Social Bookmarking:
|
|
Aggregator | News River | All Tags
| Furl has a new UI |
| Furl has a new look and feel! We would love to hear what you think of our new UI. To take our survey, please click Here. Huge thanks to our Beta Testers for providing crucial feedback to us. Additional changes... |
Furl has a new look and feel! We would love to hear what you think of our new UI. To take our survey, please click Here. Huge thanks to our Beta Testers for providing crucial feedback to us. Additional changes will go live over the next few weeks as we incorporate your feedback into the new UI. Finally, we have resolved a few bugs with this latest release. Most notably, email functionality across the site is back up and running. Thanks to all of your for your patience!
Regards, |
| Live Radio to Podcasting Comes Full Circle |
| I think it is very interesting that podcasting is going towards live radio at new sites like BlogTalkRadio.com. I watched a Scoble show episode with Alan Levy, CEO of BlogTalkRadio.com recently and it was like this concept was totally new online. While I like to see this coming to life again, it is just not new and is a new as old idea. I think that seeing people getting all excited about this development is funny as it is only new to people who are new to the online radio space and don't have an understanding of the history of online radio. The thing that is new about BlogTalkRadio.com is that it is free to have a show on the network. The earlier companies charged a fee to host a show on the network. I am sure that BlogTalkRadio.com will put these earlier companies out of business with a no fee business model. Just visit WorldTalkRadio.com that I consulted with 4 years ago and you will see what I mean. You can also see WSRadio.com. |
| Sitting Ducks - 7:25am |
| In an alligator-eat-duck world, an unlikely friendship develops between Bill the duck and Aldo the alligator - two creatures on opposite ends of the food chain. This second series offers more interesting adventures, and lots of fun. |
| Jeanette Symons, Founder Imbee and Zhone, Dies in Plane Crash |
Symons co-founded the big ticket telcom firm Zhone Technologies, then the family-centered social network Imbee/Industrious Kid. I wrote about Imbee's funding announcement in early 2006 and about Symons' vision for the company a few months later. Readers interested in this trailblazing woman in tech might also appreciate this interview with Symons at GirlGeeks.org. May she rest in peace. |
Tech entrepreneur Jeanette Symons | The Industry Standard Returns - Will It Stick? |
The Industry Standard will relaunch today in public beta as a strictly online publication coupled with a futures market. We got a chance to check it out early and speak with Derek Butcher, the magazine's General Manager. According to Butcher, the magazine's brand still had so much equity left in it, that publisher IDG (who was an investor in the original magazine and bought out the publication's assets) couldn't resist trying it again. Now that Silicon Valley is hot once more, and ad dollars are flowing on the web, it seemed like a good time to try relaunching the business mag. There's just one problem: blogs have this space covered to death. So rather than focus on breaking news, the Standard is opting to focus instead of analysis of the business and technology news. Content will be short editorials (300-400 words) that break down business news written by outside contributors (that is, bloggers, analysts, and industry pundits will submit content to the Standard for publication). It's an editorial approach that Butcher seemed to describe as one part ReadWriteWeb and one part Huffington Post -- though unlike HuffPo, the Standard will pay its contributors, and unlike RWW, the focus will be on business over tech analysis. "No single voice will dominate the discussion, which is why we decided to forgo the somewhat print-centric idea of an editor in chief, despite talking to some great people for the position," said managing editor Ian Lamont in a press release. "We want readers to get viewpoints from the widest range of contributors possible, with the common theme being that these contributors are all people who believe that the Web is a major paradigm shift in business."
