December 2004 Archives

  1. Dec31

    Personalized search meets the job market

    I am meeting more and more people dissatisfied with their jobs. The top gripe is not job function, but management environment. Are you encouraged to learn new things? Attend conferences? Do you feel like you make a measurable difference?

    All interesting things to think about heading in to 2005 from the perspective of the employee as well as the employer. Companies are too busy to post articulate job listings and interview candidates. Most of the good job candidates are passive seekers since they cannot send an explicit signal that might get them fired or make life uncomfortable in their current job.

    So I am trying to think off better solutions. I like to connect people with solutions and there are good companies looking for people and good people looking for companies. I am thinking about collecting and highlighting geek job openings in the Bay Area from companies I think are cool. I could broadcast to a new jobs weblog or narrowcast to people I think might be interested in the company and its job opening. I am not interested in doing this for referral fees, it's just good karma.

    Sound interesting?

    If you are hiring for technical or product management positions in the San Francisco Bay area contact me with a brief description of what need you are trying to fill, the level of the position, and a contact person.

    If you are looking for a position I will try to point you in the right direction. Let me know what are the essential elements of your ideal job function and work environment and I might be able to direct you towards a possible match.

  2. Dec30

    Google on 60 Minutes

    CBS News will air a segment about Google on this Sunday's 60 Minutes. John Battelle is a featured commentator.

  3. Dec30

    ccPublisher 1.0

    Nathan Yergler announced ccPublisher, a tool that allows content creators to upload Creative Commons licensed audio or video files to your site or to the Internet Archive for free hosting.

    ccPublisher will embed a license claim in MP3 audio files. The OS X version is a whopping 60 MB. The application is written in Python and is a part of the Creative Commons Tools project on SourceForge.net.

  4. Dec29

    Feedster contest winners announced

    Feedster announced its contest winners today. Two out of three of my picks were correct.

    Feedster's contest seemed like a developer relations failure. The submission date and announcement date were moving targets, and when the winners were announced there was no explanation of the tool beyond a link to the author.

    What are your thoughts? What would you like to see from a developer contest?

  5. Dec28

    Technorati developer chat

    Technorati is hosting a developer chat on IRC this Wednesday night at 7 p.m. San Francisco time (03:00 UTC). If you are working on an entry for the developers contest ending this Friday the chat is a good opportunity to receive live answers to any problems you may have. Join #technorati on irc.freenode.net.

    I will be in the chat room and try to answer any questions or explain how the site and services work. Any really difficult questions will be left to the Technorati employees to figure out.

  6. Dec27

    Opera version 8 beta

    Opera RSS address bar button

    Opera released a beta version of its Opera desktop application last week. The new version features improved RSS handling including address bar support similar to Apple's plans for Safari RSS. A user can choose between RSS feeds declared as alternate links of type application/rss+xml.

    Opera feeds menu

    After you subscribe to one or more feeds a Feeds menu appears showing your subscriptions and unread items per feed.

    Opera RSS reader

    The Opera RSS browser treats each RSS item as a mail message, complete with the e-mail address of the item's author. I did not check to see which RSS element is pulled here but I presume it must be author. After each post is a bar for a user to respond to the post via e-mail.

    Opera RSS contact

    Opera also has special behavior when an address book entry matches the RSS link element and item author. In the screenshot above, Opera ties together Jeremy's weblog and Jeremy's entry in my address book. The man icon next to each entry lights up and Jeremy's picture is at the top of the viewer. Jeremy asked for some screenshots so here you go!

    Overall an interesting take on RSS aggregation from a bootstrapped mail client perspective. I would like to see better interaction with community comments instead of sending an e-mail. I could always parse the e-mail and post it to a comment script, but it would be nice if the aggregators played nice with feedback.

    Opera RSS item header
  7. Dec27

    Marc Canter rants again

    I tried to leave a comment on Marc Canter's weblog in response to his post reacting to requests for reasonably priced geek dinners, but his weblog is not setup correctly. If you want to use TypeKey you have to edit your Movable Type weblog preferences and add your TypeKey token. You're not enabling a conversation!

    I was motivated enough to post here since Marc unfairly targeted some people trying to make the event work for everyone.

