DeWitt Clinton: My recommendation to application developers today is to use Atom 1.0, not RSS, as the basis for your content syndication. DeWitt is the lead engineer at Amazon’s A9 search engine. He took a pretty detailed look at RSS 2.0 and Atom as part of A9’s syndication efforts (including OpenSearch) and shared some of his thoughts today on his blog. He appreciates the detailed implementation of the Atom Syndication Format allowing more lossless expression of data between content publisher and parser….
Category Archives: Software
Firefox in the next 9 months
I heard a few questions yesterday about the future of Firefox and its product goals, differentiating factors, and its positioning against Microsoft and its Internet Explorer browser. I’ve been following the Firefox process intermittently so I’ll outline some of what I know in an attempt to spark community involvement and feedback on behalf of Mozilla and the Firefox team. The Firefox planners is divided into a few different functions such as planning, development, user interface, test, internationalization, and quality assurance, just to name a few. The product planners are currently engaging the community to determine what should be the…
Atom 1.0 now default option
About a year ago I said I would switch my blog’s Atom output from 0.3 to 1.0 once Bloglines, NetNewsWire, and NewsGator supported the new format. Bloglines now supports Atom 1.0, so I just flipped my Atom feed over from 0.3 to 1.0. Everything should transition smoothly….
RSS days in Washington state
The state of Washington has declared today and tomorrow RSS days throughout the state. The declaration is in recognition of big companies, startups, and governments within Washington taking advantage of new technologies such as RSS to change the technology sector….
IE7 RSS adds mark all read, refresh at will
Internet Explorer 7 beta 3 is now available and includes some new feed reading features for users who like to browse their feed items in the browser. The new beta includes a refresh all option, mark all feed items read, and a few other final tweaks on the path to ship. Sometimes it’s not fun to obey the machine and its update schedule. Advanced information hungry readers can now update all feeds at once, grabbing the latest content before disconnecting from the Internet or to be absolutely sure you’re caught up on all your feeds. You can now mark a…
Vic Gundotra leaves Microsoft
Vic Gundotra, Scoble’s (former) boss’ boss, is leaving Microsoft to join Google. Vic is taking a year off to allow his non-compete to elapse without legal issue. Vic is a general manager for platform evangelism and helped build Channel 9, 10, and other general developer evangelism efforts within Microsoft….
Windows Live Spaces announces features
The next version of Microsoft’s Spaces hosted blogging product will include more social networking, gadget integration, and premium options such as no advertising on your blog. The features were announced tonight in a post on the Spaces team blog. Spaces has a whole new look (pictured above) with cleaner lines and additional featured content than current spaces blogs. Your IM friends list can be exposed as a blog module showing off all their latest content and online activity. You can add the same gadgets to your blog sidebar that run on the Live.com personal homepage. The new site also…
PodSession: Instant Messaging
Seth Sternberg of Meebo joined me and Om on this week’s edition of Om and Niall PodSessions covering the latest trends and developments in instant messaging. Microsoft and Yahoo! launched new versions of their messaging software this week, including many features I will never use. What do end users want from their instant messaging software? Seth doesn’t think the big portals have added a new feature that users have been clammoring for in years. Chinese company Tencent has captured about two-thirds of the Chinese market with its QQ client. Estonian company Skype has enjoyed tremendous success with its P2P and…
Apple Store checks out with Windows
Apple is looking for ways to cut down on wait times at its stores’ checkout lines and roaming WiFi-enabled processing stations in the hands of each employee may be the answer. The same employee helping you pick out the right set of headphones for your iPod can scan product barcodes and take payments via credit card right on the spot. Your receipt will sent to you via e-mail just in case you need to make a return or file an expense report. The handheld devices Apple uses in its store are powered by Windows. More information is available in…
Four million Netvibes users
French personal homepage company Netvibes has amassed over 4 million users in its first 9 months of operation according to founder and CEO Tariq Krim. Tariq mentions the user numbers about two minutes into a video interview with CNET News.com. The site picked up over 15,000 visitors in its first week of operation. Close to half of Netvibes’ users are in the United States. Netvibes users can configure their homepage without logging in so it’s unclear if the 4 million users are non-expired cookied users or actual user accounts. Either way, keep the user numbers in mind when looking at…