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June 2005 - Posts

What shall i eat tonight? You decide, please.

Right. Family is away, I'm not going to cook. I need to eat, so a take-out is in order. The options are: Chinese: Spring rolls, Sweet & Sour Pork, Rice. Indian: Lamb Jalfrezi or chicken korma, rice, nam bread. Wendy's: Burger & fries. KFC: Pulled Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005 7:33 PM by alexbarn | 14 Comments

email open rates fall from 38.2% to 30.2%

emarketer reports on the news that email open rates are falling from 38.2% to 30.2% over a year on year period, according to DoubleClick . There is a caveat to these numbers in that tracking methods to report the data are being blocked by some ISPs. That Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005 7:06 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Atlas: 'no client installation at all'.

Eric Dolecki writes about his concerns regarding the news of Microsoft's Ajaz project, Atlas:: "However word on the street is that if you build an application using Atlas, it might require a browser add-on in order for it to work. Am I the only one who Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 30, 2005 6:30 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Google Video - launched Monday, cracked Tuesday.

Google Video - launched Monday , cracked Tuesday . Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 28, 2005 7:46 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

First RSS, now Ajax

Dare Obasanjo on the news of the Microsoft Atlas Ajax project: "This is excellent news which I know a lot of our UX developers at MSN will be glad to hear. Already Scott Isaacs who's been a key part of the AJAX development we've been doing at MSN has Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 28, 2005 7:24 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Ashes over the internet

One of the things I've been missing since moving to Seattle is the cricket. Until now. With the Ashes starting soon...I looked around for the various options I might have, including sattelite and online delivery. The DirecTV via sattelite option was too Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 28, 2005 6:53 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

Open Source Radio interviews 4 folks who know a thing or two about the Grosker / Supreme Court decision

Open Source Radio interviews 3 4 folks ( mp3 ) who know a thing or two about the Grosker / Supreme Court decision: Joshua Wattles , Law Professor and Copyright Lawyer (clients include Paramount Pictures and Gnutella) Michael Weiss, CEO , StreamCast Networks Read More...
Posted Monday, June 27, 2005 10:30 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

RSS List Extensions feedback

Inside Microsoft : " Phil Ringalda didn’t like part of the way Microsoft’s new RSS extension is structured, and suggested a cleaner format. Twenty-one hours later, the RSS team at MS, in their first blog post , suggested making his change pemanent and Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 26, 2005 9:58 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

'The biggest thing is to not overly use the word 'RSS' '

Seattle Times quotes Scott Gatz , the senior director for personalization products at Yahoo in reaction to yesterday's RSS/Longhorn news : "The biggest thing is to not overly use the word 'RSS'" RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS , RSS Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 25, 2005 9:56 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

RSS meets Longhorn

A bunch of RSS news relating Longhorn news will start emerging: Robert Scoble : "I just posted the hour-long interview I had with Microsoft's Longhorn Browsing and RSS team. More shortly after the announcements get made." I'm going to update this post Read More...
Posted Friday, June 24, 2005 12:52 PM by alexbarn | 13 Comments

Google Song

Inside Google points to some home-grown funny Flash movie.... Google Song , created by Edward Evans (known to b3tans as giant_squid) and manwithunderpantsonheed. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 22, 2005 11:56 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Myscreencast.com and DebugCast

Myscreencast.com , a library of categorised screencasts , is worth checking out. This is where I found Phil Jones' DebugCast (more from Phil here ): "it's improvised rather than scripted. (Hence has that patent podcast-style mumbling and uncertainty.) Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 22, 2005 1:43 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

How to encourage more behind-the-firewall use of blogs and RSS

Kevin Briody picks up on the internal blogs at Microsoft discussion , and makes some great suggestions as to how any company - not just Microsoft - can encourage more behind-the-firewall use of blogs and RSS. Love Kevin's pre-canned internal OPMLs idea Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 22, 2005 12:48 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

MSN Search + Virtual Earth: Near You

Check out the 'Near Me' & aerial features on results seach.msn.com beta (I've only tried out the Seattle and Redmond areas, not sure what the coverage is for the beta...). I'll update with links to any Microsoft bloggers who know more. (updates already, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, June 21, 2005 12:11 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Does GNU GPL incompatibility mean not 'open'?

News and commentary that the new Office XML formats are not compatible with the GNU General Public License - and therefore not 'open' - prompts Microsoft's Dare Obasanjo to respond : "There are two points I'd like to make here. The first is that "being Read More...
Posted Monday, June 20, 2005 10:25 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

My old computers...

Chris Pirillo points out Old-Computers.Com . Ah, memory lane (or lack of)...So, I'm going to bore you with a list of my first computers. My first computer - Sinclair ZX81 . Ram: 1K, although I extended this with a wopping 14K Memopak Oooh. Learnt Sinclair Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 18, 2005 6:19 PM by alexbarn | 6 Comments

BBC to launch free online video system

(via Digg)... New Scientist reports : "The BBC is poised to release a free and 'open source' internet video delivery system to compete head on with proprietary favourites. The UK corporation has developed its own video compression algorithm, called Dirac, Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 18, 2005 1:32 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Here you go Dave, all yours

"Someday this picture will be a header graphic on Scripting News." Here you go Dave , all yours . Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 18, 2005 12:33 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Don't click here

DONTCLICK.IT is an imaginary interactive research institute - a Flash site created by Alex Frank who's working on a diploma in Communication Design at the University of Essen-Duisburg in Germany ( via Usability in the News ). The site is an exploration Read More...
Posted Friday, June 17, 2005 12:53 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