    Tantek's idea was to try somewhere new and to make the event as inclusionary as possible. He's been to geek dinners all around the Bay Area so I think his suggestion was more out of familiarity than his own convenience. You know all the good eats, but somewhere between $20 and $40 the geek dinner idea lost a following.

    Joi's dinner was $35 plus tax and tip. The menu at LuLu looks within the price range of many people if there were individual bills. $15 pizza should be pretty acceptable.

    Yet all these points were lost in your post, bringing us nowhere closer to getting some coolio people together Thursday night to talk about whatever is on geeks' minds. Last year at the Cheesecake Factory in Palo Alto you brought the family and a few people asked if you were comfortable having so much information about your family online. FOAF and XFN coexisted nicely, people were aggregated, and everyone went home full and happy.

    LuLu will be new enough for most people. Most of its plates are in the same range as Cheesecake Factory, so Scoble's $40-$60 estimate seems a bit high if people just pay for what they order or consume. $16 for rotisserie chicken or a pizza, or $25 for some squab.

    No one will be chastised for going lower priced menu or lower cased semantic web. Do what works for you. You can view the ongoing conversations the next morning in RDF, XFN, or in your Technorati, Feedster, or PubSub results. Can you dig it?

  8. Dec24

    Six Apart moves into its new SoMa office

    Today Six Apart moved into its new offices. No more interviews at the Tokyo Star, or driving to work for a lot of people. Moving into new space closer to home must have a big "we made it" feeling and make you realize how you have created something where there was nothing before. Congratulations Six Apart, and may your new pad be full of many bits of moving type.

  9. Dec24

    Forbes on RSS

    Forbes has a brief article about RSS feeds changing the business landscape.

    Some inaccuracies in the article:

    "Instead of searching for information, you get RSS to push it to you." RSS is a pull technology, not push. A user requests the data and is sent a response.

    "Technorati.com is now monitoring more than 5 million RSS-enabled blogs." Technorati claims to watch over 5.2 million weblogs, but Technorati builds its database primarily by parsing HTML. Technorati is not a RSS-based searcher as the article claims.

  10. Dec22

    Technorati Users Group aftermath

    The Technorati Users Group went well. Nine people learned new things about Technorati and five Technorati employees had a chance to interact with potential power users. I enjoyed making it all happen.

    I tethered myself to a projection TV and stepped through my prepared slides -- my first time using the S-Video output on my PowerBook. I highlighted some features of the Technorati web site, showed how to create a watchlist, introduced the developer wiki, and showed the API responses. I briefly showed the Java SDK and an application I put together just minutes before the meeting.

    I did not record any audio or tune-in to the IRC channel; I was too busy trying to make things work locally. 21st Amendment is a noisy space so I found myself yelling a bit to reach my audience.

    It was good to have Technorati employees present but it is certainly not a prohibitive factor to forming a users group. You could put together a users group in your own city as well. If you are interested in discussing users groups or developer events leave a comment or drop me a note. I am sure I will have more reflections after I have gathered more responses.

  11. Dec21

    FIFA to compensate clubs for World Cup injuries

    FIFA announced an insurance fund to compensate clubs for injuries sustained by their players at the 2006 World Cup in Germany. Each national association will contribute 5% of its prize money to the insurance fund for a total of $13 million. The surplus will be reimbursed after the tournament.

    it's good to see assurances to the companies sponsoring these athletes and their long-term development. The World Cup would be very different without club soccer and the two need to learn to get along.

  12. Dec21

    Technorati Users Group tonight

    Tonight is the first ever meeting of the first Technorati Users Group at 7 p.m. at 21st Amendment in San Francisco. I will give an overview of Technorati and dive into its APIs. We will meet upstairs in the loft area.

    Everyone in attendance will receive a Technorati Users Group founding member t-shirt. You could also win one of two books. Good beer, good food, and a chance to learn about a service you can use for free. Come on down!

    I put together some slides to cover the basics of how Technorati works, how you can access their data, and what is available over current APIs.

    If you cannot make it tonight, join #technorati on irc.freenode.net to join the conversation. If anyone brings an iSight we can try to broadcast video over the open access point. Otherwise I will try to record the audio and make it available after the event.

