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Something Better Than The Orange XML Icon

It’s definitley time for this…if not exactly, someting similar that let’s syndication really take off on a much broader scale.

For RSS to be truly mainstream, subscribing to a web page needs to be a simple as printing. When I want to print a web page, I don’t have to go scroll through the page and hunt for a little orange “print me!” icon.

The icon is really useful only for people who already know how it’s used. If you told your mom [1] to “go to Reuters and subscribe to their page”, do you think she would be able to figure out that she’s supposed to click the orange xml icon? Or do you think she’d do better with a toolbar button/menu item titled “subscribe”? Now, for people who do understand what the icon is for, do you think it’s more usable to hunt-n-click, or use a single, consistent UI like printing? [Better Living Through Software ]

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WP Location Manager

One of the interesting features of WordPress is that it can track where you are when you post for GeoURL compatibility. This plugin lets you adjust it quickly while you are travelling…

The Location Manger is a utility add-on for WordPress 1.2, that allows you to save latitude and longitude pairs with a name, url, and a comment. [Weblog Tools Collection]

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One more try with Entourage

I thought I’d give it another try today and left Mail.app off so I could really give it a full go. I even started with a fresh set of user prrefs from my earlier run, which had imported all my mail from Mail.app. After configured my filters, mailing lists and prefs I got comfortable… Though Entourage does not make it easy.

Entourage IMAP Sucks!

Examples of my pain in trying to get it to work…

Lost mailbox lock
Trying to get mailbox lock from process 9962
Trying to get mailbox lock from process 10320
Trying to get mailbox lock from process 10579

Messages I’ve deleted continually re-appear in subfolders rather than simply deleting as expected and requested.

The IMAP mailboxes seem to work in the way I recall connecting to an exchange server (which was and probably still is a flavor of IMAP) from my former employer. It needs to sync, which is drastically different from my experience in Mail.app which is much more responsive to on-server usage.

I also don’t like that you have to maintain separate mailboxes for each account. I’ve got three connected now and would have a fourth if I activated my spam pop… This creates a long list of mailboxes since each account has a standard set, plus whatever folders you create for saving messages.

Threads have also become too important for me in longer lists of messages with multiple conversations…or folders in which I filter more than one mail list.

Again – I like the UI of Entourage, but think I would like it much more if I was just a POP user… It’s too much of a pain this way.

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Attack of Comcast’s Internet zombies

If you are connecting through Comcast running Windows, you might want to “batten the hatches…”

Comcast’s high-speed Internet subscribers have long been rumored to be an unusually persistent source of junk e-mail.

Now someone from Comcast is confirming it. “We’re the biggest spammer on the Internet,” network engineer Sean Lutner said at a meeting of an antispam working group in Washington, D.C., last week.

Lutner said Comcast users send out about 800 million messages a day, but a mere 100 million flow through the company’s official servers. Almost all of the remaining 700 million represent spam erupting from so-called zombie computers–a breathtaking figure that adds up to six or seven spam-o-grams for each American family every day.

Zombie computers arise when spammers seize on bugs in Microsoft Windows–or from naive users who click on attachments–to take over PCs and transform them into spambots. [CNET News.com]

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Feed Me

The WSJ finally covers RSS… makes it seem like something it’s readers would want ( 😉 ) .. but leaves you wondering where the heck their feeds are!!

With RSS, you don’t have to go out and find information on the Web. It finds you. [WSJ.com]

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NetNewsWire and External Weblog Editors

Gotta love this! Looking forward to what is coming in NNW 2.0 as Brent has mentioned his own editor will be undergoing a huge change to compete more evenly with existing stand-alone editors.

A few days ago I got email from Adriaan asking if there are any ways we could work together. I replied with an emphatic yes, because I had done support for external weblog editors in NetNewsWire, but I hadn’t yet talked to Adriaan or other weblog editor developers about it yet.

So I gave him the scoop on all this and sent him some code—and, practically before I could blink, he added support to ecto and released a new version.