However, the editorial isn't the most intriguing part of the relaunch. What really sticks out about the new Industry Standard is the prediction market. A prediction market is something like a stock exchange where the cash value of assets is tied to predictions. People invest in predictions they think will come true with the idea being that the more people who predict something, the more likely it should be to actually happen in real life. Most prediction markets in the US use play money because of gambling restrictions, and the Industry Standard's is no different. Users start out with $100,000 in play funds and invest in time sensitive predictions like, "Apple will ship 10 million iPhones in 2008," or "Yahoo! will accept Microsoft's takeover bid by February 8." Users can also suggest predictions, which are in turn voted up or down by other users. Prediction markets have shown a remarkable tendency to accurately predict the future, and the Industry Standard's market can theoretically be used to keep writers honest. Any writer who is constantly throwing out wild predictions can have his ideas tested on the open market. Butcher hopes that the prediction market will have a reciprocative effect on the editorial, with writers playing off the things people are betting on in the market, and the market reacting to the things people are writing about. The market is very well designed and rather easy to use, but will it, coupled with the out sourced editorial content, be enough to recapture the late-90s magic that made the Industry Standard a household name? The other quintessential Silicon Valley magazine of the dot-com boom was RedHerring, which relaunched in August as a web-based publication (including a video site and social network) to little fanfare. RedHerring's traffic has actually declined since then, according to Compete, and even articles on big stories like the Microsoft bid for Yahoo! only attract a handful of comments -- compared to, say over 800 on Digg -- and thousands if you count how many times the story made the main page. It's possible that the media market has shifted so much since the late-90s that magazines will never be able to reinvent themselves on the web in the face of competition from a now established and well-connected blogosphere and user-powered aggregation of sources (like Digg and Reddit). But the Standard is probably smart to eschew the traditional editorial structure and follow the example set by successful blogs communities like the Huffington Post and Seeking Alpha, by bringing together a group of outside contributors who may already have a readership elsewhere. Try out the Standard web site and prediction market and tell us what you think. Can the Industry Standard return to glory or will they flame out again? Let us know in the comments below. |
In 2000, the Industry Standard was one of the hottest magazines on the planet. It was flush with VC dollars and sold 
| Weekly Wrapup, 28 Jan - 1 Feb 2008 |
Here is a summary of the week in Web technology on ReadWriteWeb. Reminder to PR people and startups: If you would like ReadWriteWeb to consider covering your product, you should email us at tips@readwriteweb.com. This address is monitored daily by all our main bloggers. Pitch emails sent to my personal email address almost always get forwarded to the tips address, so skip the middleman by emailing tips! Due to volume, we cannot respond to every email - but be assured that they are being read and considered by our writing team. Web NewsThe top story this week came right at the end: Microsoft's $44.6 billion offer to buy Yahoo!. It's a huge story and Marshall Kirkpatrick had RWW's analysis:
DEMO CoverageThis week the venerable DEMO conference was held and Marshall Kirkpatrick was at the show for ReadWriteWeb. Here is his coverage during the week:
Web TrendsWhy the Music Industry is Lying to You
MTV Election Coverage is a Coup for Citizen Journalism
How YOU Can Make the Web More Structured
SEE MORE WEB TRENDS COVERAGE IN OUR TRENDS CATEGORY Web ProductsThe Rise of Twitter as a Platform for Serious Discourse
Have Facebook Apps Peaked in Popularity?
The New Browser War: Mobile Firefox vs. Opera Mini
SEE MORE WEB PRODUCTS COVERAGE IN OUR PRODUCTS CATEGORY That's a wrap for another week! Enjoy your weekend everyone. |
In other news, this week Google 
The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) last week released their latest report, summing up the digital music landscape at the start of 2008. The IFPI claims in the report that for every legal music download, there are 20 illegal downloads taking place. Or in other words, illegal downloading is happening at a rate that is 20 times that of legal downloading. This, says the IFPI, lead to US$3.7 billion in industry losses. But there are some big holes in that claim.
As part of MTV's coverage of the 2008 presidential elections in the US, the media network assembled a "street team" of 51 amateur journalists -- one in each state and the District of Columbia -- to file blog reports, photos, videos, and audio podcasts about election issues during the course of the campaign season. The videos are being syndicated to MTV's mobile web site, social network, and to the Associate Press Online Video Network. Members of the street team have been outfitted with laptops, video phones, and other popular tools of the citizen journalist via funding from a $700,000 grant from the John L. and James S. Knight Foundation's Knight News Challenge.
