June 10, 2003

Gizmodo 1983

Feeling old? Check out some “cool” Gadgets from 1983.

It’s interesting to note how long it took many of these to catch on en mass and then to apply that logic to some products that we are just starting to see in the consumer markets. (e.g. PVRs, WiFi and even Blogging in the relm of social acceptance)

June 9, 2003

Get the Yahoo Buzz via RSS

Jeremy Zawodny spills the beans about Yahoo’s Buzz (search) indices now being available via RSS, which is very cool indeed.

It would also be cool to see Google’s Zeitgeist rankings to be available in RSS as well. Ideally with a greater update frequency.

June 8, 2003

RSS Marketing

Greg Reinacker talks about companies using RSS feeds to market products instead of opt-in lists and/or the dreaded spam…

“If I could subscribe to a RSS feed that’s personalized for me, containing advertisements and offers of stuff I might actually be interested in, based on information I’ve given, I’d be all over it. Not only would I read it, but I might even buy stuff from it. And it’s all under my control – if I decide I’m no longer interested, I just remove my subscription.”

June 5, 2003

See SPOT run this fall

It would be pretty cool to get an RSS-2-SPOT gateway up and running so we can read our newsfeeds inbetween trips to the fridge for that next beer ;-)

“Microsoft has revealed details of its wireless service for personal devices as it tests the network prior to the availability of products due in the fall. “(via CNet)

June 4, 2003

Microsoft granted US patent for “interactive entertainment”

Martin sent me a link to this article by Alexander Wolfe of EmbeddedWatch.com about Microsoft newly granted US patent for “interactive entertainment”.

To quote Alexander…

“[Microsoft’s]… patent [number 6,571,390] appears to claim the invention of networked interactive entertainment.”

Hmm, I wonder what this will mean for video-on-demand systems and perhaps even network-capable PVRs like Replay and hacked TiVo’s.

June 3, 2003

eBay search to RSS feed

Nice! Just enter an eBay search phrase and this little script will turn the results into an RSS feed that you can subscribe to in your favorite news aggregator

The code is based on this script from waxy.org (if you’d like to run it on our own server)

For some additional RSS goodies and more check out Fagan Finder’s using RSS page

June 2, 2003

TiVo Plans to Sell Information on Customers’ Viewing Habits

Catherine sent me a link to this report about TiVo in the NY Times, which I’m sure is making waves with privacy advocates…

“TiVo, the maker of digital video recorders, plans today to begin selling information about the viewing patterns of its customers to advertisers and programmers. The company says the reports offer far more precise data than traditional rating methods.

Because TiVo’s are essentially computer hard drives connected to a central server, the company can monitor viewers’ second-by-second behavior. It can tell how many viewers in a certain ZIP code clicked away at what moment in a commercial, for instance, or when a particular character appeared on a show.

May 30, 2003

Nullsoft’s Waste Dumped?

This sounds like a barebones version of Groove:

“WASTE is a software product and protocol that enables secure distributed communication for small (on the order of 10-50 nodes) trusted groups of users.”

However, it looks like perhaps AOL made Nullsoft dump WASTE from their site because the link went 404 yesterday afternoon.

Of course there’s already a mirror, which I found @ blueyonder.co.uk via the Slashdot Thread:

As a fan of Groove, I’ll need to set aside some time to check this out.

May 29, 2003

WordPress b2/cafelog derivative

Congratulations to Matthew and Mike on the release of WordPress, which is the official fork in the b2/cafÃ©log blog tool.

On a test server I converted the data from my current b2-based blog to WordPress with very little trouble. Especially helpful was the handy upgrade script included with WordPress.

For the most part everything seems to be working well. I was even able to get the search-engine-friendly URLs working. I may in fact upgrade my live b2 blog with the new WordPress code. However, I want to run a few tests and see if any bugs pop-up before I take the plunge.

May 29, 2003

Xbox and Linux in car multimedia

Just in case you have too much free-time while driving, it might be nice to get in a quick game and a movie or two, with this.