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

Niall Kennedy's weblog, newest first. Page 70 of 72.

Spidering Hacks

I have been busy over the past week writing for a new O’Reilly book. Look for me in chapter 4 a to be released book named Spidering Hacks, part of the O’Reilly Hack Series. Interestingly enough I was the only person to author to use Java. I have a feeling this is going to be a book full of a lot of Perl. There is only one Python example. I wrote a hack that gathers data about Alexa toolbar users traffic to your Web property on a daily basis. Alexa collects subdomain information as well as property rankings, and I…

Blog from a Smartphone

News.com reports that the new Mio 8380 phone from Mitac will “keep a diary.” Sounds like a blog to me!…

Pick your own college roommate

NY Times profiles some interesting roommate matching programs. I wonder how long until similar ideas make it out into the apartment or house sharing worlds? Most of San Francisco relies on Craig’s List for apartment listings, and some sort of profile matching system would be very welcome!…

TypePad is expensive

I like TypePad, but wow it is expensive! $50 a year is about what I paid for Blogger Pro and BlogSpot. Blogger Pro is supposed to have a lot of new features and I am supposed to be lucky to have gotten in at the price I did. It has Google magic now as well. I like being able to edit the HTML of my template. This feature allows me to put in things like AIM Remote and Yahoo!’s button. To do the same I would have to use TypePad Pro and pay $150 a year. Domain mapping would be…

PDC

Can’t afford it. My current company has no idea what makes Yukon better than database XYZ from 1991. PDC would be an investment in my personal future in the software and database development industry. Will I still be working at my company in 2005? Probably not. I will still be affected by the 800 pound gorilla’s new toolsets that change the software development landscape. I could drive the 400 miles to the show and take vacation days from work ($80 + 5 vacation days). I could sleep on a friend’s couch ($0). I could pay $10 a day for…

Phish for free using iMac

Last weekend Phish headlined the It Festival in Maine. They set up a 100,000-watt radio station and hooked up their fans with a CD-R and a selection of 150 live tracks to choose from. Now that Pearl Jam has left Epic, I wonder if they will do something similar? Very cool. “In addition to performing, the band set up a tent where fans could make their own free custom mix CD of live Phish tracks with iTunes. The tent ran at full capacity, with lines outside until 4AM each night.”…

Larry King and Howard Dean

CNN has a full transcript of last night’s Larry King interview with Howard Dean online. I think King was inappropriately dragged on the gay marriage issue. Dean stated marriage is a religious ceremony, and Vermont had enacted equal rights for gays, but not termed it marriage. Favorite quote : “That’s how you beat a president who can get as many $2,000 checks as he wants, is to bring three or four million new people into the process, give them a reason to vote, and then you can beat George Bush.”…

Howl for a Rendezvous

Howl is an implementation of Zeroconf (popularized as Apple’s Rendezvous) for Windows and Linux platforms….

Bentley College on Tablets

Bentley College has a marketing class focused on Tablet PCs, profiled in today’s Boston Globe. “Because it lacks the capability to show DVDs, the introductory version of the Tablet failed to ”match student lifestyles outside the classroom,” in the words of the Bentley project’s first research report. Subsequent versions of the Tablet are being designed to accommodate DVDs.” Will slate models ever contain DVDs or is the added weight not worth it? It makes sense for a Tablet similar to the Toshiba, which is essentially a regular notebook computer with a swivel screen. I do not want a desktop…

Readily available technology

AP : “A 15-year-old boy foiled an apparent abduction attempt when he pulled out his cell phone camera and snapped photos of a man trying to lure him into a car.”…

Tablets as a readily awaiting business tool

The Seattle Times has an article today about Tablet PCs used in the luxury suites of Mariners’ games for food ordering, updated score charts, and on-demand instant replay. “The laptoplike Tablet PCs can be loaded before each game with special messages for clients, PowerPoint slide presentations and contracts that are ready to sign with a stylus.” Cursivecode is leading the initiative….

Privacy Economics

Andrew Odlyzko of the University of Minnesota has released an interesting paper on the discriminatory pricing and the privacy implications. From railroads to Amazon.com, the history of the concept is well covered….

