FEEDoTopia

Yahoo ABC News Alliance Brings Newsmakers To Yahoo!

2011-10-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

Yahoo and ABC just announced a major alliance between two companies to provide better news to the masses. The new, News and Information Alliance will bring more ABC presence in the Yahoo news.
Among the new news, will be the web-first video series that Yahoo news users will be able to experience. These videos will feature ABC anchors and will accompany Yahoo news articles. First of these videos will be a live stream of George Stephanopoulos and President Obama in an interview. It will be online at 2:35PM EST this afternoon.
Yes, there will be monetizing based on advertisements against the premium content.

Yahoo press release;

Yahoo! and ABC News Launch Premier News and Information Alliance
Powerful combination leverages Yahoo!'s massive reach, content breadth, and technology with ABC News' leading brands, trusted anchors, and global news gathering operation
Debut of GoodMorningAmerica.com on Yahoo! offers audience new ways to continue the conversation before, during and after the broadcast 24/7
Yahoo!'s and ABC News' new exclusive slate of original online video programming kicks off today when ABC News anchorGeorge Stephanopoulos interviews President Obama live from the White House
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, and ABC News today announced a strategic alliance that will enhance and transform the delivery of news and information across the digital landscape. This multifaceted relationship blends Yahoo! News' unmatched audience, as well as its depth and breadth of content, with ABC News' global newsgathering operation and unrivaled lineup of trusted anchors and reporters. Yahoo! News and ABC News reach a combined audience of more than 100 million people in the U.S. each month on PCs, mobile devices and tablets.
This unmatched alliance creates a powerful news experience that provides people greater access to compelling news and information, including more original news video online than ever before. It launches today with the debut of GoodMorningAmerica.com on Yahoo! and three new, online-first video series with ABC News' award-winning and trusted anchors and correspondents. "Newsmakers," an original interview series, kicks off today when "Good Morning America" anchor George Stephanopoulos interviews President Obama live at the White House at2:35 p.m. ET. The entire interview will stream live on Yahoo.com and ABCNews.com.
"Yahoo! is committed to building the richest set of premium and personalized content experiences for our users. Our deep collaboration withABC News further strengthens Yahoo! as the No. 1 online news source, greatly enhancing our already robust news content," said Ross Levinsohn, executive vice president of Americas at Yahoo! "ABC News and Ben Sherwood's vision is completely symbiotic with ours; together we can create highly engaging experiences for more than 100 million users a month that will set the standard for the industry."
"This relationship will give ABC News an unrivaled ability to reach across the Web, combining Yahoo!'s vast distribution and cutting-edge technology with our award-winning journalism. For years, we've proudly proclaimed that more Americans get their news from ABC News than any other source," said Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News. "Going forward, we will greatly expand this leadership by building a connection with a whole new online audience."
By bringing together two of the world's leading and most trusted news providers, Yahoo! and ABC News will deliver the latest breaking news, the biggest exclusives, and award-winning investigative journalism from a powerful lineup of journalists — all with the ability to extend across TV and online like never before.
Key elements of the alliance include:
ABC News will be the premier news provider on Yahoo! News — Greater, even easier access to ABC News material across theYahoo! News network, the No. 1 online news destination in the U.S. ABC News content will be prominently integrated into Yahoo! News, the Yahoo! front page, and other areas across the Yahoo! network.
GoodMorningAmerica.com launches today on Yahoo! — A co-branded and highly interactive online destination (GMA.yahoo.com) with robust video and information will let the "Good Morning America" audience continue the conversation online before, during and after the broadcast and deepen viewers' relationship with the program 24/7.
New original Web series will debut from ABC News anchors and correspondents — Yahoo! and ABC News are launching an exclusive slate of original online video programming, starting today with "Newsmakers," "Around the World with Christiane Amanpour" and "This Could Be Big." Additional programs will debut in the months ahead and throughout 2012 (show descriptions follow below).
ABC News and Yahoo! News editorial teams will work together to develop premium news content — Editorial teams from both organizations will collaborate on branded content that will appear on both the Yahoo! News and ABC News sites. Teams will co-produce coverage for major news events and will have integrated bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Yahoo! editorial staff or content will appear on air.
Yahoo! and ABC Sales organizations will deliver powerful advertising solutions — The companies will create a suite of premium online video advertising opportunities and a variety of enhanced sponsorships designed to allow advertisers to benefit from the unique strengths of each sales organization. ABC will lead sales during the Upfront selling season and Yahoo! will manage sales throughout the rest of the year.
ABC News will continue to maintain editorial control of their sites, and Yahoo! maintains editorial control of Yahoo! sites. The Yahoo! News network will continue to feature content and perspectives from Yahoo!'s editorial staff and the Yahoo! Contributor Network, as well as content from other industry-leading providers and experts.
Original video programming
ABC News and Yahoo! have created a slate of original video programming with ABC News' award-winning and trusted anchors and correspondents featured across various Yahoo! and ABC News sites. With 10 of the top 10 original video programs online, Yahoo! knows how to create and distribute engaging and compelling video content. Jointly produced video programs debut this fall and continue to roll out throughout 2012, starting with:
"Newsmakers" — Everyone from politicians to global leaders to celebrities will engage in exclusive, online-first video conversations with Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, George Stephanopoulos, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour, Robin Roberts, and others. Consumers will be able to join the discussion and submit questions in a truly innovative, interactive, social platform.http://news.yahoo.com/newsmakers/
"Around the World with Christiane Amanpour" — The first global program produced entirely online leverages Yahoo!'s enormous reach and Amanpour's unmatched international relationships. The world's top international journalist will bring explanations, context and analysis to the biggest international stories of the day. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-world-according-to/
"This Could Be Big" — The invisible plane, a car that gets 200 mpg, a building that generates its own electricity, an eye implant that allow the blind to see … these are just a few of the glimpses into the future of innovation that "Nightline" anchor Bill Weir will explore each week. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big/
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the premier digital media company, creating deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe. And Yahoo!'s unique combination of Science + Art + Scale connects advertisers to the consumers who build their businesses. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.com).
Yahoo! is home to the No. 1 sites for finance, sports, news, entertainment news, and more.
Yahoo! and Yahoo! News are the trademarks and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owner.
About ABC News
ABC News delivers a big picture understanding of the world to empower and inspire viewers to make confident decisions for themselves and their families. More people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. ABC News is responsible for all of the ABC Television Network's news programming on a variety of platforms: television, radio, and the Internet. With an average television and radio audience of 180 million people in a given month, ABC News surpasses the competition. More than 2,400 affiliate stations broadcast ABC News Radio's global news coverage. In addition, ABC News NOW is a 24-hour news and information network currently available to 44 million users across cable, broadband, and mobile platforms. NewsOne, the affiliate news service of ABC News, provides live and packaged news, sports, and weather reports, as well as footage of news events, to 200 ABC affiliates and more than 30 domestic and international clients.http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/press-release/
Yahoo! Inc.
Cory Pforzheimer, 1-408-349-2686
coryp@yahoo-inc.com
or
ABC News
Jeffrey Schneider, 1-212-456-3587
jeffrey.w.schneider@abc.com
Julie Townsend, 1-212-456-4934
julie.townsend@abc.com
Michelle Levi, 1-212-456-6872
michelle.m.levi@abc.com
Source: Yahoo! Inc.
News Provided by Acquire Media

Reddit Passes One Billion Pageviews. (oh a Month!)

2011-02-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Reddit is telling us that their Google Analytic page has three commas for pageviews number and like anyone and everyone else they are pretty happy, and the song below has become the favorite song of the Conde Nast site.
Reddit Via Mashable (just following Mashable new habbit of hiding the source)

Bloglines Gone To Deadpool

2010-09-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Bloglines, the venerable RSS feed read of the yesteryear, is going the way of yesterday on October 1st. Bloglines will cease it's operations and if you are Bloglines user, ask.com is providing tools to export your feeds to another reader.
A $10 million product in 2005 for ASK.COM, Bloglines quickly lost it's ground to Google Reader and who ever were left, have lately defected to real time news sources like twitter.

That said, plenty of people are still RSS aggregator-faithful, and Bloglines was lucky enough to be the news aggregator of choice for many of them. I want to thank these users for their support through the years. We are posting notification today, providing a three -week period to export feeds to another service – more detail and instructions can be found on the Bloglines website.

Techcrunch has added Bloglines to it's Deadpool.

Official Google Reader Blog: Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

2009-10-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

Google Reader is bringing in some changes that will aid you in locating more interesting content than you already have discovered. When Google launched the Personalized Search in 2005, we were skeptical because we were worried about personal information. But we came to realize that it helped us in our searches.
Now the same search feature is helping you with your reading habits, that you do with your Google Reader.
The Explore section helps you find new content, with the two new features Popular items and recommended sources, which uses your Reader Trends and Web History (if you're opted into Web History) to generate a list of feeds we think you might like.
Personalized Ranking will help you with sorting your articles, using "Sort by Magic" under the Feed Settings menu in your reader. The traditioanl sort options are still there but better because it is based on your reading and sharing habits. If you try these out, please let the them know about how you feel about them on Reader help group, Twitter or the Reader section of Get Satisfaction, a third party support community.
Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking
Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

Your Feeds "Talks" To You, If They Are On Android

2009-10-01T03:44:00.000-07:00

Yes there is an App for that, certainly on Android based phones. So Android users now can listen to their news out loud while your hands are busy to handle phone.
Or just take the case of the author of the article and the app, Stephane Doyon,that I have pointed at the bottom, who is blind.

The Talking RSS Reader does the task via text-to-speech library adapted from android eyes-free project, helping mobile phoning for visually impaired. Sometimes I am amazed at what a mind could do to solve simple tasks ans this is one of them! Here are some facts about the App from the project page.

It begins reading each article out loud as soon as it is displayed. The sentence currently being spoken is colored in green.
Speech can be interrupted and restarted by pressing the CALL button.
To move to the previous or next sentence, spin the trackball up or down while the app is talking.
If the text is scrolled, speech will pick up at the first full sentence from the top of the screen.
Links can be selected with the finger, or trackball when the app is not talking. Clicking a link launches the browser, which does not talk.
You can have sentences spoken one at a time by holding the CALL button and spinning the trackball up or down.
The Next and Prev article buttons are located at the bottom corners of the screen, where they can easily be tapped without looking. Each article is marked as read after you click Next.
If you are a first time user of Google Reader, you may need to initialize your account by going to http://google.com/reader.

Google Open Source Blog: Talking RSS Reader for Android

Feedburner Subscriber Status Might Change, Starting Today.

2009-09-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

Google Feedfetcher, one that keeps an eye on subscribers to feeds on behalf of Google Reader and the iGoogle has shaken up it's dust and updated it's database after a long period of inactivity.
So this update could take you Feedburner subscriber count will reflect this change which could either be up or down.
Feedburner folks assure us that the changes will begin to show up in feedburner subscriber counts starting today, 26th of September.

