Personal

36 posts filed under this category.

Announcing Widget Summit 2008

I am hosting a my third annual Widget Summit conference November 3rd and 4th at Hotel Nikko in San Francisco.

Widget Summit 2007

I am hosting a two-day widget conference October 15-16 in San Francisco. Widget Summit is the sequel to last year’s Widgets Live! conference, bringing together developers and product planners for a two-day perspective on the widget industry.

New weekly podcast on tech news and trends

Last week I started a new weekly podcast covering news and trends in the web technology industry. I plan to sit down with different newsmakers and experts each week to examine the changing state of web technology and hopefully capture a snapshot of how this changing world affects our lives and livelihood. Niall Kennedy’s Podcast is a bit like an extended conversation on the topics I like to cover on Niall Kennedy’s Weblog. I’ll post short summaries to my blog for each new episode, but if you’re interested in full write-ups and enclosures you should subscribe to the podcast feed….

Five things you may not know about me

I’ve avoided the Blog-Tag chain letter for weeks, but Veronica, Nick, Brady, and perhaps a few others are waiting for answers. Enjoy! I am a history buff. My two areas of most interest are western religion (Jewish, Christian, and a little Muslim) and the USSR, two areas I think carry the greatest influence over United States mentality. I had a soccer career before jumping into the technology sector. I met, and in some cases marked, most of my childhood idols. It was a really valuable experience, shaping my views on people, management, fears and dreams all at the same time….

Handling of Microsoft’s copyleft violation

There have been a few accounts on the web about a copyright enforcement action I took yesterday morning. Below are some long details if you are interested in the full details in about 1400 words. Yesterday morning a Microsoft employee used a photograph of mine in a corporate blog post promoting new features in the Windows Vista operating system and version 7 of the Internet Explorer web browser. The photograph used in the Microsoft blog post pictured Dean Hachamovitch, general manager of the Internet Explorer component of Windows, on stage at the Gnomedex 2005 announcing support for web feed syndication…

Speaking at PubCon on Tuesday

I’ll be in Las Vegas early next week speaking at PubCon on feed syndication best practices. The session takes place from 10:15-11:30 a.m. on Tuesday if you are attending the search conference. I have not been to Las Vegas in a few years so I’ll be checking out new pieces of grandeur at the Wynn, new Caesars Palace, Treasure Island, etc. Hopefully there will be lots of search geeks in attendance leading to interesting conversations….

Widgets Live! timeline

I received a few e-mails this morning from people interested in how Widgets Live! came together. Yep, the event really was planned in about a month, from site selection to the actual day-long event. In this post I’ll outline how Widgets Live! grew from an idea to an in-person event. July 12 Coming up short on ideas for my weekly podcast with Om Malik, I suggested we talk about widgets and how they are changing web publishing. I had been playing around with widgets as a form of web feed syndication, specifically thinking of performance on Live.com and other views…

Widgets Live! wrap-up

Yesterday’s Widgets Live! conference was a success! Over 200 people involved in the widget ecosystem came together to discuss the current state of the industry, show off their work, meet new people, and learn new things. There were two big takeaways for attendees: we’re just getting started and the widget world is a bit too fractured. Highlights from the day Arlo Rose talked about getting a call from a friend at Apple after a meeting discussion “steamrolling” his product and small company, Konfabulator. Apple later released Dashboard. Fox Interactive Media launched Spring Widgets, a new desktop and web-based widget hybrid….

Widgets Live! conference is sold out!

The Widgets Live! conference sold its last ticket this morning, filling the room next Monday with 200 people interested in the current state of the widget ecosystem and what’s next. We have a good mix of people in attendance, representing large content publishers, investors, designers, and even some hardware manufacturers. It should be a lot of fun. Below is some more information about Widgets Live! attendees. The conference website had visitors from all over the world and is a pretty good correlation to conference attendees. We’ll have companies present from Europe, India, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the United…

Moderating video search panel tonight in Mountain View

I am co-moderating tonight’s Search SIG event on the video ecosystem with Om Malik. Speakers include founders of VideoEgg, CastTV, Dabble, and POSTroller. I’ll do my part to make sure the topic stays on search and discoverability, and hopefully we won’t get too caught up in billion dollar buyouts. The event takes place at Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus starting at 6:30 p.m. If you’re in the area and have an interest in search or video come by and check out the crowd and presentations. I’ll be down in Silicon Valley for most of the day, visiting Google for lunch and…

