Archive for the 'Web' Category

Subscribe button

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 29/9/2005
in Blogging, Business blogging, Technology and Web
. 16 Comments

I posted yesterday about an RSS event I am organising and in the comments for that post I mentioned Dave Winer’s suggestion that we should use a “Subscribe” button on our blogs instead of “RSS” or “XML”

FrankP read that comment and decided to run with that suggestion - Frank created a cool little white on orange Subscribe button (see below)
Subscribe button

and I have replaced my XML button with Frank’s new Subscribe button - I advise all bloggers to do the same and in Dave’s words:

It’s the old second-mover thing, the second one has the power to make a standard. So let’s make a standard.

What exactly is Web 2.0

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 29/9/2005
in Blogging, Broadband, Business blogging, Technology and Web
. 7 Comments

Web 2.0 is a term which is being used more and more these days but what exactly is it? It seems to be kinda like beauty, in that it is “in the eye of the beholder” - i.e. its definition depends on who you ask.

Obviously it refers to some kind of next version of the web but how is it different and how do I access it? Well the good news is, you don’t have to do anything different to access it, in fact, just by reading this you are using it. Blogs are perceived to be part of Web 2.0!

Om Malik wrote yesterday that Web 2.0 is

a collection of technologies - be it VoIP, Digital Media, XML, RSS, Google Maps… whatever …. that leverage the power of always on, high speed connections and treat broadband as a platform, and not just a pipe to connect

This seems to me to be an overly general interpretation.

I prefer the Wikipedia definition:

Web 2.0 is a term often applied to a perceived ongoing transition of the World Wide Web from a collection of websites to a full-fledged computing platform serving web applications, like Gmail, to end users. The proponents of this thinking expect that ultimately Web 2.0 services will replace desktop computing applications for many purposes.

I was reminded of this definition this morning when I read on Slashdot that there is an

AJAX word processor, AJAX spreadsheet, AJAX calendar, AJAX presentation-building software, AJAX e-mail client, AJAX note-taking software and some other interesting applications, which, deployed on your local server, do not need installation and “just work” in a browser window?

Browser based Office applications? I love it! No installation, zero administration, and minimal training? This has to be an IT Manager’s Nirvana!

Web 2.0 whatever you are, I love you!

UPDATE:
I see Tim O’Reilly wrote an interesting article on this topic too.

Start.com

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 28/7/2005
in Mac, RSS, Technology and Web
. 5 Comments

Microsoft’s Start.com is a very pleasant departure - it has a very simple, clean design and, though still in beta, works well in Firefox (though not in Safari)! That in itself is unusual for a Microsoft application.

Start.com is an RSS aggregator (similar to Bloglines) with an AJAX interface so it is fast. Click on the Start link in the top left to see aggregator functionality - you can add feeds, browse the pre-included feeds or import your OPML file to quickly get all your own feeds in.

The site is extremely clean in Firefox on the Mac (see below) because a lot of the modules don’t display (!) but even so, it is just funky enough that I’ll be checking back from time to time to see how it is progressing (and to see if they have added Mac support!).

This is how the Start.com site looks in Firefox on the Mac:
Start.com as seen in Firefox on the Mac

Whereas this is how it looks in Firefox on the PC:
Start.com as seen in Firefox on the PC

Hotmail’s 2mb storage

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 12/7/2005
in Email and Web
. 6 Comments

I have a hotmail account (I feel like someone in group therapy -
Tom: “Hi, my name is Tom and …. I have a hotmail account”
All: “Hi Tom!”)

and my Hotmail account’s storage is still only 2mb. I know, I know, Gmail is 2gb - I have a Gmail account too and I think it is the business but I still use the Hotmail account for the odd thing.

I have read in several places that hotmail accounts have variously been upped to 25mb and/or 250mb. I can’t see how to up the limit on my account. Every time I click on the upgrade button in hotmail, it wants me to pay for the privilige (whereas I believe Hotmail should be paying me for the privilige of reading my emails!).

Anyone know how to increase the storage on my Hotmail account (without paying!)?

Browse, Search, Subscribe - the new Internet paradigm

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 29/6/2005
in Blogging, Browsers, Open Source, Podcast, Web and Windows
. 2 Comments

In case you missed it, Microsoft made three RSS related announcements at Gnomedex last week. They announced that:

  • they are building support for RSS into their next operating system (code named longhorn) scheduled for release at the end of 2006 (I hope that sucking sound wasn’t the sound of you holding your breath!)
  • the next version of Internet Explorer (IE7) scheduled for release later this year will have built-in support for RSS and
  • they announced an extension of RSS to allow RSS handle lists of information - they will release this extension under a Creative Commons license - sonething for which they have received a lot of praise

Lets look a little more closely at these three announcements and their likely significance.