Google Sidewiki, Anotate Me Please!

2009-09-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Google released Google Sidewiki today. Sidewiki allows one to;

Publish helpful information
about any web page right in your browser
Read insights in context
from Sidewiki entries added by others
Share Sidewiki entries through
Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles

There is a link to learn more after the jump.

Learn more about sidewiki

Blogger Joins the Hubbub Via The PubSubHubbub Protocol

2009-08-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

We have been working with the PubSubHubbub protocol for a while now to adopt it for Feedotopia. Now that Blogger has adopted it, we will have instant updates from millions of blogs under Blogger wing.
Basically the PubSubHubbub protocol turns web feeds in to real time streams and as developers adopt the protocol, feeds will appers in readers in near real time.
Google Reader, my favorite reader has also implemented PubSubHubbub. You can find a link to at the bottom of this article.

The protocol in a nutshell is as follows:

An feed URL (a "topic") declares its Hub server(s) in its Atom or RSS XML file, link rel="hub" ... . The hub(s) can be run by the publisher of the feed, or can be a community hub that anybody can use. (Atom and RssFeeds are supported)

A subscriber (a server that's interested in a topic), initially fetches the Atom URL as normal. If the Atom file declares its hubs, the subscriber can then avoid lame, repeated polling of the URL and can instead register with the feed's hub(s) and subscribe to updates.

The subscriber subscribes to the Topic URL from the Topic URL's declared Hub(s).

When the Publisher next updates the Topic URL,, via. the publisher software pings the Hub(s) saying that there's an update.

The hub efficiently fetches the published feed and multicasts the new/changed content out to all registered subscribers.

The protocol is decentralized and free. No company is at the center of this controlling it. Anybody can run a hub, or anybody can ping (publish) or subscribe using open hubs.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger Joins the Hubbub
Official Google Reader Blog: PubSubHubbub support for Reader shared items

DIGG Bans Laughing Squid

2009-08-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

According to Laughing Squid, DIGG has blocked the popular blog without reason or warning. We like LS, both the blog and the hosting company.
Hope this get resolved soon!

NewsGator Adopts Google Reader As Its Online COmpanion

2009-07-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

RSS Readers
From Agust 31, Google Reader will become the online vehicle for NewsGator. News Gator has announced that Googlr Reader will be the companion and the synchronization platform for its RSS Reader applications. NewsGator has FeedDemon, for Windows and NetNewsWire, for the Mac as RSS readers. It also has an iPhone App, NetNewsWire for the iPhone, one of the favorite nes readers.
New versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are available as of today, NewsGator mentions NetNewsWire for iPhone will be available soon.
If you need any futher encouragement, following paragraph will give you plenty;
"Users of FeedDemon, NetNewsWire for Mac, and NetNewsWire for the iPhone will have 30 days to download new versions of these applications that can synchronize with Google Reader. Syncing will give you a consistent reading experience across your PC, Mac, iPhone, and web browser. For example, if you add a new RSS feed, organize your folders, or mark some stories as read on one device, the changes will immediately reflect across the others. Users of NewsGator Go! can select from the mobile RSS reader options that synchronize with Google Reader."
NewsGator

Party with Blogger & Google Reader At South By SouthWest (SXSW)

2009-03-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Google Buzz just announced that it is going to host a party together with Google reader team at the SXSW and if you are attending, check out the venue at Six Lounge (117 W 4th St @ Colorado) on Sunday,
Blogger Buzz: Blogger & Google Reader Party @ SXSW

Transfer FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts, More Info

2009-02-27T12:46:00.000-08:00

Google Adsense for Feeds blog has published following information as of February 28th 2009, people will have problems managing accessing Feedburner accounts, if care is not taken. Simply create a google account and information is availale after the jump.

The FeedBurner functionality of analyzing, optimizing, publicizing, and monetizing your feeds is not being shut down or reduced in any way. We have made some strategic decisions to remove some of our functionality that is not directly relevant to managing feeds for reasons we hope will become apparent over time. Names may change, things may move around, but in general our plan is to provide a lot more functionality that makes sense in 2009, and beyond, for all publishers. Learn more here.

On February 28th, if you have not moved your feeds to a Google Account, the traffic to your feeds will not be cut off or terminated, but you will not be able to view or manage your feeds until you have moved to a Google Account, unless you use MyBrand. Technically, this means that all traffic will now be served out of our Google data centers, and there will still be a way to move your account that will be in place indefinitely.

If you used MyBrand at www.feedburner.com, you absolutely must move to a Google account and update your DNS CNAME records by March 16, 2009, or else your MyBrand URLs will return a 404 error. If you use MyBrand and have not moved, you should have already received an email from us with detailed instructions. If, for some reason, you have changed the email address associated with your FeedBurner account, you will receive another message once you have finished the move process to the email address associated with your Google Account.

Transferring FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts FAQ

Feedly, As Explained By Robert Scoble

2009-02-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Feedly brings together Google Reader, friendfeed, twitter, and anything else to bring you a better and bigger News source. Robert Scoble spoke with Feedly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian and prests us how the newest incarnation of the application works. Get Feedly here.

Your Quotes, For The Last Five Years, On Google News!

2008-10-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

If you thought the feeds that we get too much and there should be a better way to check out the news, I am with you. I have three separate news feeds that, I use to manage daily doze of various news. Still they fill up fast, 1000-2000 articles each. But until I have a better way to parse these, I have to deal with it.
Main while Google News team, has done something marvelous with the "Quotes" system. I have used the thirty day span of quotes by various people many a time. But now I am able to do that for a span of five years!
Just imagine indulging yourself in analyzing quotes by various people over last five years. I can forget about parsing my news as I will be spending a quite a bit time, with these quotes!
Just check out the quotes by Presidential Candidates, Obama and McCain.
But if you not into politics, there are many other people who uttered good and bad stuff, that might interest you.
To access these new features, first search for a person's name on Google News. If Google News has a recent quote, it will be shown above the search results, and if there are more quotes, you can expand on it!, which is again sortable depending on date or relevance. Go get quoted!
But the custom edition was much more enjoyable.
Google News Blog: Words matter

Google Toolbar 5 Ready If You Got Firefox

2008-09-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Sneaking behind Google Toolbar for Firefox users, Google updated the Google Toolbar for IE with new features a few months back. (What? how could that be?) Yes a few others also thought so and promptly emailed the toolbar team asking when those new feature will be available to Firefox users.
The answer and the new toolbar is ready. You can download the Google Toobar 5 in 29 languages and it is the the first Toolbar launched out of our St. Petersburg, Russia office. So head over to Google toolbar for Firefox site get yours.
The Autofill stands out as you can keep your profiles ready to be filled on your computer and those pesky sign up forms could be filled with just a one click.
Of course what is the toolbar without Google gadgets? you can add any gadget from the Google Gadget Gallery.
So lastly here is a video, that shows the virtues of Google toolbar 5 for Firefox.

Official Google Blog: Google Toolbar 5 now available in Firefox

Google Reader Brings Friends Everywhere, And Gets Friendlier.

2008-09-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Google Reader Blog posted about some improvements to the Google reader. First of all it the sharing feature that was only available to US friends, now expands to the rest of the world. The other feature is that there is a new way to sort your feeds, if you do not like to drag and drop to arrange them, alphabetically.

Official Google Reader Blog: Friends Everywhere, and other Friendly Features

Tags: Google Reader, feed aggregator, RSS Technology, feedotopia

Sergey Brin goes blogging.

2008-09-23T03:37:00.000-07:00

Sergey Brin goes blogging. With the first post about Parkinson's disease, shows that it is truly a personal blog. He also tells us what Google got to do with Googol.

BOTW To Buy DMOZ! (End Of Free Reviews?)

2008-09-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

According to a post on Shoemoney, BOTW, Best Of The Web is on it's way to acquire DMOZ. DMOZ had so far maintained a premier position on the web directories due to several reasons. The strict control of listing, and the association of companies like Google that relied on the directory maintained by AOL to create it's own Google Directory.
According to the article, BOTW has already hired those top editors away from the DMOZ and by any means doing much better than DMOZ already.
In the age of Google looking down on web directories, (Page rank drops etc) DMOZ (and BOTW) maintain a heafty ranks. But there is a big difference between DMOZ and BOTW. DMOZ is free and wether your site get included might boil down to a boil in the pants of those volonteer editors. I have managed to get some of my sites included but sometimes I wonder if it is worth it.
BOTW on the other hand charges a $249.99 review fee which is a prerequisite. BOTW also makes the point that their review for inclusion is not a guarantee of inclusion in their directory.
But I doubt that many people get excluded but I have not tried nor do I know the inner working of BOTW. But Google thinks they are good enough to give them a high PageRank.

I have no idea nor the Shoemoney, how the drama may unfold. But it might turn pages, web pages pretty soon. May be it is time we down loaded a copy of the directory. A few years ago we started parsing the directory for one of our search engines but I have not visited the DMOZ recently. Hope BOTW do good to DMOZ.

Google Gadgets For Your Blogger Blogs!

2008-08-12T02:51:00.000-07:00

Fresh out of Blogger's own testing ground, Google Gadgets have now been enabled for all layouts blogs. This new interface allows for the integration of iGoogle Gadgets directly into your sidebar, with an array of customization options for easy tweaking. Also built into Gadgets is our robust Gadget Directory, which lets you browse through thousands of cool gadgets and add them to your blog with a simple click of a button.
Blogger Buzz: Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets!

Happy 4th Of July America!

2008-07-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th Of July America!

Tags: 4th of July, America People We See, Independence day

Super Charged Blog List, RSS Powered

2008-06-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

This example at work on the sidebar on the left side, scroll down to see.

Blogger has released a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. If you were using Link List before to create a list of your own or friends blogs, Blog List is the link list with a woomph!. Instead of the static links, now you can have dynamic list that uses blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Here’s a quick summary, that I took from Blogger Buzz, of the features that a Blog List gives you:

Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
Import subscriptions from Google Reader
Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to

Read more here and watch a video.

Blogger Buzz: Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

Tags: RSS feeds, Atom Feeds, Blog list, Link list

Bloglines VS Google Reader, Show Me The TOPDOG

2008-05-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I came across a post by Heather Hopkins of Hitwise about how Blogline doing it's deeds against Google Reader. I use both bloglines and Google Reader and so does my collegues. So who is the top dog? Who does the best fetching? (TOPDOG is the best hotdog around where I live and where we get our midnight snacks, usually two dogs! Calabrese and Hot Link, eaten on the street, leaning against the car! So this dog fetches me, time to time)

According the analysis done by the lady and her firm Hitwise, Bloglines is still running in the front but Google Reader is steadily closing in.

