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

Niall Kennedy's weblog, newest first. Page 33 of 72.

Ask Jeeves weblog

Ask Jeeves launched a new weblog powered by TypePad. Bloglines is featured in the sidebar as top blogs and most popular blog links….

Amazon Prime

Amazon.com introduced a membership program called Amazon Prime that provides free two-day shipping for a yearly fee of $80. You can invite up to four family members in the same household to share the same Amazon Prime benefits at no extra cost. The household option is especially interesting. I might sign-up and share the account among members of my work family….

Findory Neighbors

Findory added a Findory Neighbors to help visualize the relationships between weblogs. I did an ego search and the results are interesting….

Technorati Tags cleans up, adds RSS output

I have only been at Technorati for one day but we already have two new features I am proud to talk about. If you have an API key you can now receive a RSS feed containing the latest weblog posts with a given tag using TagQuery. Our tags page is now more compliant with web standards through the use of lists and emphasis elements. Tantek posted about the decisions behind his changes to the page’s markup. It has been interesting to see all the different uses of tags from companies interested in being included in Technorati’s tags pages. If you…

Feedster redesign

Feedster has a new user interface on their web pages. A definite improvement, and the redesign helps users start using the site right away in varying capacities. The home page is not valid XHTML nor valid CSS….

Google introduces Founders Awards

Google employees are now eligible for quarterly awards of restricted Google stock worth $12 million vested over four years awarded to teams but distributed based on individual contribution. More details will be available after Google’s conference call with investors later today. The new plan is a way for Google to provide incentives for new employees with a $190 strike price….

MSN Search relaunch

MSN Search relaunched with music and Encarta integration as well as RSS results. Bill Gates: “Input from millions of our customers – including me – was crucial to our efforts to make MSN Search the best it can be.”…

Drink wine and mix with San Francisco techies tonight

Tonight I am hosting a geek gathering at Vino Venue in San Francisco. Anyone is welcome to come check out the intersection of wine and gadgets while socializing with new media types. I start my new job at Technorati tomorrow so this is my last night as a free man. Meet at 6:30 p.m. at VinoVenue, 686 Mission Street, on the corner of Mission Street and 3rd Street. Over 100 wines are dispensed using smart cards, Windows servers, and database technology to suggest new wine types. It’s like Attention.xml for your wine habits! They also serve Oprah’s favorite teas and…

TiVo Home Media Engine SDK

TiVo released a Java SDK for their broadband-connected Series2 DVRs. There is already a RSS reader for the TiVo. James Gosling will judge your Java code in the TiVo Developer Challenge with prizes such as a Segway and other gadgets….

Digital identity event at Future Salon

Last night I attended a Future Salon presentation about digital and online identities. The event was hosted at SAP in Palo Alto. Eric Sachs of Google spoke about Google’s relatively new entry into the digital identity realm with services such as Orkut and Gmail. Jeff Hodges of Liberty Alliance talked about identity systems in the enterprise marketplace. Fen Labalme of Identity Commons talked about identity systems built at the grassroots level for non-governmental organizations. I recorded all three speeches as well as the question and answer period using a directional microphone from my seat in the front row. Eric Sachs…

Reserve a product at your local Apple Store

Would you like to get your hands on the latest Apple product as soon as it hits your local Apple Store? You can go online at the store or from anywhere in the world to reserve a product when it becomes available. I used the system to reserve an iPod shuffle and I received a call today that the San Francisco Apple Store will keep one on hold for me until the end of the day. URL syntax is http://apple.webassociates.com/request/reserve.cfm?sid= + your local Apple Store ID. Visit the Apple Store retail page, select your nearest store, and note the store…

Six Apart HQ visit

Yesterday I dropped by the Six Apart headquarters unannounced. Everyone was very busily working for 4 p.m. on a Friday. I took some pictures of their new office space. The office layout is open and airy allowing for easy collaboration between teams. There are plenty of conference rooms if you would like some privacy. Two conference rooms are identified as Movable Type and TypePad battlegrounds as the War Room and the Make Love Not War room respectively. The central core of the office space contains lounge areas, executive offices, and a kitchen. Their kitchen had four or five refrigerators,…

