TECHNOLOGY: RSS is nothing more than XML, but what implications

Monday, March 5, 2007

http://www.brightcove.com/title.jsp?title=570307363

Practical RSS
John Mahoney
CTO / co-founder of Instant Information

RSS is nothing more than a specific application of XML applied to the information distribution problem. Here’s an excellent short explanation of it. Everyone may benefit from. RSS could be the way out of the morass of email we all deal with every day. Blogs, many websites, wikis, most forums can all produce an rss feed.

Envision instead of sending an milti-meg email full of attachments, that absorbs resources galore all over, one can create an entry that gets shared automagically with everyone who wants it. RSS is a pull technology. Your reader PULLS the content your interested in as opposed to you having to go get it. You can control it.

It turns the information model upside down from the way we think about it now.

Instead of one email with a bunch of carbon copies, you can “subscribe” to sources. on the intranet and internet, who will feed you.

I’ve been “doing” RSS as both a publisher and a consumer for a while now and would be happy to show you how it can work for you.

If someone can’t live outside of Microsoft LookOut, there is a freeware product called RSSPOPPER that will make an rss feed look like email folder to your LookOut. ;-) Wouldn’t want anyone to go into withdrawal.

If you are on email subscription lists, there are ways to turn them into rss feeds as well.

I’d love to “consult” with anyone who thinks I can help.

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Posted by reinkefj

RANT: Yet Another abuse of the troops

Monday, March 5, 2007

http://alternet.org/waroniraq/48788/

60,000 Marriages Broken by Iraq, Including Mine
By Stacy Bannerman, The Progressive
Posted March 5, 2007.

*** begin quote ***

Congress has abandoned the troops for nearly four years. It is the soldiers, their families, and the people of Iraq that pay the human costs. The tab so far: more than 3,000 dead U.S. troops, tens of thousands of wounded, over half a million Iraqi casualties, roughly 250,000 American servicemen and women struggling with PTSD, and almost 60,000 military marriages that have been broken by this war. Including mine.

*** end quote ***

This an inexcusable abuse of our people in uniform. The costs of this “war”, (undeclared by Congress), like those of many others, is just conveniently “overlooked” by the political class.

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Posted by reinkefj

TECHNOLOGY: Divshare – Free eternal large file hosting (How’d they do that?)

Monday, March 5, 2007

http://distributedresearch.net/blog/
2007/03/04/divshare-free-file-hosting-
for-mp3s-and-blog-pictures/

http://tinyurl.com/32h4rj

Divshare – Free file hosting for mp3s and blog pictures
Andy Roberts
an online researcher who initiated distributedresearch.net

***Begin Quote***

Divshare allows you to upload as many files as you like, up to 200Mb per file and then serves them up wherever you like for free, as text links, hotlinked from your blog or embedded as an mp3 player. And there’s a divshare uploader plugin for WordPress.org which makes it so easy to add pictures to a blog without incurring any bandwith or file quota charges, whilst keeping them all organised together under your divshare account, accessible from the dashboard. This would probably have some advantages over using flickr as a file hosting resource for blogs and wiki.

***End Quote***

Naturally, I like anything that is free. This site purports to keep anything online for free forever? I don’t know how they can do it, but that doesn’t prevent me from trying it out.

Of course, being paranoid, I’d only put stuff there that I didn’t really care about. If it was the least bit private, it’d have to be encrypted.

YMMV, but it might be useful.

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Posted by reinkefj

INTERESTING: Free language lessons

Monday, March 5, 2007

http://www.language-learning-advisor.com/
language-learning-advisor-news.html

*** begin quote ***

Free FSI Language Courses is a site that is making available all of the old FSI language courses created by the US government. These courses are free for download (in pdf and mp3 formats) for anyone who wants them. A number of courses are currently up and in due time many others will be there as well.

*** end quote ***

Could be a cheap way to learn a language.

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Posted by reinkefj

MONEY: Rebates … you almost fooled me.

Monday, March 5, 2007

I was about to buy some cheap tech dodad online when I noticed the price jumped when I went to check out.

Rebate?

I don’t know about you but I’ve learned my lesson. I don’t do rebates! I think it’s an unfair business practice.

As a matter of fact, I punish vendors with this scam. I refuse to do business with them at all.

Good bye Buy Dot Com.

You almost fooled me. But you won’t get that chance again.

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Posted by reinkefj