The Great British Venn Diagram

I was asked the other day what the difference is between the United Kingdom and Great Britain. Sam provides the clearest explanation I've found so far. ( Via groovy mother ) Read More...
Posted Friday, June 17, 2005 12:33 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

You say Canonicalization, I say C14N

Thought I'd share this with you... "In information technology, canonicalization (pronounced KA-nahn-nihk-uhl-ih-ZAY-shun and sometimes spelled canonicalisation) is the process of making something canonical -- that is, in conformance with some specification. Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 16, 2005 9:44 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

BBC Beethoven downloads get more than 600,000 requests

Dan Hill runs the team responsible for designing and building the BBC's radio and music -based interactive offerings across web, digital tv, and mobile platforms. Dan posts the following on his blog regarding the BBC press release announcing that there Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 16, 2005 8:55 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Farter of Web 2.0 asks that be referred to as Father of Web 2.0

The Father of Web 2.0 has asked that all who refer to Him , refer to Him as the Farter of Web 2.0... Or is it the other way around...? Anyhow, seems perfectly reasonable to me. Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 15, 2005 9:44 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

IBM running 3600 internal blogs

James Robertson points to a post by CorporateBlogging.Info claiming IBM is running 3600 internal blogs: "Through the central blog dashboard at the intranet W3, IBMers now can find more than 3,600 blogs written by their co-workers. As of June 13 there Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 15, 2005 8:07 PM by alexbarn | 12 Comments

MSN's RSS reader: your feedback wanted

MSN's Steve Rider is looking feedback for on the next version of the AJAX RSS reader Start.com : "Our goal is still about aggregating the best of what you want on the web, like bookmarks, rss feeds, and news. But it also means that you should be able Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 09, 2005 1:10 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

nano-RFID

RFID has been getting plenty of attention: British Airways , Amex, Chase & Microsoft have each announce their interest in the last couple of days - as have the nano-technologists . Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 09, 2005 12:39 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Skype made portable with USB drive

This is a clever idea - flash drives made smart ( via Digg ): "Skype and ICQ users will be able to use a U3-powered USB smart drive to transport and access their accounts wherever they go. When finished using the applications, users will simply unplug Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 08, 2005 9:51 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Schwarzenegger is Podcasting

Oh, my giddy aunt. 'I'll play back' (via Strubel) Read More...
Posted Monday, June 06, 2005 9:51 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Apptel (Apple + Intel)

zzzzz.... ( update ...seconds after i orginally posted...): Which will it be? Apptel or Aptel ? ( update II ...minutes after that...) or IntAPP ? Read More...
Posted Monday, June 06, 2005 9:33 PM by alexbarn | 9 Comments

Dare asks jolly good question regarding XAML/Avalon in light of AJAX

Dare Obasanjo speculates on XAML/Avalon given the recently renewed interest in DHMTL/AJAX . "Based on how adoption of DHTML/AJAX occured over the past few years I suspect that Avalon/XAML will follow a similar path since the initial conditions are similar. Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 05, 2005 10:16 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Xbox 360 v Xbox side-by-side pic

Team Xbox has a side-by-side pic of the Xbox 360 and Xbox and dimension details (via Addict3d.org ): "Following yesterday's unveiling of the Xbox 360 physical dimensions, revealed for the first time here on TeamXbox, we bring you a picture of the Xbox Read More...
Posted Sunday, June 05, 2005 3:18 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

RSS - the Shiva of the publishing business

The director of digital publishing at the Guardian, Simon Waldman, has posted a transcript of a presentation he gave at World Editor’s Forum in Seoul earlier this year ( via JD Lasica): "...we believe that the trends we are currently seeing with RSS are Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 04, 2005 9:14 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

75 million RSS users?

I just noticed the BBC.co.uk website is promoting RSS on its homepage. Not just at the footer but within prime real estate. It me got me thinking... According to the Nielsen//Netratings April 2005 data the BBC site (all properties, including the news Read More...
Posted Saturday, June 04, 2005 4:36 PM by alexbarn | 7 Comments

RSS commerce

Rok Hrastnik writes up a quick post on RSS Bazaar , a service by a little known company Hexlet LLC based in California, that seeks to make it easier for anyone to provide a paid-subscription model for RSS feeds (and make money while doing so): "Will this Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 02, 2005 9:00 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

From .doc, .xls and .ppt to .docx, .xlsx and pptx

Reuters reports on Microsoft's announcement that 'Office 12' will have new XML file formats: "Microsoft said it would begin discussing details about the new XML file format at TechEd, Microsoft's annual meeting for information technology managers and Read More...
Posted Thursday, June 02, 2005 1:14 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Jacob Nielsen: what about RSS?

Jacob Nielsen's written up a look-back article on the 10th anniversary of his widely read Alertbox column series. Nielsen as succeeded in being the customer advocate regarding the usability of sites, and while I don't always agree with his views, I'd Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 01, 2005 11:28 PM by alexbarn | 10 Comments

John Udell: The ultra-thin InfoCard

John Udell's take on InfoCard (see Microsoft press release on Infocard ) "Over the weekend I needed to log in to eBay from somebody else's machine. The browser was Firefox, but it would have been impolite to install Greasemonkey and Password Composer Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 01, 2005 9:19 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

An Excess of RSS

Mike Walsh : "Here is an irony for you. There is a growing number of people who consume their news and information exclusively through aggregated headline readers, made possible by the magic of RSS feeds. If you are reading this in your mail client, you Read More...
Posted Wednesday, June 01, 2005 9:10 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
 
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