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August 2005 - Posts

My Blogday

2 mins to 12:00am, Aug 31. Just made Blogday . So without further ado and breaking all the rules, I recommend the following 11 (not 5) blogs to you that are unlikely to be already in your opml: Bill Higgins , works at IBM Global as a systems engineer, Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:40 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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MSN Phishing Filter released

Inside Microsoft tells of news that MSNs Phishing Filter add-in is available for download for US only see update below . The filter requires MSN Search Toolbar with Windows Desktop Search and Microsoft Windows XP SP2, IE 6 or later Microsoft Monitor has Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2005 10:22 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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RSS search engines

Search Engine Watch has published their second part of a series of articles on RSS The latest piece takes a look at the specialized RSS search tools that help you locate content in blogs and feeds: " Many people mistakenly refer to RSS search as "blog Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 31, 2005 6:16 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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Pandora: simple, instant, responsive

I've been testing out Pandora the last couple of evenings, as my sister still hasn't yet replied to my email asking her to recommend some new CDs I should get (hello sis! ;-) I love the interface to this service: simple, instant and responsive. And I've Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2005 10:09 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Orlowski is at it again...

JD Lasica, author of Darknet (very good btw), despairs with Andrew Orlowksi's latest contribution at the Register: "Andrew "hatchet job" Orlowski of UK's The Register is at it again , this time with yet another wildly uninformed blast at Creative Commons. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 30, 2005 4:56 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

WinFS beta 1 released

Robert Scoble has uploaded the WinFS video to Channel 9 . Haven't seen it myself yet, only just heard! Check out the WinFS team blog too - this post is by Quentin Clark e the director of program management for WinFS. " It’s a big milestone shipping WinFS Read More...
Posted Monday, August 29, 2005 7:55 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

OSDL cries fowl?

ZDNet's Joe Brockmeier tries to explain that not having a joint research project between OSDL and Microsoft is a good thing. I'd say ( usual disclaimers apply ) that not having this independent research done is a bad thing for anyone interested in acquiring Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 28, 2005 9:42 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Cricket update: my condolences to the Aussies

Thankfully, we scraped through , 2-1 in Ashes - the greatest contest in cricket - with one to play. If we hadn't won, I think I would have joined the local Flying Spaghetti Monsterism movement and start worshiping the noodles. Like Thurya and Adam and Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 28, 2005 12:16 PM by alexbarn | 8 Comments

Win an Xbox 360 every 10 minutes (u.s. only)

Only in the US I'm afraid... Pepsi is running a sweepstakes competition, giving away an Xbox 360 every 10 minutes until 10/31/05. Starts 8/28/05. "To play, consumers will collect codes found under the caps of Mountain Dew and other participating Pepsi Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 28, 2005 8:36 AM by alexbarn | 28 Comments

Infuencers - 87% use RSS

A small survey taken by Nooked indicates how RSS is ubiquitous among key influencers . "The Nooked - Influencer survey set out to establish if key influencers - journalists, analysts and bloggers – are using RSS to collect information for analysis, news Read More...
Posted Sunday, August 28, 2005 8:07 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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about the cricket: I can't help myself

Sorry, I can't help myself... England are on the verge of defeating Australia in the fourth Test to go 2-1 up in the 5 match series...For those not familiar with the game of cricket, I should explain why I'm staying up to watch the drama of the Test unfold. Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 27, 2005 11:15 PM by alexbarn | 13 Comments

Build a simple RSS reader control

Peter Bernhardt shows how to build an RSS feed reader control that you can add to your website. Peter uses Visual Web Developer 2005 Express Edition Beta for the article. (btw, posting this might seem a little random...last night I was IMing with a chap Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 27, 2005 7:29 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Foldershare - love

Found, played and coughed up for a licence tonight for Foldershare , a P2P fileshare service that makes file/folder syncing really easy. It works. Very well. Now eyeing one of these Iomega external drives - it runs Foldershare natively. Plug the beast Read More...
Posted Friday, August 26, 2005 12:59 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Now, that's what I call Windows!

Things get even sillier ...Windows the MP3 (3 MB) . Thanks to Dan for the pointer. Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005 8:46 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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How not to implement RSS

Rok Hastrik, author of 'Unleash the Marketing Power & Publishing Power of RSS' , has written up a good case study on how not to implement RSS . The subject of the piece is AdAge.com , a marketing publication. Bottom line? If you try to subscribe to Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005 7:41 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Berners-Lee not happy

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the Wonderful Wonderful Web, in an open letter published on the W3C site has lambasted the US Copyright Office over its insistence that certain online forms can only be submitted using IE. I agree, that's lame. From the PCPro Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005 7:24 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Vonage to IPO?