C# and Longhorn

I want to learn C# so I can create some really awesome applications for Longhorn. I have a good knowledge of SQL which should give me a pretty good head start. How do you plan for a platform that is years away when you do not know what tools we be already available and where will there be a niche to fill. I cannot afford to attend PDC, so I will already be behind in the tool development. Regardless of Longhorn, learning some C# seems like a good idea. I am a Java guy, so it should not be too…

FeedDemon

Nick Bradbury has put together a pretty cool RSS aggregator called FeedDemon. Written entirely in Delphi. It’s tough to code to .Net when the CLR is over 20 MB. You can bundle a Delphi or Python runtime, but I rather pull off of common libraries. Can a developer ship and require a 20 MB+ required library download? It’s tough in the small app world. I would love to roll out something that uses Microsoft’s P2P libraries, but I doubt anyone has that installed right now. If you build it, they will come……

Tim O’Reilly speech

Tim O’Reilly gave a great speech here at Gnomedex on open source software. Makes me want to go to Emerging Tech, and some of the other conferences he puts on….

Cute girl for governor

Georgy Russell, a programmer from Mountain View, is running for governor of California. Buy a thong and support her cause!…

Gnomdex

Day 2 of Gnomedex and so far so good. Nelson Minar had a good speech on an overview of Google, but was nothing I did not know already. Learning more about AdSense was something new for me. Cost per click and past click relevancy are both used to determine page position. Nelson hopped on IRC for the rest of the day, but I couldn’t find him at the Meet the Speakers part of the day. Eric Sink was interesting, and reaffirmed that I want to take a look at C#. Rob Malda was great, and unscripted. Met the wife. They…

MIT Media Lab’s take on corporate integrity

MIT Media Lab has a new geiger counter-style device that scans a barcode and emits noise based on a database query for environmental and corporate ethics. Pretty cool!…

MSFT Analysts Day

Today was Microsoft’s day-long brieifing of financial analysts. Lots of information out there, and I have not read through or watched any of it yet. Visual Studio 2005 is code named Orcas? Must be a Pacific Northwest thing. I need Whidbey so I can code for Longhorn….

The search for a Tablet camera

I was hoping that the Veo Traveler for Pocket PC would work with my Tablet. After contacting their sales department I find out that no, it will not work. I have a flap over my USB connectors, so even if I did find something like the Paceblade camera I would have to bend back the cover. PC Card slot and CF slot are exposed, so I am trying to find a camera to attach there….

Mobile thoughts

TigerDirect is selling my Compaq TC1000 for $999. I have been questioning how much the Tablet’s handwriting recognition abilities matter to me and whether I should sell my Tablet on eBay and buy a Sony VAIO or an IBM ThinkPad instead. Intel has done a really crappy job marketing their Centrino brand. Most people have no clue that Centrino is a bundle and not a chip. The clock speeds are notably lower than the mobile P4 processor, and the AMD and Apple have already struggled with educating consumers about clock cycles. Wireless Internet is the driving force for notebook sales…

Creative’s new webcam

Creative has a new mobile WebCam with swivel that docks to the top of a laptop screen (or in my case, my Tablet). Smaller than an iSight, but with Windows drivers, and a third of the cost. Still looking for mobile still capture for my Tablet….

Premier Pizza on Saturday Night

Scoble is organizing a meeting at Premier Pizza on Saturday night. I’ve never eaten anywhere featured on late night TV before….

IBM Tablet, I feel Outdated

Looks like IBM is going to have their own Tablet, with their own handwriting software. Software competition on the base modules could be a very good thing, since I have been frustrated with the handwriting recognition on my Tablet so far. When I write on paper I often realize that I did not make the fourth leg of an “x” quite long enough, so I will go back and elongate the leg. On a Tablet I have not figured out how to concatenate the ink to enforce the “x” and not have it come out as “y”. All of my…

My New Tablet

I have had my new Compaq Tablet PC for a little over a week now. I have an 802.11b network set up at home with 128-bit WEP and MAC address security. I bring my Tablet to work with me every day. My company is worried about having any devices it has not fully configured hooked up to its network, so I am not able to take advantage of wireless Internet, or any Internet, at work. The best use for my Tablet is loading something on the device and bringing it with me to someone’s office to illustrate the code,…