Archive for November, 2004

Desktop search - the latest search battlefield.

Today brings leaked screenshots of the forthcoming Microsoft Desktop Search. The product isn’t slated for release until 2005, but a beta is still expected sometime this year.

The screenshots are news, but that M$ would enter the product space isn’t. Many are aready there: My personal favorite X1 (which Google Desktop Search, Yahoo Desktop Search, and new players like Blinks, Copernic, and many others.

Like lots of things that are too efficient at processing information, desktop search has already started to raise security concerns, since many of them capture every web page you visit, every document you create or view, and every in-and-out email.

Yesterday at one of our company Tech Talks, a prominent engineer giving the talk used the term “syntax candy“.

Syntax Candy

Computer code or markup (syntax) that is “very nice and sweet“

…that makes data easier to digest or manipulate

…additions that make things run smoother

madeyouthink.org

San Francisco is a city of neighborhoods. The Haight, The Mission, North Beach, Bernal Heights, SoMa (South of Market).

SoMa’s great, I lived and worked there for the first couple San Francisco years. It’s where all the internet companies are (were?), a landscape of warehouses and lofts, machine shops and furniture stores, artist studios and galleries, and diverse overall.

But a thing about SoMa is that there’s an amazing amount of feces laying around. While some people may think that any amount amazing — and I’d be one of these people — there really is a substantial quantity laying around.

Human feces mostly, but that presence seems to encourage dog owners to be slightly more lackadaisical with their collection duties.

I’m not exactly sure why that is. There are lots of homeless people in SoMa, so that obviously contributes. (It’s a flat neighborhood, and probably gets more sun - less fog - than any other area of The City.). In addition to the homeless population, there’s also a lot of drug users and druggie services like rehab clinics and probation offices. I’m not sure if folks that do hard drugs at the end of back alleys also like to shit on the sidewalk, but I wouldn’t put it past ‘em.

Well, at least it’s being put to good use now: madeyouthink.org

My friend Brian from 1000 Journals sent me this link. Thanks Brian!

Wired has a nice overview of iPodding - which hopes to do for online audio content what TiVo did for television.

Known as podcasting, the technology is a new take on syndicated content feeds like RSS and Atom. But instead of pushing text from blogs and news sites to various content aggregators like FeedDemon and Bloglines, podcasting sends audio content directly to an iPod or other MP3 player.

The article is a few weeks old, but I just bumbled on it again so I thought I’d point it out.

No Need to Click Here - I’m just claiming my feed at Feedster

I pointed to Juicy Studio’s article It’s all in the MIME a few days ago in my mini-blog. Well, Gez Lemon, the author of Juicy Studio, follows that up with some MIME Type Test Suites.

Did you notice the shameless plug for my Mini-Blog? Good. Enjoy it. (The 8 most recent posts to my mini-blog are included in the right column on my main blog.)

Why have a mini-blog? What’s the difference? Who’s idea was it? First of all, it wasn’t my idea. I remember noting it first at my friend Ernie’s blog, but it’s pretty common and you’ll find something similar at mezzoblue and even Digital-Web’s What’s New area.

Why have a mini-blog? The idea it to be able to quickly blog lots of things, without diluting the quality of the main blog. My mini-blog is hosted for free by bloglines. I read most of my feeds at Bloglines (it’s my recommended RSS Aggregator). Their integrated publishing/blogging capabilities make it trivial to blog things of interest without breaking stride. Instead of writing a long entry of for this blog, I can just quickly and effortlessly flag things of interest and they show up in my mini-blog.

Anyways, I hope this will allow me to publish even more content, and that you find it interesting.

Now, go get a free Bloglines account, I can’t recommend it enough!