January 2006 - Posts

U.S. Government using MSN Search technology
27 January 06 10:49 AM | michaelaffronti | 0 Comments   

The U.S. government has recently expanded its search capabilities across many of its public-facing internet sites using technology from MSN that was previously Microsoft-only, allowing for a more "citizen-focused" information portal. http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1915378,00.as Read More...

Filed under: Search, Technology News

Congressmen Blogging
26 January 06 07:31 AM | michaelaffronti | 3 Comments   

There are now at least 11 confirmed Congressmen blogging on either their own sites or as guest authors on different political sites. Why is this cool? Most people don't associate political figures with blogs in a good light, let alone having them blog Read More...

Filed under: Technology News

Portable Media Devices - where's my content?
15 January 06 09:01 AM | michaelaffronti | 5 Comments   

As a long-time lover of gadgets, music, movies, and all things in between, as well as being the proud owner of a TiVo, Media Center, and multiple PMD (portable media devices), I think the battle between consumers, artists, and production companies about Read More...

Filed under: Technology News

Simple Sharing Extensions
13 January 06 04:03 PM | michaelaffronti | 0 Comments   

This has been around a bunch, but I figured I would give it due dilligence and post a link to the MSDN article that describes the infrastucture and provides examples: http://msdn.microsoft.com/xml/rss/sse/ It's VERY cool technology that I've had the opportunity Read More...

Filed under: RSS Aggregation, Sharing

Instant Search - Part 4: The New Search Lexicon
12 January 06 07:52 PM | michaelaffronti | 8 Comments   

Search before Outlook 12 Search in Outlook 2003 had many issues that prevented users from taking full advantage of it as a primary means of interacting with their mail data. The Find UI was not visible by default, and most users did not know how to turn Read More...

Filed under: Search

Technorati is so cool...
05 January 06 04:55 PM | michaelaffronti | 2 Comments   

I think one of the coolest parts about having a blog is being able to see who communicates about it around the web, and Technorati is awesome for that. I regularly click on the "who blogs about me" link ( http://www.technorati.com/search/http://blogs.msdn.com/michael_affronti?cc=hwnjjtb5rc Read More...

Filed under: General

RSS Aggregation - Part 2: Our Implementation
03 January 06 02:24 PM | michaelaffronti | 12 Comments   

Problems facing RSS right now RSS presents the user with an entirely new way of retrieving, monitoring, and following up with web-based information sources. The technology is still in its infancy, as two competing standards (RSS and ATOM) compete to be Read More...