I know it's a little late, but better late then never eh?
My new years resolution is simple really: be more selfish. In the nicest possible way of course. Over the last few months I've found myself being online a lot, in a sort of attached-to-the-hip sort of way.
It really came to me on Saturday when I was sitting on the sofa, enjoying a cup of tea and reading the Guardian. I paused and thought to myself, "this is nice, it's been too long since I just sat and thoroughly read the paper". I went on to think about when I used to go away for the weekend hiking, or mountain biking, or how I used to actually go to the gym regularly, play football and generally be a lot fitter then I am now.
I kept found myself wanting to check my email, Twitter and my RSS reader to see what was going on and thinking back, it seems nothing that I didn't miss that much after all.
Here's an interesting twittersation for you, which left me thinking my new years resolution is to spend less time online, and spend more time doing stuff I used to like doing. (This coming from a man who just wrote four blog posts in an hour!)
To do that, I may have to cull my RSS reader and unfollow people on Twitter, so sorry about that in advance. Please add me to your Google address book though if you use Google Reader, the shared items is a great filter of information.
http://twitter.com/robb1e/statuses/572002322
http://twitter.com/FND/statuses/572157652
http://twitter.com/jayfresh/statuses/572158492
http://twitter.com/FND/statuses/572238092
http://twitter.com/robb1e/statuses/572686122
Showing posts with label rss. Show all posts
Showing posts with label rss. Show all posts
Monday, January 07, 2008
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
Using Onaswarm.com or a solution to the Robbie Clutton problem
After some discussion on my previous entry (people do read my blog, cool), I'm happy to say that so far I'm pleased with onaswarm.com and the conversations coming from David Janes over there.
I tried out a few things which Cristiano wanted, like hosting the link in your own domain and building gadgets.
First, on my own (rarely used) home page I added an auto discovery RSS element, so the RSS icon appears in the address bar and points to my lifestream feed. I also added a new page to show just a gadget along with the auto discovery RSS feed. You could do similar things with a redirect straight to the feed, or use some XSLT to transform the feed to your own presentation.
As a lazy developer and human being, I had hoped someone had built something like this so I didn't need to. Thanks onaswarm, expect some feature requests from me in the future =)
I tried out a few things which Cristiano wanted, like hosting the link in your own domain and building gadgets.
First, on my own (rarely used) home page I added an auto discovery RSS element, so the RSS icon appears in the address bar and points to my lifestream feed. I also added a new page to show just a gadget along with the auto discovery RSS feed. You could do similar things with a redirect straight to the feed, or use some XSLT to transform the feed to your own presentation.
As a lazy developer and human being, I had hoped someone had built something like this so I didn't need to. Thanks onaswarm, expect some feature requests from me in the future =)
Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Convergence, Divergence and Social Web Apps
What's all this fuss about the iPhone huh? Do people really want convergence? Don't people like carrying around several different electronic devices on them to do everything they want? Wait. Scratch that.
Seriously though, has the world gone convergence mad? Is there any demand left for divergence? Well, I look at my hi-fi system and I see a perfect example. Now, I'm no expert, but since I had my first job stacking shelves at the local supermarket, I've bought hi-fi separates. I've bought good components and upgraded as I've gone along. I pay for what I want, and don't pay for what I don't. Want a kick ass amp? Hell yeah! Want a DAB digital radio? Not really.
When I look at social web apps like Facebook, I see massive convergence. Yes, developers are writing third party apps, but it feels like I get trapped in the Facebook mini-web. I like being able to choose what web apps I want to use and how to use them, and yes, I even pay for some of those (Flickr Pro rocks!). All of those apps are online and interact-able over the web and some even over SMS (e.g. Twitter and Dopplr).
This leads me onto another thought. None of the apps send me an email to tell me something has changed on their site and that I need to go to their site to see that. I can just get that straight through that email, or through other means like RSS (which means I can stick with my favourite RSS reader).
I mention this as I was sent this brilliant blog post at telepocalyse.net which reads like a web manifesto, and one I can sign up to.
In Facebook, I've got my 'friends' sorted and they can see any changes in state, application notifications and lots of other crap. I don't have to tell my friends about each application which is good, but means I get loads of crap I'm not interested in and find it hard to filter that out.