I am more of a numbers guy than a word guy, so I am going to grab some graphs and let you go and digest the words of Heather later. The graph above is how they stood in August of last year and the one below is how they are doing now. Both are heavy climbers and Google Reader seem to be doing some catch up. There are other players as well but these two dominate the scene now. (until Feedotopia shakes the ground!)

But the gem of the analysis was the graph below!. These are the downstream visits to publishers from both Bloglines and Google reader. This makes me want to have Google Reader be my traffic cop. Because except shopping, Photography and personal blogs, Google Reader seem to be doing wonders. I think Photo attributes to the new Flickr feed module in Bloglines Beta. I use the feature a lot and I like it. Further more if you are a Shopping or Retail site, it is better to have Bloglines behind you!.Following is Heather's view of it;

The top downstream category for both feed readers was News and Media. However, Google Reader sent 61% more visits to News and Media websites than Bloglines.
Bloglines sent almost as much traffic to Blogs and Personal Websites as to News and Media (9.98% and 9.95% respectively). By contrast, Google Reader sent more than twice as much traffic to News and Media websites. This indicates that Google Reader users are more inclined toward mainstream media - using the reader as a front page of a newspaper - while Bloglines seems to be used more for following blogs.
Bloglines users are also more inclined toward Photography websites, while Google Reader users are more inclined to visit Television websites.
And the last difference I'll highlight is that Bloglines users are 24% more likely to continue on to a retail (Shopping & Classifieds) website.

You can see more data and Heathers analysis at her Blog, here is the post.
Bloglines Beta.
Google Reader
TOPDOG

RNews 0.91 With a bunch of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

2008-05-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

Rnews has released a new version, 0.91, at the beginning of this month. I have tested RNews in many test settings but yet to deploy in a production environment. Perhaps this new release will convince me to do so. I have just downloaded and soon will replace one of my test setups of old version.

This release has a raft of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements. It's definitely the best Rnews, yet. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas and bug reports!

Feeds are scored using personalized statistics, one- and two-column block views are more flexible, keyword search is supported, heuristics try to fix broken feeds, and feeds may be added using bookmarklets or a Firefox extension.
New user options were added for keeping stats, expanding articles in single-feed view, and opening links in a new window.
Rnews received a styling upgrade, with rollover icons and more AJAX interaction.
IP-locked cookies are now optional (though recommended).
Many bug fixes, in caching, IE presentation, redirects, and elsewhere.

Database structure has changed, but there is now an automatic upgrade process (from 0.8x only). See the instructions on the download page.

Update: minor bug in 0.90 is fixed in 0.91, which is drop-in compatible.

Shorten your Net Time With RSS Subscriptions.

2008-05-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

I always use my Google reader to go through my favorite blogs. I also have a bloglines account setup for blogs that I read infrequently, like once or twice a week. You take it for granted, just like email, I read it a few times a day. But you assume everyone knows about it. But today I read an article by The Net Fool, (A young guy but by reading his posts you never guess. You have to visit his about page and I think you will say great!)
But the reason for this writing is that the net fool is out to tell teach others about making money online and his lesson on RSS, simple but very informative. He explains virtues of RSS feeds as we do here but never wrote actually how to use it. So without my rumblings, here is the article;Five Reasons Why Subscribing to RSS Feeds Is Worth Your While.

VisualRank, A Pagerank For Your Logos, Photos Or Any Image On The Internet!

2008-05-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Google has unveiled a new tools and plans to rank images on the internet better. Today most image search engines rank images based on text description of the image. But this might not bring out the best image! The researchers have sighted two searches on Google image search for "Eiffel Tower" and "McDonalds", as examples. The Eiffel images were relevant but McDonalds were not exactly what you want if you were looking for "McDonalds"
Image search has always fascinated me, from large database pattern matching, (You draw a doodle of the image you are searching for with your mouse on a slate) to face recognizing for security purposes. Both the subjects are bordering each other as well as my latest fascination with medical imaging with pattern matching. But the Google researchers may look at it from another angle.
So how does this work?
The algorithm, (which is also presented in very technical and theoretical paper, which is very interesting if your field is image processing.) is to collect a bunch of images based on the search and then analyze the results to select best possible image among them.
I will be reading both the papers that were presented by Official Google Blog article, Visualrank,
Pagerank for product image search and YouTube datamining (which I have read before).
The see the Google blog, click on the link below.

Official Google Research Blog: VisualRank

Feedburner Advances and AdSense in Your Feeds!

2008-04-29T12:13:00.000-07:00

Within next few weeks selected publishers at www.feedburner.com, will have the opportunity to sign in using their Google Account. Feedburner became apart of the Google a while ago.

If you are among the selected few and decide to migrate the accounts, all of your settings, feeds will be managed through your new or existing Google account. Basically this is a single sign on that I have with Google, I sign in once and all my services like blogger, Google Docs, Google Analytics, AdSense are auto signed in. So if I am one I will be able to do the same with Feedburner as well!.

Thalking about AdSense, there will also be a tighter integration with AdSense. This should be good news for feed advertisers, and whom those plan to be. Google AdSense in your feeds! Wow.

There are few other changes as well, following is directly from the Feedburner blog;

As part of this Google Account migration, we will need to make a few process changes for our API partners. Effective immediately, the FeedBurner Management API will only be available for existing FeedBurner partners and those Google partners who currently have access to other Google AdSense APIs. The Awareness API will continue to work exactly as it did before, noting that once you migrate to a Google account, you will have to use your Google account credentials IF you use the authenticated API.

If, going forward, you do not want to sign in with a Google account, you can always take your feeds with you by redirecting your subscribers back to your source. Migration will ultimately be here for everybody, including all you MyBrand folks who are master of your domain.

tag: feedburner, Advertising, Adsense in Feeds, Feedburner account migration,

AideRSS To Help You Filter Your Daily Doze Of RSS Feeds!

2008-04-18T13:47:00.000-07:00

I came across AideRSS while ago but did not have time pen something about it. But now it is a must as it is everywhere I manage read my feeds. So instead of writing I have borrowed from other peoples writing! ;).

But I have a question, What if you are a publisher? your pagerank goes higher if people read your posts and propagate them and you get you postrank high. But people don't read your articles because of your post rank is low! Oxymoron RSS!

But no worry you can fix it, just get two of your friends to dig your article and the postrank will jump!

"Users of the NewsGator Online Reader are going to find a new, nifty feature in their readers today: AideRSS PostRank filtering! Similar to the AideRSS GoogleReader Extension for GoogleReader, this functionality will enable NewsGator users to easily sort posts based on social engagement, and quickly find and read what matters."

If you do not know what AideRSS is;

There are only 24 hours in a day and a near infinite number of blogs to follow. You don’t attempt to read the entire newswire every day, and we didn’t think you should be doing the same for every blog. We set out to create an aide, like the newspaper editor, to help you find and read what matters.

AideRSS is an intelligent assistant, which continuously monitors RSS feeds, finds the good stuff, creates a PostRank™, and delivers it to you. We do the grunt work of collecting information on every post, allowing you to focus on your agenda and stay on top of the news stream.

tag: Feed Technology, AideRSS, GoogleReader, NewsGator, PostRank,

New Alexa Ranking Is Live!

2008-04-17T08:31:00.000-07:00

Alexa has changed it's ranking algorithm and a new and less Alexa toolbar dependent method is up and running. This would change the Alexa Ranking for some. Now the ranking data come from multiple sources that will enhance the ranking. But they are not telling us what those sources are! Perhaps to deter those who misuse the ranking or may be something that they forgot to announce.
Here are some Q&A from Alexa;
My site's ranking has changed. Was it wrong before?

Your ranking wasn't wrong before, but it was different. Alexa toolbar users' interests and surfing habits could differ from those of the general population in a number of ways, and we described some of those possible differences on our website. While the vast majority of sites' rankings were unaffected by such differences, we've worked hard on our new ranking system to adjust for situations in which they could matter.

The new rankings should better reflect the interests and surfing habits of the broader population of Web users.

Why are the long range graphs gone? I can only get 9 months of historical data.

We are recalculating historic traffic data and will continue to add it over the coming weeks. We apologize for the inconvenience, but should have several years of data back on line shortly.

Will you change the rankings again?

We are constantly working to ensure that we provide the most useful data that we can. We will continue to fine tune our algorithms but don't foresee any additional big changes. If you think something is amiss please let us know.

I liked the old rankings better. Are they still available somewhere?

We liked the old rankings as well. However, we developed the new system in response to the huge number of requests we got from users like you, and now that it's done we like it even better. We hope you will too.
We think that having more than one ranking system at a time would be confusing, so we have removed the old rankings.

Do you want to know what I think about this?

Definitely. We've been collecting suggestions and ideas for months now, and would love to hear more. If you have thoughts on what we've done so far, or ideas on what we should do next, please share them with us.

You can give your Feedback to Alexa here
tag: Alexa, Alexa Toolbar, Alexa Rank,

Bloglines Beta Brings A Slew Of New Features, Search, Flickr View and Improved Add Page

2008-04-16T01:14:00.000-07:00

Bloglines have made a bunch of nice changes to Bloglines beta. I have already signed up and enjoying it. Below are some facts from bloglines News. But there are more like Bloglines Top 1000, which I liked very much. The movers and shakers are visible together with moves and shakes (graphs).
I really dig the bloglines beta.
Blog search is finally in Beta, and we've incorporated some popular Ask 3D features. For example, related searches are displayed in the right-hand column next to results. All of classic's features are still there, but with newer styling.

Flickr View Selecting a Flickr feed and viewing it in quick view now uses the Flickr API to show images at their maximum resolution.
Add Page Beta's old add page was spartan, to say the least. The new Add page has package tracking, weather feeds, and a new feature: Packs. You can now add popular categories of feeds with a single mouse click.
You can sign up here!
tag: feed aggregator, bloglines beta

Self-Service Feed Transfer capability with Feedburner .

2008-04-06T11:46:00.000-07:00

If you are a Feedburner user, you may have noticed the new feature that burning people have added to your My Feeds control panel, (see above picture, just above Monetize.), called Transfer Feed. According to Feedburner, this has been live for weeks.

What is it good for?

Nowadays more and more people build blogs, websites, portal pages. They also get wise and burn feeds to increase awareness of the pages and to promote the sites in this large ocean of publishing. As usual there will be changes in content ownership and control lead to the desire to move a FeedBurner feed from one account to another. This used to be a hassle to the owner of the feed and the Feedburner itself. Before this feature, if someone who wanted to transfer a feed to another account used to a submit a request to Feedburner, and then one of the burning people would verify the accounts and then complete the actual feed transfer. Reliable, but time-consuming and tedious for all parties involved.

