Archive for the 'Standards' Category
November 22, 2005
Extension to RSS Spec Released
Microsoft has just published an extension to RSS and OPML to enable updates to be share back and forth (I think) via RSS and OPML.
Ray Ozzie has a post on how it came about.
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November 17, 2005
W3C Forms Working Group on Web APIs
The W3C is forming a working group to look standards for Web APIs. This will be good in the long run for making AJAX interfaces much easier to develop across browsers and platforms.
The W3C Web API Working Group is chartered to develop standard APIs for client-side Web Application development. This work will include both documenting existing APIs such as XMLHttpRequest and developing new APIs in order to enable richer Web Applications.
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November 10, 2005
Boxwood Technology Adds RSS to Job Board Service
Boxwood Technology is pretty much on top of the heap for hosted job board services for associations. (Disclaimer: I was a client of theirs when I worked at ASHA and I serve with Boxwood Chairman John Bell on the ASAE Tech Council.) They have just added RSS feeds to their service, which is a fantastic extension. Now job seekers can subscribe to all new jobs or to the results of a specific search. After they subscribe, any newly posted jobs will appear in their newsreader of choice. Nice! They should mention this service on their web site.
For an example, see ASAE’s job center. There is an orange RSS button at the bottom of the screen.
A couple of improvements I think they could make include:
- Include an RSS autodiscovery tag in the page markup that will allow people to more easily subscribe with newsreaders that look for the tag.
- Make the RSS buttom a direct link to the RSS feed rather than a pop-up window (not sure why you would want a pop-up unless they are trying to discourage indexing of the feeds).
- Add some buttons for easily subscribing via some of the more popular online newsreaders (such as Yahoo!, bloglines, google, etc.).
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November 1, 2005
Fun with Map APIs
I have been looking into Yahoo!’s mapping service API this week (Google offers one as well). What they have done is opened up their mapping services so that you can display your data on their maps. I have created a example on Yahoo! that displays my upcoming speaking gigs. Kind of silly but it took me all of 15 minutes to put this together which is quite amazing. It is all driven by this little xml file.
I think this kind of thing could be quite useful for association meetings where you could develop your own custom map of the meeting and lodging facilities related to your event. You could even create a special map for VIPs with all the locations of special dinners and other invitation-only events.
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October 10, 2005
MySQL and Oracle
Oracle just bought a company that provides a key piece of technology for the MySQL database. Here is Jeremy Zawodny’s summary of the situation.
MySQL is now faced with the prospect of licensing technology they cannot ship without from their biggest rival. Interestingly, there’s always been once piece of the InnoDB puzzle that’s not available under the GPL: the InnoDB Hot Backup Tool. Without it, database administrators cannot backup their InnoDB tables without shutting down MySQL or at least locking out all transactions.
Oracle just bought themselves a whole lot of leverage with MySQL AB and a talented team of database engineers to boot.
Keep an eye on this if you use MySQL within your organization.
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October 7, 2005
Going to N-TEN DC?
I’ll be attending N-TEN’s DC meeting next Tuesday, Oct 11. The theme of the conference is data integration. Who ever has issues with that? ;)
If you’ll be there and want to say hi, just drop me a note.
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October 7, 2005
Google RSS Reader
Google is launching an RSS reader service.
(Via evhead.)
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October 6, 2005
JPEG Patent Woes?
Just saw this on Paul Bissex’s blog: Burn all JPEGs?:
Some recent news is giving me flashbacks to 1995, when Unisys sprung their GIF patent surprise on the young World Wide Web. We got quite angry and some enterprising people even built a replacement for the beloved GIF.
Are we going there again? Forgent, a Texas company that “develops and licenses intellectual property and makes scheduling software” (it makes me feel dirty just to type that) is suing 40 companies, including Microsoft, Apple, and Yahoo, for infringing on JPEG-related patent No. 4,698,672.
Sounds like patent trolling to me. Hopefully this will not become an issue (I imagine it will unite a big chunk of silicon valley to fight it if it does).
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October 4, 2005
NewsGator Eats Ranchero Software
Just heard that NewsGator has bought Ranchero Software, the makers of NetNewsWire, which is my RSS newsreader of choice on the Mac:
Q: How does NetNewsWire fit into NewsGator’s plans?
Greg: Over the last 2.5 years, we’ve built a comprehensive RSS aggregation platform. We have clients for the web, for email clients, for mobile phones and PDAs, and even for your TV. With the acquisition of FeedDemon a few months ago, we added the industry-leading Windows desktop aggregator. NetNewsWire really completes this story for us – we now have the best client on the Mac, which lets us serve this exciting part of the market as well. And make no mistake – we’re very excited about the Mac. Just looking at our data shows a huge penetration of RSS tools among Mac users – clearly you’re all early technology adopters, and that gives us a unique opportunity to try out new leading-edge stuff with you.
Funny thing is that the picture on the announcement page is of a guy using a Windows laptop. :) This should lead to some great integration features for NNW in the future.
NewsGator should have a big knowledge lead on their competitors since they have hired by acquiring the developers of the two premiere RSS desktop applications. That’s probably worth more in the long run than the software.
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September 20, 2005
Opera Web Browser Now Free
The Opera web browser is now available for free without embedded advertising. From the site:
Opera has removed the banners, found within our browser, and the licensing fee. Opera’s growth, due to tremendous worldwide customer support, has made today’s milestone an achievable goal.
Hey, how about that. An actually competitive browser market has returned with more than 2 free options. Welcome back to the mid-to-late-90s!
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