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January 2006 - Posts

Even *I* think this is a little extreme...

Even *I* think this is a little extreme... "When I found out my wife was pregnant, I immediately set up a blog for the kid. I already know that he wants to get any of my attention, he’s going to need an RSS feed." Via Groovy Mother - Tags: RSS Attentio Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 31, 2006 1:30 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Atomic MSDN blogs

Tim, it's great you noticed that the MSDN blogs gen Atom 1.0 as well as RSS 2.0 feeds, but...this has been the case for nearly two years a year, as is probably the glitch you point out ;-) Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 9:53 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments

4 plugs in one post - beat that.

My wife was given a business card by Shel Israel at the Naked Conversations party last week, and she loved the card. 'I want one of these for Unwind ' she said (ok, this is another blatant plug for her business - she provides Chair Massage for companies Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 9:09 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Well, here goes for the second time around

Bubble 2.0 - the signs are there if you look for them. Remember First Tuesday ? I never attended, but heard all the legendary stories of latecomers to the web party pitching the loons with the cash. Well, here goes for the second time around : "London Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 8:44 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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My data

No time to comment on this post by Seth Goldstein , but wanted to point it out: "Is there a legitimate mechanism for me to house my data such that nobody, neither individual, corporate or governmental can access it without my consent?" - Tags: Attentio Read More...
Posted Monday, January 30, 2006 1:29 PM by alexbarn | 6 Comments
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Attention engines not just for the geekosphere

The attention conversation keeps going. Latest post by Scott Karp : "The idea that we’re living in an “attention economy” is nothing new. But unless the media/technology industry starts listening to Umair and focuses on creating new ways to help people Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 29, 2006 3:54 PM by alexbarn | 12 Comments
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Classic anti-Web 2.0 postage

I wanted to write up an example anti-Web 2.0 post, but Harry Pierson did it for me: "First off, it’s a pure marketing buzzword. It was originally coined as a conference name " blah, blah, blah "Secondly, I think it’s wildly arrogant to claim we’re only Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 9:27 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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Professional tag gardeners now a reality (for now)

Earlier this month James Governor predicted that professional tag gardeners would emerge from the tagging eco-system. Today, Michael Arrington and Pete Cashmore (on Wednesday) report that p rofessional tag gardening prediction is now a reality . Michael Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 1:06 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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If he's an edge case, I'm an edge case.

Surfing through Flickr this morning - I took the plunge and paid for a full account so I can have more sets. I've uploaded the second day's pics from MSN Search Champs . One of the pics is of Robert Scoble's Shakespearian soliloquy: 'I'm not an edge case' Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 10:04 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Jim Alchin and his blogging dinner

Jim Alchin , Microsoft's co-president of Platform Products & Services Division, had the opportunity to meet some of San Francisco's smartest bloggers at a dinner organized by Robert Scoble . Tara Hunt, one of the attendees posted: "Somehow, I got Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 28, 2006 6:35 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Hottest Microsoft bloggers

Microsoft Watch has put together a list of the Microsoft blogs they recommend : "When we first started monitoring the Microsoft blogs almost three years ago, there were so few that we easily could list them all on this site. Now there are well in excess Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 10:45 PM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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Others' thoughts on Attention

Craig Barnes of Attensa has posted some thoughts after hearing the Attention podcast I recorded with Nick and Kevin last week . "Ideally we’d like to get online with Alex and explain what we have essentially already implemented that goes far beyond the Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 8:52 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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RSS, OPML + SSE - Tutorial and Samples

The RSS Team blog : "We’ve received lots of requests – both from the community and from within Microsoft- for samples, samples, samples of SSE code in action. We heard you. Here is a tutorial outlining “SSE 101” with accompanying samples." - Tags: RSS Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 3:01 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Alas, MSN Search Champs is over

Alas, the fourth MSN Search Champs is over. Although I'm at Microsoft, I'm not an MSN'er, so I had two reasons for being there. The first was that I was invited by Brady Forrest as he wanted my feedback on aspects of the MSN products in development. The Read More...
Posted Friday, January 27, 2006 8:26 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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I think I'm going to start dreaming in outlines.

