Tag Archive for 'RSS'

Windows Mobile Edition 6 - no RSS support?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 8/2/2007
in Microsoft, RSS and Telecoms
. 1 Comment

Endgadget are reporting that Microsoft has announced Windows Mobile Edition 6 - Microsoft’s operating system for mobile phones.

According to the article, the major new features of WME6 are

  • HTML support in email
  • Windows Live for Windows Mobile
  • File transfer capability in Windows Live Messenger
  • New versions of mobile Outlook, Word, Excel, and PowerPoint with rich editing
  • Remote wipe capability for stolen and lost devices
  • Call history in contact cards
  • Tight Vista integration
  • “Calendar ribbon” for more easily viewing schedule by day or week
  • New versions of .NET Compact Framework and SQL Server built-in

Some nice features in there alright but how about support for RSS? It would be great to be able to have an RSS reader built-in to the phone. This would make it trivial allow people to subscribe to podcasts, for example from their phones and do away with the need to be carrying a phone and an iPod.

There’s a demo of WME6 on YouTube.

Microsoft - a wolf in wolf’s clothing?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 22/12/2006
in RSS
. 5 Comments

In June 2005 Microsoft announced their support for RSS. At the time it seemed like a good thing that Microsoft were embracing this standard, however, it was Microsoft after all. I should have known there was a more sinister motive behind it.

Today, according to an article in News.com, Microsoft has filed two patent applications covering RSS. The patents were filed in June 2005 but only came to light today.

The first application is for “finding and consuming Web subscriptions in a Web browser” while the second, according to the article is:

titled “content syndication platform,” [and] appears to describe a system that can break down feeds into a format that can be accessed and managed by many different types of applications and users.

Dave Winer is unsurprisingly, unimpressed and says:

Presumably they’re eventually going to charge us to use it. This should be denounced by everyone who has contributed anything to the success of RSS.

Nick Bradbury, of NewsGator takes a more sanguine approach saying:

quite often companies file patents just to protect themselves from lawsuits. There are plenty of sleazebags who file patent applications on obvious ideas, and then wait for someone like Microsoft to infringe those patents. In other words, companies like Microsoft often file patents to prevent having to shell out millions of dollars to predatory lawyers who haven’t invented anything other than a legal pain in the ass.

So, what do you think, is Microsoft’s “evil” reputation is deserved after all? Or is this a sad reflection on the state of US patent law?

Your top Web 2.0 apps?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 13/11/2006
in Blogging, Photo Sharing, PodLeaders, Podcast, RSS, Web, Web 2.0, WordPress and office 2.0
. 10 Comments

If we ignore the fact that the term Web 2.0 is controversial for all kinds of reasons and concentrate on the applications themselves, which Web 2.0 apps (using the broadest possible definition) do you use most?

I use:

  1. my blog and podcast software all the time (they are run out of WordPress)
  2. my Flickr account regularly to post photos
  3. Google’s Docs and Spreadsheets frequently for collaboration or sharing of documents
  4. Google’s Calendar to synch with my laptop and mobile phone calendars
  5. Technorati, PubSub and Google’s Blogsearch to subscribe to RSS searches
  6. Flock as my main browser of choice (primarily because of the Flickr and Del.icio.us integration) - I also use Firefox, Camino, Safari and IE7
  7. Feedburner to burn and track my feeds
  8. NetNewsWire, Google Reader and iTunes to consume my feed list
  9. TechMeme, Megite and TailRank for keeping up with tech news
  10. Del.icio.us very occasionally to store URLs for items I have found interesting

What cool Web 2.0 apps am I not using that I should be using? What are your favourite Web 2.0 apps?

Can Google Reader scale the Great Firewall of China?

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 6/11/2006
in Blogging, RSS, Search Engines, Web 2.0 and WordPress
. 11 Comments

Jeremiah Owyang is on a trip to China at the moment. He put up a post on his blog the other day saying he couldn’t access Robert Scoble’s blog from inside China - it seems to be blocked by the Great Firewall of China for some reason. I don’t know if this applies to all WordPress.com accounts or just Robert’s.

In any case, it occurred to me this morning that if I Shared all of Robert’s posts from within my Google Reader account and sent Jeremiah the links to my Google Reader Shared items, he should be able to read Robert’s posts within China.

Of course if Google Reader had a way to allow you to select multiple posts to share (or even allowed you to share a full feed) then this would make it easier for me to keep Jeremiah up to date!

Until China starts blocking Google Reader!

OPML autodiscovery

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 25/10/2006
in RSS, Web 2.0 and opml
. 16 Comments

OPML is a file format which is used to save lists of RSS feeds. Very handy, for instance, for copying your list of RSS feeds from one feed reader to another. I uploaded a list of my RSS subscriptions to an OPML file on this server so the Grazr plugin in the sidebar on the right can display them similar to a blogroll.

James Corbett, Ireland’s OPML ambassador, recently advised me to add autodiscovery of OPML to this site. Adding OPML is as simple as adding the following line to the head section of the site’s code:

<link rel="outline" type="text/xml+opml" href="http://tomrafteryit.net/Subscriptions.opml" />

Why would you want to add OPML autodiscovery to your page code? Frankly, apart from making finding your OPML file easier, I’m not entirely sure!

There’s a Firefox plugin, which lights up a blue icon in the Status bar when you browse to a site which has added the autodiscover code allowing you to view the site owners subscriptions.

Firefox OPML Autodiscovery plugin

There’s a bit of work involved in the management of OPML files. I’m always updating the RSS feeds in my reader adding new feeds and deleting old ones so any OPML file I upload is almost immediately out of date. If there were some way I could have my RSS reader synch with the remote OPML file, that would reduce a lot of the overhead.

Then again, I don’t want to publish all my RSS subscriptions (some are client sensitive) so I’d need some way of synching a subset of my feeds to my OPML file to ensure that the OPML file I’m publishing is an accurate reflection of my current reading.

Finally, an outstanding online RSS reader

Published
by
Tom Raftery
on 29/9/2006
in RSS, Search Engines and Web 2.0
. 4 Comments

I have had issues with Google Reader (Google’s online RSS/feed reader) in the past but in the latest update to Google Reader, released today most of those issues have been addressed.

Google Reader

Lots of people are posting opinions on this from Marshall Kirkpatrick on TechCrunch to Robert Scoble on Scobleizer to Richard McManus on the ReadWrite Web and all the reviews are effusive in their praise!

I’m not surprised. This time Google seem to have got it right. The old “Lens” look of the old Google Reader was, to my mind, sacrificing usability for looks. Now, you have a reader with a simple, fast interface not lacking in functionality. It even has a river of news option with an infinite scroll. And if you liked the old interface you can revert to that in the settings page too!

Added functionality includes the ability to create folders, bulk delete subscriptions, star, share, email and tag posts.

Several commentators have pointed to the continuing lack of integration with Google’s Blogsearch but personally with the dire state that is in, I think this is a good thing!

I have been slow to recommend online rss readers in the past but I think with the new Google Reader that has just changed.

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