That was for the first point, I think I've touched on some of the others and you can easily see what the post is describing with the others. I can totally understand the point about OpenID though. Please, please, please, if you're reading this and are building a web app, for the love of god let me use OpenID.
Seriously though, has the world gone convergence mad? Is there any demand left for divergence? Well, I look at my hi-fi system and I see a perfect example. Now, I'm no expert, but since I had my first job stacking shelves at the local supermarket, I've bought hi-fi separates. I've bought good components and upgraded as I've gone along. I pay for what I want, and don't pay for what I don't. Want a kick ass amp? Hell yeah! Want a DAB digital radio? Not really.
When I look at social web apps like Facebook, I see massive convergence. Yes, developers are writing third party apps, but it feels like I get trapped in the Facebook mini-web. I like being able to choose what web apps I want to use and how to use them, and yes, I even pay for some of those (Flickr Pro rocks!). All of those apps are online and interact-able over the web and some even over SMS (e.g. Twitter and Dopplr).
This leads me onto another thought. None of the apps send me an email to tell me something has changed on their site and that I need to go to their site to see that. I can just get that straight through that email, or through other means like RSS (which means I can stick with my favourite RSS reader).
I mention this as I was sent this brilliant blog post at telepocalyse.net which reads like a web manifesto, and one I can sign up to.
In Facebook, I've got my 'friends' sorted and they can see any changes in state, application notifications and lots of other crap. I don't have to tell my friends about each application which is good, but means I get loads of crap I'm not interested in and find it hard to filter that out.
That was for the first point, I think I've touched on some of the others and you can easily see what the post is describing with the others. I can totally understand the point about OpenID though. Please, please, please, if you're reading this and are building a web app, for the love of god let me use OpenID.
Monday, October 29, 2007
Show me the feeds
Why is it when I subscribe to certain feeds that people choose to only show a snippet of their post/article. I want to read that in my RSS reader, I don't want to have to go to your site. Especially when I'm offline and I've downloaded the feeds through Google Gears, I get no value from those sites and it bugs me. Stop it. If you want metrics, then use Feedburner or something. Show me the feeds!!!
Saturday, October 06, 2007
Facebook vs Your Favourite RSS Reader
In the last week or so my web life has changed. I thought I was using RSS properly on iGoogle, but considered the change to Google Reader. Now with email like behaviour rather than static like content, I'm getting much more from the web then before.
This all makes me think about the Facebook debate about walled gardens. To be honest, I do have a Facebook account, but find it generally quite annoying. What it is great at is something close to online personal CRM app with lots of people contributing to. I've already used it a few times to get contact information from when I've not had someones number and needed to get in touch with them.
I think for me, although the friend of a friend (FOAF) issues remain, I'd much rather sign up for various web apps (Twitter, del.icio.us, Dopplr, Flickr and blogs) feeds and watch those through my RSS reader than watch those through Facebook.
It frankly amazes me that they're considered worth £10bn or something. It must be through potential advertising channels and otherwise.
In an effort to attempt to circumnavigate Facebook, I've set up a Yahoo! Pipe to grab all my feeds from across the web and suck then all in one place. For now, you can see that here:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=8vLND2N03BGbhg_g1vC6Jw&_render=rss
This all makes me think about the Facebook debate about walled gardens. To be honest, I do have a Facebook account, but find it generally quite annoying. What it is great at is something close to online personal CRM app with lots of people contributing to. I've already used it a few times to get contact information from when I've not had someones number and needed to get in touch with them.
I think for me, although the friend of a friend (FOAF) issues remain, I'd much rather sign up for various web apps (Twitter, del.icio.us, Dopplr, Flickr and blogs) feeds and watch those through my RSS reader than watch those through Facebook.
It frankly amazes me that they're considered worth £10bn or something. It must be through potential advertising channels and otherwise.
In an effort to attempt to circumnavigate Facebook, I've set up a Yahoo! Pipe to grab all my feeds from across the web and suck then all in one place. For now, you can see that here:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=8vLND2N03BGbhg_g1vC6Jw&_render=rss
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