So no more sweating over transfers, you can now transfer it to anyone you like simply by using the Transfer Feed… link. (Please note that only feed owners may initiate transfers from their own accounts to others. Additional how-to info about Feed Transfer is in our Help Center topic.)

feedburner blog

tag: feedburner, manage feed, Transfer Feed, burning people

RSS For Educators, A New Book On RSS Technology.

2008-03-28T18:37:00.000-07:00

A powerful technology, but a simple concept, RSS (“Really Simple Syndication”) makes it possible to easily access frequently updated content on the Internet. RSS allows you to “subscribe” to content and have updates automatically delivered to your computer. Many Web 2.0 tools, including blogs, podcasts, and wikis, have been made even more useful with the advent of RSS technology.

Let expert John Hendron show you how to use a news aggregator to harness the power of RSS for a variety of purposes, including classroom projects, professional development, and keeping students and parents informed. Learn how to use free and inexpensive software such as Garage Band and Audacity to manipulate audio files and create podcasts. Explore the pros and cons of various blogging platforms. Have your students blog, and use RSS to deliver their assignments to you automatically. With RSS and the Read/Write Web, the possibilities are endless.

A glossary and an extensive list of online resources round out this essential guide to the power of Web syndication.

Features

* A complete introduction to RSS technology
* How to harness the power of RSS for educational purposes
* The pros and cons of low-cost and free Web 2.0 software

"RSS for Educators" is available online for $20.95 for ISTE members and $29.95 for nonmembers. More information about the book, including the table of contents and a free, downloadable excerpt, is available at http://www.iste.org/bookstore. The book is appropriate for grade PK-12
teachers, pre-service teachers, technology coordinators, curriculum developers and teacher educators.
tag: RSS Technology, RSS For Educators,

LegalFish Newsroom Bring Legal (as in Law) Feeds To You.

2008-03-28T15:13:00.000-07:00

Chicago, IL, March 27, 2008 The latest legal news from various sites is now available at your fingertips with a simple click to the LegalFish Newsroom.

To avoid the hassle of unnecessary searching, typing, and opening of new browsers to obtain information, the LegalFish Newsroom uses RSS feeds which enables consumers and attorneys to access the latest legal news on one page from the top three legal sites: Law.com, LexisNexis, and CNN Law.

RSS feeds aggregate updated content and dynamically feeds it in real time to a website. The LegalFish Newsroom, in turn, receives these dynamic updates on the day’s top legal headlines with links directly to the source article. “Rather than time-consuming and relentless searching, RSS feeds allow these legal news sites to work for you by constantly keeping the consumer filled in,” said Joshua Fuhrmark, Managing Director of LegalFish. He further commented on the efficiency of the LegalFish Newsroom application by noting its benefits to readers. “You don’t have to flip channels, and consumers stay informed in a timely and relevant manner on the latest legal news and trends,” Fuhrmark said.

Mr. Fuhrmark hopes that readers bookmark the LegalFish Newsroom page. He believes that having easy access to legal news educates and benefits those consumers who are looking to find a qualified attorney or law firm to help them best address their unique legal issues. Within the industry of Attorney-Client Matching (ACM), LegalFish is the first to employ RSS feeds.

To visit the LegalFish Newsroom, go to http://www.legalfish.com/newsroom/index.php.
tag: News Feed, Legal News, LegalFish Newsroom

myFeedz, A Social Newspaper

2008-03-04T16:37:00.001-08:00

I have been using the myFeedz for a while now. One might think it is a online RSS reader at first glance. But the site says it is not. According to myFeedz, it finds what's important from the information overload that we try to navigate everyday and shows you what you need to read. How does it know what I read? It learns from what you like and helps you keep up with your interests.
myFeedz also finds the most linked to and referenced news and then present it to you based on what you usually read at the on line news paper.
But to learn what myFeedz is really like you need to visit it. The first thing that you will notice is the smooth interface by Adobe Labs.
and for startes, you can start with the FAQ and you may find answers to questions like;

What is a feed?
How are feeds used in myFeedz?
What is a tag?
What is a tagcloud?
How are tags used in myFeedz?
How does rating work?
Why am I not getting any fresh articles for my tags?
Can I submit my favorite sites?
How do I remove irrelevant articles?

etc. So enjoy your news paper, myFeedz.

tag: myFeedz, Social News Paper, RSS Reader, Adobe Labs, tag, tagcloud,

New Newsgator Products

2008-02-08T21:25:00.000-08:00

NewsGator has released the NetNewsWire 3.1, FeedDemon 2.6, and NewsGator Go! for Windows Mobile 2.0. At the same time public beta of NewsGator Inbox 3.0 also was started. The award-winning products for PC (FeedDemon), Mac (NetNewsWire), and mobile (NewsGator Go!) deliver a best-of-breed RSS reading experience that synchronizes through NewsGator’s online platform. All of the new product versions deliver a better user experience with the inclusion of significant performance, usability, and relevance enhancements.

tag: NetNewsWire 3.1, FeedDemon 2.6, NewsGator Go, NewsGator Inbox 3.0, feed reader,

Blogger The Trip Through 2007 and The Roundup

2008-01-17T14:04:00.000-08:00

Yes I have been with Blogger with for more than three years and always wondered why didn't I start before? So if you have slightest inclination, start now.
Yes the year 2007 passed without noticing that Blogger beta became The Blogger and I was one of the first to try the Beta Blogger. I am not much of a tweaker (I am not much of a writer either) so I just used regular templates and learned bit by bit how to add stuff. But with the new layout system, it is a breeze!
Yes, I have been breezing through more than 3000 posts in various blogs that I command. I thank Google and the Blogger team for the service they provided and only one time I had to contact the support was to get my site checked to verify that it is not a spam site!
The Blogger Buzz has an article about what they went through during the 2007. I think you will enjoy! I did.
Blogger Buzz: 2007 Roundup
tag: Google, Blogger Buzz, Blogger, ravenii

Indexing Trouble At Technorati Is Being Fixed

2008-01-17T08:28:00.000-08:00

According to Technorati blog, they are in the midst of repairing most of the effected data due to some indexing troubles they had this past week.
Technorati's spiders were shutdown for several hours last week due to this reason while the Technorati team was investigating and fixing the problem. Some newly created weblogs had their data scrambled.
No blogs that existed in our system before Dec. 18th were impacted at all.
They expected to fix everything during the weekend but it proved to be not the case due to vast amount of data that Technorati handles. Since then further work on the problem is working andd they are recovering now and the backlog of data processing is getting worked through.
So if your blog is not showing correct data or if your blog is not there at all, when you visit;
http://technorati.com/blogs/YOUR_BLOG_URL
you can inform Technorati at the support request page. A selection for 'The January 8th System Outage' will be available this month to specially aid the abnormal troubles with this case if there are any!
Information is from Ian Kallen's Dog Ate Your Blog post.

tag: Technorati, Technorati index,

VOIP IP Telephony: Just Broke Technorati 50000 Rank Barrier!

2008-01-15T10:43:00.000-08:00

Give me more feeds!
VOIP IP Telephony: Just Broke Technorati 50000 Rank Barrier!
tag: Technorati, Technorati Rank, voip ip telephony, ravenii, snapvoip

Re-learning the Web at its principles

2008-01-08T12:10:00.001-08:00

I was hunting for information on Feed Technology when I came across this gem of a n article. Although I do not agrre with all it has to say, I enjoyed reading it, in fact, I changed some of my directions, indirectly, based on the information and links provided in the article.
So if you also want learn something about about Content Negotation and URI, information spaces and so on dilemmas, in the Semantic Web areas, head over to Casual Info Ina Bottle.
tag: Feed Technology, Semantic Web, Content Negotation, URI, information spaces,

Technorati Authority Bug Fixed, But My Rank Is Still Low ;)

2008-01-08T11:52:00.001-08:00

Technorati Fixes Authority Bug. The bug gave some sites with sub domains an inflated authority, according to Dorion Carroll at Technorati. (I went there to find out about why pings are not registering and article posts are all haphazard. Some of my blogs show old posts as latest. I will check support later.)
The bug fix to the Technorati Authority should not affect many of us who are in the lower rungs of the ladder. According to the same post, mostly affected were top 100 or weblogs and sites. I wish Technorati gave me some of those fallen off authority rankings! ;). Well may be I have to work on it.

tag: Technorati, Technorati Authority Bug, Technorati Authority Rank

Wikia Search Goes Live today

2008-01-07T10:36:00.001-08:00

Search Wikia, the widely awaited search engine from Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, is slated to make its official debut on Monday, with the bet that an open-source, community-driven effort can disrupt and reshape this Google-dominated market.
tag: wikia, google

Have A wonderful XMAS!

2007-12-24T12:13:00.000-08:00

Find Santa Here!
VOIP IP Telephony: Track Santa OnLine As NORAD Follows Santa,!
Tags: Track Santa, The Worlds Fastest Flying Object, XMAS,

Why You Should Redirect Blogger Feeds

2007-12-15T00:13:00.000-08:00

Yes I thought like you too. Why redirect my feed to feed burner? Blogger is good. I had a feedburner account and basically playing with it. I also had the feed count showing on one of my sites. But the count was about 10! Yes nothing big, in fact tiny. Then Yesterday I redirected my feeds through feed burner. It was because some people were using my posts and taking my keywords away.
This morning I was a bit surprised. feed count is 129 and I also found few others who were using my feeds, which were in full for their own good.
How do you go about doing this? well you can follow the instructions on feedburner Blog;
"Getting started
Our Blogger QuickStart guide has been updated to include all the necessary info for redirecting your feed. And, since you've made it this far in today's post, now is a good time to let you know we're still accepting Publisher Buzz submissions, so if you have a good story to tell about your newly integrated Blogger feed or your experience using our feed-related services, submit it to buzz@feedburner.com."
Tags: Feedburner, Feed redirection, Feedotopia, blogger

Newsgator Puts OpenSocial to Use

2007-11-19T08:43:00.001-08:00

Latest NewsGator social application taps into a programming model developed by Google to deliver and enable discussion about the best video and image content for Google users

Nov. 2, 2007 — NewsGator Technologies, Inc., a pioneer in RSS and Enterprise 2.0, today announced the release of Didja Hear!?, the latest NewsGator social application that will give Google users the ability to easily share and discuss video and image content.

Didja Hear!? leverages OpenSocial, a programming model developed by Google in which developers are provided with a set of common APIs enabling distribution of their applications across multiple sites all with the aim to help the Web become more social and to make sharing great content easy. Didja Hear!? and its participation in OpenSocial reinforces NewsGator’s continued commitment to innovation and highlights the power and flexibility of NewsGator’s RSS platform to deliver compelling, social and useful applications.