Geek wine gathering Monday, January 31

I am hosting a geek wine gathering and tasting at VinoVenue in downtown San Francisco on Monday, January 31 at 6:30 p.m. VinoVenue dispenses 1-ounce sample of wine by inserting a smart card into an automated machine hooked up to wine bottles. Very geeky, and a good space to mix after work. If you plan to attend please leave a comment so I can get a reasonable headcount. If you do not drink wine they also have some nice teas. There is a small market next door, A.G. Ferrari, and outside food is allowed. VinoVenue is located at the…

Bay area technology events calendar

I try to keep track of events in the Bay Area of interest to techies like me. There seems to be enough interest from like-minded people that I decided to publish an aggregated calendar of local events of interest to me. I pull information from venues, local groups, and personal contacts. Cost information will appear at the top of the notes section. Yes, I could output in hCalendar or RSS as well but publishing my calendar on .Mac is just so easy. Click on one of the links below to view my list of San Francisco Bay area events of…

Technorati Tag API

Technorati opened up their tag API for anyone to query for posts associated with a tag. The query currently only returns Technorati’s own XML. Some other API changes now live: You can choose to not receive claimed weblog data for cosmos and search queries by setting the claim parameter to 0. Search query now has a limit parameter to allow for selective browsing. Cosmos query has a highlight parameter to highlight the anchor text within the excerpt….

Take 2 Games acquires Civilization franchise

Take 2 Interactive Software announced that it has purchased the Civilization game franchise from FIRAXIS. Civilization IV will be released in late 2005 with 3D graphics and support for XML and Python user-created add-ons. I have spent many days over the years playing Civilization and its expansion packs. I’m looking forward to being able to code for the next version and bringing the Irish closer to virtual world domaination!…

Amazon visual yellow pages

Amazon’s A9 search engine added a business directory today with images of the business storefront alongside the address and a clickable telephone number. A search for Starbucks returns Starbucks locations within five miles of your Amazon.com default shipping address by default with thumbnail images for the business location and an overlay of a MapQuest map. You can even browse up or down the block to see surrounding storefronts. Very cool technology! In my sample searches I found Starbucks location in a mall or office park setting had an address that did not match the picture on the listing. Business owners…

Ben Goodger joins Google

Ben Goodger, lead engineer for Mozilla Firefox, just announced he started a new job at Google. He will still be “devoted full-time to the advancement of Firefox, the Mozilla platform and web browsing in general” and work out of the Mozilla Foundation offices regularly. Interesting move and it’s good to see Google giving back to the open-source community….

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…

Amazon DevCon

Amazon is hosting DevCon this week for its software development team. If you could like to join the developer chat you may have a chance to ask questions of Guido van Rossum and other speakers on today’s schedule. The web services team plans to post video and possibly audio, but the summaries are an interesting enough read regardless. Some excerpts: Joel Spolsky: “[P]eople won’t understand where their emotional reactions are coming from. Use this info in real life. Do same thing with software, put people in control, good emotional response, good physical feel, remind them of mom. Make it pretty,…

Picasa links to their weblog in help menu

I just started playing around with Picasa 2 and I noticed they have a “Read the Picasa Blog” option in their help menu linking to a new Blogger weblog. Picasa is the first product that I have seen link to a weblog within the application and it is especially interesting to see the link appear in the help section and not in a more generic about section….

Bill Joy joins Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers

Bill Joy is the newest partner at Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers. John Doerr of KPCB said “It’s our tradition every year end to ask Bill what innovations, what important ideas are just over the horizon. Last month we agreed we should work together.” Doerr added, “Whether the innovation is in internet web services, software, architectures, energy, material science, info/life sciences – or entirely new fields – Bill’s insights and relationships are respected and valued.” Big news!…

Doug Bowman photo gallery using Movable Type

Doug Bowman designed a photo gallery using Movable Type, Mac software iPhoto and Photon. View Doug’s New Zealand gallery and remind yourself the whole thing is powered by Movable Type entries and categories. I especially like the slide effect with the labels….

Feed aggregators and robot exlcusion

The world of feed aggregators has been compared to the HTML Internet of 1994 by Scott Rosenberg and others.. We are starting to consume and make sense of this new data, but there are currently no well-defined methods or implementations of selective consumption. If I publish content it is instantly available to feed aggregators and search companies with no restraints on its usage regardless of licensing and robot preferences. If a Major League Baseball launched a weblog for the private, non-commercial use of their audience there is nothing stopping companies from adding or supplementing the content without the consent of…