Monday, May 30, 2005

Blogger.com says no to Full Text ATOM

It's bad enough that Blogger only supports ATOM (my RSS feed is provided via the excellent FeedBurner service). Now they've decided that I don't need to be publishing full text feeds (even though I'm not using blogspot.com for hosting...). I'm sure this is a bug since there are controls for enabling / disabling full text site feeds. It seems like the only changes that ever happen on Blogger these days are when something gets broken... Update: Bah! Full Text feeds are back.

Commenting in RSS

Russell Beattie has an interesting idea - he wants a blog that is completely implemented in RSS. So he's trying to solve some of the problems like how to allow comments - by putting the commenting form directly in the HTML for the RSS feed (you need to look at the posts in an RSS aggregator to see the web form). One downside to this is that before I make a comment, I usually like to read other peoples comments to make sure that the point hasn't been raised already. Also the web form typically isn't going to preload the username / email / weblog fields. I think a better solution would be an RSS / ATOM extension that allows an aggregator to directly post a comment.

Encryption Key Ransom

Bruce Schneier describes a new type of computer virus that encrypts all of your files and then hold the encryption key ransom. The most interesting part was this observation:
Internet attacks have changed over the last couple of years. They're no longer about hackers. They're about criminals. And we should expect to see more of this sort of thing in the future.

Karmann Ghia 993 RS

Don't ask me why but these guys sell old cars bodies like Karman Ghia's with a Porsche 993 RS engine in them. Fortunately, I think they also took the brakes and suspension from a 993 as well. I always wanted one of these as a kid but now I live in California and could easily buy one - I don't! A friend used to own one and said that it had trouble making it over Hwy 17 to Santa Cruz so maybe a 993 engine is just what it needs. Via autoblog.it.

GMail RSS Feeds with labels

From Inside Google, some improvements in the GMail ATOM support. You've been able to subscribe to the unread items in your GMail inbox for a while (although it's not exactly well documented any more) - now you can subscribe to the mail for a specific label within GMail. The URL looks something like this: https://gmail.google.com/gmail/feed/atom/

Saturday, May 28, 2005

Amazon Price Drop Guarantee

Apparently Amazon offers a 30 day price drop guarantee on anything you buy from them:
Did you know that if the price on something you buy drops, within 30 days of your purchase date, Amazon.com will credit you the difference if you ask for it? It’s a not-advertised price drop policy that most people don’t know about and it’s saved me tons of money over the last few years. I didn’t know it was “secret” until I brought up recently and no one knew what I was talking about, so I thought I’d write a post all about how to take advantage of it. One of the great things about the drop policy is that it still works for orders where a coupon is involved or a “Buy Both and Save” deal is utilized. They only consider the individual item prices (based on the invoice) and not the final price after discounts!

Friday, May 27, 2005

House of Leaves

Defective Yeti reviews "House of Leaves" - quite honestly the freakiest book I've ever read. The typography alone will scare the crap out of you. Part of this was that while reading it, I was on a road trip of the desert south-west (California, Nevada, Arizona) and characters in the book kept visiting places I'd just been.

Tom Peters' Presentation Tips

Tom Peters has a bunch of tips on giving great presentations (as a PowerPoint file) - via Paul Kedrosky. My own presentation tip is don't use Powerpoint unless you really need to - too often it's just a crutch for giving presentations where your just reading the slides with lots of fancy transitions. Paul excerpted some of Tom's tips:
1. Total commitment to the Problem/Project/Outcome 2. A compelling "Story line"/"Plot" 3. Enough data to sink a tanker (98% in reserve) 4. Know the data from memory; ability to manipulate the data in your head 5. Great stories/Illustrations/Vignettes 6. Superb "political antennae" (you must "play the room" like a Virtuoso and be hyper-attentive to the likes of Body Language) 7. By hook or by crook … CONNECT 7A. CONNECT! CONNECT! CONNECT! 8. Punch line/Plot Outline/WOW/Surprise in first one to two minutes

Thursday, May 26, 2005

Pixie-dust projects

Adi Oltean attempts to classify the various kinds of open source projects. I especially liked this one:
3) Pixie-dust projects. Here I put big, commercial projects that were morphed in an open source variation, as in an attempt to sprinkle the open source pixie dust to help them to remain competitive. Examples: Netscape (and probably Solaris?).