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

Niall Kennedy's weblog, newest first. Page 50 of 72.

Apache Geronimo 1.0M1

Apache Geronimo, the Apache Software Foundation attempt at creating a J2EE compatible container, released its first milestone build. Source and binaries available on the CVS server….

HiMPACT Sports Technology

HiMPACT Sports Technology breaks down sports broadcasts into only the actual plays and highlights. NY Times reports on the technology. “[R]educes a three-hour baseball game to an eight-minute experience.” Very useful for baseball coaches, but it seems like the soccer version could use some work before it can be used by staff. Highlights are not enough to evaluate play from a coaching point of view….

Pepsi iTunes giveaway results in 5% redemption

Pepsi drinkers had a one in three chance of winning a free iTunes download, but only 5% of all winners redeemed their winning code, according to News.com….

French Laundry named best restaurant in the world

Restaurant Magazine released its list of the world’s top restaurants and French Laundry of Yountville takes top prize. Chez Panisse is #37. I have not eaten at any of these restaurants….

St. Paul Saints professional baseball player for a day

The St. Paul Saints of the Northern League are auctioning the opportunity to be a professional baseball player for a day. “[T]he winning bidder will work out with the team and will be guaranteed an official plate appearance.” Bidding ends on May 3. Step out to the plate in front of 6,000 fans and take a few swings against the Sioux Falls Canaries….

AOL Journals update

AOL updated its AOL Journals service today. News.com has a report. Members will be able to add to their journals by sending instant messages or text messages from a mobile phone. AOL claims over 33 million subscribers, but only 220,000 journal creations. 0.7% of all subscribers start a journal? Seems discouraging, but maybe AOL is not marketing the service well enough….

Chris Pratley on the history of Word

Chris Pratley writes a history of Microsoft Word from his point of view. Details like great design were not critical to most customers, so that didn’t really make it into the products, except where it mattered to the customer. Understand the market, and the customers, and then go pedal to the metal, with release after release focused on what the customers need, incorporating their feedback. That puts the competition into reaction mode….

Jenna Cooper, University of Nebraska captain, dead from gunshot

Jenna Cooper, captain of the University of Nebraska women’s soccer team and member of the U21 player pool, died yesterday from a gunshot wound in her throat. The Nebraska soccer team was celebrating the close of its spring training season….

Slate: Our Hidden WMD program

Fred Kaplan of Slate breaks down the United States budget for nuclear weapons. [T]his year’s spending on nuclear activities is equal to what Ronald Reagan spent at the height of the U.S.-Soviet standoff. It exceeds by over 50 percent the average annual sum ($4.2 billion) that the United States spent—again, in real dollars—throughout the four and a half decades of the Cold War….

Women increase productivity in single gender groups?

Alex Tabarrok writes in the Marginal Revolution weblog about competitive differences between males and females. His writing is based on an article in the August 2003 issue (Vol. 118, Issue 3) of The Quarterly Journal of Economics written by Uri Gneezy, Muriel Niederle and Aldo Rustichini. Very interesting implications for sports as well as business. [I]n the single-sex tournaments the women’s performance improves considerably relative to both their performance in the piece rate system and to their performance in the mixed tournament. Women do like to compete just not against men!…

MacMice MicFlex USB microphone

MacMice has a new USB microphone shipping May 7: the MicFlex. Bend it around the back of your screen and aim it at your recording subject. (via Gizmodo) I would like to record more of the technical presentations I attend with the online world, and this new microphone might be a good portable answer! If you have a better solution for audio recording presentations from the crowd, please let me know….

Opera 7.5 supports RSS newsfeeds

Opera 7.50 beta 1 is now available. Opera Mail now supports RSS newsfeeds. Integrates with Opera address book so you can see custom avatars for weblog publishers and even their IRC nicks. You can also add the blog publisher as a contact direct from the RSS reader. Supports CSS Level 2 revision 1 with few exceptions. “Newsfeeds” added as access point in the e-mail panel RSS 0.9x, 1.0 and 2.0 are supported Clicking RSS links automatically adds newsfeed to Opera Mail Auto-detection of RSS file (link rel=”alternate”) displayed in navigation bar…

Independent : Decreasing life of a CD-R

Why do different CD-R media claim different shelf lives? Dutch personal computer magazine PC Active put 30 brands to the test by placing them in a dark cupboard for two years and retesting. Independent (U.K.) reports on the CD-R test results. 10 percent showed aging problems after two years….

Business 2.0 : Creative Commons

Andy Raskin of Business 2.0: “Creative Commons encourages artists to share and distribute their work for free. And that could be the key to a new multibillion-dollar industry.”…

College interns : you get what you pay for

Laura Vanderkam of USA Today writes about the market for college interns in the United States and concludes “unpaid internships are rarely in employers’ best interests.” (via MetaFilter)…

NetStumbler 0.4.0

NetStumbler 0.4.0 is now available. Adds support for new devices and new scripting features….

OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview

Microsoft released the OneNote 2003 Service Pack 1 Preview today. Chris Pratley is a much better source for the intricacies. SP1 includes an API and SP1 will be the new OneNote baseline. OneNote now has real-time note sharing. It would be great if we were able to discover available documents similar to SubEthaEdit instead of negotiating IP addresses. At least they did not require Passport logons. You can also take video notes. My favorite feature of OneNote is the ability to synchronize your notes to a point in an audio recording. That ability is now expanded to video….

San Jose Sharks use Tablet PCs on the sideline

Katie Dean of Wired writes about the San Jose Sharks use of Tablet PCs and software by XOS Technologies to follow game plays. A digital video recorder hooked up to a server records the game and then wirelessly transmits the data to a tablet PC. Hunter can then use a stylus or a remote to mark key moments in the game — like a goal for, goal against, power play or penalty kill — so that he can return to them with a quick click. He can diagram over the video as well…

Sony Music RSS

Sony Music has artist RSS feeds for artists such as Beyonce Knowles, Five For Fighting, Jessica Simpson, and Nas….

Gucci iPod case

Just in case your iPod is not sexy enough naked, Gucci has an iPod case for you. (via Cult of Mac)…

North Pole soccer

Two nuclear submarines, the HMS Tireless and USS Hampton, surfaced near the North Pole today for a game of soccer….

Pearl Jam video creation with Apple

Pearl Jam creates its own live concert DVDs using Apple software and hardware. Apple profiles Pearl Jam’s content production process. I don’t know that there would be three Pearl Jam DVDs if not for this type of technology. It allows people to do on their own what they were previously forced to hire from experts….

Conflict Archive on the Internet on Northern Ireland.

The CAIN Web Service provides information and source material on politics, society, and the struggle between Catholics and Protestants in the region since 1968. Sponsored by the University of Ulster, Queen’s University of Belfast, and the Linen Hall Library, among others. (via MetaFilter)…

Sports Illustrated’s digital workflow

Eamon Hickey follows the path of Sports Illustrated photography from the 2004 Super Bowl from the time the images leave the photographer’s camera. “16,183 digital pictures shot in Houston’s Reliant Stadium by eleven of the magazine’s staff photographers over the course of about six hours” reviewed and then sent to New York. He covers the different equipment used and the staff’s switch from film to digital. (via Tim Bray)…