Category Archives: Software

Six Apart partners with Yahoo!

Yahoo! and Six Apart just announced a deal to make Yahoo! hosting the preferred small business host for Movable Type. Yahoo! currently hosts about 30 million individual websites including hundreds of thousands of small business sites. Yahoo! is using FastCGI, making Movable Type run a bit faster than a typical hosting install. Movable Type is available on all hosting plans including the starter $11.95 package. Users of other blogging software may have to pay $8 more for Perl, PHP, and MySQL support for their accounts. Customers can visit a special page on Six Apart’s website to purchase a Yahoo! Small…

Scuttle: open source social bookmarking

I use open source project Scuttle to manage my bookmarks on my server with full control over all my information. Scuttle is GPL licensed and uses PHP and MySQL to create a multiuser environment for storing bookmarks for public or private consumption. Anyone is welcome to join my social bookmarking tool on NiallKennedy.com. The API is a del.icio.us clone and open for import and export of your bookmarks if you try it out but don’t like it. Tags: socialtagging, tagging…

Rich RSS beyond text

I just posted the latest episode of Om and Niall PodSesssions to our podcast site. This week Om and I talk about the possibilities of RSS beyond text and blogs as content such as photos, music, movies, and more are delivered using RSS and other syndication formats. I have been playing around with some of the new broadband RSS services on my TiVo and thinking about new methods of content delivery to the home. Broadband access has been sold as an instant-on service available anytime you wish to interact and retrieve information. I believe the next wave of services will…

Syndicate Conference San Francisco

I am a panelist for Searching the Syndisphere at next week’s Syndicate conference in San Francisco. The panel will discuss different approaches to indexing and surfacing syndicated content, business models, emerging trends, and other topics chosen by the moderator. If you would like to attend the two day conference you can save 30% using a discount priority code of SPKDEC. A two day pass is $836.50 and a one day pass is $437.50 with the discount code applied. Tags: atom, rss, syndicatesf, syndication…

Odeo Studio released

Odeo just released their online audio recording software called Odeo Studio. Odeo Studio was previously available to a limited group of users. The new version 0.14 is the first public release of the software. Giving people the ability to record content via a web page or telephone takes away a lot of the complexity of podcasting or casual voice message creation. No worries about getting the proper recording software, encoding the audio, uploading to a server. Now all you have to do is hit record on a web page and everything is done for you. Recordings are limited to…

Skype thoughts

Skype updated its Mac client today with some new user interface features, improved call quality, and some additional member information. I like the small touches such as the new blue dock icon and the ability to automatically pause iTunes when you receive a new incoming call. I just realized today that Skype works over local Bonjour networks. The feature has been around for a few months, but none of my coworkers knew about it either. Om points out that many of the Skype 2.0 features were previously available as plugins from third party developers. I have not used any of…

Skype 2.0 – video and customizations

Tonight around midnight Skype will release version 2.0 beta of their popular peer-to-peer voice and instant messaging client. Version 2.0 adds client support for video, customizations such as avatars and ringtones, . The new version is currently available for the Windows platform only. The video transmission uses the On2 Truemotion VP7 compression format which is easily throttled for bandwidth differences and was designed with video conferencing and dropped packets in mind. The video format appears to only support the Windows operating system and could constrain any plans to expand Skype with video to other platforms. On2 claims their video…

PodSession on blogs, RSS, and advertising

The latest episode of Om and Niall PodSessions is now available. Om and I sat down at his apartment last week to talk about blogs, RSS, and advertising. Om asked most of the questions, focusing the discussion about how to make the right choices in blogging software and services to become a better blogger. Full show notes are available on the Om and Niall PodSessions site. This week’s podcast is 21 minutes in length and a 9.7 MB download. After the podcast I gave Om’s RSS a makeover including switching his feed to FeedBurner, adding more branding by utilizing more…

Yahoo! Mail RSS

The next version of Yahoo! Mail includes a feed aggregator as a sidebar option. The front-end is based on Oddpost’s blog aggregation technology and the front-end code even includes Oddpost copyright statements and comments. The back-end is the same as My Yahoo!. The Yahoo! Mail feed aggregator supports RSS 0.91, RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, and Atom 0.3. The aggregator does not support enclosures such as podcasts. Screenshots and analysis is based on Yahoo Mail 0.3.0 build 176. Yahoo! is the first major webmail provider to integrate a full-post aggregator into the mail client. Millions of Yahoo! Mail users will…