    Questions? Lost? Give me a call. My cell number is 415.425.2417.

  13. Dec20

    Six Apart business figures

    San Francisco Business Times writes about Six Apart's planned move to San Francisco next month. Some interesting statistics:

    • $2 million in revenue for 2004.
    • $5 million projected revenue in 2005.
    • New office space on 4th Street is 14,000 square feet.
    • 40 employees in San Francisco, 11 in Paris, 12 in Tokyo.
    • Plans to add 60 employees in the next eighteen months.
  14. Dec18

    Technorati moving to a new colo

    Technorati's servers will be down this weekend as they move to a new colocation host. I mirrored the API documentation and SDK if you would like to continue developing without the live servers.

    Adam is posting pictures from the move on Flickr.

    [Update: As of 7 p.m. Pacific Time on Sunday servers are back online.]

    Old compared to new:

    Old Technorati colo location New Technorati colo location
  15. Dec17

    Amazon customer images

    Amazon allows customers to share its images of a product with the intention of helping buyers understand product features and uses. In the digital camera category customer images has become a high profile way to show off your work and be evaluated by other photography enthusiasts. Take a look at the customer images page of the Nikon D70 for a good example or view the top images in the camera and photo category. It's an online portfolio hosted by Amazon.

  16. Dec16

    My picks for the Feedster developers contest

    The Feedster developers contest is over and developers are waiting for the winners to be announced. You can view all of the entries on the Feedster submission form.

    What do you think about the contest submissions automatically being posted on Feedster for all to see? Good idea or bad idea?

    I went through the entire list of submitted Feedster hacks, removed the garbage entries seeking free linky love, and was able to put together my own list of winners while we wait for the official results.

    Best use of Feedster in a standalone RSS aggregator

    NewsFire RSS search using Feedster

    David Watanabe added Feedster search to NewsFire, a popular RSS aggregator for Mac OS X. It even searches as you type!

    Best use of Feedster with a publishing engine

    Timothy Appnel wrote a plugin for Movable Type to search your weblog's feed or a collection of feeds using Feedster and display the results on your Movable Type site.

    Best Firefox extension using Feedster

    News Story Expander screenshot

    Adrian Holovaty wrote a Firefox extension to overlay Feedster links on The New York Times and The Washington Post web pages.

  17. Dec15

    Technorati Users Group meeting December 21

    Come drink beer and learn more about the Technorati API next Tuesday, December 21, at 7 p.m. at 21st Amendment in San Francisco. I will introduce Technorati API calls, demonstrate some existing applications built using the APIs, and lead you through some sample code using XPath and Java.

    A few Technorati employees will stop by and provide updates on the developer program and provide the latest company news. If you are interested in learning more about live search, web services, or corporate intelligence this event is for you! The Technorati developer contest ends December 31 so this will be a good opportunity to develop or fine-tune your ideas for a to compete for over $3250 in prizes. I will raffle off two books -- a copy of Michael Kay's XPath 2.0 Programmer's Reference and a copy of Dan Gillmor's We the Media -- for those in attendance.

    21st Amendment is located at 563 2nd Street in San Francisco. It features free wireless internet, good food, and house made beers. On Tuesday you get to keep your pint glass! We will be upstairs at the mezzanine loft. Street parking is usually not an issue.

    I will try to setup an iSight so you can listen and watch from anywhere in the world. Please join #technorati on irc.freenode.net next Tuesday night if you would like to participate in the meeting remotely via IRC.

    If you plan to attend please leave a comment below or contact me so I can get a good idea of headcount.

  18. Dec14

    Search wars

    Charles Ferguson has a lengthy analysis of Google and Microsoft in the January edition of MIT Technology Review and how the search wars might play out over the next few years. Will Microsoft crush Google like it crushed Netscape? Ferguson bets on open standards and APIs as Google's saving grace, creating a lock-in of tools and services.

    Winning architectures are proprietary and difficult to clone, but they are also externally “open”—that is, they provide publicly accessible interfaces upon which a wide variety of applications can be constructed by independent vendors and users. In this way, an architecture reaches all markets, and also creates “lock-in”—meaning that users become captive to it, unable to switch to rival systems without great pain and expense.