ZDNet and WSJ are reporting that the VoIP firm Vonage is planing an IPO to raise $600m, after having raised $400m with VC cash. If this is true and works out, Skype will need to make its move soon. Either by its own IPO or by acquisition . What seems Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005 6:52 AM by alexbarn | 6 Comments

Bill Gates Musical

Oh - my - giddy - aunt. Inside Microsoft : "Yes, there is actually a musical opening next month about the lives of Bill Gates, Paul Allen and Steve Jobs. Nerds: A Musical Software Satire , opens September 20 with eight performances at off-Broadway theatre Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 25, 2005 12:09 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

My hard disk

Frank Arrigo shows off his hard disk . Here's mine (also using SequoiaView ). Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2005 11:38 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Invented conflicts

Love this post by Adobe's John Nack , regarding some recent articles claiming Microsoft's Acrylic is a Photoshop/Flash/Illustrator/FreeHand/Fireworks/etc killer. "If I were Microsoft, I'd be deflecting these assertions like crazy. Why? Because they set Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2005 9:13 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Gartner conclusion on RSS - wrong.

According to Gartner's report, Hype Cycle for Emerging Technologies , RSS will be useful for content that is 'nice to know' rather than 'need to know' (via Silicon Republic ). The report is described as an IT buzzword hype scorecard which assesses the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2005 8:05 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments

A Further Five Numbers

Simon Singh continues his Five Numbers series on BBC 4 Radio: This time Singh explores 1 (the most popular), 2, 6 (the pivot), 6.67 x 10^-11 (or G), and 1729 (the first of the “Ramanujan numbers”). Probably best to start with the original Five Numbers Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 24, 2005 7:35 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

something most curious...

I.T Vibe spots something most curious... " Origenxbox360.com is a site that contains a single page of flash showing a tree, a green bunny, and a numerical countdown in the background. Gamers familiar with Microsoft's previous viral marketing campaigns Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 8:17 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Windows 95 - 10 years on

Joe Wilcox points out that tomorrow , August 24 2005, is the 10th anniversary of the Windows 95 release. Joe takes a trip down memory lane... "Those were the days when Microsoft got aspirational marketing right and for the right audiences. For businesses, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:58 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

MSN Messenger 7.5 released

Andre de Costa points out MSN Messenger 7.5 is available for download here : "The MSN Messenger team have just released version 7.5 of the client to the masses. Among the new features are Dymanic Backgrounds and Voice Clips. Dynamic Backgrounds fill your Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:44 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Video, video

Search Engine Watch : "The folks at MSN Virtual Earth have publicly released this very funny video clip that has the MSN Butterfly (as portrayed by Steve Lombardi, Program Manager, of MSN VE)" Peter Horsman (Microsoft Holland) sent me a link to a video Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:27 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Google Talk - review

The new Google IM / VoIP beta client ' Google Talk' is reviewed by Download Squad . via Goolge Rumours . Update: Google Talk now live . Am playing with it. ping me: alexbarnett gmail Also, remember the speculation in January 'Google phone'...? Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 7:16 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments

RSS Magazine

Flickr has a fun new service , allowing losers like me to mess around - in this case creating magazine covers from Flickr pics. via usernomics . Update : Trackbacks are not working (again)... Dave Winer links. Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 23, 2005 12:25 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

My blogroll and some attention data

In case you were wondering, here's my blogroll on Bloglines My blogroll and some attention data (as OPML file) Read More...
Posted Friday, August 19, 2005 12:40 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Atom 1.0 specs published

(I could have sworn I did this earlier today! ;-). A new feed spec is announced, this time by Tim Bray: Atom 1.0: "It’s cooked and ready to serve. It doesn’t have an RFC number yet, but this is officially Atom 1.0 ( HTML here ). Here’s a comparison of Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 18, 2005 6:06 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

RSS 3 specs published

RSS 3 specs are published. Via Slashdot : "The RSS 3 Homepage now offers its first publicly available specification, the RSS 3 Lite-type Specification First Draft, intended for review and commenting for revision. RSS 3 is a reworking of RSS 2.0, filling Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 18, 2005 9:11 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Kiwi website manager required

Gretchen points to a fun video (wmv) advertising a website manager role for the Microsoft New Zealand subsidiary ... Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 17, 2005 10:07 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Xbox 360 prices official

From the Microsoft's press release "Ending weeks of speculation about which upcoming video game platform will give gamers the most bang for their buck, today at the German Games Convention, Microsoft Corp. revealed that consumers can get their hands on Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 17, 2005 7:11 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments

Robert Scoble's book at Amazon, 'Naked Conversations'

Robert Scoble's book 'Naked Conversations' is available for pre-order from Amazon . Co-written with Shel Israel, their book blog is here . Congratulations Robert ! I've pre-ordered my copy, can't wait!! Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 17, 2005 6:33 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

If you love RSS...

