Category Archives: Software

Photocasts are not valid RSS

I just bought a copy of Apple iLife 06 and created my first photocast of foodporn. The feed invents its own date format and places a guid at the channel level. Apple is also doing some odd user agent restricting access to browsers such as Firefox and tools such as Feed Validator. <pubDate>2006-01-11 18:55:03 -0800</pubDate> Perhaps Apple can publish an update to make all dates RFC 822. Apple also declared a new “wallpaper” DTD that is undefined, just like their podcast DTD. Tags: ilife, photocast, ilife06, puppy…

iMac developer transition kits

If you are a Mac developer and received a developer transition kit from Apple you can now exchange the old system for a new Intel-based iMac. Apple will send out the 17″ iMac first, allowing you to transition all your work off the old box, and Apple will even pick up all shipping costs. Sweet deal. The developer transition kit gives you a $1300 iMac for about $1000. Tags: imac…

Windows Live Messenger new features

Microsoft unveiled some new Windows Live Messenger features during Bill Gates’ keynote tonight at CES. My favorite new feature is Messenger activities prompted by a chat bot. Activities Microsoft showed off a chat bot that allowed a user to ask questions about TV programming. One possible response from the bot is a link to a list of shows playing that night, The link opens up directly inside the chat window in an activities pane, allowing the user to browse the content and ask the bot a few more questions. The bot is learning about the individual user and his…

Pacific Digital WiFi picture frame with Windows Vista features

Pacific Digital is also showing off a WiFi picture frame at CES in Las Vegas. The new MemoryFrame products will connect to Windows Vista PCs using Windows Media Connect, Windows Connect Now, and Vista’s integrated RSS features. The picture frame can connect to other PCs on a home network using WiFi and display shared content. I could not find any pricing information but current 10.4″ wireless picture frames from Pacific Digital cost about $400. Tags: photos, windowsvista, windows…

eStarling WiFi picture frame

eStarling just released a picture frame with built-in WiFi that can receive photographs from any RSS feed or POP e-mail account. You configure the device once using a USB connection and it will automatically update itself over a 802.11b wireless network (even with WEP encryption). Pictures formatted in JPEG or bitmap format are displayed on a 5.6″ LCD. You could subscribe to a specific tag on Flickr or send e-mails from your cell phone to a special e-mail address such as a free Gmail account. I would love to give one of these to my mom and have it…

Atom-formatted resume and podcast

Last weekend I decided to break free of the standard boring job résumé or CV and express my job history in the Atom syndication format complete with audio enclosures. Syndication geeks may appreciate the implementation details. I used the published and updated dates to represent my start and end dates. My first day on the job seems like a good match for the published element’s intended use as the “time of the initial creation or first availability” and my last day on the job is the last time the entry was “modified in a significant way” or updated. Since…

Mac small business dinner January 11 in San Francisco

I am organizing a dinner for Mac small business owners and developers on Wednesday, January 11, at Chaat Cafe in San Francisco starting at 7 p.m. I want to bring together the small businesses attending the conference for face-to-face discussion and sharing of ideas among other people who have probably used your software and read your blog but might have never met face-to-face. I enjoyed the lunch meeting during this year’s WWDC and want to keep the conversation flowing. Chaat Cafe is located at 320 3rd Street (corner of 3rd and Folsom) in downtown San Francisco, one block from…

Exclusive: Google to offer feed API

Google plans to offer a feed reader API to allow third-party developers to build new views of feed data on top of Google’s backend. The new APIs will include synchronization, feed-level and item-level tagging, per-item read and unread status, as well as rich media enclosure and metadata handling. Google Reader PM Jason Shellen and engineer Chris Wetherell both confirmed Google’s plans after I posted my reverse-engineering analysis of the Google Reader backend. The new APIs will allow aggregator developers to build new views and interactions on top of Google’s data. Google currently has at least two additional Google Reader views…

WordPress 2.0

WordPress 2.0 is now available for download from the newly redesigned WordPress.org. The new release includes many behind-the-scenes changes as well as some front-end AJAX goodness. A Subversion update is the best way to upgrade your existing installation. My favorite new features: Improved user permissions that allow you to select a role instead of a number. Better importers. WordPress importers can login to other blogging services and suck out your data, comments and all! Abstracted data layer allows future support of various databases and makes plugin development a bit easier. Rich post authoring through a WSYIWYG interface and drag and…