    More companies need to realize the power of the network and the ability of outside vendors to increase demand for services while creating products the provider does not have the time or imagination to invent.

    Peter Norvig, the company’s director of search quality, told Technology Review, “We’ve had the API project for a few years now. Historically, it’s not been that important: it’s had one person, sometimes none. But we do think that this will be one important way to create additional search functions. Our mission is to make information available, and to that end we will create a search ecology. We know we need to provide a way for third parties to work with us. You’ll see us release APIs as they are needed."

    Wow. Only one person at Google responsible for supporting APIs?

    Google should first create APIs for Web search services and make sure they become the industry standard. It should do everything it can to achieve that end—including, if necessary, merging with Yahoo. Second, it should spread those standards and APIs, through some combination of technology licensing, alliances, and software products, over all of the major server software platforms, in order to cover the dark Web and the enterprise market. Third, Google should develop services, software, and standards for search functions on platforms that Microsoft does not control, such as the new consumer devices. Fourth, it must use PC software like Google Desktop to its advantage: the program should be a beachhead on the desktop, integrated with Google’s broader architecture, APIs, and services. And finally, Google shouldn’t compete with Microsoft in browsers, except for developing toolbars based upon public APIs. Remember Netscape.

    Microsoft can bundle search with the next version of Windows Server just as it delivered SharePoint with Windows Server 2003. Google needs to make a play for this pure software space instead of relying on the hardware bundle. I think desktop search will continue to be controlled by Microsoft and Google will be confined to market share similar to Firefox unless Google has a major distinguishing desktop search offering such as exclusive content.

  19. Dec14

    FeedBurner announces FeedCount

    Sample FeedCount Display

    FeedBurner announced new features today FeedCount, an image displaying the total number of readers of a FeedCount enabled FeedBurner feed. You can choose your own background and foreground color and choose an animated version.

    FeedBurner also claims 1 in 5 podcasts listed on audio.weblogs.com is provided by a FeedBurner feed.

  20. Dec14

    Tiger adds default RSS reader option

    The next version of Macintosh operating system, 10.4 code named Tiger, defines a default RSS reader at the system level. Preferences in the current early start kit allow a user to define the time between feed updates, the color annotation of a new article, and when to remove stored items. Hopefully this means aggregators will be able to share a common feed storage location.

    Update: MacNet took down at the request of Apple Legal. The preference pane showed a drop-down boxes to select the default RSS reader, choose an update interval, highlight new items, and the length of time to store items.

  21. Dec14

    Value of idle time

    I just finished reading "Quitting the paint factory," an article by Mark Slouka in the November 2004 issue of Harper's Magazine. Mark looks at the history of the American worker, the pursuit of money over the value of time and mind, and questions what we value. Mark talks about the value of idle time, how we now spend money to have busy leisure time, and he shares the stories of literary figures struggling with some of the same questions about life. (via BoingBoing)

    What it says, crudely enough, is that in order to be successful, we must not only work but work continuously; what it assumes is that time is inversely pro­portional to wealth: our time demands will increase the harder we work and the more successful we become. It's an organic thing; a law, almost. Fish got­ta swim and birds gotta fly, you gotta work like a dog till you die.

  22. Dec13

    PubSub LinkRank detail

    PubSub has had LinkRanks for a while, but yesterday BoingBoing linked to a detail page not listed in the PubSub site links. PubSub displays a line chart of incoming links to the specified domain over the last thirty days and inbound links in the past ten days. Only one double listing in my results, a TypePad weblog with a separate domain. The chart is presented in Flash, making copy and pasting much more difficult. PubSub should learn from Alexa and make their images easy to add to other content. Think PowerPoint slides.

    PubSub is experimenting with NewsML for entry tracking using the OASIS published subjects specification.

    The line chart displays rank on the Y-axis and time on the X-axis -- both not labeled. Comparing PubSub results to Technorati results for the nine most recent links there are six domains links missed by Technorati and two links missed by PubSub. One of the PubSub domains listed referenced me 11 days ago: beyond the stated range. I cannot verify the reference of one of the domains listed by PubSub, ssucu.com, as it has no home page and no pages indexed by Google.

    Overall a good reminder that I need to play with PubSub more. Especially if they capture del.icio.us references (through spliced FeedBurner feeds I presume?).

