Writing on feeds, search, widgets, and the social web.

Niall Kennedy's weblog, newest first. Page 24 of 72.

My new iPod nano

I arrived at the Apple Store in downtown San Francisco today right before the first shipment of iPod nanos arrived via FedEx. I had to wait a little while, but I am now the proud owner of an iPod nano 4 GB in black. I already have a 1GB iPod shuffle but my biggest frustration was not being able to see what I was going. I would often load my iPod shuffle with just a few tracks — podcasts at the beginning followed by music — to avoid not knowing where anything was. My shuffle barely ever contained over…

Vint Cerf joins Google

Vint Cerf will join Google starting October 3 as their Chief Internet Evangelist. Vint already posted to the Google blog to let us know he is “committed to the vision of Google’s criticality to the daily lives of hundreds of millions of people.” Vint Cerf is currently working on the Interplanetary Protocol and may be working with Google to create the first Earth node at the top of the often rumored Google space elevator. :) Tags: vintcerf…

Northern Ireland defeats England in World Cup qualifying

Huge news from Ulster! Northern Ireland defeated England 1-0 in a World Cup qualifying soccer match. England is currently ranked #7 in the world and Northern Ireland is ranked 116. England did play their full squad. Tags: northernireland, england, ulster…

Mitsui invests in Feedster

Japanese business conglomerate Mitsui has invested an undisclosed amount of money in Feedster. Mitsui has 723 subsidiaries ranging from steel production to medical spas. Update: It looks like Scott Rafer, former CEO of Feedster, has left the company perhaps as a contingency of the Mitsui deal or of his own will….

Wall Street Journal on blog search

Wednesday’s Wall Street Journal features an article on the world of blog search and how companies such as Technorati, BlogPulse, IceRocket, and Feedster are providing users with access to information as it happens. It is a pretty good overview of the industry and the various search services that will introduce people to the concept of searching for information as it happens. The failure to mention Ask Jeeves and its purchase of Bloglines seems like a big omission given the comparisons made between smaller search startups and bigger search players such as Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. I will have to flip…

WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a new hosted version of the popular open-source software WordPress. WordPress.com builds upon the WordPress 1.6 codebase including new support for multiple users named WordPress MU to describe its multi-user capabilities. Developer Donncha O’Caoimh has been busy adding new multi-user capabilities to WordPress. WordPress MU features improved user management, categories shared across an entire install, and a redesigned drag-and-drop editing interface. Bloggers will soon be able to signup for their own hosted WordPress installation at WordPress.com but until then the service is invitation only while hardware comes online and everything is properly configured. If you would like to…

Bay Area Technology Jobs Blog

I created a new weblog focused on technology jobs in the San Francisco Bay area. The process of potential employees with potential hirers seems so inefficient I just had to try to better connect the two sides. The economy is improving and there are many interesting jobs available at technology companies building cool new things that push the boundaries of conventional wisdom, behavior, and code. The new weblog provides a way for me to experiment with various forms of advertising, connect people, a provide a pulse on industry employment movements to all who are interested. I am currently using FeedBurner…

Signs you should consider replacing your company

Brad Feld’s recent post about signs a board of directors should replace the company’s CEO got me thinking about a larger issue. Why not apply the same problems to a worker’s role in the company? The main difference is the middle manager or line worker usually has less money and capital invested in the success of the enterprise but many of the same ideas hold true. The list below is modified from Brad’s post to focus on the role of an individual worker. Signs you should consider replacing your company I never hear from my commanding officer (other than at…

Time wasting at work

According to a new survey of 10,000 workers by America Online and Salary.com the average worker in the Software and Internet sectors admits to wasting 2.2 hours per work day. Human resource managers admitted to an assumed loss of 0.94 hours per work day and a suspected loss of 1.6 hours per workday. The top reasons employees provided were not having enough work to do (33.2%), feeling they were underpaid for the amount of work they perform (23.4%), distractions from co-workers (14.7%), and not enough personal time after-work (12%). I think the top two cited work hinderances are actually related:…

