Wednesday, June 30, 2004

Sharpreader RSS Aggregator I've been using Sharpreader now for a couple of weeks. I'm satisfied but looking forward to upgrading my Firefox browser to version 0.9.1 and adding the new Sage RSS and ATOM feed aggregator extension. 11:07:37 PM

	Wednesday, June 16, 2004

On the air with Steve Crowley's American Scene Today we will cover Movies (VOD), eBay's new RSS feeds and assorted topics and sites to see. I'll introduce a teaser about what's coming soon in the energy business also. Tune it to American Scene Radio for more. Movielink.com - Rent Any Movie For Just $0.99. Movielink is a new service that allows you to download movies to watch on your computer. After you download a movie you'll have 30 days to begin watching it. Once you begin viewing the movie, you can watch it as many times as you like in a 24 hour time span. If you travel it'll make a great use for your laptop. It won't work with Mozilla Firefox so you'll have to use IE 5.0 or later. Let's argue with The Motley Fool: My news aggregator picked this up from the Motley Fool's RSS feed: "Netflix Retains Edge. Don't believe the hype. VOD threats have nothing on Netflix." Motley says that Video-on-demand (VOD) technology hasn't caught up with Netflix, and that there isn't a real present threat, but I think they are underestimating the competition. We must agree that VOD isn't there yet but it's coming. And with options like Movielink, the playing field is going to get crowded. It may not be VOD that raises the biggest challenge. Just in the last couple of weeks, Blockbuster has initiated their Unlimited Movie Pass, a rental campaign with no late fees, no due dates, no long term commitments on a monthly recurring charge on your credit card. Now if you look at it, Netflix has the problem to overcome. Do customers want to wait for the post office to deliver for a few dollars less per month? Or will they get better value and convenience by joining the Blockbuster offer? It took a while for Blockbuster to wake up, but I think they are going to win the battle in the short run. Netflix is better positioned for VOD in my opinion, and they might need to go there sooner rather than later. Let's just say that Business Week was on target in their article on Convergience, It's bound to happen as broadband continues to gain speed and market penetration. Then VOD will be the standard. eBay's RSS feeds Senior manager of developer relations at eBay, Jeffrey McManus, announced the RSS rollout on his weblog and said eBay's feeds would be used to push special offers, promotions and system status messages via RSS. "[They are] highly recommended if you use a Weblog reader and are the least bit serious about using eBay," McManus said. The RSS feeds, which appear to be targeting the hardcore eBay buyer and shopper, are available here: General Announcements and System Announcements. Using RSS, an interesting third party site, FreeBiddingTools.com, allows you to search for specific item updates. I've tried it and found it very useful for finding good deals. It's a good idea and seems to work very well. You can generate your own custom RSS feed for your favorite eBay search. Once you click the "Generate" button below, your RSS feed will be generated for you. After it's created, simply copy the RSS location and paste the URL into your favorite RSS Aggregator. 12:03:36 AM

	Tuesday, June 08, 2004

Google position challenge: As the quest for Google positioning continues, you might be interested in reading about the latest Google challenge. The contest, called the SEO Challenge, tasked webmasters and site owners with using any optimization method to try to claim the top spot on Google for an odd term, which loosely means "dark blue" in Latin. DarkBlue, an Australian affiliate-marketing company, and SearchGuild.com were the sponsors of the competition. Read the article in Wired News at Wired.com. 12:49:14 PM

eBay announces RSS feeds. InternetNews: eBay announces RSS feeds. Thanks to Robert Scoble for this link. I've added it to my aggregator. It looks very interesting... can't wait to see how useful it is. 8:42:49 AM

	Wednesday, June 02, 2004

What is RSS?  You might try Dave Winer's blog, he boils down RSS and gives a loose explanation of features and benefits in his "what RSS is" blog.  From my point of view, at the very least, RSS develops and feeds information that develops community.  You'll get used to aggregators, the essential tool of the blogger, delivering content from post to post.  If you grow tired of the blogger?  Delete the RSS feed.  Simple.  Try doing that to a spammer, you'll never get off his list! Want to see the most recently updated weblogs?  You might also like reading the most popular Radio weblogs.   In any event, blogs are reshaping the internet.  It's back to the old days folks, when newsgroups were spamless and discussion boards were essential.  Though many still use both and find them useful, the difference is that RSS feeds you...effortlessly.  10:01:14 PM

	Sunday, May 30, 2004

All Clear... The rotation of this storm went directly over our home but the funnel had receded just a few miles earlier.  It's the 4th round of tornadic storms which have come within 2 miles of our home in the last 6 weeks.  They are really awesome to watch but one has to be careful not to test them foolishly.  The previous storm occured early one evening as I was walking with my wife and dog.  Upon seeing the wall cloud, my wife scooted home and I decided to view the storm by walking out to the middle of a pedestrian bridge over the Arkansas river. It was an awesome sight. I could see that the wall cloud was going to cross the river about a mile north of me, but when the trailing end of the cloud swung south towards me, I put my dog and my Reeboks in high gear. I caught a lot of heck from my family when I got home.  It's nice to know they care about me, but  Norman, my Yellow Lab wouldn't make a good Toto. We know that many here stand praying against such storms, and they just dissipate before crossing the river.  Up to now every storm has failed to hold its energy upon approaching Tulsa over the last few years.  It's just been interesting to see them hop over Tulsa and then regain strength on the other side.  This one did. 2:07:53 AM

	Saturday, May 29, 2004

Tornado coming!  Another stormy night in Oklahoma We are getting warnings just to the west of us, coming into Creek County, of a tornado on the ground.  The storm chaser closest to the storm is saying it's a large tornado kicking up a significant debris field.  He can see the tornado only as background lightning flashes.    We'll be up late tonight watching this storm as it approaches.  If you lived here, you'd know how well our warning systems work.  We are very well informed every time we have a tornadic storm.  These storms can be nerve wracking.  Thankfully, our weather forecasters and storm chasers really save lives.  11:39:42 PM

	Friday, May 28, 2004

I can live with it Just some CSS mods to the text and header color changes make this blog style palatable, for now. There are tweeks I can do later but the items I changed mattered most to me.  I'm not a fan of the Geneva font which is used in the Radio template.  The masthead was too bright... I'll change the link mouseover colors in some fashion when I get to it.  Visited link colors are questionable. I've disabled comments because the Userland server is very slow with it enabled.  Since I host on my server and mirror on the Userland server, comments are intitiated from only the Userland server.  My blog speed increased dramatically when I disabled that function. Radio sometimes has a mind of its own.  Due to some settings the old design reappeared.  Hopefully this last change squashed it. So, if you have a comment on any of my posts, please feel to email me at randy@phillipsonline.com 12:06:01 AM