  23. Dec13

    Technorati API first long look

    I spent some time today looking at the Technorati API and coding part of a personal tracking application. The API server was spotty throughout the day, making testing difficult. I cleaned up some of the wiki documentation, stored my own copies of API responses, and used my own servers to pull the data.

    I put together a demo application using JavaScript.

    Some things I noticed:

    • Cosmos query never returns rssurl or atomurl elements even though the data is stored. Use the weblog url as a parameter in a bloginfo query to pull this data.
    • The lang element in bloginfo is undocumented. 31411 for English, 1065 for Japanese, not sure what else.
    • Technorati picks up a lot of duplicate references. A weblog entry will often be counted twice: one for the home page and once for the individual entry pages.
  24. Dec10

    Bay Area tech employment on the rise

    Every day this week I have received an e-mail and phone call from Bay Area technology companies looking for a technical product manager. Some companies I have never heard of, others have a market capitalization in the billions. I would love to say they heard of me through my weblog, but most found me on Monster or some similar service. These companies just signed some big deals, more are coming, and they need to hire people quickly to support the new business.

    The Bay Area economy is picking up and many companies just can't hire fast enough. Referral bonuses are back. Employees are less afraid of being laid-off. Interesting times ahead.

  25. Dec10

    NewsFire 0.4 adds Feedster search

    David Watanabe released version 0.4 NewsFire, a slick RSS reader for Mac OS X. The new version adds support for Feedster and Yahoo! News search from within the application. A very well integrated and fast use of live web search.

  26. Dec10

    Society of the Underemployed

    As an economics nerd I have a lot of thoughts about weblogs and theories of incentive. Weblogs share some social and economic motivations with the world of open source software yet I struggle to quantify the economic effects on an individual publisher level.

    The key overlooked metric of the blogosphere is the society of the underemployed. People with full-time jobs and a paycheck who rather be doing something else on a full or part-time basis utilize weblog tools in an attempt to gain notoriety or possibly a new job. Weblogs are the karaoke night of online journalism where many participants are singing the same song and everyone dreams of their moment in the spotlight. Weblogs have found their way into the cubicles and bedrooms of America as individuals long to be heard and recognized where no such recognition exists before.

    During the boom years of the late 1990s employees could be selective about their employers and companies made huge efforts to attract employees and keep turnover as low as possible. An employee defined his or her work environment, hours, and was free to pursue whatever career path entered his or her mind. The boom years came crashing down and quality minds scrambled for work. Dreams were forgotten and bright minds took jobs at Starbucks, happy to pay the bills but creatively dormant. In 2001 Pyra struggled to stay alive and Mena Trott crafted her very own "Winner" ribbon before starting work on Movable Type with Ben. People wanted to keep their dreams alive but reality was closing in.

    Along came the world of weblogs. Individuals publishing personal experience for peer review and archived for the world to see. Cubicle dwellers had an outlet, a way to be discovered and appreciated, and a way to dream of a way out of their less than ideal world of collecting a paycheck but little else. Even writing about a cheese sandwich is a welcome distraction from an unsatisfying job.

    Eventually weblogs evolved into more than cheese sandwiches and short posts. Free hosted services such as Blogger's BlogSpot allowed anyone to get started in the world of weblogs and created a tool boom similar to Web-based e-mail and instant messaging before it. Corporate distractions were now more serious. Link blogs evolved into excerpts and then posts. Weblog authors now had to differentiate themselves based on content. Passionate and underemployed individuals were ready to step up and share their areas of expertise with the world.

    Weblogs have led to many hires based on reputation gained in ways previously not possible. Local journalism, political analysis, and stock selections are served up by individuals with full-time jobs unrelated to their weblogs. Companies are now able to tap into this large community of the underemployed and utilize a small portion of their time for free. Market research is widely available without the need for expensive focus group testing. All enabled by a network of people contributing to an online world throughout their day. Companies who get it right are able to benefit from the efforts of eager participants in exchange for the chance of fame and/or recognition. Start-ups are especially likely to get it right since they need all the help they can get. Companies should learn how to better utilize the society of the underemployed, gain goodwill, and increase loyalty.