Didja Hear!? leverages NewsGator’s database of nearly two million feeds and the editorial controls of NewsGator’s Widget Framework to present the images and videos that are most compelling and enjoyable for users to pass on to their friends. With Didja Hear!?:

• NewsGator automatically recommends the top video and graphic content from nearly two million RSS feeds – more than seven million articles per day;

• The NewsGator Widget Framework divides those videos and images into categories including movies, sports, celebrities, television and more; and,

• Users can easily send a cool video to their friends along with comments – and reply back with comments on any videos they get – as well as see existing comments on anything they have sent.

“Didja Hear!? and our early participation in OpenSocial exemplify our mission of getting the right content to the right people. We developed Didja Hear!? to filter and deliver the best video and graphical content from across the Web to the users who want to interact with it,” said Brian Kellner, vice president of products at NewsGator. “Didja Hear!? is like a Web 2.0 mashup of a greeting card store and a coffee shop – it’s a fun way for people to communicate, interact and socialize around quality content.”
For more information, visit www.newsgator.com.

Quantifying your Feeds, Casts with Quantcast.

2007-11-18T17:36:00.000-08:00

I just joined Quantcast free service to checkout their services. I only added one of my blogs and it is yet to get any meaningful data from my site. (It is not a very busy site but I using it to verify accuracy of the services as I have other systems from Google to tiny startups providing similar services. I have looked at reports on sites that Quantcast has collected enough data and seem to be interesting. You can follow the link in the following News release by QuantCast.

San Francisco, CA - September 25, 2007 - Quantcast, the world's only open internet ratings service, today announced that it has launched a robust suite of media measurement services for publishers in its Quantified Publisher program. The program, which is free to join at Quantcast.com empowers publishers to demonstrate the unique value of their audiences by tagging their websites, videos, widgets and games for direct measurement.

Available today, Quantcast's enhanced suite of free media measurement services includes:

Tabbed Quantified Publisher Profiles for individual media properties including a rich traffic overview that provides greater depth and insight on key audience metrics.
The Quantified Publisher Network View, providing measurement of unduplicated reach and aggregated traffic statistics as well as a single point of control for publishers with multiple sites and services.
Secure Quantcast Measurement Tags to measure transactional pages on e-commerce sites of all kinds.
Video and Widget Measurement Services to track impressions and interaction with Flash-based videos, widgets, games and more.

"The response has been overwhelming. More than 15,000 publishers with several million web media assets, including sites, blogs, widgets and videos, have joined our free program," said Konrad Feldman, co-founder and CEO, Quantcast Corporation. "Today, we are pleased to continue the drive for transparency and accuracy by providing a robust suite of media measurement services that help publishers better understand and monetize their properties."With millions of 'Quantified' web destinations and services, Quantcast measures more than a billion page views per day. Quantcast's models are derived from visits by more than 350 million Internet users every month, including more than 80 percent of all U.S. Internet users. "Quantcast's Network View helps us demonstrate our unduplicated network reach and highlight the popularity of our sites - which net 50 million visits per month," said Christopher Batty, Vice President, Sales, Gawker Media. "And the new traffic tab makes it easy for advertisers to see the power in the network - complete with daily, weekly and monthly statistics on all of our sites combined and individually - from Gizmodo and Valleywag to Wonkette and Defamer."Details on Quantcast's enhanced suite of media measurement services follow: Tabbed Quantified Publisher Profiles: Quantcast profiles will always feature the popular summary view for each online property. But now they include an enhanced traffic tab that provides greater depth and insight on key audience reach, engagement and frequency metrics.Key metrics, including unique visitors, visits and page-views, are presented in dynamic daily, seven-day and trailing 30-day charts. In addition, a traffic summary automatically calculates average visits per unique visitor and page views per visit. Coming soon, this tab will include time-on-site metrics. The Quantified Publisher Network View: This new interface enables publishers to track their portfolio of properties, including websites, videos, widgets and games, in a single dashboard. It also provides one-click access and a single point of control for the Quantcast profile for each media property. The network view features the new traffic tab with the same easy-to-use dynamic charts to provide a rich overview of network metrics. Unique visitors ("uniques") are reported as unduplicated network reach, and the other network metrics are shown in the aggregate. The network view is automatically created when a Quantified Publisher tags a second website or media element such as a video, widget or game. As always, Quantified Publishers can adjust their Quantcast profile settings to control which elements the world can see. Secure Quantcast Measurement Tags: Paired with conventional Quantcast measurement tags for content pages, new secure Quantcast tags enable online retailers and e-commerce providers of all kinds to measure the traffic on their transactional 'https' pages with no interruption to check-out, and no affect on the shopping experience.The secure tags are available free of charge to all Quantified Publishers. They can be found by logging-in to Quantcast.com and going to the 'My Quantified Sites' page. Video and Widget Measurement: As announced in July, Quantcast now offers free video and widget measurement services with the ability to track any Flash-based file. These new capabilities help publishers track the web-wide distribution of their media elements to demonstrate their true network reach. Visit http://www.quantcast.com/quantified-video.jsp.

Pricing and Availability: Quantcast's enhanced suite of media measurement services is available free of charge to any web publisher, site or service that joins the free Quantified Publisher program http://www.quantcast.com/quantified-publisher.jsp.

PRWeb Webinar Series, Orientation for New Users and Avanced Features Training for Current Users

2007-11-15T10:25:00.000-08:00

PRWeb would like to welcome you and provide you with the basics of how PRWeb works, press release tips, and show how easy the submission process truly is. They also will show you how to get the most out of what has become the most advanced and robust system for distributing news releases to reporters, search engines and thousands of web sites that download news via PRWeb's daily XML/RSS feeds.
I am a member and it has been a smooth news feed for me!
Mario Bonilla of PRWeb will be conducting the series and you will be able to enroll here.

News Feed On Your PS3

2007-11-13T10:23:00.000-08:00

The 2.00 Firmware Update for the PS3, which was just released, will add the Information Board to your XMB. Once it's activated, headlines will begin scrolling in the upper right-hand corner of your screen. Sony plans to use the Information Board to release information on games, hardware, Store updates, and so forth, but you can choose not to display it if you'd rather not be bothered.
PS3 News Release

Microsoft's web analytics tool, Gatineau, Introduced

2007-11-03T11:03:00.000-07:00

After getting exposed by a attendee of ADChamps about Gatineau, screenshots and all, Ian Thomas, who is "responsible for bringing Microsoft's new web analytics solution, codenamed Gatineau, to market", decided to provide his own informative report and also about the beta program with that anyone interested could apply to be included.
He also provided some screenshots (one above) of his own; according to LiveSide, Microsoft's official news blog.
The Gatineau is not much different from Google Analytics but LiveSide says that it will be able to leverage Live ID to provide to offer demographic information. But I have already seen these information on other Analytics product, not only Google Analytics.
Of course as with any product that links user to the web, privacy concerns have come up regarding Live ID usage.
But Ian has replied the querry;
"the answer is that we do get this information from users’ Live ID (formerly known as Microsoft Passport) profiles, but I would stress that we get this information anonymously, and there is no use of PII (Personally Identifiable Information, such as name or e-mail address) in the product."

LiveSide Article

To request an invitation to Gatineau: http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoft-adcenter-gatineau.

Lies Damn Lies (Ian's Website)

Are you aware That You are Being Tracked on the Internet

2007-11-03T10:57:00.000-07:00

I know I am!
Geemodo: Most People are Unaware That They are Being Tracked on the Internet

Future of News Media, and Tom Curley Yes....

2007-11-02T21:48:00.000-07:00

Associated Press Head Tom Curley seem to have got it all right. (To borrow from Blodget at SAI);

We -- the news industry -- have come to that fork in the road. We must take bold, decisive steps to secure the audiences and funding to support journalism’s essential role in both our economy and democracy, or find ourselves on an ugly path to obscurity.

Yes...

Get Your Site Optimized and your Feeds smoother: Upcoming Website Optimizer online seminars

2007-10-24T17:12:00.000-07:00

If you are going to get your web site optimized, (Good websites give Good Feeds!), then I think you attend two web seminars provided by Google's Website Optimizer team has brought about.
I am going to register as soon as post this post.
"

The first online seminar, Introduction to Website Optimizer, will be geared towards those who are unfamiliar with website content testing and optimization. Tom will discuss the importance and benefits of optimizing your website design and content, and he'll provide a detailed introduction to Website Optimizer and review the product's latest features (including A/B Split testing and the ability to delete experiments).

The second online seminar, Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments, builds on the first and is designed for those who have previous experience with Website Optimizer or other site testing tools. Tom will give a step-by-step demonstration of how to successfully launch multivariate and A/B experiments, and he'll also answer your questions.

Other members of the Website Optimizer team will be available during the online seminars to chat individually with attendees and answer questions in real time.

Here is the schedule and registration information:

Introduction to Website Optimizer (New or inexperienced users)
Tuesday, October 30th, 2007 10:00 - 11:00am PDT
Register to attend.

Website Optimizer: Creating & Launching Experiments (Intermediate and advanced users)
Thursday, November 1st, 2007 10:00 - 11:00am PDT
Register to attend.

Once you've registered, you'll receive an email from WebEx with participation details."
Google Analytics Blog: Upcoming Website Optimizer online seminars

The Gap between PR Professionals and Media is Widening According to Journalists

2007-10-21T10:50:00.000-07:00

ORLANDO, Fla.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The results of Bennett & Company’s 25^th anniversary survey suggest the divide may be growing between PR professionals and the media. This year’s survey polled more than 29,000 journalists, with 688 completing the survey, or 2.3%.

When asked if they see a growing divide between PR professionals and the media, 49 percent of journalists say “yes”.

Bennett & Company found that 62 percent of journalists now obtain less than 10 percent of their content from PR firms. “Communication channels have expanded to the 1000s, including grassroots social networking, and therefore, our relationships with the media are one of many tasks we do every day; twenty five years ago when this survey began it was how we spent the majority of our day,” explains Laura Bennett, president of Bennett & Company, in reference to this year’s results.

One reporter responded, “I don’t feel a growing divide, but I don’t see the divide getting smaller either. PR professionals need to become more informed on the needs of print media.”

Building a relationship with the reporter fills one such need and makes a difference. Thirty eight percent of journalists said the number one reason they open their email is because they know the sender. Reporters are more likely to use a responsive source they know and trust.

PR professionals need to be just as reliable when things get negative. “Speak openly and honestly when bad news happens. We are seeing a trend of PR people trying to avoid the media or ignore bad news. It only makes things worse,” wrote a network television news director.

The prevalence of “fluff” remains a distracting put-off for busy journalists. “Be fair. Don’t stretch the truth or tell half-truths. When words such as “first,” “best,” “biggest,” or “only” are used, there better be supportive explanations,” one journalist noted.

