipFolio application.
My complete template code is below. I am a single author weblog, so your milage my vary.
<klip>
<owner>
<author><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthor$><MTEntries></author>
<copyright><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%Y"$> <$MTEntryAuthor$></MTEntries></copyright>
<email><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryAuthorEmail$></MTEntries></email>
<web><$MTBlogURL$></web>
</owner>
<identity>
<title><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></title>
<uniqueid><$MTBlogName remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></uniqueid>
<version>1.0</version>
<lastmodified><MTEntries lastn="1"><$MTEntryDate format="%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S "$><$MTBlogTimezone no_colon="1"$></
MTEntries></lastmodified>
<description><$MTBlogDescription remove_html="1" encode_xml="1"$></description>
<keywords></keywords>
</identity>
<locations>
<defaultlink><$MTBlogURL$></defaultlink>
<contentsource><$MTBlogURL$>index.xml</contentsource>
<icon></icon>
<banner></banner>
<help></help>
<kliplocation><$MTBlogURL$>index.klip</kliplocation>
</locations>
<setup>
<refresh>60</refresh>
<referer></referer>
<country>US</country>
<language>en</language>
</setup>
</klip> -
Sep10
The environmental savings of digital news
Researchers at UC Berkeley researched the environmental impact of reading a newspaper on a PDA versus in reading the paper form.
A good argument for syndicated feeds![I]f just a quarter of newspaper readers around the country switched to reading the news on their PDA, they'd generate just two to three percent of the carbon dioxide that would have resulted from the 14 million print newspapers they no longer need.
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Sep10
TypePad's new look
Six Apart introduced new designs for TypePad designed by Dave Shea. The templates focus on mixed media display such as a photo collection. Video and audio are supposed to be better integrated as well, so hopefully Six Apart added support for RSS enclosures. Post via e-mail is also improved, allowing for up to 5 e-mail sources.
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Sep09
Red Herring on Joyce Park's Friendster firing
Red Herring has an article about Joyce Park's termination by Friendster for blogging.
In just five business days, Ms. Park estimates that at least two dozen Silicon Valley employers – including Friendster's most prominent competitors – deluged her with job offers.
Good to see things worked out well for Joyce. She definitely received a lot of help sending the word out to employers that she is looking for a new job.
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Sep09
How to pick up your Apple iMac G5
Apple has posted a support document to help users pick up and carry their iMac G5.
Before moving your computer, make sure all cables and cords are disconnected.
Pick up the iMac G5 by grasping both sides of the computer. Carry it to wherever you wish.
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Sep09
Google looking for Executive Protection Specialist
Google is looking to hire persons as an Executive Protection Specialist. Trained in protective driving and knowledge of surveillance, counter-surveillance and technical surveillance countermeasures.
I am sure this is common practice among Fortune 500 companies but the times are changing for Google.
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Sep09
Access to zombie PCs for sale
Byron Acohido and Jon Swartz of USA Today wrote an article about the use of zombie machines to send mass e-mails. They found the asking price for use of a network of 20,000 zombie computers to be $2,000 to $3,000. (via Slashdot) -
Sep09
McKinsey Quarterly on raising productivity
Stephen Dorgan and John Dowdy of McKinsey & Company researched factors influencing productivity growth focused on the period from 1994 to 2002. They looked at 100 manufacturing companies in France, Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States and found that increases in IT spending has little impact on productivity unless it is accompanied by first-rate management practices. The 100 companies were evaluated on a scale of 0 to 5 for their use of three important productivity tools: "lean manufacturing, which cuts waste in the production process; performance management, which sets clear goals and rewards employees who reach them; and talent management, which attracts and develops high-caliber people." The results indicate a one point improvement on the scale correlates with a 25 percent increase in the company's total productivity (labor + capital). Companies that raised their management-practices score by one point increased their financial returns by 42 percent. Companies in the top quartile of IT deployment had a total productivity just 4 percent higher than the bottom quartile. The conclusion of the study is "Companies should first improve their management practices and then invest in IT." -
Sep09
Jeremy Wright reviews WordPress
Rick Bruner has the first of his community's weblog platform reviews on his site. First up is Jeremy Wright's review of WordPress.
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Sep09
Sybase ASE Express Edition for Linux
Sybase now offers a free version of its database. Sybase ASE Express Edition for Linux is limited to one CPU, 5GB of storage, and 2GB of RAM. (via Slashdot)
Competitive free offerings such as MySQL and PostgreSQL help make this happen. -
Sep08
TypePad mobile features integrated into Nokia LifeBlog
TypePad and Nokia have partnered for Nokia's Lifeblog service. Uers will now be able to upload multimedia to their TypePad weblog using the Atom protocol. The service is currently being demonstrated at DEMOmobile in La Jolla. -
Sep07
Knowing when to delegate
Lauren Keller Johnson wrote an interesting article for the Harvard Management Update about how effective leaders delegate. Do you manage or lead? Does delegating make you more expendable? All good questions raised. I especially like the coverage of how to handle a management position for the star promoted and why knowing the strengths of your subordinates and letting them shine is a good thing. -
Sep06
TiVo and Netflix working together
Later this month TiVo and Netflix will announce a new service allowing subscribers to both services to download movies to their TiVo boxes. (via Matt Haughey) Movie studios will now know who watched their movies, how many times, and at what hours of the day. All information you cannot obtain from a piece write-only media and postal mail. The move drives demand for higher capacity TiVo hardware and will make a new TiVo box a hot seller this Christmas. -
Sep03
Presidential brand association
The Presidential ImagePower study from branding company Landor Associates and research firm Penn, Schoen and Berland revealed the perceptions of George W. Bush and John Kerry by undecided voters. 1,262 Internet survey respondents associated brands with the candidates. George W. Bush was the unanimous choice for Ford, IBM, and Bud Light.
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Sep01
Steve Ballmer selling Windows 1.0
Michael Heilemann pointed out a video of Steve Ballamer selling Windows 1.0. Hilarious. -
Sep01
Boyfriend Arm Pillow
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Sep01
Blabble natural language weblog search
Internet Retailer has an article about Blabble, a weblog search company that incorporates natural language processing when parsing weblogs. Blabble just entered its public beta stage on Monday. Take a look at a report for Bourne Supremacy for a better idea of what Blabble is offering that is different than Feedster or Technorati.The software can search the database for relevant words, phrases, and even within defined time frames to gauge how often bloggers referred to a product by hour, day, week and more. It also can search for the same idea as expressed by phrases composed of different language. It encompasses a "tone engine" that, for example, ranks adjectives and descriptions on a scale to determine the degree of a blogger’s negative or positive feeling about the product or service being discussed.