Leaving Microsoft

I am leaving Microsoft to start my own company. My last day at Microsoft is next Friday, August 18. It’s uncertain whether Microsoft will continue the feed platform work I started, but it’s some good stuff so I hope they do. RSS is the internet’s answer to the notification scenarios we’ve discussed and worked on for some time, and is filling a role as “the UNIX pipe of the internet” as people use it to connect data and systems in unanticipated ways. I joined Microsoft in April excited to change the world and build an Internet-scale feed platform to power…

Speaking at SES San Jose next Wednesday

I’ll be at the Search Engines Strategy conference next week including speaking on a blogger panel on Wednesday from 11 a.m. – 12:15 p.m. Google CEO Eric Schmidt kindly agreed to be our opening act, warming up the crowd for 45 minutes as they recover from a night of drinking (but not much dancing) at the Googleplex. If you’re at the conference or one of the evening parties say hello and let’s talk about search. I’m still hoping Yahoo! will rent out Great America on Thursday night so I can ride Top Gun over and over again….

Back from vacation

I spent the last week in Maui visiting a friend and having some rest and relaxation before I start at Microsoft on Monday. I spent my time scuba diving, hiking, eating BBQ, climbing volcanos, and watching movies and a few European soccer matches. It was a relaxing trip and a fun adventure but it’s good to be back in the Bay area and around familiar people and places. I was impressed my the number of enterprising small businesses in Maui made possible by tourism. Individuals would set up a photo area with a few tropical birds and charge for postcards…

Creating a feed syndication platform at Microsoft

Starting next week I will join Microsoft’s Windows Live division to create a new product team around syndication technologies such as RSS and Atom. I will help build a feed syndication platform leveraged by Microsoft products and developers all around the world. I am excited to construct a team and product from scratch focused on scalability and connecting syndication clients and their users wherever they may exist: desktop, mobile, media center, gaming console, widget, gadget, and more. Live.com is the new default home page for users of the Internet Explorer 7 and the Windows Vista operating system. Live.com will be…

Continued interests

I’ve been digging into a few new areas of interest over the past few months I feel still need improvement in search, discovery and tracking. I’ve spoken about most of these topics in my podcast series with Om, but it’s worth mentioning again in text. I’m interested in continuing my work in these areas and perhaps helping to solve some existing problems. Feeds We have RSS 2.0, and Atom 1.0, the world is starting to understand how syndicated content makes sense, but I don’t see a lot of future thinking for handling multiple locations, personas, and personalized content. Advertising is…

Seeking new horizons

I am leaving Technorati to pursue new opportunities. I submitted my resignation letter this morning and I will be a free agent on March 1. I joined Technorati in February 2005 excited about changing the world of weblogs and introducing people to a new kind of search. Almost a year later my passions at work have eroded and it’s time to find new horizons. Valentines Day is the perfect time to rekindle lost flames. The company has accomplished a lot in the past year, emerging from what many people viewed as a commodity space into a market leader. The Alexa…

Site redesign complete!

I’ve been a bit quiet over the past week while making some changes under the hood of this website. This morning I unveiled a new site design I hope will convey a more professional look and experience for everyone viewing my pages in a web browser. I wanted to add more visual structure to each post to match what I try to accomplish in my markup. I wanted to help visitors discover new sections of the site and click around a bit to learn more. I also wanted to improve the friendliness of search and commenting. I worked with…

Visiting New York next week for BlogOn

I will be in New York City next week from Sunday until Wednesday for the BlogOn 2005 conference. If you are in New York and would like to meet up feel free to contact me. I arranged for a late flight on Wednesday to allow time to meet with interesting people during the day. Tags: blogon, nyc, blogon2005…

My first house, other big news

Today was a huge day for me. It’s my birthday. I just bought my first house, a one-bedroom condo in San Francisco’s south of Market district near 9th and Howard. I just found out my younger brother is being deployed to Tikrit, Iraq in about six weeks with his Army unit. Posting might be light while I fill out forms and move physical locations. Tags: sanfrancisco…

My other blog is rebuilding

I am changing web hosts and while the name servers update you may experience odd things within my web space. Not to worry, it is expected, and I will bring my site back to life on its new home on TextDrive.

New York Times photo shoot

Today I was photographed for a New York Times article on the tension between employers and employees over weblogs.

More questions answered

I have been following the conversation around the blogosphere over the last Questions and Answers Was the work created on your own time, on your own hardware, and uploaded to your own personal server?… I created and uploaded the image Friday night at home with my personal computer.