However great or small the divide is between PR professionals and the media, building relationships with open communication and reliability are still the key. After 25 years, Laura Bennett does not personally feel there is gap, but concedes that her team’s approach to marketing is now more holistic than it was five years ago. Bennett concludes, “The media plays a very important role and PR professionals serve best when they know and respect that role.”

Bennet & Company

RSS Feeds, PodCasts Turns to Phonecasts

2007-10-21T01:30:00.000-07:00

Feed your podcast feeds directly to a phone!
VOIP IP Telephony: PodCasts Turns to Phonecasts

Popuload Feeds for While You Wait

2007-10-12T12:40:00.000-07:00

Popuload is a free RSS reader with a difference: it appears and disappears alongside your computer's loading bar. The innovative idea is that computer users will never sit there bored waiting for their computer to perform tedious functions. While waiting to download, copy and print files, with Popuload, you can read the latest news, sports result, celebrity gossip or the news feed of your choice. Indeed, the choice of feeds is vast; from news to entertainment, Popuload offers an expansive range of top quality news feeds. Additionally, if users see a piece of information that is of particular interest to them, they can simply click on it to take them instantly to the full article online. Now when you are waiting to download that file or movie, you can browse leisurely through the news snippets to keep you both informed and entertained with the latest information.

The main difference between Popuload and other feed readers is that Popuload loads automatically with your computer's loading bar. It is also designed so that it can be accessed at any time. In addition, rather than the common method of displaying news feeds in a list, Popuload allows users to interactively browse news items individually through its streamlined, compact window. This feature eliminates the frustration of being confronted with too many feeds at once. Best of all, Popuload is free, and very easy to use. All these features, when taken together, are what makes Popuload truly innovative. Entertainment while you wait has never looked better.

Popuload is free. Go to www.popuload.com

China Blocking RSS feeds, Any RSS Feed

2007-10-06T01:17:00.000-07:00

Ars Technica reports that China is blocking any RSS Feeds to China. I verified this with the WebsitePulse' china firewall test none of the feeds were available from Bejing,China, but the same feeds were available in Hong Kong.
ARS begins with
" As many readers who follow the antics of the Chinese government know, when it comes to enforcing the "Great Firewall of China," consistency isn't exactly its strong point. While certain phrases, concepts, and entire web sites are regularly blocked from reaching the eyeballs of many Chinese Internet surfers, things like high traffic are enough to let a number of forbidden concepts slip through. And then there's the indecision of China's Public Security Bureau (PSB), which has blocked certain sites (such as Blogspot and Wordpress blogs) on and off for some time now, and enforces the blocks inconsistently between provinces. For a One True China, there are certainly many interpretations of what is and isn't allowed through the country's cyber connection."

Feeds are shareable, just mash them up

2007-09-30T11:10:00.000-07:00

Google Mashup Editor Blog: Sharable $user feeds
GME allowed application feeds to be shared. But now due to changes made to the GME, user feeds which were private previously, are now shareable. Now this might bring out more mashable ideas!
Feedotopia is currently playing with GME in certain features and hope to use this new opening to the fullest as our application is completely user based.
If you want to see examples of this feature, have a look at MultiTask (a shared task list) and My Travel Map, ( a travelling mashup?).
Feeds are shareable

Read any feed with multilingual Google Reader

2007-09-18T10:28:00.000-07:00

Google Reader goes multilingual as well as breaking away from the Google Labs.
I have been using the reader, The Google reader from it's inception and all I see are improvements. I think now that it has broken away from Google labs, the stand alone Google reader will do well with the line up of other google applications and services that serve us well and it self! ;)

Learning through RSS at OpenLearn

2007-09-08T14:35:00.000-07:00

RSS versions of the OpenLearn units are being made available at OpenLearn Units as RSS). I have been keeping in touch with open university The Open University, best known as OU has made strides in offering various courses for people from all over the world.
It is exciting, to my mind at least, to see the RSS versions of each of the OpenLearn course units (this is still in the process of implementation).

Here's an example: a course unit on Babylonian mathematics (via RSS).

You can find the full list here: OpenLearn Units and thier RSS unit content feeds.

The feeds are also reachable from each course unit landing page (example):

Find the feed you need or reach feedotopia!

2007-09-08T13:46:00.000-07:00

Google blog tell us how the information overflow and how to tame it with Google reader. Because there is search added to the Google reader now! Although it is focused on blogs and news sources, I hope this post will help Feedotopia to jump through the hoops of filtering and become popular so that I would be able to help the world, to reach Feedotopia. Blurb from Google Blog;
Find a needle in a feedstack with Google Reader
"Your sources filter out the noise and present the most interesting bits to you in a useful way. For many of us, these sources include newspapers, magazines, and of course blogs. We built Google Reader as a way for you to see all of your online sources in one place."
And the utube, youtube video!;

BLO.GS not working.

2007-08-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

The attempts to ping blo.gs has not been successful last few times I tried to ping. Perhaps Yahoo is dumping the service. I still have to code from the time Jim released it and perhaps time to whip it out have the service under Feedotopia.com!

Simple Sharing Extensions for Atom and RSS, SSE 0.94

2007-08-18T21:32:00.001-07:00

Of course Microsoft has to do something to all these simple thing and make extensions so that nothing will work after that! (Kidding I have not tested or verified any of this.) Anyway I was going to write about (Just make links basically) ATOM 1.0. But this made it easier. All in here.

Overview

The scope of Simple Sharing Extensions (SSE) is to define the minimum extensions necessary to enable loosely-cooperating applications to use XML-based container formats such as Atom and RSS as the basis for item sharing – that is, the bi-directional, asynchronous synchronization of new and changed items amongst two or more cross-subscribed feeds.

Simple Sharing extends the following specifications:
Atom 1.0 - http://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc4287
RSS 2.0 - http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss

One of the guiding principles of SSE is to reinvent as little as possible(HA HA)—hence the use of Atom and RSS in this spec as the underlying format for exchanging SSE data. It is expected that there will be additional container format bindings for SSE in the future.

SSE continued here

Outline Processor Markup Language, OPML 1.0 specification

2007-08-18T21:16:00.000-07:00

Well after looking up RSS 2.0 specification my next stop was at Outline Processor Markup Language, OPML 1.0 specification.
OPML an XML-based format that allows exchange of outline-structured information between applications running on different operating systems and environments.

In the summer of 2005 Dave Winer, released an open source OPML Editor, for Windows and Mac OS.

To learn more about outliners, the software category that inspired OPML, check out outliners.com.

The OPML spec has a liberal copyright, adapted from the copyright of the IETF, which has stood up well over time.

Dave Winer's OPML Validator came online in October 2005.

RSS 2.0 Specification

2007-08-18T21:08:00.000-07:00

Have you ever wondered what RSS 2.0 specification is. I did not until I had to look it up for some of the work we do at FEEDotopia.
So here is where I read it at; RSS 2.0 at Harvard Law
Contents at the site;

Mixing that Most Paint apps fail! Krita on Linux does it with ease.

2007-08-14T21:40:00.000-07:00

Today I saw this video on YT via this post on DIGG. Well I was working on mixing feeds at the time. Then I thought "How nice, I can mix two feeds and get an entirely new feed!" OK, I am still mixing and do not find anything worth while. So until then enjoy the nice colors!.

Ready for Some Stories! RSS

2007-08-13T21:51:00.001-07:00

Quick Post via email
According to about page;
FeedRaider allows you to lasso the interesting parts of the web for your viewing pleasure on a single page.
(1) Gather feeds
(2) Create a page = stay updated and save time!
(3) Embed = feeds on your blog/page easily!
(4) Customize
At first glance it seems plain feed site. But if you look close enough and use the site, one will begin to see the depth of work put into the site.
I will write another post once I have gone through the complete site. Meanwhile, you can register yourself and enjoy some feed raiding!

gridtech: Novell owns Unix and Unixware Copyrights Judge say so.

2007-08-11T14:11:00.000-07:00

gridtech: Novell owns Unix and Unixware Copyrights Judge say so.

developerWorks RSS feeds

2007-08-07T09:18:00.000-07:00

I deal with a lot of developer networks and IBM developerWorks is one of the places I roam when I have time. I have built my own feed so that I can get exactly the news I want. There is also a iPhone feed ;), good if you are a developer and a iPhone user!

Digg effect on SnapVoIP

2007-08-06T10:15:00.000-07:00

One of our sister sites got the DIGG effect and it is good, and I think it will give a good boost to SnapVoIP. Now I have get the same for Feedotopia!
SnapVoIP on DiGG
VOIP IP Telephony: Google Phone coming soon!

Google Supplemental index, stil in force, it is the name that got dumped.

2007-08-01T08:25:00.000-07:00

All theses indexes, feeds and publications are a method to get in to a search engine index like Google or Yahoo and countless other search engines and be prominent in the results.
The Google maintained a supplemental index that to keep search results that dont quite have enough juice to make the main Google index. But according to a Webmaster central post, Supplemental goes mainstream, the gap between supplemental and the main index has been narrow and does not show as supplemental in your search results. But it is there, and if you are bored or extremely intelligent, you can guess where the results for that search came from.

To get more information such as the supplemental index (read more - and here's Matt's talk about it on video) and countless comments could be found by following the link below.
Happy Google feeding
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Supplemental goes mainstream

Is RSS Mixer a Twitter with out Social Network?

2007-07-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

Masable writes about RSS Mixer being the twitter sans the social network. RSS Mixer is a new service that will combine all of your feeds into one. A feed aggregator, if you will.
Mashable article.

Go get you Map Mashup on!

2007-07-20T15:56:00.000-07:00

Where do you get map mashups other than Frappr, Zooomr, Trulia, and still do something worthwhile to spend your (UN) productive time with. I am always in the look out for mapping tools as they are very good feed tools as well, if you configure them right!
So set out to look for some but then realized that Mashable's Adam Ostrow has already done it for me. I don't know why but he found 13 worthwhile maps (why not 12 or 14, I don't know. May be he is trying to take unlucky ness from #13) Well if you count all the plugs in comments, it is 33 sites I think!
Anyway I think it is a good investment to spend some time smashing these map mashups! All are supposed to commemorate newly released, Google Mapplets, that is two P's.

Google sitemaps (webmaster tools) improves feedback

2007-07-13T19:01:00.000-07:00

Google webmaster tools have improved it's way of reporting errors! Now some of them will be reduced to warnings depending on if they are minor problems or major errors!
According to the post,
Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: New warnings feedback
Warnings allow Google to provide feedback on portions of your sitemap that may be confusing or inaccurate, while saving the real "error" alarm for problems that make your sitemap completely unreadable. Google hopes the additional information makes it even easier to share your sitemaps with them.
The new set of warnings includes many problems that we had previously classified as errors, including the "incorrect namespace" and "invalid date" examples shown in the screenshot above. We also crawl a sample of the URLs listed in your sitemap and report warnings if the Googlebot runs into any trouble with them. These warnings might suggest a widespread problem with your site that warrants further investigation, such as a stale sitemap or a misconfigured robots.txt file.
So if you have not done already, get an account on webmaster tools and improve your site so I can have good feeds on my feedotopia!