We have written a lot here about the the vision of building a 
For 2007, our 
There appears to be evidence that Facebook users are beginning to suffer from app fatigue, and there is growing discontent about how applications are being distributed and about the amount of noise that the application platform has introduced into the Facebook ecosystem. As 
Last October, Mozilla | Odelay's Secret History | ||
| Beck tells the stories behind his newly reissued classic I thought Odelay might be the last time I got a chance to make a record," Beck says of his 1996 album. "I was acutely aware that I was thought of as a one-hit wonder." But almost twelve years later, Odelay is the definitive Beck album, full of funk, noise and sliced-up jokes. It's now receiving the deluxe reissue treatment, with an edition that adds nineteen outtakes, remixes and B sides. Beck reminisces about his landmark disc at the Hollywood studio where he's quickly recording a new one... | ||
|
| Rumer Willis Gets Tossed! |
| Hollywood clubs have been letting in underage kids for too long! However, Villa, recently booted Rumer Willis out for being 19. I thought they would have booted her out for being ugly. Sadly, Willis, was able to drive over to Hyde to get her party on. Of course if I was her bartender, [...] |
|
Hollywood clubs have been letting in underage kids for too long! However, Villa, recently booted Rumer Willis out for being 19. I thought they would have booted her out for being ugly. Sadly, Willis, was able to drive over to Hyde to get her party on. Of course if I was her bartender, I would have asked if she wanted paper or plastic with her drink. Not for her drink but for her face! OH YEAH! That makes me both disturbed and funny! Source: Bam! |
| J Lo’s Baby Pics Worth $6 Million!? |
| “I’d be giving birth too if it was a $6 million dollar pay-off!” With Jennifer Lopez about to deliver twins, the star turned hack might just be able to cover her kids college fund with their baby photos. According to MSNBC via TMZ: People reportedly is paying $6 million for the snaps. And to add to that [...] |
“I’d be giving birth too if it was a $6 million dollar pay-off!” With Jennifer Lopez about to deliver twins, the star turned hack might just be able to cover her kids college fund with their baby photos. According to MSNBC via TMZ:
And to add to that OK! will have international rights giving it a stepping stone to launch OK! Spain. I don’t get how someone like Lopez, who hasn’t made a decent choice (music, movies, and mate), will be getting so much for her baby’s photos. With her doing nothing as of late, she should be lucky that Walgreens would have printed them for free. |
| Hot Gossip Blogs |
| Today is President’s day. I’m not quite sure what that means to me or you but I do know it’s a national holiday, which pretty much means I’m going to start drinking in the early afternoon. Have fun with these other awesome blogs: Drunken Stepfather Dlisted The Bastardly Celebrity Smack Celebitchy Celeb Slam I’m Not Obsessed The Skinny Website Horny Oyster Hollywood Backwash Popbytes The Feeding Tube [...] |
Today is President’s day. I’m not quite sure what that means to me or you but I do know it’s a national holiday, which pretty much means I’m going to start drinking in the early afternoon. Have fun with these other awesome blogs: |
| Andrey Golub :: Voice Mobility Introduces Google Apps: the same change that Salesforce.com once brought to the CRM market |
Voice Mobility Introduces Google Apps™UCN Vmerge is the first UC solution for Google Apps in the Workplace and Campus MarketsVancouver, BC, CANADA – February 14, 2008 – Voice Mobility International, Inc. (TSX: VMY, OTCBB: VMII and FWB: VMY), a Vancouver-based developer and provider of carrier and enterprise enhanced messaging solutions, today announced its new Google Apps™ functionality, a first in the enterprise market. Voice Mobility’s UCN Vmerge is now integrated with the Google Apps solution suite to provide workplace and campus customers full collaboration functionality. The Google Apps suite includes Gmail, Google Talk, Google Calendar, Google Docs, Contacts, Mobile apps and other collaboration tools all using the workplace or campus domain. UCN Vmerge adds unified communications to complete messaging, collaboration, calendaring and presence functionality. Enterprise clients want the ability to enable their enterprise voice and fax communications to work seamlessly with Gmail. UCN Vmerge allows full on-premise or hosted enterprise PBX integration with a hosted personalized Gmail service. Industry analysts have calculated that the average IT manager spends 75% of their budget on infrastructure maintenance, leaving a small amount for new technology. With Google Apps, free or premium service combined with the cost-effective UCN Vmerge solutions, IT managers can roll out new technology to keep pace with consumer technology. “By integrating UCN Vmerge with Google Apps, workplace and campus customers have price-effective options for collaboration functionality,” said Mike Seeley, Voice Mobility’s VP of Global Sales. “This is like deploying a full Microsoft® Exchange® server, Active Directory® and Office Communication Server® at a fraction of the cost. No longer are customers forced to utilize expensive on-premise solutions from providers like Microsoft for collaboration functionality." "The market has asked for this type of solution and Voice Mobility is proud to be the first to bring it to the market. This new functionality will bring the same change to the workplace and campus markets that Salesforce.com® brought to the CRM market. Combine this functionality with our mobile applications and we can deliver unified communications on all Symbian™, Windows Mobile® or Blackberry® devices.” UCN Vmerge enables users to access voice, fax and email messages directly from their Gmail account and synchronize all messages across all their devices — in essence, gluing the Google Apps to the enterprise telephony infrastructure. For example, if an email is heard via the user’s mobile device, it will be show as ‘read’ in their Gmail account. Other functionality enables users to:
As is standard with all Voice Mobility’s UCN solutions, included are message waiting indication and message notifications, mobile workforce integration and offline access to the user’s inbox. Our next UCN Vmerge release will offer PBX presence integration with Google Talk and other exciting features. The combined collaboration suite is easy to set up and manage: Google Apps is installed in six easy steps, and UCN Vmerge is compatible with the majority of PBX and Centrex solutions in the market. n most cases, one day is all it takes for a certified Voice Mobility technician to install the UCN Vmerge product with flexible training and support options available. Workplace or campus customers also have the choice between purchasing the UCN Vmerge solution outright or selecting managed or hosted solutions from Voice Mobility and its certified partners. For more information about Voice Mobility’s product line or how to purchase Voice Mobility solutions, please contact one of our sales representatives. For Immediate Release |
| Idol’s Chris Sligh Cuts a Record Deal |
| He came into Idol's season 6 Birmingham auditions with a fun, quirky style and a voice that could knock your socks off. So it's really no big surprise to see that American Idol 6 contestant Chris Sligh has scored a record deal and will be releasing an album later this summer. Sligh, ... |
| Bush Calls for Action on Darfur - Wall Street Journal | ||
|
| I became a celebrity :) |
| Hello guys, Recently I have got, it’s really funny “Today I became a celebrity, it drives me mad! My new producer Michael said I would have to try my best and listen to those experienced guys who would make my movie. He also said that I must accommodate him to reach the success in that shooting. It [...] |
Hello guys, “Today I became a celebrity, it drives me mad! My new producer Michael said I would have to try my best and listen to those experienced guys who would make my movie. He also said that I must accommodate him to reach the success in that shooting. It was very important for me! That’s why I agreed and followed him to his penthouse apartment. He said: “You are a pretty chick, Carol, listen to me and I’ll make you a star”. I said that I would be an obedient girl. He smiled and commanded me to stay on my knees and unfasten his zipper. I did… My god, that was a huge strained cock, I saw it right ahead of my eyes! I passed my tongue over his dick-head and took all his gun in my mouth then. Uhh, I could hardly breath! Then he said: “Look at the camera, all the film unit will enjoy your celebrity sex tape”. That was an earth-shattering piece of news for me, but he ordered me to get naked and go down on all fours, showing him my sensitive small holes. Brrr! I felt myself absolutely helpless! He stuck his huge stony cock right into my asshole, and I could think just about his hard immovable cock pulsatile inside me and the camera behind me… |
| Samsung M520 Slim Slider Unveiled | |||
| Sprint today announced the Samsung M520, a new slim slider that lets users access the web, find local restaurants, watch live television, download their favorite songs, send text messages or use GPS to find their way home. Offering multi-tasking capabilities, customers can play music in background mode while also using the phone for text messaging, playing games or surfing the Internet. Operating on Sprint's broadband network, the M520 provides access to Sprint multimedia content, including: - S... | |||
Sprint today announced the Samsung M520, a new slim slider that lets users access the web, find local restaurants, watch live television, download their favorite songs, send text messages or use GPS to find their way home. Offering multi-tasking capabilities, customers can play music in background mode while also using the phone for text messaging, playing games or surfing the Internet. Operating on Sprint's broadband network, the M520 provides access to Sprint multimedia content, including: - Sprint Navigation, powered by Telenav, with GPS-enabled audio and visual turn-by-turn driving directions, one-click traffic rerouting and more than 10 million local listings
The M520 is integrated with basics including web access, SMS voice and text messaging, Phone as Modem, picture caller ID, Wireless Backup and a microSD slot supporting up to 4 GB of memory (64 MB card enclosed). Additional features include stereo Bluetooth with audio caller ID that lets users identify callers with their voice while they listen to music and a 1.3-megapixel camera with 2x digital zoom and camcorder functionality. The Samsung M520 is now available in all Sprint retail channels starting at $49.99 with a $50 mail-in rebate and 2-year contract. Related News Articles
©2002-2008 Mobiledia Corp. A Cell Phone Resource Site. All Rights Reserved. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. |
| LG KF700 Touch Screen Phone Competes with iPhone | |
