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

Niall Kennedy's weblog, newest first. Page 37 of 72.

TechNet summit at Google

TechNet organized an innovation summit at Google’s Mountain View Campus yesterday. The tech elite such as Bill Joy, John Chambers, Eric Schmidt, Paul Otellini, John Doerr, Terry Semel, Carly Fiorna, and more. Michael Beazley of the San Jose Mercury News covered the event. Charlie Rose moderated the panels and The Charlie Rose Show will air four episodes this from the event, starting with John Doerr, Bill Joy, and Jeff Taylor tonight. Eric Schmidt said “the next killer device is clearly a personal one” and he favors a data iPod holding the world’s information….

Feedster advanced search

Feedster has many advanced search features most people are not aware exist. Since every search is deliverable as an RSS feed, you can tweak the results of the Feedster database to your content. You can visit the Feedster advanced search page and search a particular weblog or your entire feed list if your OPML is available online. OPML search is useful for finding that entry you know you saw somewhere but you forget the details. Feedster displays its entire history for a site search while Technorati displays only the past 30 days. Search your OPML is a lot more interesting…

Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Mercury News interview

Matt Marshall of the San Jose Mercury News recently visited venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers to interview partners John Doerr, Brook Byers and Ray Lane. Companies stay in stealth mode longer to discourage clone ventures. Most companies come out of stealth with about 100 employees. People like joining stealth projects, and companies already know who they want for their first 100 employees. Brook Byers: Network was a thing of the 1990s. I don’t know what it is now. John Doerr : It’s the blog….

Betting on Tools that Power Blogs

Olga Kharif of BusinessWeek wrote about the companies building weblog tools and the venture capital that follows. Ask David Sifry when his little San Francisco startup called Technorati will turn a profit, and he laughs contagiously. No, Technorati, which tracks Web logs, or blogs, and will soon offer blog searches, is a long way from turning a profit. But it has big-league venture-capital backers like Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Mobius Venture Capital, and they’re willing to wait as blog entrepreneurs cast around for a good business model….

Feed update scheduling

I want to be able to define in my feed aggregators when a feed or feed group should not be checked for updates. When I attend a conference or I am at work I am focused on groups of feeds. Please only update those groups automatically until after 6 p.m. Monday through Friday. I know audio from Fresh Air will not be available until 4:30 p.m., so there is no use in teasing me at 10 a.m. while I wait for the audio. Similar to ttl each aggregator could use skipHours or skipDays as the default and not let me…

Feedster Feed of the Day

I am Feedster’s Feed of the Day! Very cool! I took a look at the list of past feeds of the day, and there are some pretty big names like Instapundit, Talking Points Memo, and Wonkette just featured in the last few weeks. If this is your first time here, welcome! Please stay a while! Grab a RSS feed or an Atom feed to stay informed of all the latest postings. I blame Halo 2 for keeping my post count low this week. Normally I am much more interesting….

Koders source code search engine

Koders is a search engine for source code. Very useful when you want to see how other projects have implemented the code you are considering. You can even check out an estimation for how much money you will save by integrating the existing code or project versus building it yourself. Some examples: Google reference in java code GAIM costs more than HTTPD?…

TypePad users receive easy advertising

Six Apart and Kanoodle announced a deal to allow TypePad subscribers to easily add Kanoodle’s content-targeted advertisements to their sites. Expected rollout is Q1 2005….

Feedster ping

You can now ping Feedster. No more relying on weblogs.com and blo.gs for updates and additions. Good move! Hopefully this means more of my entries will make it into Feedster’s database. In August I wrote my own Movable Type template to subscribe a search by keywords after I was unhappy with the Feedster results….

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….

Voice of the vendor

BloggerCon took place yesterday at the Stanford Law School and was described by Dave Winer as the “unconference,” where everyone is equal and participates in a university setting as users. During the Information Overload session led by Robert Scoble there was some vendor identification beyond the rules of the conference, and the response to the vendor violations set a tone for the conference that left many participants on edge and caused some audience members to get up and leave as an act of protest. The discussion focused on what features users would like to see in the feeds they used…

Technorati changes

Technorati is no longer just phrase search! Technorati launched new features and a new redesign today. A new feature still in testing is a feed with enclosures of the top 20 MP3 references in the blogosphere. Dave also claims they have better blogroll detection. They fixed the Developer’s Wiki and I can finally login again. Technorati also announced a $3250 developer’s contest ending December 31. A lot to announce all at once! I noticed there are no advertisements on the search results page. Could be unintentional but an interesting change….