Got Blog...ger? Burn it

2007-07-12T12:35:00.000-07:00

If you host your content on a Blogger blog with a blogspot.com address (or use Blogger's “custom domain” feature), you can now redirect your native Blogger feed to your FeedBurner feed (quite easily, might we add). Gone are the muggy, languorous days of wrestling with "autodiscovery" tags in foreboding corners of your Blogger template code or hacking through this tangled discussion thread for a glimpse of configuration clarity. Starting right now, you just log into your Blogger account, select Settings | Site Feed, enter your FeedBurner feed address and click "Save Settings." Zap! Pow! Kraaakkkk! Now you've got the complete picture of how your content is being consumed out here, out there, out everywhere.

Everyone burn free with feedburner!

2007-07-12T12:21:00.000-07:00

Feedburner is a part of the Google family now and offering several of its used to be “Pro” features free. Both the “MyBrand” tool, and TotalStats, a tool which allows you to see views or clicks of your feed, are now available to everyone for free.

PRO is feed analytics taken to the next level. You will now have access to the number of people who have viewed or clicked individual content items in your feed and “Reach,” which estimates the daily number of subscribers who interacted with your feed content. You can turn this on by signing in to your account, navigating to the Analyze tab and heading to the FeedBurner Stats PRO section. Click the "Item Views" checkbox to activate these PRO features.

The MyBrand service (also PRO-level) is located under the "My Account" tab after you've signed in. MyBrand lets you maintain consistency between your feed address and your hosted website's domain, if matchy-matchy is your thing. For example, rather than using feeds.feedburner.com/MyFeedName, your MyBrand-ed feed address can be feeds.myexcellentdomain.net/MyFeedName. To get started with MyBrand, sign into FeedBurner, click the "My Account" link in the upper left-hand corner, and then click "MyBrand". Nota Bene: You must be comfortable playing around with DNS entries and own the rights to the domain whose DNS entries you'll be playing around with in order to successfully activate MyBrand.

And if you have been paying for those features, feel better! you will not be charged for the month of June 2007 and beyond.

World of RSS Feed resources, 120+

2007-07-02T12:45:00.000-07:00

You will get a bellyful of RSS information from this link. I think I don't need to go anywhere, just use this link to find things to write about Feeds and feed technology! May be it is good enough to be called mini RSS Feedotopia!
Follow The Ultimate RSS Toolbox - 120+ RSS Resources to feed your RSS hunger.

Is Yahoo killing BLO.GS?

2007-07-02T12:16:00.000-07:00

For some time now I have not been able to ping BLO.GS and the lists of Updates, and recently added are empty.
Further more there is no indication or notification on the home page. May be it is time to wip up that old open source code by Jim Winstead and bring up new blo.gs!

Google's AJAX feed api gives you a slideshow gadget for your iGoogle

2007-06-25T11:46:00.000-07:00

I was browsing through Google code site when I noticed that Slide Show Control is now available as a gadget for iGoogle.
I have been interested in Google AJAX Feed API because, well, this site is about feeds and Google Code has taught me a thing or two.
The Google Gadget supports any direct feed that uses the MediaRSS extensions. In addition, it has configuration support for discovery of public Picasa Web Albums and tag-based search over PhotoBucket. We will most likely add other tag-based domains in the near future. Why not try to work it out with Flickr?
I read about this here; Google AJAX Search API Blog: Slide Show Control now available as a Google Gadget

Don't follow the feeds, make feeds follow you with Google Gears!

2007-06-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

Google Gears (beta) has brought out a new dimension to how you interact with web applications! Since RSS Feeds, ATOM Feeds and OPML Feeds are our life blood, let's see what it could do to feeds! Will it give us feedotopia?

According the developer site, Google Gears consists of three modules that address the core challenges in making web applications work offline.

	LocalServer Cache and serve application resources (HTML, JavaScript, images, etc.) locally
	Database Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
	WorkerPool Blogger: FEEDoTopia - Edit Post "Don't follow the feeds, make feeds follow you with..." Make your web applications more responsive by performing resource-intensive operations asynchronously

But where is the feeds or feed store, for that I had to go to another site! Yes to Google reader site!
But I got the Idea from an article on Google Blogger! According to the article Google Reader is the first application available for online and offline use. Once you have Google Gears installed, you can download your latest 2,000 items so they're available even when you don't have an Internet connection.
How do you do that? simply click the "Offline" link in the top right of Google Reader.

Feedotopia, social bookmarking and RSS

2007-06-05T20:44:00.000-07:00

Content syndication and distribution on line is getting a shot in the arm from social bookmarking. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project 28% of Internet users have tagged or categorized content on line such as photos, news stories or blog posts. On a typical day on line, 7% of Internet users say they tag or categorize on line content.
I usually do it twice for my posts, once as blogger labels and then Technorati tags. So why all the fuss? may be just to organize one self, many selves!
But an article I read today says there is more to this tagging and labeling. Heidi Cohen, who teaches in New York University's Masters Program in Direct and Interactive Marketing, says in her ClickZ column (I learned about Heidi's column at Press-feed)that what makes social bookmarking importnat to marketers is that it's another cost-effective way to augment search marketing efforts, distribute content, and aid branding.

Social bookmarks are links allowing users to store, classify, share, and search content through a process known as tagging. Tags are a user-generated taxonomy that makes information easier to find. Social bookmarks can be applied to various types of content, including Web sites, blogs, PDFs, audio, video, photos, and tools.

Major social bookmarking sites include del.icio.us, Furl, StumbleUpon, and Google Bookmarks. TopRank Online Marketing CEO Lee Odden suggests adding commentary to bookmarks to aid search within the social media site. Social news sites such as Digg and reddit are often counted in this category. These sites can be important for reputation management and branding, notes SEOmoz CEO Rand Fishkin. To mitigate the effect of negative information about your company, create articles portraying your firm in a positive light and optimize them on these sites.

And it seems that all these should end up in RSS Feeds. Feedotopia, will take you to utopia of feeds, soon!

RSS Announcer comes to read your feeds, just like TV or youtube!

2007-06-01T14:51:00.000-07:00

I thought I have seen all the RSS bots and readers. And I see that I have not! ;). Televirtual has announced Karina, the RSS Announcer based on their AiVATARS & AiCASTERS technology

Despite their small client PC or mobile phone footprints, AiCASTERS boast a range of complex expressions and gestures, which allow them to interpret and augment the information they deliver. This ability can be semantic-related or 'tagged' manually by an RSS editor, and allows them to bring added performance to the material they deliver. To match this performance we integrate only the best available synthetic speech solutions.

Televirtual's Rapid Information Delivery system is not limited to character performance. It can also manage. control and handle rich content including still photography, maps, diagrams or movies. The auto-generated result simulates a conventional TV news or information bulletin.

Feed ADs in your RSS FEED stream

2007-05-26T12:34:00.000-07:00

MyADLETS tells about Pheedo' s Feedpowered advertising. Hmm.. there must be something in it! for all these feeders, Bottom, Middle and Top!
MyADLETS informtion trickle!

Feedburner is in Google oven now.

2007-05-24T08:18:00.000-07:00

This Techcrunch article explains, what was a rumor for sometime now as to be a fact. Rumors about Google acquiring RSS management company Feedburner from last week, started by ex-TechCrunch UK editor Sam Sethi, are accurate and are now confirmed according to a source close to the deal. Feedburner is in the closing stages of being acquired by Google for around $100 million. The deal is all cash and mostly upfront, according to our source, although the founders will be locked in for a couple of years.

The information we have is that the deal is now under a binding term sheet and will close in 2-3 weeks, and there is nothing that can really derail it at this point.

Update;

Google official blog explains the deal and a audio file, the discussion with feedburner CEO.

RailsConf more stuff.... Opening Keynote and ....

2007-05-19T21:29:00.001-07:00

I am not going to write about the opening keynote because someone else have done a really good job of it. Actually a whole bunch of it. Since my writing (I write?) is really bad and information is all I am trying to provide, I will have to direct you to Nick Sieger. (If you have touched, ActiveRecord-JDBC connector, or seen inner working of JRuby + NanoContainer, you have been touched by Nick.)

Once I found that Nick was blogging, and found that I can catch up with presentations, that I have missed!, I gave up even thinking about writing. He did write a lot of very good material, I spent a lot of time reading his blog already!

Once you read his articles, you will feel that you have actually been in the presentation.

Here are the article;

RailsConf 2007 Opening Keynote: David Heinemeier Hansson

RailsConf 2007: Evan Weaver: Going Off Grid

RailsConf 2007: Saturday Morning Keynotes

RailsConf 2007: Bradley Taylor: Virtual Clusters

RailsConf 2007: Chris Wanstrath: Kickin' Ass with Cache-fu

Railsconf, Ruby on Rails and Portland

2007-05-18T11:26:00.000-07:00

I was hooked on Ruby on Rails from the day I discovered it almost a year ago. Railsconf now in session in Portland is a sold out event!
Just to keep railsconf news tidbits afloat, My favorite tool, Komodo,

Active State has a IDE for Ruby On Rails;
ActiveState, the leading provider of tools and services for dynamic languages, released the latest version of Komodo IDE today at RailsConf 2007, introducing unparalleled Ruby and Ruby on Rails support to the award-winning development environment. Komodo IDE 4.1 is a multi-platform, multi-language IDE for dynamic languages and Ajax technologies, now featuring the most advanced Ruby and Rails editing and debugging available in any development tool.

But I liked the Fiveruns studio better
FiveRuns, a pioneer of enterprise-class management for Rails
and other popular open source and commercial systems, today announced the general
availability of RM-Manage, the first product offering within the FiveRuns Enterprise Management Suite for Rails. Built to integrate with the FiveRuns Enterprise Management Platform, the Enterprise Management Suite for Rails will ensure Rails applications are enterprise-ready, performing and available.
More feeds on railsconf here on FEEDoTopia soon.

Sendouts Pro’s RSS Feed Technology Integrates with Indeed.com to ease job and candidate hunting

2007-05-17T21:31:00.001-07:00

eMediawire News release.
May 17, 2007 -- Sendouts LLC, provider of Sendouts Pro, the #1 on-demand recruiting software for recruiting and staffing agencies, has completed a seamless XML feed integration with Indeed (www.indeed.com) and Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.com) enabling clients to fill more job orders and find more qualified candidates.

