Backdoor Tech          

Your daily helping of technology

Thursday, June 26, 2003

 

Google Toolbar

I installed the new Beta Google Toolbar, which I use practically everyday for quick searches. What attacks me is that it has a Blogger hot button that allows me combine my browsing and blogging transparently. Of course, there's alwasy BlogThis, but I've had some bizarre things happen recently. I don't know whether it's my Internet Explorer acting up or something else.

I also use Dave's Quick Search Taskbar Toolbar Deskbar for online research, which can handle practically anything else. It sits in the taskbar and has a popup menu that allows you to pick option so I don't have to remember all the complex query options. It plugs into scores of online resources. A new version comes out about every three months.

At work, I live in the browser. As explained elsewhere in this website, I am a kind of technology pathfinder so my desk receives many requests for information. At my home, I am cruising for news on Peru and info on my new consulting tasks. I still miss the access I had at the Universitsy of Maryland University College's online library. So these tools that are so tightly integrated with the browswer window make my work a bit easier.

Wednesday, June 25, 2003

 

RSS Building Steam and Web Creep

You can see how momentum is building up because many people are throwing in their two centrs (that's more valuable than might seem): infoWorld's Jon Udell writes Fixing RSS's public-relations problem and Mark Pilgrim offers the history of RSS data formats. For that matter, Mark has extensive discussions about RSS and weblogging. I'm going to spend some time exploring them.

This is what you call web creep -- just as you have scope creep with projects. You start out with a fairly simple question or task and it starts growing as you take in background, context, leading edge concepts, practical implications, front-runners, etc. Before you know it, you have been overwhelmed with information. When you throw in a RSS feedreader, it gets worse because you have a list of valuable online resources being feed to your desktop. You don't have to fire up your browser and visit 30 different scenes and scan for what interests you.

Tuesday, June 24, 2003

 

More on RSS

In my ongoing research into syndication and news feeds, I have gotten ahold of a RSS newsfeed reader/organizer. Well, it's still in alpha testing, but it shows all the signs of being a solid product. FeedDemon is an initiative of Nick Bradburry, the instigator of HomeSite, which I have used since it was freeware and upgraded it religiously. He also produced TopStyle. Nick has lots of admir collaborators who are raving about the product, reporting bugs and requesting features. [Update: The beta is available.]

The most gratifying thing is that both my weblogs' RSS feeds show up in the FeedDemon (or any reader for that matter). I had already validated my feeds so I knew they were kosher, but I needed to confirm that they were accessible.

On the Scoblizer weblog, Robert Scoble explains why he sees RSS as a crucial tool and why he blogs so profusely. It's an extension of his research and work as a Microsoft employee. There's an effort to unify the multiple paths that RSS has taken (if you must ask about the complicated details check out Tim Bray's explanation.). A wiki is centralizing the initiative on content syndication.

Sunday, June 22, 2003

 

Syndication comes to gci275

I spent the weekend coming to grips with the complexity of syndication using RSS and XML to provide news feeds about the contents. I have set up feeds for both La Esquina del Movimiento and this blog. Although the BloggerPro features is pretty straightforward, there is no meaningfull online help about the syndication feature to understand what is happening.

The next step is to get these RSS newsfeed accepted by news aggregators liek Syndic8 and NewsIsFree.

I am not doing this work so much for my own site, rather modest, but for GlobalSecurity.org, my main (only) consulting client. I see RSS as a perfect fit for the site. It has lots of daily updates, and they are already doing something similar to a weblog, posting all news stories that GlobalSecurity.org staff is quoted in and all U.S. government public announcements, like Voice of America (VOA). It's simple a question of reorganizing their procedures. Once the system is set up, the news feeds happen automatically, adding value to their work.

Finally, I've been really disappointed with the online help for Blogger and BloggerPro. The online support forum has disappeared. The glitch reporting system says that no one checked out my items from six months ago, and other people have the same experience. The new Dano version is nice, but devoid of meaningful help. I know that Blogger.com has gone through harrowing times when it was barely kept afloat financially. Now it's been rescued by Google. It's been four months since they were taken over, and no sign of a reasonable level of support. I am sure that the lack of support is a main reason for people going to other services or products. The one saving grace is that blogging is usually so straightforward that you don't need help.

Friday, June 20, 2003

 

Blogger does Dano

My weblog service has upgraded its features. There is a handsome interface to write in, and I am going to assume that there are a lot more enhanced features under the hood and more to come. I have BloggerPro, which allows me to have as many blogs as I can manage, for a small price. I suspect that the current upgrade is due to the extra support that Google provides since taking over Blogger.

I know that that the improvement was in the works for a while, but the switch came without any fanfare. There was not even an announcement on the homepage. Yesterday morning, I added an item and the new interface appeared. Strangely, the changes applied only to La Esquina del Movimiento, but not to this log. This evening, the changes appeared here.

The one hiccup was that my BlogThis shortcut no longer worked in Internet Explorer. I thought IE was having a bad day -- something that has been cropping up more and more. I then thought through the issues and guessed that the upgrade might have scrambled the BlogThis script. I had to reinstall the script to get it right. Now the problem is resolved.

More food for thought about blogs: Glenn Harlan Reynolds's The Good, The Bad, and the Blogly and Mark Glasser's Bloggers Rate the Most Influential Blogs both revolve around the issue of the fuzzy line between journalism and weblogging, as well as ideological questions (readm being a loud mouth). It's all part of a reassessment of blogs and how they weigh on the evolving nature of the web. I am going to start adding links to my Weblog section to reflect some of these issues.

