Once a week, I will be covering the hottest stories that were highly discussed around the web. You’ll have your chance of submitting tips as well as making your opinions open to the public.
I’ll try to finish the current week’s coverage by Sunday so it can be read by you all on Monday morning.
Read on,
Many of you might not yet know what feeds are and what you can use them for. Feeds are the perfect way to keep track of your favorite websites, and you can do so without even opening your browser. First of all, you can recognize feeds by the symbol shown here on the left. For basic usage, here’s how you can get started:
For website visitors
Choose how you want to view your feeds: online, using online applications such as Bloglines, Netvibes or Google Reader.
Or install your own application on your PC. I personally use and recommend FeedReader. You can get it here for free, install it and customize it as little or as much as you wish. Feeds can be arranged into folders, no matter how you want them.
As a third option, browsers such as Firefox allow you to post active bookmarks that make keeping track of a website a whole lot easier.
TIP: Most websites’ feeds are located at http://domain.com/feed
For website owners
Make sure your feed is working. For that, it’s best if you subscribe to your feed and see that it is working properly. Once you’ve made sure it works ok, my best advice is to subscribe to FeedBurner, a very useful service, which, if used properly, can give you information regarding your subscribers. After you register, my advice is to post a FeedCount on your blog, so you can see all your subscribers (it’s located under Publicize > FeedCount, in FeedBurner), and also install and activate the “Feedburner Feed Replacement” plugin for WordPress, which redirects all your users through FeedBurner, thus making FeedBurner more accurate.
Hope this article has given you a little insight into Feeds and how they are used. But remember, you learn best by trying these methods yourself, and seeing which you like and what fits your style the most.
Remember when it was first announced two months ago? It was just a mock-up of Digg’s website, and Teddy Hwang, the author, was afraid to release it in order not to get sued for it.
Quoting from his blog:
Wow, it never ceases to amaze me what lengths people will go to get what they want. Like all default WordPress installations, my plugin folder didnC”b,b”t have a blank index.html to hide the files. Some people have went through the trouble of downloading every single plugin I had to find out which one was the digg styled admin. I know that at least one blog is distributing it. This proves exactly why I didnC”b,b”t want to release the theme in the first place. Even though I didnC”b,b”t create the original design of digg, it sucks knowing that somebody went behind my back and took the incomplete plugin and started distributing it without my permission.
It seems that the author sent an e-mail to digg asking for permission to publish the theme, but it got stolen from him before that and being published in an incomplete version over various blogs. For those interested, here’s a video describing the theme.
Interesting demonstration of "tapping" optical cables carrying voice or data:
Optical fibre is a lot easier to tap than most people imagine. There is no need to break or splice the fibre now — a relatively shallow bend can be enough.
The technique works because the light in the cable propagates by bouncing off the insides of the fibre. Unsheath the cable, and a detector can pick up the tiny amount of light that escapes through the fibre’s coating, explained Thomas Meier, the CEO of Swiss company Infoguard.
He demonstrated the technique on a fibre carrying a VOIP phone call over Gigabit Ethernet. A section of fibre from inside a junction box was looped into a photodetector called a bend coupler, and the call was recorded and then played back on a laptop.
"People claim optical fibre is harder to tap than copper, but the opposite is true — you don’t even have to break the insulation, as you would with copper," Meier said. "You can read through the fibre’s cladding with as little as half a dB signal loss."
We all know the long expected Optimus keyboard. Yes, it’s that keyboard that allows you to customize what’s being shown over the keys based on different profiles.
Well, good news. The development schedule has been announced. They say it’s going to be fully finished by the end of November, THIS year and it will retail for $1536. But since with good news come bad news as well, only 400 pieces will be manufactured by the end of the year but this is enforced with another 400 pieces for January.
I know I’d love to buy one, if I’d have the money to spend.
As much as 10 days ago, Kevin Rose announced the release of the Digg API in order to serve as platform for one upcoming contest of theirs.
Many of you have been asking about the Digg API and IC”b,b”m happy to announce that it is now publicly available at services.digg.com along with a Flash application toolkit. This will be a great tool for Digg users and partners to openly access all Digg data dating back to 2004.
To kick off the API release, starting today weC”b,b”re launching a contest for the most creative and innovative visualizations and applications developed by our community using the API and Flash toolkit. All of the top 10 finalists will get prizes, with a Grand Prize featuring a Falcon Northwest gaming PC, the full catalog of EA PC games, and the Adobe CS3 Master Collection.
Big thanks to stamen design for their help in the development and design of the API and flash toolkit. As always, weC”b,b”ll build on this first release with future releases that allow developers to interact in even greater ways with Digg data.
–Kevin Rose
After only 10 days, I have already found two interesting releases. The first one is called “Who’s digging you?“. It might be buggy at first, but I think it’s an interesting program to research friends as well as multiple usernames abuse. The website could look better though, but let’s keep in mind it’s only at the beginning.