The history of Labor Day

Today is Labor Day. A day for every man and woman in the United States to take some time off, sip some ice tea, and spend time with friends and family. The tradition began with coordinated unpaid day off of work and became a part of the national scene under political pressure and a mid-term election in 1894. The work environment of the late 19th century heavily favored the employer. The Pullman Palace Car Company company was one example of a company where you assumed not just a job, but a lifestyle. Founder and CEO George Pullman created the town…

Updated Hurricane Katrina page on Technorati

Yesterday afternoon I updated the Hurricane Katrina page on Technorati with new first-person reports and information resources about the hurricane and its aftermath. The original featured content from Monday focused on the latest news about the hurricane and it’s immediate impact. There were links to weather sites such as NOAA and first-hand accounts from people who had been in the middle of the winds and rains that tore through southern Louisiana and southern Mississippi. Many people updated their blogs with the latest news, accounts, and general observations from their immediate geographic area. Commenters provided advice from tornado and hurricane affected…

The Onion on Google

The Onion posted an article on Wednesday about Google’s plans for world domination. In the Onion’s satirical account Google will index all of the world’s information by destroying anything it cannot index. The Onion also speculates about Google Sound, a global network of microphones to index the world’s emitted sounds, and Google’s vast army of laser-equipped robots that will scan the DNA of every living organism. (via Doc Searls) Tags: theonion…

Technorati Blog Finder

Technorati just introduced Technorati Blog Finder, a browsable and searchable directory of blogs powered by tags. The Technorati Blog Finder helps you find blogs of interest in the subject areas you care about. The Technorati Blog Finder is a product created with a lot of user feedback about what groups they identify with online and how they would like to find other bloggers within that interest. Technorati seeded the list using a blogger’s most common post tags but authors can edit, change, or delete these tags — up to 20 total — through their Technorati member account page. You can…

MSN Search quietly introduces feed search

MSN Search introduced feed-specific search last week using two new search operators for advanced users: feed and hasfeed. You may now restrict your search to only return results from the content of a RSS or Atom feed using the feed search operator. Here is an example MSN feed search for Niall Kennedy. You may also restrict your search to only include HTML pages with a declared RSS or Atom link alternate. Here is an example MSN feed search for Niall Kennedy on pages with a RSS or an Atom feed. These two operators pave the way for MSN to introduce…

Shopping comparison questions answered

I recently received a couple inquiries from people interested in the shopping comparison industry for academic studies as well as new business development. I decided to make the answers to some questions and the discussion around the industry an open conversation not constrained to e-mail. I hope you find the information below useful insight into the shopping comparison industry. The text in blockquotes contains questions sent to me via e-mail from a MBA student at the University of Maryland regarding large shopping comparison sites Shopping.com, PriceGrabber, and NexTag and the industry as a whole. Competitive advantage: My observation is, to…

RSS jobs at Yahoo! and Microsoft

Yahoo! and Microsoft are definitely paying attention to emerging forms of data transport such as RSS. It is evident not only in their product roadmaps but also in the essential tools to help potential candidates succeed in their jobs. Microsoft mentions RSS in 15 current job descriptions across product groups such as portable media center, marketing, and MSN. Looks like Microsoft has some plans for RSS on mobile devices. Yahoo! mentions RSS in 12 current job descriptions including what they are calling their “open content (RSS) platform.” Google currently has no job listings for feed technologies RSS, Atom, or even…

Hurricane Katrina on Technorati

I spent my morning summarizing the current happenings around Hurricane Katrina for a new Technorati page on the topic. Some interesting observations with limited citations as I am just braindumping. Bloggers opened their houses to each other sight unseen. Blogs with video and photo coverage quickly exceeded their bandwidth limits and were offline this morning. CNN setup a special citizen journalists page for submissions. Technorati received calls from media outlets this morning in their search of the latest news from the blogosphere. Bloggers lost power and Internet access put kept on blogging through laptops connected to dial-up modems and free…