Anne 2.0: "I think I'm going to start dreaming in outlines." - Tags: Attention , OPML , dreaming Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2006 11:31 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Microsoft announces Live Labs

Dr. Gary Flake, Technical Fellow at Microsoft and the man responsible for bridging Microsoft Research (MSR) and MSN, announced Live Labs this morning at the MSN Search Champs event: "Earlier today at the Search Champs event I announced the formation of Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2006 12:16 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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MSN Search Champs podcast - Privacy conversation

I attended the MSN Search Champs today....and what a day. Given the recent news and concerns around the data MSN Search, Yahoo and AOL provided to the government, there was a session set up where the 57 bloggers / online experts at MSN Search Champ were Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 26, 2006 1:15 AM by alexbarn | 5 Comments
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Netflix, the Long Tail and baloney

If you happen think the Long Tail is load of baloney then consider this snippet from yesterday's NY Times article : "At NetFlix, the online DVD rental company, for example, roughly two-thirds of the films rented were recommended to subscribers by the Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:28 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

IE7: Native XMLHTTPRequest object (er, that's the Ajax thing)

Sunava Dutta, Program Manager in the Internet Explorer team posts : "I’m excited to mention that IE7 will support a scriptable native version of XMLHTTP. This can be instantiated using the same syntax across different browsers and decouples AJAX functionality Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2006 7:17 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Microsoft Expression ('Sparkle') ready for download

Microsoft Expression Interactive Designer ("Sparkle") is available for download . From the Expression team's new blog . " So, first, what is Expression? Microsoft Expression is a suite consisting of three products each intended for use mainly by the professional Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 24, 2006 6:38 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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MSDN TV has some 'Atlas' / AJAX goodness

MSDN TV has some AJAX goodness to show off: "Nikhil Kothari provides a brief overview of ASP.NET "Atlas", a framework to build rich Web apps on top of ASP.NET 2.0. The demo shows an app that uses the new server controls from the December CTP to incrementally Read More...
Posted Monday, January 23, 2006 11:31 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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the issue at hand

Chris from Touchstone : "The issue at hand is not how to get a user’s attention information (that’s easy) but rather how to help the user manage what their paying attention to across all the things they care about – both local and in the cloud. To service Read More...
Posted Monday, January 23, 2006 10:22 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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If I came across a 'semantic web', what would it look like?

If I came across a 'semantic web', what would it look like? Would I know it was semantic web just through my using it? What signs would I look for? Read More...
Posted Monday, January 23, 2006 10:05 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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RSS business models: full text or partial feeds?

To provide full text or partial feeds, that is the question. Well, that's the question if your revenue model depends on online advertising: page views, CTRs and CPAs. In his latest podcast show, Steve Gillmor, a writer / blogger for ZDNet asked Dan Farber Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 22, 2006 9:47 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Star Wars, faithfully reproduced in ASCII

Star Wars, faithfully reproduced in ASCII . Via Brad Feld . Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 22, 2006 9:01 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Attention podcast: RSS feedreaders and aggregators

I asked two of the RSS industry's leading lights to join me for a call and share their perspective on the question of where Attention is going with respect to RSS feedreaders and aggregators: Nick Bradbury creator FeedDemon , part of Newsgator (Nick also Read More...
Posted Sunday, January 22, 2006 2:49 PM by alexbarn | 8 Comments
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Getting Naked with Scoble last night

I got Naked with a bunch of other people last night. That is to say I went to Naked Conversations ' first book launch party , by Microsoft's Robert Scoble and Shel Israel . In attendance was a venerable who's who of Seattle area bloggers and geeks: Chris Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 21, 2006 9:50 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments

Evangelizing evangelism?

If I'm blogging this , does that mean I'm evangelizing the evangelizing of evanglism? Read More...
Posted Friday, January 20, 2006 6:49 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

Meet Microsoft Max on Channel 9

Meet Microsoft Max on Channel 9, Via Robert Scoble . Read More...
Posted Friday, January 20, 2006 8:24 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Attensa: 'attention is the holy grail'

Craig Barnes, founder of Attensa (RSS reader for Outlook and has a toolbar version for Firefox), posted on the subject of Attention yesterday. Not only that, but Craig has made it clear that the whole Attention data space is of strategic importance and Read More...
Posted Friday, January 20, 2006 7:42 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Feedreader features wishlist

If you: design, develop, test, architect, product manage, product plan or market: products or services that could be even loosely described as: feedreaders, RSS readers or aggregators and 'my' type services, then I recommend you read John Tropea's latest Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 19, 2006 11:23 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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The RDF vs. OPML Attention data format contest

Danny's posted up a challenge for some xml freaks. He's pointed to a bunch of his Attention data collections (wishlists, foaf, blogroll, etc) and is handing out Bonus points for conversion to these into a single Attention file format in RDF: "Anyhow the Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 19, 2006 4:03 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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The web isn't easily writeable

Scott Karp has been writing some some good stuff of late. His latest (in a series of 'Setting-the-Cat-Among-the-Pigeons-esque) post, he writes : " I’ve argued that if Media 2.0/New Media is based on Web 2.0 applications, it’s going to overwhelm the average Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 19, 2006 1:50 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Occasionally connected Wikis

Julien Couvreur has been working on something that sounds very, very good. "...I haven't been idle. I was working on AJAX-based web application with transparent support for disconnected operations. TiwyWiki is a prototype wiki that runs both online and Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2006 11:27 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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'Feeds I pay the most attention to'

