Category: Tech

FeedHub

~ rbonini

I might as well jump in here with the rest of the crowd.

Scoble blogged about it. He says:

TechMeme actually works great. Tracks thousands of news feeds and every few minutes it remeasures which ones are most important. Problem is that TechMeme only covers tech news. Its sister sites cover gossip, or regular news/politics, or baseball.

But what about 800 custom feeds that you hand picked?

Well, that’s what FeedHub is aimed at.

You put your feeds into it and FeedHub will pick the best stuff to show you out of those feeds.

Sounds good. And I do need help with my feeds ( I never manage to read everything). So I’m trying it out.

So far I’ve only revived 5 posts from all my feeds that FeedHub picked. They’ve not been the ones I would jump at, but it is supposed to learn your reading habits.

Read/WriteWeb also seems to be positive about the service, albeit with the following clarification:

My problem with such services in the past has been that the output, a single feed, is not very well integrated into a user’s daily RSS reading experience. Ideally I’d like a service like FeedHub to be integrated into Bloglines or Google Reader itself (or whatever RSS Reader you use). In other words, a user ideally should be able to filter their feeds within their RSS Reader of choice. Perhaps we’ll see that happen in the near future.

I agree with them 100%. In fact I’d go as far as to say that Google should by the company NOW. Although Google Reader is out of preschool  ( 🙂 ) beta, Google need something to blow the competition out of the water, like they’ve done with search.

RWW elaborates on how FeedHub works:

Feedhub is built on mSpoke’s “mPower Adaptive Personalization Engine”, which the company has a patent pending on. The key to training a Feedhub feed is the concept of a ‘meme’ – popularized in the tech blogging world by news aggregator Techmeme. FeedHub will discover new memes for you and learn “meme weights” by noticing which posts you click on and interact with

As usual, there’s more at RRW about FeedHub (I was about to leech the entire post, but thought he better of it)

So I’m trying it out. I’m going to see how it compares with my linkblog over time. naturally, there wont be a perfect match, but I’m looking at how good the personalization engine is.

Vista Desktop Manager

~ rbonini

Seriously, you have to ask yourself why Microsoft didn’t think of this:

[via Scott Hanselman]

I think its a testament to the legions of Windows developers the world over who wont take Redmond lack of design inspiration for an answer (compared to an unnamed Computer Company).

Get it here. I am so downloading it.

It also shows how much Microsoft left out of Vista (presumably under pressure to RTM it before it was ready).

Earth to WinFS. Where are you????????? 

Dell Laptop

~ rbonini ~ 3 Comments

Here’s what I got:

Inspiron 6400 Intel® Pentium® Dual-Core T2080 Processor (1.73GHz,533MHz,1MB L2 cache)

Wide Sreen 15.4″ WXGA (1280×800) TFT Display

Memory Dual-Channel 1024MB (2×512) 533MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Hard Drive 120GB Serial ATA (5400 RPM)

Fixed Internal 8X DVD+/-RW Drive including software, for Vista only

Battery Primary 9 cell 85W/HR LI-ION

Integrated Intel Media Accelerator 950

Dell Wireless 1390 802.11b/g 54Mbps Mini-PCI Wireless Card, for Dual Core Processors

English – Vista Business

English Microsoft Works 8.0 (Word Processor, Database) with Recovery CD

Not entirely sure about the memory. Last time I played with Vista it took 800Mb sitting idle – no programs running.  But hey, operating an a shoestring budget is never pretty. And I can always use Ready Boost if I need to.

Performance isn’t really an issue. I’ve got all the power I need.

And why on earth do OEM’s insist on putting Works on every damned machine they build. I’ve got  Works installed on the Compaq I got 2 years ago and have never ONCE used it.

And I figured that I might as well get Vista since the service Pack is out soon. And I never really got playing around with the beta beyond admiring the eyecandy.

Delivery date says on or before the 26th. We’ll see.

A Word about Link Blogs

~ rbonini

Scoble, in his latest post, reflects on what a resource his link blog has become as a database of all things technological.

It has almost no noise, just much of the best blogging that’s been done over the past year in the technology field. But, whenever I think about moving feeds to a new reader I start thinking of that database and start thinking about the value it has to me as a way to search back on what caught my eye over the past year.

 

Then it struck me that since I’ve subscribed to said link blog over the past year, and since I use Google Reader, I can access that same database as well. The addition of search by the Reader team just makes it better. It has some invaluable stuff in it. I share stuff in it more than in all my other feeds. I find plenty of bloggable materiel in there as well.