| LG Electronics today announced the launch of the KF700, a new multimedia phone that combines three input methods. As the world's first phone with three separate input methods, the KF700 integrates a 3-inch touch screen, alpha-numeric keypad and Shortcut Dial. With its user-optimized navigation, all of the phone's functions and features are instantly accessible. The KF700's 3-inch full touch screen provides access to features and its wide aspect ratio makes it ideal for watching movies or browsin... | |
LG Electronics today announced the launch of the KF700, a new multimedia phone that combines three input methods. As the world's first phone with three separate input methods, the KF700 integrates a 3-inch touch screen, alpha-numeric keypad and Shortcut Dial. With its user-optimized navigation, all of the phone's functions and features are instantly accessible. The KF700's 3-inch full touch screen provides access to features and its wide aspect ratio makes it ideal for watching movies or browsing the internet. From the main screen users can flip through several handy widgets, including a calendar, scheduler, and memo pad, with the swipe of a finger. The large touch screen also means that the phone can provide an adaptable on-screen interface, rather than tying users to a fixed, preset button layout. The Shortcut Dial on the back of the phone scrolls through six user-selected features by controlling a virtual dial on screen, rather than digging through menus. The Shortcut Dial can also be used to scroll through web pages or emails, adjust volume and perform other functions for which a wheel is naturally better. "Our consumers told us that they wanted a phone that had plenty of multimedia features, but doesn't take a long time fiddling with menus to figure out. We created the LG KF700 based their insight," said Dr. Skott Ahn, CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. "Internal research showed that a phone's multimedia features often lay dormant if they are hard to access. On many phones these features are hidden deep in menus, requiring too much time and effort to find them. The LG KF700 eliminates these endless menus with its intuitive interface and multiple input methods." Most of the new touch screen phones currently available eliminate some formerly universal features like the alpha-numeric keypad. LG incorporated a slide-down alpha-numeric keypad to simplify the process of making calls and typing text messages. When browsing the internet on the wide touch screen, the shortcut dial zooms in and out on websites. When sending text messages, the alpha-numeric keypad provides the letters, while frequently used symbols are readily available on the touch screen. These symbols change based on users text messaging habits. One of the KF700's multimedia features is a web browser that provides access to Google Search, Blogs, Gmail, Maps and Youtube. Support for HSDPA 3G networks makes web browsing fast and other features like video telephony possible. Other features include an MP3 player, MPEG4 video player, 3.0-megapixel camera, Bluetooth connectivity and more. The LG KF700 will be available in Europe in mid March and will become available in other markets in the months following. Related News Articles
©2002-2008 Mobiledia Corp. A Cell Phone Resource Site. All Rights Reserved. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. |
| LG KF600 Mind-Reading Phone Introduced | |
| LG Electronics introduced the LG KF600, a stylish slider offering InteractPad, replacing physical navigation keys with context-specific virtual keys. The LG KF600's InteractPad and virtual menu keys show the exact keys users need to complete the task at hand eliminating distractions. More flexible than standard hardware keys, the KF600 eliminates the need to memorize which key performs what function. The virtual keys are also larger and better spaced than physical keys, improving accuracy. The I... | |
LG Electronics introduced the LG KF600, a stylish slider offering InteractPad, replacing physical navigation keys with context-specific virtual keys. The LG KF600's InteractPad and virtual menu keys show the exact keys users need to complete the task at hand eliminating distractions. More flexible than standard hardware keys, the KF600 eliminates the need to memorize which key performs what function. The virtual keys are also larger and better spaced than physical keys, improving accuracy. The InteractPad is an ideal interface for controlling multimedia features like the KF600's digital audio player, camera and video camera. Since its controls are not tied to physical buttons, each of these functions has a custom interface that makes it intuitive to use. The InteractPad is also equipped with multi-sensorial feedback that provides users with audio, visual and tactile cues. When a virtual button is pressed it becomes larger and the phone vibrates just slightly and makes a clicking sound. The feedback is not only designed to seem more like real buttons, it also improves comfort and accuracy. The KF600 includes eight dynamic graphic interface themes. Each gives the phone a different character that can act as an extension of its owner's personality. The themes affect all aspects of the KF600's interface including the InteractPad. When users choose a theme, all the layouts of each application will be reflected in menu, icons as well as wallpaper under the integrated theme. Dr. Skott Ahn, CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company said, "The LG KF600 and the InteractPad reflect LG's commitment to making its handsets easier to use through improved user interface technology. Usability is truly at the centre of this handset's design and it represents LG's latest achievement in making phones that connect with their users. This handset offers a mere glimpse into a newly emerging trend in the mobile market. LG is researching and developing new ways to improve usability and will continue focus on features that add practical benefits for users." The LG KF600's multimedia features include a 3.0-megapixel camera, MP3 player, video recording, FM radio, Bluetooth and more. Related News Articles
