rss feeds

January 30, 2006 at 12:57 pm ·

This survey over at The RSS Weblog prompted me to take a quick look at my RSS feeds and see what sort of things I subscribe to. I have to say I dont think the survey is that informative of general usage and the numbers of participents is very low compared to the number of options - and of course, only people who are interested in RSS specifically would subscribe to that blog - but nevertheless the numbers of people with 390+ feeds certainly raises an eyebrow..

So my own feeds:

First a background as to how I have chosen these feeds - to date I have not gone out of my way to find feeds that I like, there are too many and I have never got around to it. I have however been recommended several feeds over the last few years and merely by adding feeds that have linked to these I have built up my list - and from places like memeorandum, digg and other news websites.

So looking at the RSS feeds I subscribe to:

RSS feeds by country

This really isnt a surprise but I definitely want to subscribe to more UK orientated websites, and maybe the odd one in Europe and Asia. Maybe I should go and search through britblog!

RSS feeds by industry 

 

Looking at my categories on this blog, this is not much of a surprise. However, there are two areas that stand out - sport and cooking - both areas I am interested in but completely missing from the list. Something to rectify News is also a bit of an oddball as I dont use it inside outlook with my other rss feeds. Instead I subscribe via live.com because news feeds update too rapidly for me to keep up with all the posts, which is unmanageable inside Outlook! This is a good example of where RSS the technology is being used to fulfill 2 different needs.

RSS feeds by company

Now by virtue of the fact that most RSS feeds I subscribe to have come about by cross linking, and Microsoft being busy cross-linking bees they thrash the other companies.. I have ignored all other companies outside the ones above as they all had only one feed. Of course, a lot of the feeds “do not represent their employer” so technically should not be counted - I did anyway

Service Orientated Architecture

January 25, 2006 at 10:48 pm · Filed under: british_computer_society capgemini oracle service_orientated_architecture soa windows_vista

Interesting evening tonight - I went to listen to Andy Mulholland, CTO of Capgemini Group talk about service orientated architecture, defining what they are, what they do and why there is business value in it. It was hosted by the North London Branch of the British Computer Society - thanks to them for organising the event.

I spent the session comparing it to what I know about web based services, which is my area of interest, and how the open architectures he was advocating led to better value (and lower costs) both for the customer, the supplier - and moving further up the chain the supplier’s suppliers. The latter especially gaining from being able to access a greater number of customers whilst giving the middle man increased value. What is created is one big ecosystem which is scalable.

Whilst the talk about services was interesting, one thing in the Q&A session after intrigued me. It was the data. The piece that “feeds” the services is something that is yet to be standardised. The inefficiencies of centrally storing large amounts of data in xml type formats and other custom formats by Oracle are not perfected yet and is still being worked on. I will have to look into it further

One other item that arose was how someone connected to Microsoft came up with the name “Vista” - not that I have been able to confirm this anywhere on the web as yet - Windows Vista uses virtual folders and an integrated search functionalty to give you views through Windows. ie. a vista. (Not as well written as in the presentation but I think the point is probably made).

mobile data

January 18, 2006 at 8:00 am · Filed under: 3g mobile wifi

I remember the days when connecting to the internet meant telephone bills of thousands of pounds. I wonder how long it will be before the same occurs in the mobile space? Ben is right when he says it is extortionate right now. I wonder if 3G will ever have the capacity though to bring down the prices to a level that is as usable as the internet was even a few years ago – my understanding whilst vague is that the more data you push through a handset the greater the number of channels available in a cell are taken up – and I don’t think there is enough capacity to be able to bring the rates down. After all if its cheap, everyone would be downloading data and suddenly there is no capacity for those phone calls we all want to make. So they need to invest more which costs more money short term.

I think there is another solution. I think the next generation phones will integrate Wifi Max into them so you can use those networks. Obviously unless its your own network, there will be a subscription – I wonder if there will be enough competition that the cost will come down quickly and not be charged by the byte! That would make the most sense - whenever it finally launches – it seems like I have been waiting years for it to come out – oh wait. I have.[update] links didn’t follow across for some reason. fonts were messed up and a few typos

CES

January 17, 2006 at 8:00 am ·

So I am a bit behind on what has been happening at CES over in the states the last few weeks. I have to admit I was feeling completely underwhelmed by the whole thing and had been ignoring it. (Mostly because I wanted it to happen over here I think). Anyhow I got over it and started watching the various video streams of it; I am now feeling very impatient. (you can see one of the feeds here)

Have you heard of the Palm windows phone? It is called the Treo 700W, but when is it coming over to England? Why have the UK networks not picked it up yet? One guy at Orange had the nerve to tell me that their M500 phone was better. It runs Windows Mobile 4 and last time I used one it crashed all over the place. Why not a Treo 650? I may end up having that instead, I just like the integration possibilities with the 700 – assuming it loves up to my imagination

As for that wraparound desktop screen bill was using – who is looking at manufacturing them? When? Would it not be easier and more efficient to be positioned like an easel? Or is that bad for posture?

Onto Windows Vista. I love the search functionality inside it. Of course it is just desktop search integrated into the OS. I hope its not as memory intensive as the desktop search programs out there today – much as I love them; I have had to uninstall them. I hate unresponsive systems (it is one of the reasons I still don’t use Firefox). I wonder if you could for contacts using it – and the have the ability to right click and email/im/call them. That would be cool. Also having the online messenger contacts in the sidebar means I never have to have a separate messenger client. One place for all my communication

[update] cleaned up fonts (again) tried (!) to clean up the quality of the text a bit

news international :(

January 16, 2006 at 8:00 am · Filed under: football football (soccer) liverpool_fc rant riaz sky_sports soccer world_cup

Its not often I write about football on here – even though it consumes a fair part of my life (usually involving Liverpool FC..)Anyhow, without repeating previous blog entries on the subject about the quality of the press these days, I feel I have to rant and rave about the New of the World. I cannot believe that in a World Cup year they feel it appropriate to undermine the England team in any way. For those of you not in England, the New of the World published an article which involved hoodwinking the England football manager into speculating what would happen after the World Cup. Unfortunately there were comments about existing England players and that the England manager would leave after the World Cup.

Now the players have all come out and backed the manager, but it cannot help matters. Why can’t the press just get behind the team for once?

What is worse is that despite outrage by people calling in to Sky Sports against the paper, the few newspapers I saw this morning all lambasted the England manager.

OK. I’ll stop now.

[update] fonts fixed, hyperlinks fixed. (hint: don’t use word as your blog post writer).