Yahoo! leasing San Francisco office space

Yahoo! plans to lease 200,000 square feet of office space in San Francisco according to the San Francisco Business Times. The new office is located at 475 Sansome Street, near the landmark TransAmerica pyramid. Yahoo! currently has a HotJobs office in San Francisco and is currently hiring for two account executive positions. I wonder what teams will be located at this new location. I have thought about working at Yahoo! in the past but the commute to Sunnyvale is just too much for city dwellers like me or people living in Marin or the East Bay. 200,000 square feet holds…

Movable Type 3.2 is here

Six Apart released the final version of Movable Type 3.2 today, almost a full year after the release of 3.1 on August 31, 2004. New feature highlights: A detailed user manual. New templates allow default markup compatibility across all Six Apart properties. Trusted commentors, junk folders, and simpler individual archive templates help authors fight spam while jumping through less setup hoops. SpamLookup is a bundled plugin. Reworked administrative interface including color icons and list actions. Bundled with an OpenID server as an extra feature. Atom 1.0 template is included while the RSS 1.0 template has been removed. Separate configurable…

Google Talk client now available

The Google Talk application is now available on Google for Windows 2000 and Windows XP. It features voice and text messaging and loads all of your contacts from Gmail. The application is only 900 KB in size. Google Talk supports voice codecs PCMA, PCMU, G.723, iLBC, ISAC, IPCMWB, EG711U, and EG711A. They are evaluating the Speex codec. They currently use XMPP-based signaling but plan to support SIP signaling in the near future. Google is currently working with EathLink’s Vling product as well as Sipphone’s Gizmo Project for integration with Google Talk. Google also has a page listing Jabber/XMPP clients…

Google Talk is live

Want to chat with your friends using Google’s instant messaging platform? Do you have an instant messaging client that supports Jabber messaging and a Google ID? Here’s what you need to do: Open a client supporting Jabber (AdiumX, Gaim, etc.) Your server name is talk.google.com Your username is the same as your Google ID. Example: user@gmail.com Your password is the same as you use to login to Gmail or other Google login locations. That’s it! You can add your friends using their full ID and encrypt your messages to be safe. I am sure Google will introduce a nice UI…

LinkedIn social hack

Would you like to contact people listed on business networking site LinkedIn without a paid account or even an approval? I have received a few calls from recruiters lately using LinkedIn as a prospecting service but not paying anything for the service. How? They simply look at my current company and search the web for corporate contact information. A quick call to a receptionist at a small company like Technorati and the recruiter asks to speak with me. It’s not too difficult, and the recruiter just avoided the LinkedIn InMail cost of about $5 an e-mail. The practice seems to…

Two Google announcements this week

The New York Times reports Google plans to introduce a new version of Google Desktop on Monday and a “communications tool” on Wednesday. The new Google Desktop will feature live content panels allowing developers to write their own widgets associated with Google Desktop. A beta version of Google Desktop version 2 is now available on the Google Desktop site. What communications tool will Google introduce on Wednesday? Google mobile? Google IM? We have a few days to speculate. Tags: googledesktop…

Blogs as an e-mail replacement

While at a cafe on Friday afternoon I experienced a new use for TypePad. I was at Ritual Coffee Roasters in the Mission district of San Francisco Friday afternoon when I noticed a gentleman transferring notes from a notepad to entries on his TypePad blog. His girlfriend is currently in Africa as a humanitarian aid worker and he created a password-protected TypePad blog to keep in touch. Blogging had replaced e-mail as their most reliable form of communication. How do you communicate with someone when you are unsure when they will have access to the Internet in one form or…

Technorati party tonight in Palo Alto

Technorati is sponsoring dinner and drinks — free as in beer — tonight, August 20, at Gordon Biersch in Palo Alto from 7 p.m. until 9 p.m. The event coincides with the nearby BarCamp event nearby. If you are in the Palo Alto area I hope you can join us tomorrow night for some garlic fries, beer, and many interesting people in downtown Palo Alto. Tags: barcamp, paloalto…