Whose voice is it anyway?

Last Friday I posted a modified poster originally created by Albert Dome in 1942 for the Office of Facts and Figures: an agency of the United States government.

Managing the Technorati community

Starting Tuesday, February 1, I will start a new job as Community Manager at Technorati. I will be responsible for helping the world understand Technorati’s service offerings and providing developers with the tools they need to build and extend Technorati. I will help make your voices heard and build new features to strengthen the links we create while consuming and producing content. I am excited to be working with a team of smart and passionate people. Technorati is not the only company competing to be your live search destination and keep you informed of the latest happenings in the areas…

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…

E-mail down over the weekend

I did not receive any e-mail from Friday afternoon through Sunday. I have contacted my host, and changed some things on the server-side to make everything work again. If you sent me an e-mail over the weekend I apologize, but it may be lost forever so please resend….

Outsourcing front line

On Monday I started my new job at NexTag, a comparison shopping site in San Mateo. NexTag has offices in the U.S. and India, with over 30 software developers in Gurgaon (near New Delhi) in India. In some cases NexTag will hire employees locally, train them, and relocate the employees to India to lead a team in Gurgaon. How does the existence of a software center halfway around the world change your daily work load? You definitely need to reevaluate your time and spend a lot more time on clear specifications instead of building the application yourself. Once you develop…

New job at NexTag

On November 1 I will start my new job at NexTag, a shopping comparison search engine in San Mateo. I will be a product manager in charge of creating a developer and affiliate network to create a better community around the site and its offerings. I worked for one of NexTag’s competitors — PriceGrabber.com — in the early stages of product search so I know the industry well. My weblog did not help me win the job, but my experience in the online community and developer space will no doubt be utilized in my new position. I am excited to…

Seeking new employment

I am currently looking for a new full-time position in the tech industry. My current employer, Callan Associates, has threatened to fire me for having a weblog and making any reference to my work life. While I have yet to be fired my yearly review is now ten months overdue and I have been told not to expect any pay increase or job advancement. There are so many interesting services in the tech sector right now I would love to work on. I realize that I am not aware of all of the companies currently seeking new talent and I…

Weblog design

I never really liked the design of my weblog. When I moved from Blogger to Movable Type I was more worried about getting every entry converted to the new system and lost sight of structure and design issues. I finally decided to do something. I have changed my XHTML to include more lists, spans, and divs to create more specific blocks of code. Each entry is part of an ordered list and has its own unique list item id. I might have gone too far when I made some lists with one item, but those lists have room for expansion…

Weblogging about work

I received an e-mail this morning from an executive from my company asking I remove all references to my current employer (Callan) from my Web site. Thanks to Lawrence Lessig, Wendy Seltzer, and Robert Scoble I am already aware of some of the issues at play with branding and trademarks. Someone came across my blog by doing a Google search on Callan. I assume it was someone inside the company because this was passed along to Callan’s legal representation (Cooley Godward LLP) and then I was contacted. The first mention of my Web site within search results for Callan Associates…

500th entry

This is my 500th blog entry. Exciting that I now have a history of more than 500 posts over the last 4 years….

Change in RSS 2.0 feed

Today I changed my RSS feed from excerpt to full text. I did not realize this was the default MovableType setting, but I do appreciate full text in other people’s feeds, especially for offline viewing. I would like to follow the best practices of blogging and incorporate any community tools that are out there, so please let me know if there is something I should be aware of….

Spidering Hacks goes live

Spidering Hacks is now available for pre-order around the world. $20 adds these 100 tips and hacks to your library. 400 pages. Currently ranked 432,937 at Barnes & Noble. ISBN is 0-596-00577-6. UPC is 636920-00577-3. ASIN is 0596005776. As previously mentioned, I wrote a hack using Java to gather traffic statistics from Alexa. It will most likely come out in November, not October, but it’s still cool to see it hit the virtual shelves as a pre-order….

Spidering Hacks

I have been busy over the past week writing for a new O’Reilly book. Look for me in chapter 4 a to be released book named Spidering Hacks, part of the O’Reilly Hack Series. Interestingly enough I was the only person to author to use Java. I have a feeling this is going to be a book full of a lot of Perl. There is only one Python example. I wrote a hack that gathers data about Alexa toolbar users traffic to your Web property on a daily basis. Alexa collects subdomain information as well as property rankings, and I…

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