The fact that Microsoft are building RSS support into their operating system is big news no matter what your opinions of Microsoft. This really takes RSS mainstream. Phil Ringnalda, in a comment on Brent Simmons’ post explained it well when he said:

In my impression of their vision of the future, I’m going to produce a single combined feed which includes my public bookmarks (which they’ll route to IE’s version of Firefox Live Bookmarks), my weblog posts (which will be pulled out of the common data store by one or more traditional feed readers), my photos (that will be fed to a photo gallery), all my other binary output (music and video to players, applications to an inbox, application updates to their respective applications), my calendar data (to a calendar app or two), my geopresence data (to a mapping app), whatever else I can find to output to wherever…

And it will all just happen ‘cos RSS is built into the plumbing of Longhorn - this can only be a good thing.

The second announcement, that IE7 will support RSS is also great news in that it will bring RSS more into the mainstream by virtue of Internet Explorer’s dominance in the browser market. True Firefox, Safari and Opera have had this functionality for quite some time now, and in this Microsoft is simply playing catch-up but that doesn’t take from the fact that many more users will be exposed to RSS as a result of this announcement.

The final announcement, that Microsoft are extending RSS using what they call the Simple List Extension and will license the SLE using a Creative Commons license has generated a lot of controversy.

Many people are saying that microsoft’s support of RSS in this way sounds the death knell for Atom (Atom is another XML-based protocol for syndication) - however as Bill de hÓra points out:

The list notation can go into any of the many RSS formats as far as I can tell. It’s not being baked into RSS2.0, which is to say it’s not an extension of RSS2.0 at all, it’s just an XML module. At this point I’m tempted to debunk a particular confusion that reigns in the XML syndication world - the difference between modularity and extensibility, but that’s for another day. Suffice to say the Simple List Extension, is an XML vocabulary, and not an extension of RSS. Indeed you can start using it right now without any RSS/Atom in sight. Let me repeat - you do not need to use RSS2.0 or Atom to use the Microsoft Simple List Extensions.

Others are saying that this is, yet again, Microsoft trying to take over a standard - however, the fact that it is licensed under the Creative Commons seems to nail that argument pretty quickly.

So, what are we to think of Microsoft’s seeming act of generosity - licensing the SLE under a Creative Commons license - well BusinessWeek said:

What’s more, Microsoft is going after the RSS market in a very un-Microsoft-like way -– it’s making its RSS technology available for free using the so-called Creative Commons license.

I take a contrary view - remember RSS was already licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike license, which says:

If you alter, transform, or build upon this work, you may distribute the resulting work only under a license identical to this one

So Microsoft had no choice but to license the extensions under a Creative Commons license!

Having said that, Microsoft’s decision on RSS is an important one. It heralds in a new internet paradigm - initially we had Browse, then it was Browse, Search and now it is Browse, Search and Subscribe. As eWeek said:

Microsoft has decided that subscribing, via RSS, will become the third leg of its information-access triangle. The other two legs are browsing and searching. With the addition of RSS, once a user has found information they are interested in, they will be able to stay updated easily as the information changes.

UPDATE:
I have created a podcast of this post which is available for download here.

D-Link DSL 300 is Mac address specific!

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 23/5/2005
in Technology and Web
. 0 Comments

I lost Internet connectivity over the weekend at home. My home Internet setup is quite basic - see the following diagram (courtesy of D-Link):
Home Internet setup diagram
I use my laptop almost exclusively and I have it connected to the Internet via wireless network served by my D-Link DI-624 wireless router.

On Sunday morning, my laptop didn’t register any wireless network. I thought my son had accidentally turned off the router so I went upstairs to check but no, the router was dead. Completely dead - no LED lights lighting, nothing.

No problem, I thought. I’ll bypass the router and plug my laptop directly in to the DSL modem (a D-Link DSL 300). When I did, though, I still couldn’t access the Internet!

I logged into the web interface of the modem and discovered that my ISP username and password settings appeared to be lost. Strange coincidence I thought, both devices having problems simultaneously, possible power surge of some kind? Anyway, I reconfigured the modem with the settings, downloaded my email and then connected the modem to my sons iMac so he could play.

Again though, there was no Internet access. I logged into the modem again and yet again the ISP settings were lost. Uh oh! I wondered if the modem had been damaged as well.

Then it hit me - the modem must be MAC address specific - and it was set for the MAC address of the wireless router - hence its apparent failure when the router failed. Knowing that, I left the one device connected to the modem until this morning when I had a chance to replace the wireless router.

Now that I have replaced the wireless router, all is back to normal once more (except my wallet which is a little lighter :-( )

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