The second website I’m talking about it DuggBack, a words game inspired by the WayBack machine. DuggBack is a site that helps you find removed stories using a mix of mirrors and caches. The service uses the Digg API, and mirror services from DuggMirror, Coral CDN, Wayback Machine and DotCache, and web cache services from Google, Yahoo, Live Search and so on. It’s basically the DuggMirror, only with more features.
UPDATE: I later found out the number of applications developed with the help of the Digg API extends to 7. A full list here.
Not much to say about the new version, it’s a development release that brings extended documentation and some bug fixes, nothing spectacular. Although it’s worth mentioning as it brings us one step closer to Gnome 2.20, the 2.19.1 is a test release that’s meant to point out bugs and other flaws. This being the case producers recommend you download, build and test the new release in order to bring 2.20 out quicker.
This along with the release of Linux Kernel 2.6.21 are the latest news in the Linux world (besides some other minor releases) but you have to consider the fact that the ‘release season’ should only start in the second half of 2007.
We all know you can find a lot of crazy devices out there so let’s take a look at some of the latest additions.
I want to start with some of my favorite: The Star Wars mimobot USB drives! Featuring Chewbacca, R2-D2, Darth Vader and Stormtrooper the drives have a storage capacity of 1, 2 or 4 GB and come in a limited series of 2.500 or 3.500 per character. The drives come already loaded with Star Wars content as wallpapers, trailers and many more!
The Angus Noble Indium Smart Flashlight is as weird as it’s name. Why would one need a programmable flashlight? one might ask. Well if you ever felt the need to adjust the (more…)
Most of you have been put at least once in the position of choosing an alternative for the classic Yahoo Messenger, either because you couldn’t use YM at that certain point, or because you just wanted to try out something new.
There are several programs that allow users to connect to a multitude of instant messaging accounts, all including Yahoo as well. I am going to present the three most powerful of them all.
Trillian
A multi-protocol instant messaging application for Windows created by Cerulean Studios that can connect to multiple IM services, such as AIM, ICQ, Windows Live Messenger, Yahoo! Messenger, IRC, Novell GroupWise Messenger, Bonjour, Jabber, and Skype networks (the latter four with Trillian Pro which allows for additional plugins). Initially released July 1, 2000 as a freeware IRC client, the first commercial version (Trillian Pro 1.0) was published on September 10, 2002. There are currently two types of Trillian available, the original and free Trillian Basic 3 and the commercial Trillian Pro 3. An upcoming product called Trillian Astra (4.0) has been announced and is currently in alpha testing. All in all, this makes for a great alternative.
Gaim (actually Pidgin)
Ported from Linux, it’s a popular multi-platform instant messaging client that supports many commonly used instant messaging protocols. Gaim is free software available under the GNU General Public License. Gaim was originally known as GTK+ AOL Instant Messenger. In response to complaints from AOL, the program was renamed to Gaim, an acronym of its previous name. As AOL’s IM program AOL Instant Messenger gained popularity, AOL trademarked its acronym, “AIM”, leading to a lengthy legal struggle with Gaim’s creators that was kept largely secret. On April 6, 2007, the Gaim development team announced the results of their settlement with AOL, which included a series of name changes: Gaim will become Pidgin, libgaim will become libpurple, and gaim-text will become finch. It’s easy to use, simple, and stable.
Meebo
It’s an in-browser instant messaging program, like AIM Express, which supports multiple IM services, including Yahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AIM, ICQ, and Jabber. This means no additional software installed on the computer. Although still in its early stages, the goal of the project is to combine the features of Trillian or Pidgin (formerly Gaim) with the availability of AIM Express. Meebo includes the ability to sign on invisibly and to connect to multiple services.
These being said, I’ll leave you decide what option suits you best.
According to a new study by Access Market International, the market for hosted VoIP solutions targeted at small and medium sized businesses is set to hit US$416 million in North America this year, up from only $165 million two years ago.
“In particular, the small business (SB, or companies with up to 99 employees) segment is forecasted to grow at a spectacular 69% on a cumulative basis for the next 5 years,” says Sanjeev Aggarwal, AMI-Partners’ New York-based Vice President for SMB Infrastructure Solutions. “The concept of hosted VoIP is analogous to software-as-a-service (SaaS) where upstarts like Salesforce.com and NetSuite are gaining rapid adoption. Similarly, the concept of voice communications as a service is becoming very appealing as these small businesses have almost no IT/voice communications expertise and resources.”
The market opportunity for hosted business-VoIP solutions for SMBs is huge and growing rapidly - and so is the competition, which is increasing with participation from traditional telecom and cable companies, equipment vendors, and focused complimentary service providers.
There are many drivers that are influencing SMBs to adopt hosted business-VoIP, including predictable monthly voice communications expenses with no up-front capital expense, toll savings for intra- and inter-company long-distance and local calling. “Simple, secure, very reliable, easy-to-use solutions supporting unified messaging and mobility are key for small businesses that never want to miss a customer call,” Mr. Aggarwal says. “Helping SBs appear more professional and larger, especially SBs that have a store presence and web presence.”
Source: AMI Partners