So about all this RSS vs. Feeds naming brouhaha , what can I say? I love RSS. I've been banging on about RSS like a crazy man for last two and half years . But emotions have no place in this debate. When I first heard about the IE team considering calling Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 16, 2005 10:22 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

Web 1.0 and Web 2.0

James Governor provides his thoughts on the never-ending discussion around the definition of Web 2.0 . Following James' format , here are the differentiating characteristics between the Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 concepts as I see them: web 1.0 - centralized Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 13, 2005 10:12 AM by alexbarn | 16 Comments

Link experiment

Me too: J-Walk blog link experiment. via Tommy . Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 13, 2005 8:16 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

A meating of minds

Nathan Weinber points to a nasty collision between two Mets fielders . (video 56K | 350K ) Read More...
Posted Friday, August 12, 2005 8:15 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Geo-targeting on MSDN and Technet

The MSDN & TechNet Product Group (MTPG - the group I'm in) has made Geo-targeted local headlines live for 10 markets on both MSDN US and TechNet US Homepages. The local headlines are provided by Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, India, Japan, Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:56 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

Baby branding - commercial blogging going too far?

This is how Jason Calacanis introduced his new nephew - via my feedreader and a great big ad plastered over young Daniel's day-old face. Hey Jason, isn't this taking commercial blogging just a little too far ;-) ? Read More...
Posted Thursday, August 11, 2005 10:24 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

C9s map

Minh at Channel 9 has started a niner's map . Can you find me? Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 10, 2005 10:07 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Yes, you to can make your very own RSS feed!

PC Magazine review of three RSS feed creation tools (via Steve Rubel ): "We looked at three programs that help you build RSS feeds and even let you create your own podcasts (distributed audio files that can be played back on iPods or other portable players). Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 09, 2005 8:02 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Really Speedily Saturated?

Dave Winer is not impressed with how Goolge News is providing their RSS service . "I'm not sure it's very useful. Why? Well, try subscribing to one of their feeds in an aggregator for a clue. Each item doesn't map onto one story, it maps on to hundreds Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 09, 2005 7:10 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Churchill not offensive

BBC reports that the UK's Advertising Standards Authority accepts that Ryanair's advert featuring Winston Churchill did not cause widespread offence. Apparently, the ad managed to cause 319 complaints, "We shall fly them to the beaches, we shall fly them Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 09, 2005 6:30 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Google News via RSS

Charlene Li: "Google now has the ability to add RSS/Atom feeds from Google News . Users will have the ability to add three types of feeds: 1) Google News section feed; 2) Google News search results feed; and 3) feed from a customized news page. Interestingly, Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 09, 2005 7:07 AM by alexbarn | 4 Comments

Slashdot interview: Microsoft's Linux lab manager

The Slashdot interview with Microsoft's Linux lab manager , Bill Hilf, is now published. All the questions were sent in by Slashdotters. First question, straight to the point: " Dear Mr. Hilf - Surely by now you have to have been accused of helping Microsoft Read More...
Posted Monday, August 08, 2005 6:07 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Who is the 'Intelligent Designer'?

(Warning relating to this post. Chowbay's Food and Article Center advises to maintain proper etiquette while attending dinner parties: one should, " try to avoid heavy subjects such as politics and religion.". I'm going to stay out of the politics (as Read More...
Posted Saturday, August 06, 2005 5:20 PM by alexbarn | 76 Comments

Is it wrong to love Microsoft?

Classic Slashdot: ' Is It Wrong To Love Microsoft? '. Read More...
Posted Friday, August 05, 2005 8:14 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

1bn people online by next month, the world gets flatter

The FT takes a speculative look at the next 10 years of the internet's development: "Somewhere in the world in the next few weeks the billionth human being will sit down at a computer, log on to the internet for the first time and join the swelling throng Read More...
Posted Friday, August 05, 2005 7:30 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

marketers vs techies

Mark Baartse , an ex-Microsoftie working at the Australian subsidiary and recently at Redmond, has started a series of posts providing some words of wisdom for marketers involved in online marketing (or pretty much any marketer than needs to work with Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 03, 2005 10:22 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Apparently, I'm an alternative brand

Apparently, I'm an alternative brand ;-) Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 03, 2005 8:48 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

The 'RSS Effect'

Pheedo's Bill Flitter has written an article at Cnet describing what he calls the 'RSS Effect'. The article is spot on. "Unfortunately, most of these media companies do not yet understand the impact that RSS is having on their Web site traffic, also known Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 03, 2005 7:18 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Jobs tips

Josh Ledgard provides 5 tips for being successful at Microsoft . "1. Remember to ingore your email" :-) Update: Gretechen Legdard (Josh's wife) reminds me of an often quoted tip inside Microsoft: "It’s better to ask for forgiveness than ask for permission" Read More...
Posted Wednesday, August 03, 2005 6:59 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Why?

rethink(ip) has a nice post on parenthood:: "I have a three-and-a-half year-old son. All the parents reading this post now immediately understand the title. Why Daddy? Why? Why? Why? After ever explanation…he fires it right back at you. Why? The subject Read More...
Posted Tuesday, August 02, 2005 12:21 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

India - $250 PCs running Microsoft XP Starter Edition

BBC reports that an Indian PC manufacturer, HCL Infosystems, is helping the Indian government to reach their target of increasing the number of PCs- from 15 million today and five million net connections to 75 million computers and 45 million net connections Read More...
Posted Monday, August 01, 2005 7:06 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
 
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