FeedBurner adds e-mail subscriptions

FeedBurner just announced FeedBurner Email, allowing readers to subscribe to your feed via e-mail. Most Internet users are familiar with e-mail but a feed reader is a completely foreign concept. They live within Outlook and have an efficient work flow governed by rules-based sorting and alerts. This new feature provided by FeedBurner helps a feed publisher reach more readers in their favorite method of delivery.

E-mail subscriptions to a feed is nothing new, even for FeedBurner customers. The company has partnered with FeedBlitz and more recently Squeet to provide e-mail subscriptions in the past, and both companies remain an option for FeedBurner users. The feature probably became popular enough for publishers and essential to the complete subscription experience that FeedBurner decided to bring the feature in house for more control and reliability.

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Recruiters in the late 90s

In the summer of 2000 I became fed up enough with clueless recruiters calling me I decided to create a fake résumé to test how bad the industry had become. The résumé was not just slightly fake, it was over-the-top and obvious to anyone in the industry. I put the résumé up on Monster.com with my real name and phone number and a completely altered work history.

I had calls within 20 minutes, including recruiters claiming to work for KPCB and Benchmark encouraging me to come work at companies such as BroadBand Office or Catapulse. I had so many calls I had to shut off my phone to get back to work.

Résumé highlights

  1. 15 years of Java experience. I told one recruiter I was not interested in working with them but she wanted someone with 15 years of Java experience so bad I suggested she give James Gosling of Sun a call and she probably did.
  2. Created industry-leading teleportation technology for Amazon.com in 1989. I actually got a call from an early Amazon employee about this one, so it was worth it. (Amazon was founded in 1994)
  3. Worked as Pixelon’s CTO developing industry-leading vaporware and head party planner of their $16 million launch party. Pixelon was in the news for falsifying everything including their own names.

Do I remember the bubble of the late 90s? Yes, why yes I do. I hope I never again get a call from a recruiter interested in vaporware experts.

Think Partership acquires IceRocket

Think Partnership is acquiring IceRocket, a search engine focused on emerging media such as feeds, cell phone pictures, and the latest news. Think Partnership is a group of companies based out of Chicago in the dating, real estate, and SEO industries.

Think Partnership raised $26.5 million last week in a private placement of preferred stock and they are redefining the company through acquisitions. No word yet on the purchase price of IceRocket. The deal is in the due diligence stage.

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Start pages do have revenue

A few blogs — Richard MacManus and others — have pointed to my post from Monday as “confirmation” that Live.com is the new homepage, and it must be true because a future employee of Microsoft said it. There could be a little more research from the publishers, but this is the wild west known as the blogosphere after all.

My information about Live.com came from the Windows Live launch last November when Bill Gates mentioned it on stage. The news is not new, and the products discussed such as Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista haven’t even launched yet.

As for comments about losing advertising revenue by serving up a search box, remember that search is a revenue-generating activity for each provider and some companies make money from their personalized home pages by selling special default feeds such as placing ESPN for sports content and not Fox.

In short: the best way to confirm that a new feature exists is when the code gets locked for release and until then many things are possible. The past can hold some queues but just like a company reorganization — just happened at Windows Live — things can change.

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 the first feed syndication experience for hundreds of millions of users who would love to add more content to their page, connect with friends, and take control of the flow of information in ways geeks have for years. I do not believe we have even begun to tap into the power of feeds as a platform and the possibilities that exist if we mine this data, connect users, and add new layers of personalization and social sharing. These are just some of the reasons I am excited to build something new and continue to change how the world can access new information as it happens.

I’ll be working out of Microsoft’s Silicon Valley campus but hopefully there will be a new San Francisco office in the near future. I’ll be working closely with the Hotmail storage team to make sure the platform scales and with the MessageCast Windows Live Alerts team to make sure you can customize how you receive new content. Microsoft Research already has a few projects focused on the blogosphere as well as research into new search and social networking techniques. Windows Live is all about your info, your relationships, and discovering new things all in a seamless and secure experience. Oh so much fun, it’s just a matter of prioritizing and having a strong enough platform on the back-end to make it all possible.

I want RSS and Atom syndication technologies to be available anywhere, integrated as the background technology delivering new information when and where it matters most. Read your own personalized top news stories while waiting for the bus. Track your friends’ Halo results anywhere. Pull the latest information off the corporate intranet and into an authoring application. Load your own niche content channel into your DVR. Update the art on your walls. I geek out on this stuff and could go on and on.

I will continue to engage the community. There are some big challenges ahead for the entire syndication industry that are best solved by working together. There is a need for new shared metadata initiatives to describe rich media such as podcasts, videos and images. Some content publishers are holding back their content due to a lack of clear authentication and feed noindex options. The industry can gain a lot by having open dialogue and working groups around various issues in the space and I will continue to look outward for new ideas, partnerships, and best practices.

I’m excited about the many opportunities before me in my new job. Not quite as excited as Steve Ballmer running around on stage but I’ll stay focused on building great products.

