Hit Counter in Pipes

Is rssCloud All Wet?

Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:32:35 -0700

Rogers Cadenhead recently posted his thoughts on why the rssCloud concept “failed to catch on.” This is a response to his post and an attempt to foster further discussion in the community. Blue Sky The main idea behind rssCloud is that your RSS reader can ask to be notified when a feed changes (push), rather than [...]

ROME 1.0 Released

Wed, 11 Mar 2009 19:44:33 -0700

It has been a long time coming, but the Java library for RSS and Atom utilities called ROME has finally made it to version 1.0 (changelog). Thanks to all of the contributers and the hard work on the dev team for making it possible! New to ROME? For a quick tutorial on how to get [...]

President Obama – Lost in Translation

Tue, 20 Jan 2009 16:00:19 -0800

Fox News has an “Automatic Transcription” feature for its videos. The disclaimer of “may not be 100% accurate” is understated by 95%. Here’s the presidential oath of Barak Obama, the way their transcription software heard it: “I. — Barack Hussein Obama I solemnly swear Barack Hussein Obama do solemnly swear. That I will execute the office [...]

Defrag a Single File or Set of Files in Windows

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 15:46:16 -0700

Ever wanted to defragment a certain file or collection of files on your Windows PC, without defragging the entire hard drive? Here’s why and how you can do it: Don’t Bring Me Down I recently noticed that one of my oft-used Windows applications was getting slower and slower. After checking the usual suspects in [...]

Make a Word Cloud from your Feed

Tue, 01 Jul 2008 16:04:54 -0700

I happened across Jonathan Feinberg’s Wordle (”Beautiful Word Clouds”) visualization recently.Â Pretty fun, but I instantly wanted a way to create one from an RSS feed. I didn’t see a way to do it, so I checked the FAQ confirmed there wasn’t one available: How about a field to enter a blog/web page/wikipedia article’s [...]

How to make easy video screencasts of software in Windows

Fri, 14 Mar 2008 11:30:47 -0700

A video demonstration of software is often far better than static screenshots, and is often more convenient to distribute than arranging for a live demo. This tutorial will show you how easy it is to record a video “screencast” of most applications with the free (as in lunch) Windows Media Encoder software. Caveats [...]

RSS Advisory Board Validated by RSS 0.90, 0.91

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 16:08:25 -0800

The RSS Advisory Board has had a checkered past and its share of run-ins with Dave Winer over RSS 2.0. There have been times where it was right to question how relevant it had become. This announcement by Netscape lends a great deal of credibility to the Board-sans-Winer, and hopefully will increase the adoption [...]

Freed Demon!

Wed, 09 Jan 2008 11:40:50 -0800

Newsgator has announced that a bevy of their RSS/Atom clients, including the excellent FeedDemon is now free: FeedDemon 2.6, NetNewsWire 3.1, Inbox 3.0 (beta), and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile 2.0. Each of these is a pretty major release on its own – tons of new features in all of them. But second, every one of [...]

On Craft

Mon, 07 Jan 2008 11:05:15 -0800

Ben Abernathy writes a poignant observation about computer science and the kinds of people that come (or don’t come) out of college programs.Â Â The first group ditches computer science altogether, the second delights in making things work, but the third strives for something more elusive: elegance and beauty.Â Ben is right to note that [...]

High-Tech Helpers for New Years Resolutions

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 20:04:19 -0800

Wondering if your New Years’ resolutions will make it past February? While there is no substitute for personal discipline and all that stuff, it is nice to have some help along the way. Here are some ways that technology can make that resolution just a little bit easer to keep: Get Things Done Do you [...]

Free Ruby on Rails Book (limited time only)

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 10:14:51 -0800

If you’ve been looking for a good excuse to learn Ruby on Rails, now is a great time. Sitepoint.com is giving away the full PDF of “Build Your Own Ruby on Rails Web Applications” through the end of the month of November. All you need to do is provide an email address and they’ll [...]

How to put IntelliJ IDEA on Ubuntu

Wed, 28 Nov 2007 08:49:11 -0800

I’ve been a user of the excellent IntelliJ Java IDE for 4 years on Windows. Even though the official Linux support by JetBrains is only for RedHat, you can also install IntelliJ fairly easily on Ubuntu. I’ve tested this with Xubunto 7.10 (Gutsy), Java 6, and IntelliJ 7. Here’s how to do [...]

Go Mobile with Mogul

Sat, 24 Nov 2007 21:33:24 -0800

My mobile phone was getting a little long in the tooth, so I’ve been researching phones for a few months. As tempting as the iPhone is, I didn’t want to switch to AT&T. A couple of weeks ago I took the plunge and bought the HTC Mogul instead. Here are the highlights that [...]

Are You Readable? Find Out with Your Feed

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 07:00:21 -0800

The literary world – especially academics – has a number of readability metrics that show how “hard” a given work is to read in English. If you are a writer, these metrics can give you a pretty good swag at how easy it will be for people to read your work. In this [...]

Atom Compliance Shows XML Parsing is Still a Mess

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 11:56:02 -0800

RSS and Atom guru James Holderness just issued a report on the how well namespaces are being handled by feed readers that understand Atom. The results are dismal: …Matters havenâ€™t improved much since this issue was first discussed nearly two years ago. … Of the thirty-odd products I tested, ten 2 were incapable of subscribing to [...]