  27. Dec09

    Dan Gillmor starting new citizen-journalism project

    Dan Gillmor is leaving the San Jose Mercury News in January to work on a citizen-journalism project.

    Wow! I better finish reading We the Media and tune in to what will surely be an interesting project.

  28. Dec09

    Forrester Research on search loyalty

    Charlene Li authored a new paper on search engine user loyalty and posted a summary on her weblog. The $50 six-page paper cites extensive customer survey data. Some interesting findings:

    • MSN gained substantial share as the default browser home page. (Internet Explorer no doubt)
    • MSN has a slight lead in toolbar users. (related to Messenger installs?)
    • Almost half of all toolbar users also use another toolbar.

    Charlene concludes that customers are becoming more sophisticated and specialized search companies will take away market share from Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Feedster is mentioned as a player in the RSS specialty.

  29. Dec09

    Omidyar Network invests in Feedster

    Feedster announced funding from Pierre Omidyar's Omidyar Network,

    Scott Rafer told me on Monday that the Omidyar Network had a good understanding of his approach to life and business from reading his weblog. A good business case for blogging about more than just your startup. Omidyar Network is interested in enabling the public. Feedster seeks validation as it continues to pursue venture capital funding, but the Omidyar Network is known for investing in social ideas and non-profits (Creative Commons, voting intiatives). Feedster is currently the only live search player without venture capital funding.

    I know little about the world of venture capitalists, but it is always interesting how dollar amounts or board of director placements are never announced. If someone gives you five dollars you can issue a press release and feel your business model has been validated. If you have a good enough product the VCs call you and you work out a relationship and partnerships. Pitching to VCs has been described as bend over and grease up but I think it would be interesting to gather ideas from intelligent business people even if it never resulted in immediate millions.

  30. Dec08

    Programming Summit at Sun

    Sun Microsystems hosted a programming summit yesterday with many big names in programming in attendance. Tim Bray has a good write-up about the day, the process putting together the event, and some of the outcomes.

    Groovy
    James Stachan
    Java
    Graham Hamilton
    Gilad Bracha
    Martin Buchholz
    Parrot
    Dan Sugalski
    Perl
    Larry Wall
    Python
    Guido van Rossum
    Samuele Pedroni
    Sean McGrath

    Good to see so many major coders in one spot to share ideas. Tim predicts "that as time goes by, more and more of the code written in the Java ecosystem won’t be in Java. This is a good thing."

  31. Dec08

    Edward Tufte lecture tonight at Stanford

    Edward Tufte photograph

    Edward Tufte is giving a lecture at Stanford tonight at 7:30 p.m. about his new book Beautiful Evidence. Tufte will discuss the theory of analytical design and methods for displaying eviidence. He will display the design decisions for reporting tools such as the Columbia shuttle investigation.

    The Visual Display of Quantitative Information is on my Christmas list and I have been wanting to learn more of Professor Tufte's methods for years. If you would like a ride to or from the event I will be driving from San Mateo and returning to San Francisco.

  32. Dec07

    Live search traffic comparison

    Which company is the number one player in live search in terms of total traffic and user share?

    Live search Hitwise statistics December 2004

    The above chart plots total market share Feedster, Technorati, and PubSub over the past month compared to all sites as calculated by Hitwise. Feedster and Technorati jostle for the top position while PubSub is way below. I expected to see a clear winner and was surprised at the results.

  33. Dec03

    WSJ on weblog marketing intelligence

    Vauhini Vara of the Wall Street Journal writes about how marketers increasingly turn to weblogs for marketing data. The article mentions Volkswagen utilizing reporting tools from Techdirt to keep informed of "items that appear on blogs and message boards, as well as in mainstream news outlets." Sony hired Intelliseek to find out how its customers compared its new digital Walkman to Apple's iPod.

    Karen Rizzo, director of marketing for Kryptonite, mentions how rapidly their product's reputation fell apart online when a message in an online bicycle forum spread across the online world.

    I expect to see more automated reporting tools in this space to help companies deal with the influx of data regarding their products. I already know of companies hiring consultants to interpret Technorati's results, and it is only a matter of time before companies develop market intelligence tools to tap into this readily available information.