Steve Ballmer

Add my feed to your favorite aggregator to stay informed of the latest news as a new journey is just around the corner. Onward!

PodSession: You’re being watched, and Macs now do Windows

Om and I received a variety of feedback last week as podcast listeners stood up against research reports about podcasts and their audiences. Some people thought a 20-minute discussion of hot tech news was just right and others wanted even shorter, more digestible chunks. This week Om and I recorded two 10-minute podcasts to try something new and introduce a little variety. It was also tough to pick just one topic this week since both Apple and Google had big announcements last Wednesday.

You’re being watched

Your cellular carrier knows where you are at all times. Pinpointing your location helps connect phone calls and lets emergency personnel send help to your location even if you have no idea where you are. New ad-supported networks such as Earthlink and Google’s municipal WiFi network in San Francisco will track your activity to better target advertising based on your location and/or browsing habits.

What are you willing to give up for free or cheap access to the Internet? Om and I discuss who’s watching you and why, and introduce some new business ideas that will encourage users to opt-in to tracking.

You’re being watched – Geolocation and privacy. The podcast is 12 minutes long, a 6 MB download.

Windows on a Mac

Apple released a public beta Boot Camp last week, a preview of what’s coming in the next major OS release. The blogosphere was abuzz at the news of a new shiny toy from Apple and its implications. How will “Leopard” change the way we choose applications and games?

I boot into Windows to use applications I cannot get on a Mac or to take advantage of new features that may eventually make their way into the Mac version. Boot Camp allows me to boot into financial mode or gaming mode with one piece of hardware. I think Apple’s move makes a lot of sense as users are less likely to miss 10 GB of disk space than 512 MB or more of RAM.

The Windows on a Mac podcast is 10 minutes long, a 5 MB download.

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Blogging surveys tend to ask the wrong questions

The latest numbers about blogging terms reaching the mainstream masses have little interest to me based on the questions that have been asked. Asking people on the street if they can define RSS or podcasting is like asking about a PSTN or 802.11g wireless networks. It makes much more sense to focus on current uses of the technology to determine the pervasiveness of new ideas.

I’ll use my mom as an example because she is afraid of her computer crashing if she changes anything, even plugging in a new keyboard. Some of the news she cares about the most is thousands of miles away and not well covered by TV, radio, or print publications in California.

My mom would love to have daily updates on a few things: the latest news from Ireland, the latest news from in and around my brother’s military base in Iraq, and updates from my sisters’ schools. If she happens to be home at the right time on a Monday night she can catch 22 minutes of news geared towards Irish-Americans interested in what’s going on “back home.” My parents visit a blog to find the latest news from my brother’s base in Iraq, but they have no clue they are reading what some people call a blog. She visits school websites to find the latest general news.

If my mom opened up her web browser and found all her favorite news sources in one place, time-shifted and waiting for her on her schedule, she would probably be using RSS, podcasting, or some other fancy word but wouldn’t be able to tell you what is powering the experience.

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Google Toolbar adds feed subscriptions

Google Toolbar subscribe to feed

The latest version of Google’s Firefox toolbar adds support for feed subscriptions to online aggregators with just one click. Users are able to choose from a list of five popular online aggregators as well as Firefox’s own Live Bookmarks option.

The icon was located right below the address bar feed icon in my Firefox window and seems like the least confusing place for the button even though it’s odd to see two options.

Google toolbar subscription preferences

I was able to choose between Bloglines, Google Personalized homepage, My Yahoo!, NewsGator Online, and Pluck.

It would be nice to provide advanced users with the ability for users to add their own favorite online aggregator through some simple template syntax such as http://domain.tld/addfeed?url=[feedurl] in the feed reader drop-down.

PodSession: wireless broadband

3G logo

I want high speed Internet everywhere. Forget the WiFi hotspot locator attached to your keychain or the questionable reliability of a local cafe, I want a reliable and fast connection everywhere I go, even if it’s on a train or car moving 60 mph. Thankfully the cellular phone industry is up to the task and rolling out wireless data connections with up to 3 Mb/s in the San Francisco Bay area and other large metropolitan areas throughout the U.S.

These new mobile technologies are known as EV-DO or HSDPA depending on the carrier and are delivering high enough speed with low latency for us to start taking it seriously. The technology is built-in to many mobile phones and even a few laptops and getting online anywhere might be as simple as a $8 USB or a $100 specialized PC card and a data plan costing around $60 for unlimited data usage.

In this week’s PodSession Om and I discuss the latest wireless broadband offerings from major U.S. carriers such as Sprint, Verizon, and Cingular available today and in the next 6 months. What would you do with a 1 Mb/s always-on connection in your car, pocket, or on your laptop? How would it change the types of applications you develop or the way you seek out new information?

If you have an ExpressCard 34 slot in your laptop, help is on the way! Novatel will introduce a EV-DO card in about 5 weeks that will work with your MacBook Pro and other laptops using the new card format.

This week’s podcast, Wireless broadband, is 22 minutes long, a 10 MB download.