Thursday, June 19, 2003

 

Weblog pioneer spells out the nature of the beast

Harvard Weblogs What makes a weblog a weblog?: "A weblog is a hierarchy of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically, that can be viewed in an HTML browser. There's a little more to say. The center of the hierarchy, in some sense, is a sequence of weblog "posts" -- explained below -- that forms the index of the weblog, that link to all the content in sequence." David Winer has been blogging since before the word was invented. I watched him as he set up one of the first publicly available services to allow posting over the web. This piece has stirred up a lot of interest and polemic. It's worth bookmarking for future reference.

Tuesday, June 17, 2003

 

IP version 6 will be DoD standard by 2008

Reuters Pentagon to Move to Next-Generation Internet: "The new standard, known as Internet Protocol Version 6, or IPv6, being developed by an independent standard-setting body, will help glue together the key components of the Defense Department's so-called Global Information Grid -- its sensors, weapons, aircraft, information systems and digitally linked forces." This initiative will be a big push for the move to Internet Protocol v6 because of the heavy budget that the DoD swings. Five years to get ready for the new system, the DoD chief technology officer says.

There are probably other protocols that should be given the once over, especially those associated with e-mails and spam. It's too easy to send out anonymous e-mails or grab someone else's address. Also see IPv6 Forum.

Sunday, June 15, 2003

 

I want to be in the valid one percent of web pages

I chanced across a commentary about a master's thesis about the quality of HTML code on the Web (via Zeldman). Out 2.4 million pages, less than 1 percent was valid code. That sent me back to my own pages. I discovered a slew of problems. I have the excuse that for 18 months I was studying for my own master and holding down a full-time job, but I am supposed to be a web professional. When I wanted to put up new content, I did not check all the old pages that contained all my beginner mistakes.

Well, I've spent most of the evening working on the site and correcting the most egrarious errors and slip-ups. There's still a lot of stuff that needs to be done, but I also need to do a rethink about the site so that I won't have to double-back to shake up the design and functionality. There are plenty of arguments in favor of being standards-compliant.

The real problem for bringing my site into compliance are two outside services that I use: Atomz search engine and WebTrendsLive. They both handed out code for their applications that are full of quirky code and they say I should not touch it for fear of breaking them.

What I did implement today was a 404 Error page that gives the visitor a chance to get out of the deadend by going to my home page, the site map or the search page. It's one of those things that I knew should have been added, but never fully realized how easy it was to put up.

Wednesday, June 11, 2003

 

Is the Web a Fad?

BusinessWeek discovers that after 10 years, the World Wide Web has a social impact, from spam to online matchmaking to weblogs and Google. Of course, if you really want to get to the real undercurrents of social trends, turn to the Many-to-Many weblog at Corante. It has multiple contributors, something that I should probably consider, so the perspectives are fresh and varied.

Tuesday, June 10, 2003

 

VoIP taking over the world

Silicon Valley.com Internet calls to challenge telephone companies: "Two factors make VoIP virtually unstoppable: the continuing evolution of communications technology and cost.

"Just about all communications are moving toward 'packet switching' methods, breaking digital messages into little packages and sending them by various routes to their destinations, where they're reassembled. Voice, once digitized, takes up a tiny amount of bandwidth relative to any definition of broadband data, and data networks are getting fast and reliable enough to bring voice to a quality level that usually matches or exceeds traditional phone-company circuits.

"By using the data networks this way, user costs can drop enormously. Companies with far-flung divisions are already moving much of their voice traffic to these kinds of systems. And phone companies themselves are routing an increasing amount of long-haul traffic onto data lines."

I continue to follow the VoIP experience, both at home and at work. Dan Gillmor gives an overview that is similar to the one that I produced for my XMIT paper, now a page on this site.

Sunday, June 08, 2003

 

Look and Learn

If you'd like to see what can be done with Cascading Style Sheets and XHTML, just take a look at CSS ZenGarden. There are eight different designs for the same content, showcasing the potential of pushing CSS to its limits. Dave Shae's mezzoblue is none to shabby either.

Friday, June 06, 2003

 

Back to the Web

I have made a decision that I need to get my feet wet with web development again. Over the past 18 months, I've only done the bare minimum for the upkeep of this site. Meanwhile, the web world has moved on to new and exciting ways to develop web pages. I went out and bought a bunch of new books, starting with Jeffrey Zeldman's Designing With Web Standards and Eric Meyer's On CSS. These books will keep me busy for a while. I'm also going to spend some time visiting resources on the Web to get up to speed.

First off, I will try to spruce of this web site and Peruvian Graffiti. Although I've done some improvements, it's been minimal efforts during holidays. I also have to think of a much better name for this site.

Another motivation is that I have to start generating some extra income to pay off my graduate studies and web development has more short-term potential than any other line that I might take. A lot of time is involved in identifying clients and convincing them that they need my services, and I just did not have extra time while I was studying. The investment in time, energy and creativity is just as important as coding and design.


Where We're Coming From

In October 2001, I was a member of a group of 17 IT professionals that took their first tentative steps together towards a graduate degree in information technology. Over this period, we learned together, we griped together and we ate stirred-fried vegetales together for lunch until fast food started looking good. Our classes took place at the Shady Grove campus of the Maryland University System.

In April 2003, we finished our course work and we graduated on May 17. But our professional journey does not end with that ceremony. This site is meant to be a landmark for the classmates who shared 18 months. I also intend to use this site as a learning area. It's part of my mental makeup to register things on the Web as part of my continuing learning process. After all, the technologies that we studied are in constant evolution and flux.

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