Vlad

I’m generally not a Google fanboy. Really! Though, I do think their search is the best thing since sliced bread and Gmail is the greatest free service (just a figure of speech, nothing is free these days). And I love the Reader.

Web feeds (RSS or Atom) are great if you want to track blogs, discussions, news and web sites of all kind. I’ve been using them for some time and I have a strong feeling I’ll stick to them some more. But consuming them is a long story. In time I’ve used numerous systems. Some were desktop apps, others were web services. I’ve had my share of passing OPMLs from one program/service to another. Read more »

Here goes:

• TechRepublic
  • 11 Ways To Motivate Geeks
  • Outlook 2007 preview & review
• BoingBoing
  • Zotero – Firefox for scholars and infovores (link)
• Engadget
  • DIY HD projector
  • Clear polycarbonate car wheelzzzz
  • Microsoft supports Linux via Novell; Satan phones Gates regarding temperature (loved the title)
• Lifehacker
  • Firefox extension to remote control uTorrent (ok, the uTorrent web interface has been in public beta for a while now, but then there’s the extension)
• Yahoo! Biz
  • Cloudbreak strikes gold in Romania
    
• Google
  • Gmail mobile client (excellent, if only I could use it to get all my mobile email, via POP3)
• CNET News
  • Security hole in Visual Studio
• Google Blogoscoped
  • eBay/PayPal bombed
  • TODOs in Gmail?
• SvN
  • Cooking with comics

There were some more but my ISP ate my homework, that’s all I recovered from Drafts.

Being an avid consumer of feeds I’m dedicating a lot of time to reading through blogs and news. So why not try to sum up, maybe on a weekly basis, what catches my eyes?

Here goes:

• Boing Boing: Bulgarian foreign ministry starts blog, opens content under Creative Commons License
• Lifehacker: DIY magnetic power connector
• Joel Spolsky: The Guerrilla Guide to Interviewing v3.0
• Slashdot: BitTorrent tracker admin sent to prison
• Engadget: AllOfMp3′s DRM cracked – all MP3s available for free download
• Engadget: Alienware stylish media center PC
• Techdirt: Get RIAA to drop case: hire a lawyer that defeated them before
• Lifehacker: Firefox 2.0 config tweaks – tip: add to these TinyMenu and MinimizeToTray
• Engadget (hey, I’m a big fan): Run OS X on any x86 PC – all legal but in command line
• Rondam Ramblings: Top ten geek business myths – also read Paul Graham’s 18 mistakes that kill startups
• Seth Godin: Cheaper
• Engadget: UPenn scientist create artificial retina on a silicon chip

I hope these will keep you entertained over the weekend!

I’ve been watching Mioritics.RSS for some time now and every once in a while an interesting feed would pop up. Lately though that’s not the case. And while I put up with spam such as Nicocure, No more hair and Hair loss treatment (wtf: make up your mind already!) I won’t be putting up with the latest Videoclipuri manele.

I’m unsubscribing and will stay away until they get someone to MODERATE entries! If you feel like me, please help boycott Mioritics.RSS! Or at least give them some bad publicity.

Everybody is talking about it – the public beta for Internet Explorer 7. Here’s my 2 cents: not that a big deal. Microsoft has failed again to put the end user in the equation. Or the developers.

The installation file is 11,2 MB, more than double Firefox is. And wait till you run it. Here’s the good news: it appears IE7 is unable to install over itself. So if you had IE7 beta 1 (MSDN subscriber) you’ll need to uninstall it before installing beta 2. Quite a pain as it involves uninstalling and rebooting. So we’re back to IE 6. But then Microsoft decides it’s time for my IE 6 to be updated and starts downloading and installing updates. Which require another reboot.

Finally, I get to start the installation of the beta 2. First it extracts the file it needs. It does that straight in c:\ and not in TEMP. And in the end I have to reboot. That’s 3rd time. Will I get anything done today?

Did I mention IE7 is unable to install over itself. I can’t wait till the final release, then I’ll be able to reboot my machine a few more times again :p

So, three reboots down the road, a lot of warnings from Microsoft Antispyware (MS, they’re both your damn products, why can’t they just get along?) and it started. First it needs to ask me some questions about fishing and stuff which it repeats just as soon as I say “No thanks!”. And then it crashes – some internal problem with frames. Arghhhhh!!!!!

Second time is luckier, it manages to start and not crash. Yet! So what’s changed? Not much from the beta 1. A bit of polishing on the GUI. Supposedly better feeds handling though i still haven’t completly understood how it handles them and why is everybody so keen about MS supporting feed parsing. Instead of relying on MS, an open source, standards based library could be put together for everyone to use.

But then again, that wouldn’t suit programmers who think all you need is a mouse and MS wizards to create great software. Anyway, so far IE7b2 doesn’t suit me, I’ll stick to Firefox for browsing. Get Firefox!