  34. Dec03

    Bloglines adds international flavors

    Bloglines International

    Bloglines is now available in Spanish, Japanese, traditional Chinese, French, German, and Portuguese. Mark should open up the interface and allow users to add their own launguages like Google's interface.

  35. Dec03

    Recent Comments RSS Feed Template for Movable Type

    A few months ago Jeremy Zawodny posted his Movable Type template for a RSS feed of all comments regardless of their approval status. I liked the idea as a way to keep e-mail clutter to a minimum. I took the idea and created my own recent comments RSS feed template using no namespaces or CDATA. The feed validates.

    I created a new index template and set the RSS file to regenerate with every index build. Every time you post your comments feed is rebuilt. For some people that will be not often enough but for me it works well.

  36. Dec02

    MSN Spaces and MSN Messenger

    MSN turned on MSN Spaces last night and of course I had to set up my own test weblog and tinker a bit with every feature I could find.

    MSN Spaces does not declare a doctype and their HTML does not validate. The RSS feeds do validate without Microsoft resorting to CDATA inside the description element.

    The use of MSN Messenger as a weblog interface is the news I actually care about. I installed MSN Messenger 7 beta to take a look at the MSN Spaces integration.

    MSN status

    Messenger now places a small star on the bottom right of each contact icon, as pictured above. Clicking on the icon reveals a contact card with My Space information on the first card.

    MSN status

    You see the last post title and brief summary as well as some of my photographs. The contact card uses the same theme as my MSN Spaces pages. "See more" takes you to that person's My Space page. Since this contact is me, I also see space to add entry or visit my MSN Spaces configuration page.

    Very cool but too bad it is limited to MSN only for now. Hopefully there will be ways of adding non-MSN RSS content to the contact card as well.

  37. Dec02

    Jason Kottke and Sony

    Jason Kottke's recent experience with Sony has him reconsidering his role as a publisher. Is the hassle worth it?

    Only big publishers have the budgets to deal with any hint of legal issues. I raised this issue at Lawrence Lessig's Law & Blogging session at BloggerCon. Regardless of fair use, being on the right side of the law, it is difficult to gather the resources to respond to legal harassment. Lessig differentiated between a "nastygram" and an actual legal filing.

    Jason has demonstrated good judgment and community building in the past. I received an e-mail from Jason before he pointed at one of my entries with a file hosted on my servers to let me know he would be willing to mirror the file if I had bandwidth issues. He has worked on projects such as Dropcash to help the weblog community raise funds.

    Hopefully someone with a legal background will step in and help Jason tell Sony to go away and play with the MPAA some more instead.

  38. Dec01

    Howard Rheingold class at Stanford

    Howard Rheingold is teaching a class titled Toward a Literacy of Cooperation at Stanford on Wednesdays from 4:15 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. from January 5, 2005 until March 16. The class covers the economics of cooperation and will utilize weblogs and wikis to communicate between classes and with people from all over the world. Syllabus readings include Smart Mobs, Eric Bonabeau, Joi Ito, and Micah Sifry are all required readings.

    Non-students who live in the area can show up to the course without signing up.

    If you live outside the area we hope to be able to deliver a videostream to you.

    Sweet! I wish I could attend, but probably cannot leave work to be in Palo Alto by 4:15 p.m. I will try to follow along through videos.

  39. Dec01

    Gator EULA prohibits uninstallers

    Ben Edelman read through the 63-page EULA for Gator and found some pretty interesting clauses.

    You agree that you will not use, or encourage others to use, any unauthorized means for the removal of the GAIN AdServer, or any GAIN-Supported Software from a computer.

    Ad-Aware and Spybot are of course not on the approved list.

    Gator displays advertisements on a computers with its software installed. These advertisements are triggered by the sites you browse, often showing a competitive offering for e-commerce sites. Like spam, the way to make companies like Claria (makers of Gator) go away is to simply not click the advertisements. Better yet, write the companies doing business with Claria and let them know their decision to partner with such companies has lost your business.

    NexTag, my current employer, pays Claria and WhenU to serve advertisements on the sites of competitors. If you would like to voice your opinion on advertisers contributing to spyware, e-mail advertising@nextag.com or call (650) 645-4700 to let them know what you think.

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 »

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