stuandgravy

NewsGator right-click-subscribe for Firefox 1.0

Robert Bernstein did everyone a favour and created an install.rdf for the NewsGator subscriber extension, allowing it to be installed in Firefox 1.0. I actually had a problem getting Robert's package to install, but with a couple of minor tweaks we now have right-click subscribe for the latest release of Firefox.

About time too - thanks Robert for the legwork!

Download here. (You'll have to right-click -> Save Link to Disk... then execute.) 

Google Scholar

Just launched today, the beta version of Google Scholar. To quote the Google Blog:

"...a free service that helps users search scholarly literature such as peer-reviewed papers, theses, books, preprints, abstracts and technical reports. "

The results are ranked by number of citations. The correlation between the currency of the academic citation and the web link is one of those obvious strokes of genius that Google just keeps churning out. Also smart: literature that is often cited, but not available on the web, is still listed in its rightful place in the results.

This is a resource that will be invaluable for any student trying to find their own primary sources.

The MBA student sitting next to me nearly wet himself...

NTFS Partition Resize

I was installing Fedora Core 2 over the weekend and wanted to leave the existing XP installation in place, so faced the common hurdle of non-destructively resizing an NTFS partition - something Windows still doesn't support.

After a bit of a hunt around I chose ntfsresize, booting to a Linux shell from the Fedora install disk. Worked like a charm - I'd recommend it.

Google Desktop Search

It's been expected for a while, so no great shock that Google have today launched (in beta, as ever) their desktop search tool.

Their take on the 'pages I've seen' challenge appears to be similar to Dan Grigsby's IE toolbar, adding to the index a local cache of web pages you've visited.

All looks very tasty, with one huge, glaring caveat: the web pages history works with IE only. Concentrating on the dominant browser makes sense in pure numerical terms, but Google are going to seriously dent their geek-kudos if they don't get a Firefox (and Safari Mac, and Linux...) version out pretty damn sharpish. And there's zero chance of me switching over from (Microsoft's) Lookout until they do.

RSS bandwidth problem - a suggestion

Robert Scoble's done some calculations that illustrate why RSS is becoming a bandwidth nightmare for large sites.

Aggregators constantly pinging the RSS feed for updates clearly doesn't scale. This certainly isn't news, but MSDN pulling their full-text feeds is the first high profile example.

The problem can be eased by reducing aggregators' polling frequency - once every couple of hours, or even once a day - but surely that's a band-aid? Scale up the (currently tiny) number of RSS readers a few thousand times and the stickiness of RSS means you've still got a problem, even polling once a day.

Besides which, limiting polling to once per day destroys a large chunk of the appeal of RSS: I want to know whenever stavros updates, and I want to know NOW, dammit.

So what's the solution? A push technology is never going to provide what RSS does - we're immediately back in the world of email and spam and filtering and... ugh. And any pull technology is always going to poll for changes. So the solution must lie in limiting the bandwidth required by the poll.

I have no wish to descend into the depths of the RSS/RDF/Atom/Semantic Web debates, but the solution lies there, in the specification. RSS providers need a way to tell aggregators "go away, there's nothing to see here for another 12 hours". And it needs to happen in less than a couple of Kb.

Firefox Gmail notifier

To continue the endless barrage of Firefox hype, may I mention Doron Rosenberg's Gmail Notifier. This extension adds an envelope to your status bar that reports the number of unread emails in your Gmail inbox. Makes it possible for me to switch all personal email away from Outlook, without having to leave a tab dedicated to Gmail all day.

Simple, yet satisfying.

Electronic Frontier Foundation wins Grokster

This is a good thing. A very good thing.

The EFF have won their case to allow suppliers of peer-to-peer file sharing software (spawn of Napster) to be legally separated from the use of their platform - in the same, obvious sense that VHS manufacturers cannot be held responsible for pirate videos.

The decision will cause yet more upheaval in the corporate worlds of music and film, some of it unfortunate. Undoubtedly, much popular media will continue to dramatise any unpleasantness, particularly inside the vested interests of Murdoch's empire. However, this decision will encourage creative innovation and continue the decentralised upgrade of the internet.

Gizmodo T-Mobile Rant

T-Mobile, the American cellphone company, don't operate in Australia; the quality of their customer service isn't something I care deeply about. However, this scathing rant by Joel Johnson, editor of Gizmodo, serves as a classic case study for any modern service company.

Gizmodo is a fairly popular site, attracting over 50,000 visitors per day. Significantly, it's a site that's read and respected by influencers and early adopters: T-Mobile's market for their premium products. Most importantly, Gizmodo's a site that gets a lot of GoogleLove: 7th in the Technorati Top 100, this article will get linked and will shoot up the Google rankings.

Clearly, one article from one gadget site is not going to destroy T-Mobile's business. It is going to cost them a whole lot more than it would have done to give decent service to several thousand potential Joel Johnsons though.

Intro to .NET data structures

Only4gurus has a presentation up on .NET Data Structures (arrays, strings, collections & regular expressions) that provides a great introduction to a few fundamental .NET classes. I've been coding in VB.NET for a couple of years now and I'd forgotten some of the useful stuff that's in here!

Via Panopticon Central

Feedster 'Sites I'm subscribed to' search

In the comments to New Search Engines needed, Betsy Devine points at a great Feedster hack to limit a search by OPML. This is similar to my ability to search a local archive, but in a simple centralised location.

Betsy's also translated danimIp's neat toolbar bookmarklet that I've included again. Drag Search my OPML to your toolbar and change "http://stuandgravy.typepad.com/blog/NewsGatorSubs.opml" to point at your OPML for an always available 'Sites I'm subscribed to' search.