Google is launching an RSS reader service.
(Via evhead.)
Google RSS Reader
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Category Archives: Standards
JPEG Patent Woes?
Just saw this on Paul Bissex’s blog: Burn all JPEGs?:
Some recent news is giving me flashbacks to 1995, when Unisys sprung their GIF patent surprise on the young World Wide Web. We got quite angry and some enterprising people even built a replacement for the beloved GIF.
Are we going there again? Forgent, a Texas company that “develops and licenses intellectual property and makes scheduling software” (it makes me feel dirty just to type that) is suing 40 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, for infringing on JPEG-related patent No. 4,698,672.
Sounds like patent trolling to me. Hopefully this will not become an issue (I imagine it will unite a big chunk of silicon valley to fight it if it does).
NewsGator Eats Ranchero Software
Just heard that NewsGator has bought Ranchero Software, the makers of NetNewsWire, which is my RSS newsreader of choice on the Mac:
Q: How does NetNewsWire fit into NewsGator’s plans?
Greg: Over the last 2.5 years, we’ve built a comprehensive RSS aggregation platform. We have clients for the web, for email clients, for mobile phones and PDAs, and even for your TV. With the acquisition of FeedDemon a few months ago, we added the industry-leading Windows desktop aggregator. NetNewsWire really completes this story for us – we now have the best client on the Mac, which lets us serve this exciting part of the market as well. And make no mistake – we’re very excited about the Mac. Just looking at our data shows a huge penetration of RSS tools among Mac users – clearly you’re all early technology adopters, and that gives us a unique opportunity to try out new leading-edge stuff with you.
Funny thing is that the picture on the announcement page is of a guy using a Windows laptop. 🙂 This should lead to some great integration features for NNW in the future.
NewsGator should have a big knowledge lead on their competitors since they have hired by acquiring the developers of the two premiere RSS desktop applications. That’s probably worth more in the long run than the software.
Opera Web Browser Now Free
The Opera web browser is now available for free without embedded advertising. From the site:
Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.
Hey, how about that. An actually competitive browser market has returned with more than 2 free options. Welcome back to the mid-to-late-90s!
I read my news via HTTP
I had several conversations about RSS at the ASAE meeting. Often discussed was Microsoft’s upcoming new operating system Vista (nee Longhorn) that will have RSS support built into it at a very low level. My hope is that they will do it in such a seamless way that most users will have no idea they are even using something called RSS (or Atom or whatever) to track sites, headlines, what have you.
Right now, you have to spend a significant amount of time when introducing the concept to give all the background necessary for it to make sense. I remember giving presentations in the early/mid 90s where I had to explain what a web site was. No one tells you today that they like to get their information via HTTP. RSS will have made it when no one has to talk about it anymore to make use of it.
Given MS’s track record, transparent RSS support will probably really well in Vista2.0: The Next Horizon.
Architecting CSS Files
Here is a nice article in Digital Web Magazine on Architecting CSS.
With nearly ubiquitous standards support among modern browsers, we’re turning to CSS to handle presentational heavy lifting more than ever. The more we rely upon CSS, the larger and more complex CSS files become. These files bring with them a few maintenance and organizational challenges.
Gone are the days of creating a single CSS file and dropping in rules as needed. As we build new sites, it is necessary to spend time planning how to organize and structure CSS.
Following the tips in this article should save you quite a bit of time during initial design and when going back to revise later.
Crawling Robots!
Search Engine World did a crawl recently of 75k robots.txt files. (robots.txt files contain instructions for search engines that index your site. You can use them to prevent search engines from indexing certain directories, blocking specific search engines, etc.) They report on their findings of common errors made in the files.
The worst robots.txt error I ever saw was for a site whose owners complained that they never showed up in google search results. I took a peek at their robots.txt file and sure enough someone had set it to disallow all search engines. Oops! This was probably a leftover from when the site was in development. Have you checked your robots.txt file recently?
Technorati Redesign
Eric Meyer discusses his role in the recent redesign of Technorati.
I was pleased to have Eric work on a redesign project when I was at ASHA where he optimized our xhtml/css design. Eric does great work, as he should since he literally wrote the book on CSS.
IE About to Be Standardized?
Just read over on Eric Meyer’s blog that IE development team at Microsoft may be planning on increasing standards support in the browser. Halleluja. Eric offers his thoughts on what they should address first.
The Hard Truth about Linux on the Desktop
Is it really cheaper to deploy Linux desktops in a large organization? A former CTO of the World Bank does some price comparisons with desktop manufacturers that large organizations typically use. Shocking revelation: linux systems, if available, usually cost more than the same box with Windows installed.
Part I: Corporate Desktop Linux – The Hard Truth.
There are 3 more installments to come, which I am looking forward to reading.
C. David Gammel, CAE 