©2002-2008 Mobiledia Corp. A Cell Phone Resource Site. All Rights Reserved. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. |
| LG KF510 Ultra-Slim Touch Slider Unveiled | |
| LG Electronics today unveiled the KF510, a stylish phone catering to consumer demands for slimmer phones with design accents. At just 10.9 mm thick, the KF510 is the extremely slim slider phone. Combining a slim style with strength created by its metal frame and tempered glass, the center of its design are metal gradation paint schemes available in Stardust Dark Gray or Sunset Red. A visually interactive user interface includes captivating animation developed based on the LG's touch technology. ... | |
LG Electronics today unveiled the KF510, a stylish phone catering to consumer demands for slimmer phones with design accents. At just 10.9 mm thick, the KF510 is the extremely slim slider phone. Combining a slim style with strength created by its metal frame and tempered glass, the center of its design are metal gradation paint schemes available in Stardust Dark Gray or Sunset Red. A visually interactive user interface includes captivating animation developed based on the LG's touch technology. The KF510 integrates a multi-function camera and MP3 player. The LG KF510 will be available in major markets worldwide from March. Related News Articles
©2002-2008 Mobiledia Corp. A Cell Phone Resource Site. All Rights Reserved. This Feed is for personal non-commercial use only. |
| Sprint and Clearwire edge closer to deal, world waits with bated breath |
Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless 
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments |
| Yut: Korean Traditional Game - Game |
| Yut is one of the most popular family board games in Korea, played by children and adults for centuries. It is a must especially during the New Year's. This fun and exciting game combines luck, quick thinking and team strategy. Toss the four yut sticks, rounded on one side and flat on the other, the way you would a dice. The final resting positions determine the number of moves you can make. Short-cuts, opportunities to bump the opponent back to the starting point, and ability to move two markers together adds excitement. Yut game comes with four decorated 6.5" sticks, 8 markers, paper game board, and instructions. For all ages. Requires 2 players or more in two teams. Product type: Game, $9.95 |
| Bloglines Beta Debuts Photo Widget |
We have another treat for you Blogliners who have been patiently awaiting our redesign. Today's special surprise is the Photo Widget View available within Bloglines Beta.We've been experimenting with different views in the Bloglines Start Page. In this case, we display photos from Flickr inside a Photo Widget. Sure beats a text description. We currently only do this for Flickr, but in future releases you will be able to apply the photo view for other photo-oriented feeds. Here's a little before and after. Before
After
As a reminder, you can go to Flickr or other photos sites and create a feed tracking a specific topic or tag. In the example above our topic we tracked was "Europe." Or you can track a specific user on the site. So in other words, anytime a friend posts a picture on Flickr, you would see that picture on your Bloglines. Have Fun! - Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team |
| Blog View - More Goodness for Bloglines Beta |
One of the problems with a feed reader is that you can't see the blog in its full glory. We've solved that problem in Bloglines Beta. We've created a setting in 3-Pane View which allows you to get all of that bloggy goodness in your feed reader. Plus, you can get easy access to the comments, other features or, heck, even click on an ad to help you favorite blogger. This is great for highly designed blogs that cover knitting, design, art or funny pictures of cats.Here's how you get access to the feature. Go to 3-Pane View. Click on a headline. Look for the Preview or RSS buttons to toggle between Feed View and Blog View (see below). 
You can see the differences below with a feed from one of our favorite blogs, icanhascheezeburger. Feed View
Blog View
Enjoy! - Eric Engleman and The Bloglines Team |
| Bloglines for the iPhone and Mobile Phones - Reminder | ||||||||||||
Last week, I met a big name blogger who is also a dedicated user of Bloglines. I couldn't help but notice his iPhone typing skills. He was clearly pounding out at 40 words per minute which is super-fast on the iPhone. I was really excited to hear his impressions on iBloglines, our iPhone optimized version of Bloglines. Unfortunately, he hadn't heard of iBloglines. I was crestfallen. I realized I needed to do a better job telling Blogliners about our great products. No better time than the present to remind everyone of the great Bloglines mobile products. We have 2 major product sets: iBloglines for iPhones and Bloglines for mobile phones. iBloglines for iPhones - located at i.bloglines.com
Bloglines for Mobile - located at m.bloglines.com and m.beta.bloglines.comWhy two different versions of Bloglines for mobile phones? One is Bloglines Classic (m.bloglines.com) which has been around for years. The other is our new beta product (m.beta.bloglines.com) which has the latest set of enhancements. 
