A few weeks ago, Google’s personalized home page enhanced the display of RSS feeds. Normally just the title of the post is shown, and you have to click thru to the site to read the whole thing. They added a way to “open” a quick snippet of the entry, including the main link of the story.
For sites like Techmeme, I end up at Techmeme and 90+% of the time, I just click to the original story. Techmeme guides me to interesting stories, but requires a quick pitstop at their site.
The addition of the “+” enabled me to go direct to the page of interest, and bypass Techmeme. Today I noticed that the Techmeme feed doesn’t have the plusses. Other feeds still do.
Is it fair to assume that Techmeme complained? Probably. This plus probably dropped their traffic a bit. I now miss the feature, not because I hated going to Techmeme, but because I will miss the extra productivity (the pitstop usually adds 10-20 seconds each time).
[UPDATE: In the comments, Gabe says Techmeme didn't complain, and is fine with the sidestep. Good for Techmeme.]
[UPDATE 2: The "+" is back. This return to normal. A technical glitch somewhere, or a quick change/change back? Who cares, I have my short-cut back]
[tags]google, techmeme[/tags]
While I use my Mac a lot and prefer it generally, for some reason I’ve never used it much for IM. Perhaps it is because it sits on my desk and most of my IM is work related, so I use Trillian on my work laptop.
But with all the high fives and back slapping around the 1.0 release of Adium, I thought I’d give it a try. And you know what? It is pretty darn nice. I like it. And I switched the icon set to use the Reddit alien dude and that makes it even nicer.
So a pat on the back and a big Thanks to the Adium team. Good Work!
[tags]im, macosx, application, adium, reddit[/tags]
Recently I read about MacFUSE. A port (or equiv support) to Mac OS X of FUSE, which lets file systems run in userspace. That is a fair bit of techno-speak. What “business problem” does it solve?
It lets me easily access my (fairly locked down) server as easily as any other shared server on my local network. This enables me to edit files on the server (using some great Mac tools) as if the files were local. Take MacFUSE, sprinkle sshfs on top and away you go.
Since ssh is the only service I always enable, this saves me a bunch of hassle trying to get some other file sharing system (like SAMBA, NFS, WebDAV, etc) setup (and secured).
Most excellent.
Back in January, I wrote about how I was shifting my telco/net connections. Well, I spoke too soon. It turns out I’m 15,000ft from the CO (as the wire runs) and that is too far for 768Kbs SDSL. They even came out and measured the various tolerances. Just wouldn’t work.
So at present, my network connection remains the same. Not sure what options I have, so I’ll sit tight. One small possibility is ADSL, which might work to give me a little more bandwidth in one direction, but they limit the number of static IP addressed you can get to 5. So I’ll need to talk with them about that.
Speaking of telecom, I finally bought a second patch panel for my little rack, and punched down all of the wires running into the closet. Not I just need to buy a bunch of connectors and terminate the 25 or so wires in the house that still dangle from holes in the wall.
Wi-Fi Networking News: Washington Post Says Open Wi-Fi Attracts Criminals:
“No, it’s more like having an endless pot of coffee that you’re willing to let anyone pour a cup from, even though you’re paying for the electricity. The coffee is essentially free, because you’re paying a fixed amount for unlimited java. The ‘front door wide open’ argument applies when you intend to close your network and fail to;”
I found this a useful analogy. I currently have an open wireless network at home. I’ve benefitted too many times not to give a little back.
[tags]open, wifi, network, analogy[/tags]
Yahoo rolled out “Pipes.” The is some buzz here, and for good reason. For a geek, especially an older one, one of the most elegant (easy with power) solutions for assembly of components is the Unix pipe concept. If you know a few basic tools that know how to manipulate streams of data, you can move mountains with relative ease. And making a special purpose tool to play in this world is trivial.
Jeremy Zawodny chimes in (including many links to examples and other posts. Brady Forrest over at O’Reilly also has a nice overview. Of course, Tim O’Reilly himself has something to say.
So Yahoo did a few great things with this idea. First, it is using RSS. This is powerful in how well understood and ubiquitous RSS is. Second, and most importantly, they are calling it “Pipes.” It conveys the concept to a legion of people who already understand the concept.
I haven’t used it yet, but at the 50,000 ft level, this looks very good, and from one of the big boys. It will be interesting to see how Microsoft responds with their Live Bookmark functionality the were demoing and talking about last year.
I’ll also be interested to see how this comes to the enterprise. With the growing number of “outside the firewall” places people are starting to put data, security and trust are going to be key. Today almost all “private” RSS feeds assume security through obscurity (some large unique part of a URL). That won’t last long. Identity is key, as is trust. But they have to be simple enough to roll into the likes of Yahoo Pipes.
[tags]yahoo, pipe, rss, development[/tags]
Over the past 3-5 years, the word “agile” has become so common it starts to lose meaning. While ‘agile development’ is perhaps more defined, ‘agile’ and ‘agility’ are used by vendors all of the time. BEA used it 4+ years ago. I don’t know when Microsoft started using it (but they have bigger ads). Others do also.
The goals of ‘agility’ when talking about IT are important, but perhaps we are missing something. What I hear more often is that we need systems that are pliable. The basis of the system is fine, but it needs to be molded and sculpted to meet the needs of the here and now. We don’t need rigid systems that need to be dismantled and rebuilt to accommodate change, we need pliable systems that accommodate a certain amount of change easily.
I was reading a guest article by Naomi Bloom titled “It’s all about the models” over on deal architect. You want to get things right the first time, but you can only do that if it is really your third time (you’ve ‘been there, done that’). But times change, so even when ‘done right’ you know you will need to change. The more pliable a system is, the happier and more effective(?) the people using the system will be. A key in my mind is that the shaping is done by the end consumer if at all possible, or at least the ‘power user.’
[tags]agile, pliable, systems, development[/tags]
Full stop. Two spaces.:
“I never thought about my double-space habit until tonight when I happened to come across this article on the subject. I asked Suzanne what she does and she remarked that she’s noticed my double-space style (she was a single-space journalism major). She hypothesized that only people old enough to remember typewriters would share my habit. I did a quick scan of my email, and sure enough — only about 20% of senders use double-spacing, and all of them are (ahem) in their mid-thirties and beyond.”
I fall into this category. As I’ve helped Connor type things on the computer, I’ve told him two spaces. I guess I need to stop that.
(Via Hey Norton! - Ken Norton’s blog.)
[tags]age, typography, style[/tags]
Doug Kaye posted a block diagram of an iteration of a podcasting/publishing system in the works. It makes heavy use of Amazon’s infrastructure services… S3, ECC, and even SQS.
What I like about Amazon’s approach is that they are looking to offer discrete services (where computation is one). Most others you read about are thinking “grid” and simply CPU cycles. Amazon is enabling you to start with one aspect and grow into the others, as Doug has. He first thought about using S3 for podcasts, but obviously grew as Amazon grew their services. So what is missing from what Amazon offers. We have:
- Storage
- Messaging
- Computation
What should be added?
The only thing I can think of is a basic structure data(base). Could look relational, could look hierarchical, or perhaps something “different” (GData like?).
[tags]amazon, cloud, doug+kaye[/tags]
I’ve decided to hold off on changing the template here. I’ve done some mock-ups and know what I think it will look like, but stumbled across K2. I want to give it a try as the foundation here. But instead of spending time tonight with a “pre-release” or SVN version, I’m going to wait until it is 1.0 (which looks to be very soon).
[tags]wordpress, k2, template[/tags]