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 a title and a source and publish time in the description text 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.

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.

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

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.

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.

Johnny Ramone is dead

Johnny Ramone 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.

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).

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.

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.