I installed the 2.0 beta version of FeedDemon last night. I've been using FeedDemon since as my RSS feedreader for over 2 years now and just keeps getting better . Great job Nick! One thing that caught my attention in this latest release is the 'Feeds Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2006 9:26 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Tailrank and threading

Tailrank is developing nicely. Kevin Burton is doing a great job at speedily developing the service and seems to be increasingly getting the attention it deserves. In TechCrunch's latest review of Tailrank, Michael Arrington points out a feature I think Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 18, 2006 7:47 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Google: the Internet is not enough, part 2

First print , now radio . "The search advertising company purchased dMarc Broadcasting, a digital solutions provider for the radio industry, for $102 million cash and potentially as much as $1.136 billion over the next three years. Google announced plans Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 17, 2006 7:45 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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huge waves of information

anne 2.0 : "The problem I'd most like to solve as a technologist and as a blogger is information overload . When I moved beyond mom blogging into tech blogging I discovered an entire new ocean of information. Today I feel like a tow-in surfer at Jaws Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 9:39 PM by alexbarn | 4 Comments
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Mobile, mobile

Two new blogs focused on the mobile space joined the Web 2.0 Workgroup today: Open Gardens and MobileCrunch (you can import all the Web 2.0 Workgroup blogs into your RSS reader using this OPML file ) Also today, S. Somasegar , VP of Microsoft Developer Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 5:40 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Virtual India is live

Microsoft Research has released a first public build of their Virtual India research project. Language choices for the UI and map labels include English, Hindi, Kannada, and Tamil. Virtual Earth blog : "Before trying it out, I strongly encourage you to Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 3:26 PM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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And Man said, Let there be connectivity

I think this has the potential of being the best post of the year. I cried with laughter. "1:3 And Man said, Let there be connectivity: and there was global connectivity" Enjoy . - Tags: darknet , lightnet Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 3:01 PM by alexbarn | 7 Comments
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the shadow of the cathedral

Nicholas Carr: "Sometimes I think that if it weren't for the shadow of the cathedral, there'd be no place to set up the bazaar." Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 2:24 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Visio - the interaction designer's nail gun (2nd edition)

Hendrik Olsen has updated his article on using Visio for rapid prototyping for the web. The new edition includes a new version of the GUUUI Prototyping Tool for Visio 2003. Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 11:40 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

You have 50 milliseconds to impress

BBC News: You have 50 milliseconds to impress . Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 9:00 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Reading Lists = the killer app for OPML

It's becoming increasingly obvious that Reading Lists is the killer app that will help take OPML to the masses . It'll soon become a standard feature of most RSS feedreaders. Pito has created a nice screencast showing how the RSS feedreader he's created, Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 8:37 AM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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smart aggregators

I came across a great post today by Steve Borche - ' Information Overload: Can you see what's coming? '. Talked about 'smart aggregators'. I liked it: "The river of content is turning in to a flood and my instinct is to get to higher ground. But where Read More...
Posted Monday, January 16, 2006 12:07 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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photos are about 40% pixels and 60% context.

Tara (aka Miss Rogue) of Riya , the photo search / facial recognition company : "photos are about 40% pixels and 60% context." Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 14, 2006 11:29 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Growth strong, revenue lackluster

Burnham’s Beat Reports Record Q4 Revenues : "Burnham’s Beat today reported record results for its fourth quarter ended December 31, 2005. Revenues for Q4 2005 were $168.64 up 176% compared to $61.08 in Q4 2004 and up 27.3% sequentially vs. Q3 2005. Earnings Read More...
Posted Saturday, January 14, 2006 12:49 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Tagnautica

Tagnautica is cute little UI for Flash Flickr tags. Uses Flashr - a Flickr API wrapper for Flash. Via information aesthetics . Tags: tags , Flickr , folksonomy , UI , Flash , API Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 6:52 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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a tune for the geeks

Friday amusement - a tune for the geeks . Via Zeo . Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 6:39 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

You cannot ignore yourself

Aynne was reminded : Tags: attention Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 6:21 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Correction: Geek dinner, Seattle / Redmond, Feb 3

Update, just realised the dinner is February 3 (that's a Friday). Frank pinged me to let me know he's in Redmond for a few days in early Feb. He suggested we get a geek dinner together - great idea! So that's it. Date is February 4 3 (that's a Friday), Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 6:09 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments

Reactions to MSN adLab

Greg Linden has collated some reactions to the news of Microsoft adCenter Incubation Lab (adLab). Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 10:51 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments
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Detracting from the hype and buzz

From the boys at Supr.c.ilio.us , an open letter to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch : "Subject: This is no way to build a bubble. Mr. Arrington, Concise, sensible and well researched articles about possible acquisitions are no way to build a bubble. Blog Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 10:41 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Hotmail, 10,000 servers, 100 sys admins