Which brings me to the question: What is a link blog?

I know, it sounds idiotic, like something web 1.0 guys would ask.  But think of it. Do you a use a link blog to share posts with others? Do you use a link blog as reference for yourself, to point to things that catch your eye? Do you use it a reference, but don’t mind if others share it?

The way we see the utility of a link blog determines what we will use a link blog for, which in turn determines the quality of our link blogs.

On the one hand if we take it seriously and only add stuff that is truly worthy of being shared, not just stuff loosely related to what we blog about. In other words:Are you in the business of simply observing the world go by, or is the welfare of your blog and link blog taken seriously? Do we/you intend for our/your link blog to be a resource – personal or public?

On the other hand, Scoble can be easy on his link blog – he’s posted cat photo’s there more than once. Do we fill it with stuff that’s not really useful ( and I am definitely a cat person)? Do we linkblog just for the sake of it.

Lets take a look at the old school link blogers I have in my reading list.

Larkware News: They put their links in blog posts. They’re up to 1227 posts today. lets see what yesterdays post post looks like:

Software

Information

Community

 

Simple. Clean and neat. The three categories are particularly useful allowing you to skip right to the meat of the post. The RSS Feed is here.

Christopher Steen. Same deal. His latest Link Listing:

  • LINQ to SQL (Part 9 – Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the control) [Via: ScottGu ]
  • Obscure ASP.NET Problem – AJAX Control Toolkit, CollapsiblePanelExtender, Image controls pages loading more than once…….

    • RSS feed here.

    Kent Newsome posts “Evening Reading”. its not so much a link listing as a running commentary of the stuff he’s read. An excerpt from his latest:

    Larry Borsato talks about a recent focus group in which college students said MySpace is over, Facebook might not last much longer, and their best source for information is word of mouth.  Paul Stamatiou is one college guy who has chilled on Facebook.  Thank goodness there’s all those grown-up bloggers to keep the hype going.

    He posts this in the middle of his other stuff in stead of a completely separate feed. I tend to give it is quick scan and see if there is anything interesting, or else ignore it completely.

    RSS feed here.

    Sam Gentile often posts his “New and Notable”. He’s up to number 180.

    SOA/ESB

    WF

    The great thing here is that they’re grouped by subject matter. You can skip right to what you’re interested in. RSS feed here.

    After that review, I still much prefer Google Reader’s Shared items. All they need next is a taging for your shared items. ( I think someone’s already suggested that somewhere in Scoble’s link blog 🙂 ).

    But one thing is sure – link blogs are invaluable tools to finding information because  the information has already been used and promoted as useful.

    There ain’t nothing like an oft used piece of information.

    So. My link blog has a new lease on life. (RSS feed here)

    PS Scoble says TechCrunch aren’t happy about linkblogs. I think this a first for a content producer to complain about link blogs.

    Multi- Gigabyte File Copy Operations

    ~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

    Copying more than one gigabyte in one operation is tedious, frustrating and agonizingly slow. Not that there is all that much you can do.

    Scott Allen was having a little bit of difficulty so I’ thought I’d help a little.

    Scott Hansellman has a post on 3 utilities you can use to copy files without using the windows explorer.

    First, Robocopy. If you have XP or Windows Server you can easily get this in the Resource Kits. If you have Vista, it’s already in your path. That’s always nice. It’s Robust, indeed (hence, Robocopy) but it’s legendarily unforgiving

    …

    Second, for repeatable jobs, I love SyncBackSE. It’s $30, but there is a free version with less features available. SyncBack is option-ful and literally moves nearly every important piece of data in my house around weekly.

    …

    Last, but certainly not least, XXCOPY. It’s huge. Epic even. It’s even got a nice windows progress bar that pops out of the DOS Box. The Technical Reference is comprehensive to say the least. Here’s a summary of the features. It’ll sync directories, maintain short names, qualify by date/time, copy security info.

    I’ve used Robocopy. The GUI frontend is next to useless (either that, or I’m doing something wrong).

    I’ve yet to try the other two.

    Hope this helps someone.

