For those accustomed to having their newspaper delivered to their desk, the equivalent service can be realized by delivering news to your desktop. All of the following are free and just take moments to implement. Three major categories: 1. Viewing in your browser 2. Viewing with a desktop application (aggregator) 3. Receiving each new post via email
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1. Viewing RSS content in your browser Eventually, all web browsers will have built-in RSS capabilities. Most have plug-ins that can be added. The most used browser, Internet Explorer, needs a plug-in.
Internet Explorer 6.0 
Pluck RSS Reader adds an icon in the IE toolbar. Clicking on the icon opens a sidebar to view or add favorite feeds. When you visit a site that displays the RSS symbol, just drag the symbol into the Pluck sidebar. You're subscribed. Mozilla Firefox
RSS capabilities already integrated in the Bookmarks function. When you visit a site where the RSS symbol appears in the toolbar, click on it and add the feed.
- Sage Extension. A little more functionality and control with this plugin. When visiting a website with an RSS feed, an ALT-S pops up the sidebar to add the feed. This is the one I use.
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September 28th, 2005 by Day Tooley
Posted in Blogs | 1 Comment »
You can upload files from your computer to your website using a browser. Your clients can retrieve these files using their browser. This eliminates the difficulties often associated with email attachments or with setting up and using FTP sites and software.
Sharing files with clients and partners in protected directories on your website can be easy. Here is an example that you can try out.
Go to: http://www.webfooters.com/upload.shtml. In this example, only .txt, .jpg, .gif and .zip files are allowed to be uploaded. This is configurable to allow the file types you are interested in. It also sends an email message to the webmaster that an upload has occurred.
Of course, this application could easily be password protected on your site.
September 17th, 2005 by Day Tooley
Posted in Collaboration, Websites, eMail | Enter a comment »
With the increasing thirst for real-time information, Google as announced their Blog Search service. Because of the nature of RSS, the search engine is expected to know about new blog posts and comments almost immediately.
It has apparently been gathering steam and data since June, so earlier blog information will not be in the search results, at least initially. The service was designed to respect robots.txt and NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW meta tags, however some bugs have been discovered where those requests were not honored and the blog was indexed anyway.
We'll see how long it takes to discover this post.
September 15th, 2005 by Day Tooley
Posted in Search Engines, Blogs | Enter a comment »
The SAO breakfast meeting yesterday had a panel topic of Blogs & RSS: Buzzwords or Business Critical? The interest was high as evidenced by having to hold the event in a larger room to accommodate the 75 attendees.
Panelists included Scott Niesen, president of Attensa, an RSS technology company based in Portland, and Stephen King, CEO of Marqui, Inc., a marketing and content management company also based in Portland.
Observations:
- There are 17 million blogs on the Internet
- 50 new blogs are added every minute
- Blog transparency requires that the external and internal image of the company be aligned
- Publicly-held companies may need legal parsing of content
This Business Week article: Blogs Will Change Your Business, published on May 2, 2005, noted there were 7 million blogs online. Four months later, there are 10 million more. "(Blogs are) going to shake up just about every business — including yours."
Do you think your company will have a blog within a year? Why or why not?
September 14th, 2005 by Day Tooley
Posted in Blogs | Enter a comment »
With the avalanch of data that business and individuals must manage, finding the file you want on your 80 GB hard disk at best is daunting, at worst is impossible.
If only I had an assistant who knew where everything was. Google Desktop might be that assistant.
I installed it and now can search among more than 100,000 items, including almost 10,000 email messages. It instantly locates specific content in Word, Excel, Outlook, Outlook Express, even GMail messages, all from the beloved Google bar in my browser.
Is there more? Well, the weather, stocks, news, RSS feeds from websites you visit and a bunch of other stuff. All customizable in an auto-hide toolbar. But it's the search function that saves the time.
Worth checking out. Takes only a couple of minutes to install. Get it at http://desktop.google.com/.
Now, did I call the thing I'm looking for a 'gizmo' or a 'thingamajig'? No problem, just takes seconds to find either.
September 8th, 2005 by Day Tooley
Posted in General | Enter a comment »