Sendouts provides its clients with Webconnect, a product that enables recruiters to automatically post job openings to their websites from within their Sendouts Pro recruiting software. Recognizing a need for more qualified candidates and further exposure for clients’ job postings, Sendouts Pro has implemented RSS feeds (Really Simple Syndication) technology. An XML format, RSS feeds are creating a standard way to automatically deliver fresh content to websites and blogs.

Rest of The News release.

BlogTopsites and Blogflux services are under one roof now!

2007-05-16T14:40:00.000-07:00

The services provided by Blogflux is very familiar to blog authos and publishers. I use Blogflus services in many a weblogs and direct others to do the same.
Blogtopsites ranks weblogs based on number of visitors to weblogs or blogs. Although they are both owned by the same company, Bloggy Network (Thanks goes to Vincent McBurney for clearing it up. Like him I thought the same when I got the Blogtopsites email). Good news is that you can use both the services with a single sign on at Blogflux.

I did not have any problems with this merger , but there seems to be some problems with some sites. (I just noticed that I lost one of my site registration, although everything works fine.)
May be I should send an email and get it corrected.

Vincent has written a better article and instead of rewriting I will direct you to his article!

Links;
Fix duplicate accounts here
Bloggy Network
If you have trouble email merger@blogtopsites.com for support
Vincent McBurney

Google Analytics gets a new face

2007-05-10T09:19:00.000-07:00

If you are like me, using the free Google Analytics service for monitoring, optimizing your websites, I have good news for you. I was at the Emetrics Summit and witnessed Brett Crosby and Jeff Veen unveiled the new version of Google Analytics.
I took a break from a few hectic days and now I am seeing the new interface at GA (Google Analytics).

I tried to capture my screens but seems to be having a bad luck with it. So I just got the image from Google Analytics blog.
Visit or Join Google analytics if you are not a member and enjoy all those insider views into your site/s.
But visiting this link;
Google Analytics Blog: New Version of Google Analytics!
might help you to get your bearings!

ADLETS are born it seems

2007-05-07T17:32:00.000-07:00

Did you feed unwanted stuff in to a search engine?

2007-04-17T21:24:00.000-07:00

If you did and if the search engine is Google, you will have a chance at removing those indexed feeds or content.
I never thought of this procedure until I read the following post on Google's Google webmaster central blog.
Earlier I thought that if my robots.txt or robots meta tag would take care of all that But now I have access to a new tool. A tool that let me withdraw pages slipped through those barriers.
But the following article takes you through every step of removing a web page that got indexed by mistake. I hope other search engines will pick a clue and provide the same to webmasters.
Now where did that feed go!

Official Google Webmaster Central Blog: Requesting removal of content from our index

Teqlo, The Next great Mashup

2007-03-25T10:19:00.000-07:00

If your idea of feeds and other web services comes via pipes, like yahoo pipes beta, then you are in for another surprise.
Teqlo which is also in beta at he moment offers something everyone could be happy about. If you ever have tried to build a pipe on yahoo pipes, you know the drill. The difference at Teqlo is that it is focused on getting your work done without having to worry or think about about APIs, coding, or scripting. For Technical and non-technical people alike.
You can even plug in Yahoo pies as well, are we talking mash ups or what? Instead of reading my rumblings here I think it is better to head over to Teqlo and try out.
Word of warning though, about registration/ sign up page! If you are the type who wants to know terms of service or terms of use, please do that before filling up your information. It is at almost bottom of the sign up page. Why? 'cos you have to type up your information again, if you click on the terms of use link!
But the rest of the Teqlo is super for me, so far.
This is what their Executive summery has to say what Teqlo is all about;
"Web application developers have been building sophisticated services interfaces and protocols into their applications for years as a means of stimulating third party developer activity, we are taking that one step further by enabling non technical users with the capability to drag-and-drop components to a web page and enable reliable communication between services. Through enabling co-creation of process and task automation applications we unleash a wave of new applications that really do represent the way people work, because they are built by the people who use them!

Imagine you want to drop sales leads onto a map and then select contacts for daily calls, such as a sales person would do. Maybe you want to automatically notify your preferred customers when you are having a promotion event, or plan an event, or manage employee expenses. Teqlo's breakthrough sequencing methodology and data routing technology enables these and many more user generated applications without the steep learning curve imposed by competing technologies."

Links;
Teqlo the next great mashup

Mix, Burn and Subscribe to your own feed mix

2007-03-20T20:31:00.000-07:00

James E. Lee carries you through a feedmix elevator ride to give a pitch to feed technology!. I really enjoyed reading and trying out his article on "how and why to mix feeds"
Head over to his blog to get a bellyful.

WeSeePeople: un-Boring Technorati... if it was boring to you!

2007-03-10T11:45:00.000-08:00

If you are checking in your feeds at Technorati, find out how to be in the top 100.
WeSeePeople: un-Boring Technorati... if it was boring to you!

Red Sweater gets Marsedit from Newsgator

2007-02-22T11:17:00.000-08:00

Red Sweater Software announced today that it has acquired MarsEdit, the popular weblog publishing software, from NewsGator Technologies, Inc. The acquisition promises an exciting future for the application, which provides an intuitive, email-like interface to the web's most popular publishing systems.

MarsEdit's simplicity and power make it the tool of choice for many of the platform's leading writers.

"Nearly every word I write for Daring Fireball is published through MarsEdit," said John Gruber, author of the popular Daring Fireball weblog. "It's a terrific tool, and I'm glad to see it in good hands. I can't wait to start pummeling Daniel with feature requests."

Daniel Jalkut, the founder of Red Sweater Software, is himself an avid blogger. "MarsEdit has long been one of my favorite applications, so it's a thrill to welcome it into the Red Sweater family of products," he said. "I am both passionate and confident about steering MarsEdit into the future."

"I've already sent a bunch of feature requests to Daniel," said Brent Simmons, MarsEdit's original developer. "I use the app every day, and love it, and I'm so glad that it has a bright future. I look forward to being a MarsEdit user, to seeing what cool stuff Daniel does."
Links;
Press release at Red Sweater
Marsedit

Geemodo: Now there is a Badger in my Yahoo Pipes

2007-02-20T09:49:00.000-08:00

Very nice use of Yahoo pipes to add RSS feed badges to a site or weblog.

Geemodo: Now there is a Badger in my Yahoo Pipes

Yahoo pipes pipes feeds and more

2007-02-09T15:58:00.000-08:00

Although it is some time since Yahoo let the pipes beta out, I did not have enough time to test it out. I did get a chance today and well, very clever piece of work. If worked hard enough, one would be able to pipe all his internet information through Yahoo Pipes. If you trust the Internet enough, then you will be able to create pipe that transfers data from one place to other. Like a VPN that we use to connect network to network.
I created a my own pipe, (Basically saved a copy of another pipe that a rather creative person has created and modified for my uses) and I am rather amazed and disappointed with the results. The disappointment is not due to Yahoo pipes but for what Yahoo pipes showed me. SPLOGS stealing blog data. I was searching for exact line by line copying of blog information. I found many, my own blogs, (yes I do have a few blogs! why? same reason you have your bookmarks categorized. you have? don't you.)
I invite you to visit Yahoo pipes and let some ideas flow.

Links;
Yahoo pipes Beta

Write comments and win big, no Spam!!

2007-01-12T14:59:00.000-08:00

Did you ever thought that a comment that you leave on a weblog could earn you some money? Now you can.451 Press is hosting a comments contest. Just by commenting on the some of the blogs that this network is publishing, you can win up to $500. Requirements are that those comments have to be “quality comments,” not spam. The closing date for the comment contest is January 31, 2007. So get your comments brain up and head over to the link provided below.

LINKS;
Comment Contest

Happy Feed holiday!

2006-12-24T13:36:00.000-08:00

I hope Santa will come your way and Your holiday will be filled with laughter and Joy. If you pass by an unfortunate person, please try to make him/her smile. Don't forget that all the Kids are the same!

Best Regards!

Leave a Fleck on any website

2006-11-20T09:43:00.000-08:00

Geemodo carries a post about new bookmarking sensation, Fleck. Fleck is a way to annotate a website, any website, so you can later visit the website. You don't have to remember why you bookmarked the site, because all your notes, called flecks, are on the site. Go check out the article and leave some flecks behind!
Geemodo: Is Fleck flaking? No Dashnote needs tweaking!

Ping survey results from October

2006-11-19T11:15:00.000-08:00

Mark Sweeting of Britblog, Technoranki fame has done a survey ping services. Not all the ping services out there but three of them. So what is the interest of those to me? First let me tell you what those ping Services are and then I will tell you why.
Mark is currently monitoring the following three ping services: Autopinger, Blogflux, and Ping-o-matic.
Why am I looking at these? because I use two of those services, Autopinger (I like the best) and BlogFlux (thought it was good!).
Anyway I think feeds and pings go together. And when (WHEN?) feedotopia is up, I will try t work with Autopinger to provide some services to Fedotopia.
Another reason is I like what Mark is doing. Just browse his projects and see if you like them too.

Links;
Mark Sweeting
Autopinger
Blogflux
Autopinger Blog

State of the BlogSphere as of October 2006

2006-11-07T22:16:00.000-08:00

I was at Joi Ito's blog and he directed me to this site with a one line post. I like Jo Ito's style and the progress in Web 2.0. Too bad I could not make it to the conference in San Francisco.
Anyway The article is about a report by CEO of Technorati!, I always refer to him as Sir-fry but his real name is David Sifry. He has plotted the state of blogsphere into some good graphs (some may not agree) that reveals that state blogs and the mainstream media.
It is hard to explain the report without one actually seeing the article so I think it is best to redirect you to Sifry's article.
I am really fired up though, about ideas I carry in my head about Feedotopia.

Links;
Joi Ito's site
Sifry's report

Widgets "glorified RSS feeds."

2006-11-05T12:38:00.000-08:00

Pheedo blog reports that Steve Rubel talks about his love for widgets, Web 3.0 and the Widgetized Web. He calls widgets "glorified RSS feeds."
They also conversed with Scott Rafer, former CEO of Feedster, he said RSS is a "developer's tool." Widgets are perfect example of developers using RSS feeds to solve a problem, entertain, waste time etc. In this case, Scott is spot on.
All the links to articles and conversations are on the Pheedo blog.
Pheedo is according to about us on site;
"A lot has happened since Pheedo pioneered the feed advertising industry in 2003. It’s been amazing to watch our original idea, good as it may have been, grow into an industry-wide necessity. The speed of this evolution has taught us the importance of remaining focused on our customers, providing the thousands of bloggers, micro-publishers, large media outlets, and online advertisers innovative and flexible tools to capture and measure revenues through the sale of advertising."

Links;
Pheedo
Pheedo Blog article