[inessential.com]

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Abstract Feeds Reducing Bandwidth

Not getting full feeds… do you unsubscribe or stick it out? I keep them only because I want to know about updates, but find it very annoying and rely much less on the sources than those who provide the full article.

I guess JD is right. Making your RSS feed only have headlines does reduce bandwidth? How? Cause people unsubscribe. [Scobleizer]

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AOL previews new e-mail software

Similar to Communicator but enhanced…

The product, called “Fanfare,” is essentially an updated version of Communicator with new features such as media playback, a calendar and spyware protection. Fanfare is similar to Communicator but with more options on the navigation screen. For instance, a user can pull down a panel with Radio@AOL and its video player next to e-mail messages and instant-messaging “buddy” lists.

While Fanfare pulls more features from the AOL proprietary client onto Communicator, the company said the enhancements do not signify any changes in priorities for AOL. [CNET News.com]

Regardless of what they are saying this is a shift in play at AOL…

Fewer people want to play in proprietary places online… AOL has already started to push it’s own content out and is going to use more web based standards within to make it easier to move out when they want/need to.

IMAP support has been rolled out to allow people to use their AOL mail in the mail client of their choosing, but this is beyond Communicator, which already lets you use AOL Mail and Messenger without fully being logged into the service. Fanfare is pushing additional content features to the lite client which may indicate the beginning of a major change. Frankly I am not sure people really want this kind of email client, though I guess AOL won’t want it to be seen as just email plus features.

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RSS or Atom

Politics aside… who really cares?

There’s been much said from various mucky-muck tech studs (you can search it out for yourself if you care) talking about the benefits of atom vs rss and why the other sucks, or why one is just so superior.

From a user perspective, I want a feed format that lets me subscribe to a site and read it via aggregator (web or local). I only have a few ATOM feeds, and have mostly RSS feeds, though I’d be hard pressed to tell you which flavor they are .9 or 2.0. Once they are subscribed in my aggregator, I have no way of knowing whether I am reading one vs. the other and don’t have any desire to think about it either. All I really care about is the full article… excerpts annoy me since they require that I take an additional step to read something and really break up what is an otherwise efficient process. I still subscribe to excerts though since I like getting informed through my aggregator first. As local aggregators advance and include web browsers, it becomes easier to keep things streamlined within a single application…

The important thing to remember is simplicity. As more people adopt syndication and large media companies offer feeds as well as the existing blogger camp, no one will want to try an sort out what button to press if you offer multiple versions. It’s hard enough to figure out what to do with the link, since browsers either download the file, or display a lovely page of XML. Users (and it really should be about the users) want a positive, easy experience so that they can understand why syndication might work out to be of great benefit to their workflow or reading list.

There is a good discussion in the comments of a post by Scoble to which I have contributed.

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Quick Office 2004 Report

As mentioned earlier, I downloaded the demo of Office 2004

So I want to like Entourage…

  • I like the 3 pane effect, though wish there was a better way to move between things with the keyboard.
  • IMAP support is funky! I was hoping it would improve, but I am getting strange errors saying wacky stuff about my server connection when it just works in Mail.app. I do not want multiple inboxes or to be forced into using IMAP only folders for certain rules… but that is how it seems Entourage continues to work.
  • I really like how each mailbox breaks the view into days for quick scanning, but what about threads?? I find that threads are a great way to follow conversations and appreciate that Mail is able to track things as threads even when the subject line changes through reply.
  • Entourage did my import from Mail (not even sure how many thousands of messages I have) in about 10 minutes which is well done I think. I was not pleased to find things from my main Inbox sorted to the trash… emails I sent were also somehow thought to be Junk which is not that cool, but perhaps because my main email is the same as my domain and not a real word.

I’m sticking with Mail. I like some things but don’t like too many other details to endure then to switch. Your mileage may vary, much of my discovery and usage is personal…

I have yet to try the Project Manager and Notes/Outliner which is supposed to be a rip-off of one of my favorite apps Notetaker, but doubt that they will sway me to switch mail clients for now…