What does it mean when your name is used in a Splog? This one popped up for me recently:
“Mark Woodman Ca. Prison Conservation Camp Firefighter“
Me, Canada, prison, and… firefighters. I really don’t like where this theme is going. Within the “post” are also mentions of comparative anatomy (!), chemical warfare, and Red Hat 8.
If this means something, I don’t wanna know. I’m also not planning a trip to Canada anytime soon.
Just announced:
A new release of the RSS and Atom Utilities (ROME) project 0.9 (beta) is now available on the project’s Java.net website. This new release includes fixes to Atom relative URI resolution, easier parsing for RSS feeds that use , better support for mapping of RSS to and from Atom and numerous small fixes.
Here are some quick links to the relevant release docs and files.
• Release page
• Change list
• Javadocs
Direct link to downloads:
• rome-0.9.tar.gz
• rome-0.9.zip
See Dave Johnson’s full announcement for more information on what’s included in this release.
Breaking a long-standing rule of meme boycotts (and delving into the personal) here are Five Things the readers of inkBlots probably don’t know about me. Blame Mike Sansone for tagging me on this one.
1) The very first time I jumped out of a perfectly good airplane, my parachute didn’t properly deploy. It took me about 2500 hundred feet (out of 5000) to coax it completely open. I wasn’t pleased with the experience, so I jumped a couple more times until I got it right.
2) In 1994 I worked as a script reader in Hollywood while taking film classes. I read the script for Daylight and passed it on to my boss, who made it into a movie starring Sylvester Stallone. Some of my feedback on the script actually made it into the next draft, but I take no responsibility for the film as a whole. I turned down an assistant-to-the-producer job so I could finish school… and never worked in Hollywood again.
3) I helped build a school for deaf children in Jamaica.
4) As a kid, after watching Dukes of Hazzard with my friend David, we noted that downed power lines make sparks when they touched water. Later that day we decided to pee on an electric fence to make sparks. I learned a lot about how a highly-saline liquid is remarkably good at conducting electricity, and what 60 cycles sounds like from inside your bladder. David learned how to run half-way across the field without ever pulling up his pants.
5) I’m going to be a dad again. Which goes to prove that God gives us second and third chances when we’ve thoroughly messed up the first ones. And it also goes to prove that peeing on an electric fence doesn’t prevent you from starting a family one day.
Microsoft has released a beta version of UniveRSS to show off Windows Vista’s graphicy goodness. It is a 3D browser for RSS feeds… that’s right, 3D. If you’re scratching your head at the usefulness of that kind of environment, keep scratching.
I scratched, but I couldn’t resist. I don’t have Vista, but IE7 and .NET 3 are enough to get it working on my WinXPSP2 machine. The performance wasn’t great, but it was enough to see what they’re trying to accomplish.
The short story is: They’re showing off some really simple 3D stuff, not an RSS reader. It picks up feeds from your IE7 feeds folder, then displays a spinning cube with the feed’s image displayed on each side. Click the cube to get a in-world browser, and right-click to get out of it again. The browser doesn’t even support the full HTML set from IE7, so formatting is rudimentary.
Minority Report for RSS it aint.
With simplistic 3D presentation and substandard feed presentation, I’m scratching my head on why they released it. I’ll invoke “Remember Its a Beta” from my Microsoft Max RSS experience and give Microsoft the benefit of the doubt, for now.
However, I just don’t think this kind of interface makes for good browsing of RSS and Atom content. 3D space is better for link analysis and exploring hyper-dimensional data that can’t be easily visualized in 2D. (I’m doing just that sort of thing at work right now with Java3D, so I’ve got a little background in this opinion.)
In the meantime, here are some screenshots to let you see what UniveRSS looks like without needing to install it:
The Next Morning Update
It occured to me in the shower this morning that Microsoft probably isn’t trying to show off their 3D skillz, nor an RSS reader, nor a revolutionary way to display information. They’re providing a demo with source code of Avalon AKA Windows Presentation Foundation. Now that makes sense.
The technical aspect of redirecting RSS and Atom feeds from one URL to another has been discussed lately, but there is also an issue of etiquette that is worth thinking through. Let me explain…
It has been quiet lately on inkBlots as I’ve been working on a project I intend to announce in a few weeks. More details are forthcoming as things come closer together, but the whole notion centers around a non-profit venue for strong technology-related content that will reach a broader audience than “just my blog.”
My plan at this point is to point the inkBlots feed to the new site, so the transition would be seamless. You would get the same sort of stuff you get on inkBlots, plus (I hope) quite a bit more. Basically, you wouldn’t have to do anything, since the same RSS feed you use now would pull from the new site. (inkBlots would stay behind as an archive, but no longer be updated.)
Technically, this is easy stuff (thanks to FeedBurner.) But what about the etiquette of it?
Is it okay if a feed follows an author to a new site? Is redirecting a feed to a strongly-related site a reasonable thing to do? Is it a nice convenience, or does it feel like a bait-and-switch? When is it not okay? Is announcing intent enough, or should something else be done?
What do you think?
