“Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”– Marie Curie
Archive for June, 2005
“Think like a man of action, act like a man of thought.”– Henri Bergson
A question haunts me: What Internet users want?
Published June 28th, 2005 in Web. 5 Comments
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What Internet users expect from it? What Internet users want from it? These types of questions haunt me since some days. I am searching what Internet users really want from it.
What type of service are they using?
What type of service they would like to use? (Not currently existing)
What are the problems that they are experiencing and that could be resolved by an Internet service?
Why Internet users… use Internet and computers?
These questions could seem silly at first. However, try to answer them, ask them and check for the answers: it is not as simple as it seems.
You, how would you answer to these questions?
There are some concepts you can use to start your thinking: social software, search engines, news networks, sharing networks, community, socialization, getting things done, management, business, store, etc.
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.”– Thomas A. Edison
You have problems accessing Ping-O-Matic? Try this new ping service
Published June 27th, 2005 in Blogging. 24 Comments Print This Post
I have problems to access to the Ping-O-Matic website since some days. I have not been able to access to it today, so I created my own.
If I have problems accessing the service, it is probably the same thing for my readers. So I decided give access to the ping service to my readers to try to accommodate them. This is a test that I am doing, and it is currently under construction. I have implemented a list of 14 services to ping for the first version.
Here his where you can have access to the service:
How it works?
- You enter the title of your blog in the title field
- You enter the URL of your blog in the URL field
- You check the services you want to ping
- You press the “Ping” button and wait until the ping results page appear
Ease no? Yup, it is exactly the same thing as Ping-O-Matic.
I also added a cool little feature to bookmark your settings. So when you will need to re-ping the same services with the same blog title and URL, you will only have to click on your previously created bookmark, and then click “Ping”.
How it works?
- When you finished setting your settings, click on the “star” where it is wrote “Generate the bookmark for these settings”
- You will be redirected to a new page
- Go at the bottom of that page and click on the “Bookmark these settings” link
- Then you only have to click on this bookmark to have access to these settings
I hope you will enjoy using this service. If you find some bugs or have some suggestions to improve the service, send me an email. If you want to talk about the service, go on.
Technorati: [blogs] [ping] [service] [pingomatic]
“Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever.”– Napoleon Bonaparte
“I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”– Frank Herbert
“An intellectual is a man who takes more words than necessary to tell more than he knows.”– Dwight D. Eisenhower
Blog syndication format: the future are Interface Markup Languages
Published June 24th, 2005 in Blogging and Web. 2 Comments Print This Post
What I wrote yesterday could be defined as a lost of time. It is another garage made code that try to cope with something that is not built for it.
Blogs has evolved in past years. However, feeds are stock into the past. More and more users are using these syndication technologies, and these new users ask for much. So, how could we give them much? Actually by making garage code like the one I do yesterday.
This is just another demonstration of the specifications problem. Things move slowly. The only way that things move faster is that someone with influence gets the bull by the horns and does it.
By example, personally I would like to have a “comment” tag where to put the comments of my readers.
However, will I call every feed reader companies to tell them to take these new tags into account, and to display them properly in their application? I do not think so.
RSS 2.0 support XML namespaces. However, who cares? I mean, feed readers will have access to the structured information; however, they will not display it if they do not care about.
It is why technologies such as XForms are interesting. What is an XForm? It is an XML based form. The purpose is to give me the power to build my custom forms with a simple XML script. Then with an XForm, I can create my custom web form that will send me the retrieved information in an xml format I previously specified. Plus, I am sure that the form will be displayed by the presentation software (a browser or anything else) the way I want it to be presented.
Now what I want is something that does the same thing as XForm but more presentation oriented. The W3C answered the needs with the XFDL specification. Then, as a blogger, if I want that my posts and comments be seen in a traditional Usenet readers interface, the only thing I need to do is to add a “simple” snippet of script into my blog’s feed. Then I will be sure that all my readers, platform and software independent, will see the information I broadcast as I want them to see it.
I think that this is one of the only way to see the future. The feed readers will only have to replace their “Web Browser Layer” by a “XFDL (or any other interface markup languages) Layer”. Then everybody will be able to do exactly what they want, without caring about the compatibility with all the softwares on the market.
Right now, such modules are only available as plug-ins for current web-browsers. Sometime they work, other time they do not. When the guys in the IE or Firefox teams will integrate it and make it available to other developers through some API, the whole landscape of web feeds publishing certainly will change.
“Creativity is…seeing something that doesn’t exist already. You need to find out how you can bring it into being and that way be a playmate with God.”– Michele Shea
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