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

Niall Kennedy's weblog, newest first. Page 47 of 72.

AirPort Express with AirTunes

Bring iTunes to your home stereo system with AirPort Express. The AirPort Express can be used as a wireless bridge, and has a USB port for your printer. $129 retail….

New York Times on Google PhDs

Randall Stross of The New York Times takes a look at the hiring practices of Microsoft and Google, specifically focusing on their approach to PhDs. Working in Google’s favor is its practice of putting new Ph.D.’s to work immediately in the exact areas where they have been trained – in systems, architecture and artificial intelligence. Google, the company, may falter, but Google, the human resources experiment, is unlikely to be the cause. Microsoft has yet to disavow old templates for hiring. Its chief college recruiter, Ms. Roby, says that among computer science Ph.D.’s, “it’s less likely to find someone with…

Ronald Reagan is dead

CNN: “Former President Ronald Reagan died Saturday at his home in Los Angeles. He was 93″…

Gerry Adams on prisoner abuse

Gerry Adams: “News of the ill-treatment of prisoners in Iraq created no great surprise in republican Ireland. We have seen and heard it all before.”…

Mars Opportunity Rover to enter Endurance Crater

The Mars Opportunity Rover will attempt a 25-degree slope next week as it enters Endurance Crater. Risky move, and the rover will have to reverse out. Hopefully it hits solid rock the whole way and does not slide on sand….

A boy raised as a girl with his identical twin brother

John Colapinto wrote a really interesting article in Slate about the life of David Reimer. David Reimer was born a male, had a bothced circumcision, and Dr. John Money of Johns Hopkins performed a surgical sex change. David was raised as a girl. He had an identical twin, perfect for nature versus nurture research. He later had his female parts removed and male parts and hormones added. Mind bending stuff! David Reimer committed suicide on May 5….

Nike Art of Speed weblog

Nike now has a weblog published by Nick Denton’s Gawker Media. “Nike commissioned 15 talented young filmmakers to interpret the idea of speed. Over the course of 20 days, this weblog will introduce these innovative directors, their short films, and the digital technology behind the scenes.” (via Scoble)…

BitTorrent 2 protocol

The P2P Weblog posted an e-mail from Bram Cohen listing the some of the features of the BitTorrent 2 protocol. Merkle hash trees, UDP trackers, and more….

So you’d like to…grab an expert OPML file

Amazon has the “So you’d like to…” guides to share product lists spanning a unique category. iTunes Music Store has iMix. What are the data structures for the online publishing world’s self published guide lists? Users of news aggregators in search of new feeds might browse a directory such as Syndic8. While viewing a channel, they see a few guides containing this feed. So you would like to… be a Web standards guru, learn photography, keep up on world news, etc. Guides could be published using OPML. It is Share Your OPML, at a very targeted level. The user would…

Aluminum Cube

A lucky office worker had his cubicle remodeled in aluminum. The perfect setup for an aluminum PowerBook!…

New York Times on RSS

NY Times: “[I]f you can control yourself, you may find that R.S.S. is the best tool yet for taming the Web.” The Bob Scott graphic is interesting. Open the information spigot for the NBA and J Lo!…

Fahrenheit 9/11 Trailer

The trailer for Michael Moore’s new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11, is now online….

Atom Community Meeting Report

Tim Bray will update his blog throughout the day from the Atom Community Meeting. Also live at irc://irc.freenode.net/#atom. Wish I could be there….

Nike Mayfly

The Nike Mayfly running shoe wieghs 4.8 ounces and has a recommended lifespan of 62 miles. Only 5,000 of the $45 shoes (72 cents a mile) will be sold nationwide. ESPN notes that “Nike’s Mayfly was inspired by the ideal set forth by Nike founder Bill Bowerman, who envisioned a shoe that would provide enough support for a runner during a race, but would fall apart once that runner crossed the finish line.”…

Windows Media Player 10 Technical Beta

Windows Media Player 10 Technical Beta is now available for download from Microsoft’s Web site. The software only works with Windows XP. New design, better sync abilities, and an integrated online digital media mall….

Call the condom ambulance!

Reuters: In Sweden, “amorous couples can call the telephone number 696969 and a white van featuring a large red condom with wings as a logo will deliver them a packet of 10 prophylactics.”…

No More Sony Clies

Brighthand: “Sony announced that it will no longer develop and sell Clie handheld models to the United States market”…

NY Times: When Software Fails to Stop Spam, It’s Time to Bring In the Detectives

Monday’s New York Times article about Microsoft’s fight against junk e-mail senders. I receive over 500 spam messages a day and would love to do something to stop the senders. “Microsoft’s two-year-old digital integrity unit – which also fights online fraud, identity theft and spyware – employs more than 100 people around the world and has an annual budget of more than $10 million.” “In the last 15 months, Microsoft has filed 53 civil cases against spammers.”…

Lunch at Buck’s

Scoble is organizing a Silicon Valley Geek Lunch today at Buck’s of Woodside at noon if you are in the area and would like to attend. There will probably be a small group, and that worked well last time….

The Canvas Gallery and Cafe shuts down weekend WiFi

The Canvas Gallery and Cafe, located in San Francisco’s Inner Sunset district, no longer offers its patrons free wireless Internet access on Saturday and Sunday. There are now signs throughout the space to inform patrons of free wireless Internet Monday-Friday “with purchase.” This change in policy happened within the last week, as I was at the café and online last Sunday. I assume the change allows for greater turnover during weekend hours. I know of other businesses who choose not to offer wireless access because of this same turnover concern. Is wireless Internet access another perk reserved for off-peak hours?…

Sam Ruby: Each format has its strengths

Sam Ruby posted a long and interesting writeup on the differences between RSS and Atom, and what tool builders need to worry about. “[I]f you want to support any version of RSS completely, you essentially need to support all of them.” “If you can’t generate unique ids for entries, then perhaps Atom is not the format for you.” “Atom has more required elements than RSS. Atom adds type attributes to titles and links to resolve the ambiguity described above. It has separate elements for summary and content.”…

Wired 12.06 : Cracking the Code to Romance

Annalee Newitz writes about geek approaches to online romance in the June 2004 issue of Wired magazine. The article starts on page 156, and is now online. Christopher Filkins and his FOAF-based Dating Syndicate. Marc Canter’s People Aggregator is mentioned as another dating engine built on FOAF. Kevin Burton is named “The Sniffer” for his use of AIM Sniffer to pick up women in wireless Internet enabled San Francisco cafés. Jonathan Moore is profiled as “The Stalker” for his use Unix shell scripts and Netcat to pull e-mail addresses from wireless networks and match the data with a Friendster profile….

Farallon Islands to San Francisco by kite-board

On Sunday afternoon Steve Gibson, Chip Wasson and Jeff Kafka rode their kite-boards from the Farallon Islands to Crissy Field beach. The 28-mile stretch of ocean is known for strong currents, large swells and one of the highest concentration of great white sharks in the world. The trip took 2 hours, and no sharks were harmed….

Yusuf Mehdi speech at Goldman Sachs Internet conference

Yusuf Mehdi, head of Microsoft’s MSN division, spoke yesterday at the Goldman Sachs Internet conference at the Bellagio hotel in Las Vegas. Audio of the speech is available online in Windows Media Audio and RealAudio formats. Some interesting comments on MSN Search throughout the talk. “All of our aspirations…pivot on on Hotmail and Messenger.” Why do you download a toolbar when everyone already has one? For integration into all of the MSN services of course. Search is front and center, but not the primary motivator for the install. MSN Search handles 2 billion queries a day. Over 10 million people…