Technorati trademarks

On August 26, 2004 Technorati filed a trademark application for “attention index” (serial number 78474374). This move shows Technorati is serious enough about Attention.xml to file a trademark application with the Patent Office. Technorati also has a Goodpoint trademark about to clear. I have no idea what the significance of that trademark is about but it was filed while Krisztina Mendonca (GoodPoint Web Design) was doing contract design work for Technorati….

TypePad adds rich text WYSIWYG support

TypePad now features rich text editing and spell check. Some pretty slick JavaScript and design implementations in the WYSIWYG post editor. Only a matter of time before we see this functionality in Movable Type? You currently cannot preserve formatting when copying and pasting text from a word processor or other application according to the TypePad rich text tips page….

F-16 fires on elementary school

Associated Press: “A National Guard F-16 fighter jet on a nighttime training mission strafed an elementary school with 25 rounds of ammunition.” The firing range is three and a half miles from the school….

iPod photo thoughts

I kept quiet when Apple announced the iPod photo a week ago, not wanting to join the crowd and hype another Apple product like the rest of the cult of the Mac. On Sunday I visited the Apple store in San Francisco and played with the iPod photo for a little bit and realized what an iPod is really about. I want to be able to backup my data easily, and have that data available at all times, possibly enabling synchronization on multiple machines. I live on the edge when it comes to my software environment and sometimes I…

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…

LexisNexis and code funerals

Programmers at LexisNexis have a creative method of expiring outdated code: it is buried in a graveyard. There are at least eight grave markers and some funerals include the playing of “Taps” and eulogies. To make sure really hated sites are banished forever some employees drive a stake through the printed pages of code….

Election Day

Today is election day in the United States. While the presidential election receives the most attention, I spent most of my time reviewing local and state propositions. 31 propositions ranging from a position on the war in Iraq to children’s hospital funding. Time to elect a President, Senator, House member, school board, and more. If George W. Bush wins today’s election I expect San Francisco to erupt in riots….

NASA photo analyst says Bush wore a device during the first debate

Dr. Robert M. Nelson, senior research scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, analyzed pictures of George W. Bush from the first presidential debate much like he would analyze photographs from Mars or Titan to determine surface features. After enhancement Nelson is confident Bush was wearing something under his jacket during the debate “consistent with the appearance of an electronic device worn in that manner.” In fact, it’s how we measure the depths of the craters on the moon or on Mars. We look at the angle of the light and the length of shadow they leave. In this case, that’s…

Technorati open house

Tonight was the Technorati open house at their new offices near SBC Park. The event was catered and drew a large crowd. You can check out pictures from the event. There were many new Technorati employees I had not seen before, including Jason DeFillipo, who is currently working as a contractor for Technorati’s new search functions. That’s right, Technorati is not just phrase search any more. They have new boolean features and will show search results from not just the last week. The new features should be announced any day now. It will be interesting to see how their servers…

Feedster Hacks

Steven M. Cohen just launched Feedster Hacks to track tools and tricks using Feedster. It looks like the hacks site is hosted by Feedster although the site description makes it seem like a fan site with approval. Feedster Hacks running off a copy of Movable Type 3.1b given out in August. The current version of Movable Type is 3.121. Join the Six Apart Professional Network for a free five author license. Obviously not playing favorites with weblog platforms, Feedster uses the following software throughout its weblogs. TypePad for About FeedsterMovable Type for Feedster HacksSerendipity for Scott on Feedster and Story…

Matt Mullenweg in Houston Press

Catherine Matusow of The Houston Press wrote a feature story about Matt Mullenweg and blogging in general. Matt also announces he has taken a job with CNET Networks in San Francisco. Congratulations Matt!…

Firefox Live Bookmarks has a new icon

I just downloaded Mozilla Firefox 1.0 RC1 and noticed the new orange icon for Live Bookmarks. It looks like the broadcasting icon in iCal (pictured above)….

Morgan Stanley Syndication report

I just finished reading the Morgan Stanley report on news syndication from analysts Mary Meeker and Brian Pitz. The report focuses a lot on Yahoo!’s moves into supporting RSS throughout the site, and what Yahoo!’s move to syndication means for publishers. Overall a good paper with busness arguements from a business-oriented source. Some interesting snippets from the 15-page report: While Google’s search engine and advertising tools set the pace for new ways of searching information, we believe that Yahoo! may be setting the pace for new ways of serving information. Bold statement, but no other major player has embraced the…