    Cheering up the Original iPhone Owners

    ~ rbonini

    Fake Steve Jobs made me laugh out loud:

    Well, we’ve got a plan to restore some of that magic you felt on Day One. No, not a $200 rebate. And no, we’re not going to let you return the phone or cancel your plan with AT&T. But here’s what we’re going to do. It’s a sticker. Bring in your receipt to any Apple store or AT&T store and show that you paid full price for your iPhone, and we’ll give you a sticker that says, “Original iPhone.” Very small, very classy, black on black, made of super high quality plastic with a glossy finish. Something you’ll be proud to put on your iPhone so everyone will know that you’re not just any iPhone user; you’re one of the super smart, super cool early adopters who paid full price. You see? We’ve got you covered. I know what you want to tell me. What can I say? You’re welcome. I love you too. And you are special. I mean it.

    One problem. They’re not buying it. They’re stalking el Jobso:

    Damn. Last night they were out there holding a candlelight vigil and singing “We Shall Overcome.” To hell with it. I’m calling the police.

    Windows Home Server and SageTv Update

    ~ rbonini

    ( You’ll catch the previous installment here)

    Well, after carefully looking at the problem that I originally thought had to do with SageTv, I’ve come to the conclusion that it most defiantly isn’t. It seems to be a problem inherent to WHS (to do with opening backup images). So you can rest easy. this should be fixed in the RTM release, but I can’t be sure.

    The next thing is finding a backup time so that SageTv will play nicely with WHS and find my PC’s switched on to backup. Still working on that. Its most probably going to be early in the morning.

    I created a network share in the console and told SageTv to dump store all its recordings there.

    Overall, it’s great.  Having the ability to have TV on my PC is great. I have BBC News 24 running in a window above the system tray – its way better than a news ticker.

    Recording is great. I really dig the  intelligent recording functionality – no more missed ER episodes. I tested it with my second favorite US Comedy after friends – Scrubs. You might want to fiddle around with the Video Codec under Detailed setup. The default SageTv codec was,well, dogs vomit. Since I have Intervideo WinDVD installed locally, I chose their codec and  it was perfect playback. I’ll have to look around the forums to see if there is another fix.

    Funnily enough watching the video files was impossible with Windows Media Player or Real player before switching codec, but perfect afterwards. I’m not superstitious so I’ll write that off to chance 🙂 .

    The Youtube thing failed to play the files for some reason. And the weather, though it got the info, was displayed horribly.

    And if you do buy a license, you’ll need a Media Centre license.

    Choosing a Laptop

    ~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

    Its back to university in a few weeks and I’m needing a new laptop. Currently I have my eye on a Dell Inspiron 6400:

    Processor: Intel® Centrino® Mobile Technology: up to Intel® CoreTM 2 Duo Processor T7400 (2.16 GHz, 4 MB L2 cache, 667 MHz FSB & Intel®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connection

    Operating System:

    Genuine Windows Vista®  Ultimate

    Genuine Windows Vista®  Business

    Genuine Windows Vista®  Home Premium

    Genuine Windows Vista®  Home Basic

    Chipset: Intel® 945GM chipset (with Intel®  GMA 950TM  integrated graphics)

    Display: Choice of 15.4-inch Wide screen displays in WXGA resolution, WXGA TrueLifeTM resolution

    Video Graphics: Intel®  Graphics Media Accelerator 950TM  integrated graphics with up to 224MB shared system memory

    Wireless Connectivity Solutions: Integrated Dual-Band (802.11 a/b) antenna. Integrated DellTM  Wireless 1390 (802.11b/g) or Intel®  Pro/Wireless 3945 (802.11a/b/g) network connections. The Dell Wireless 350TM  integrated Bluetooth 2.0 wireless solution is available as optional upgrade at time of purchase only

    Battery Life: Be productive for up to 5 hours without re-charging your batteries

    Design: Artic Silver and Alpine White design incorporating a 5-1 card reader and front-access multimedia buttons

    Memory: Up to 2GB of 533 DDR 2 SDRAM provides for excellent overall system performance

    Optical drives: Your choice of CD-RW/DVD Combo drive or 8x DVD+/-RW 2(supports double layer technology)

    Software: Microsoft®  WorksTM  including Works word processor, spreadsheet, database, calendar and My Projects organiser

    Weight: Starting from 2.8 kg (6.18 lbs) with CD-RW/DVD Combo drive and 6-Cell Battery and integrated graphics

    QuickSnap Colour Display (LCD) Back: Choose from four different stylish colours to personalise your notebook

    Express card slot: Please note that this system has a ExpressCard slot and support the ExpressCard format only. This system does not have a PCMCIA card slot.

    The only thing they forgot is the battery time. Since I’ll be using this to take notes, among other things, battery time is very important.

    Any other suggestions?