ACM Queue has an interview with Phil Smoot, a product unit manager (PUM) in Microsoft’s MSN division. "In the landscape of today’s megaservices, Hotmail just might be Mount Everest. One of the oldest free Web e-mail services, Hotmail relies on more than Read More...
Posted Friday, January 13, 2006 10:18 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Draw-Something

Draw-Something, by Rob Meyers , is a program that generates original drawings. It does so by generating a simple random polyline scribble then drawing around that using a simple maze-running algorithm. Here's my little collection: Via Future Feeder . Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006 10:56 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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using your social network as a filter

David Weinberger is looking for examples of sites/services that aggregate and filter news and posts by using your social network as a filter. I've suggested Tailrank on the basis that my blogroll / OPML file could be defined as a form of a social network. Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006 3:17 PM by alexbarn | 3 Comments
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Slashdot is far from dying

Joshua Allen puts one myth to rest : "Slashdot is far from dying ...the site still wields an enormous amount of influence. That's because it's been around so long, it's been big, visible, and influential for so long, and their purpose is provide their Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006 2:39 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments

Largest prime number found

CIO Today : "A team of researchers at Central Missouri State University has discovered the largest known prime number, university officials said Tuesday. " ...The team programmed 700 university computers to run the program years ago, Boone said. In mid-December, Read More...
Posted Thursday, January 12, 2006 11:03 AM by alexbarn | 2 Comments

end of cyberspace

Francois Gossieaux points out a new blog I've just subscribed to: "According to Alex Soojung-Kim Pang from the Institute for the Future , it also means the end of cyberspace. As a matter of fact he thinks that the idea has gained enough popularity to Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 11:13 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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(blog) Plagiarism Today

It's not April 1st already is it? Via Michael Arrington . Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 10:53 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Better still, whack in your OPML

Russell Beattie : "I’m down to 315 feeds right now, and I’m actually making an effort to cut more. I don’t think there’s any reason to see the same news story over and over and over again in my news reader because I subscribe to 20 links blogs who do Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 9:32 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Mashup Feed

John Musser : "ProgrammableWeb’s ‘mashup-only’ site is live: http://www.mashupfeed.com What is it? As the name implies it’s a site, a very small one-page site for now, that is only about mashups: recent mashups, popular mashups, mashup tag clouds, and Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 9:19 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Term extraction for tagclouds

Duncan MacKenzie : "I was playing around with Yahoo's term extraction service, as a possible path to tagging (this is the same service used behind TagCloud.com , for example), and I created this C# class libary with a sample app written in Windows Forms." Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:38 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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AmazonBay

AmazonBay , via Ross Mayfield . "If you liked EPIC 2014, the Googlezon film, and have dreams of perfect liquidity, you will love Sean Park's AmazonBay 2015 -- a future film on Financial Services disrupted by the net." Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 2:36 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Visual Studio 'Live'...

John Montgomery : "After seven years in developer division marketing, I'm making a transition into the product team to work as a program manager to help define what a "Live" version of Visual Studio might look like. ...So I've started imagining what the Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 1:59 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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20 thoughts on Attention

I've been carrying a number of thoughts relating to Attention and rather trying to create a huge essay, I've decided just to offload these as a partially random list. Would be great to get your feedback, discussion, agreement and brutal rebutal. 20 thoughts Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 9:00 AM by alexbarn | 23 Comments
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My book tagloud

My book tagloud at Library Thing . Tags: Web2.0 , tagcloud , tag Read More...
Posted Wednesday, January 11, 2006 12:06 AM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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If you have JavaSpit enabled...

"If you have JavaSpit enabled..." Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:57 PM by alexbarn | 0 Comments
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Multiples and mashups

I've had the good fortune of meeting Matt McAlister of Yahoo, great thinker, really nice guy. For some reason, an old post of his cropped up in my reader today. Not only did the piece point out some good mashup / Web 2.0 material (that's my excuse for Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 11:16 PM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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Tag Gardening

Tag Gardening . James Governor has coined a phrase (or a tag) that I'm sure I'll see crop up again... "Like plants or animals, tags evolve in an emergent fashion, open to hybridisation. Stewardship can help grow and put roots down. Helping the darwinian Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 9:52 AM by alexbarn | 1 Comments
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BBC Radio 4 on Web 2.0

Is the Internet changing? That's the question a BBC Radio 4 programme has investigated. Steve Bowbrick (my blogdaddy ), along with Nicholas Carr , Paul Miller , Joe Krauss , Excite founder and now the man behind Jotspot all appeared on the BBC Radio 4 Read More...
Posted Tuesday, January 10, 2006 8:59 AM by alexbarn |