Bloglines has had a leading mobile feed reader for the last couple of years. It's always been one of our key product strengths. So we were really excited to make our mobile product even better. We were busy over the summer re-writing the mobile code from the ground up. A new version of mobile is available as part of the Bloglines Beta Releases. Go to m.beta.bloglines.com on your cell phone. When we feel it's ready, we'll make it available on Bloglines Classic. Key Features
Enjoy Eric Engleman and the Bloglines Team |
| Bernanke: Fed acted to assure firms of liquidity |
| WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. Federal Reserve officials said on Sunday the U.S. central bank was taking additional extraordinary measures to ensure the broad spectrum of financial firms have access to liquid funds as a credit crisis roils markets.
|
| Talking about Gadget devs, come out and play! |
I know it has been awhile since I posted. Tonight we have big news! MSN Spaces is now Windows Live Spaces. The Windows Live vision is taking shape! In addition to tons of cool improvements (themes, social networking, and more), now Gadgets can be built for Spaces as well as Live.com. Stay on top of developing for Spaces at the Spaces Platform blog. One of the best aspects of Gadgets on Spaces is their viral nature. See a cool gadget on someones space - just click on the + sign and you can quickly add it to your Space. Let the fun begin! Quote Gadget devs, come out and play!   |
| Gadgets and Cross-Browser Development |
We are working hard to improve the Gadget framework documentation. In the meantime (and as we improve documentation), I am working on a series of short tutorials, tips, and highlights introducing how to use the Gadget framework and the underlying APIs. I am going to start with our compatibility layer. After exploring various third-party gadgets being developed for Live.com, I discovered that many developers are still struggling with the API differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer. Most common, I see various tricks to handle the event model differences where IE uses a global event object and Firefox passes the event object as an argument to your handler. This is not necessary when you build Gadgets. Instead, you should be leveraging the underlying compatibility layer that is part of the overall Gadget framework. As I posted last September, as we develop our properties, almost none of our application logic contains browser specific code. Instead, we develop once to the Internet Explorer API and our code runs without modification in Firefox. This occurs because we download a special script that emulates the most useful IE’isms inside of Firefox and in a few cases, Firefox/W3C’isms in Internet Explorer. In this article I highlight the most useful methods and properties of this layer (I promise we will develop a full reference in the near future). Event Model This is easy – always attach events using attachEvent and detachEvent. Do not assign event handlers using function references (e.g., myElement.onclick = doThis) nor use the addEventListener approach. In your event handlers, don’t worry – you will always get the global event object. For example: function doClick()
{
alert("You clicked on a " + event.srcElement.tagName +
Also, as a general practice (I will cover this more in later articles but this is extremely important), when writing Gadgets, be sure to detach any event handlers in your dispose handler. Otherwise, your Gadget will leak memory due to known browser issues. What can you do with this event object? You can check out the MSDN reference as most properties are exposed. In addition to the standard properties, below are the list of properties we added to Firefox:
We have also gone further and extended Firefox with the very useful mouseenter and mouseleave events. As long as you attach these events using the attachEvent and detachEvent methods, these events fire just as they do in Internet Explorer. These events are very useful for quickly and easily detecting when a mouse enters or leaves a specific element. Again, check out the MSDN reference for more details. We even have a reasonable emulation of mouse capturing. However, this is most useful in the context of an entire web-page not within a simple gadget. This is because mouse capturing in Firefox only fires within the context of the browser client area. Regardless, when using mouse capturing (setCapture and releaseCapture methods), the mouse events fire properly on the correct elements. We also fixed the Firefox onclick event to only fire for the left mouse button (Firefox fired for all mouse buttons). This little difference could cause you grief in your application. (For those of you who noticed that we also accidentally prevented the ability to open pages in new tabs via the middle button, that will be fixed real soon). Useful Element Methods Internet Explorer also supports a number of very helpful methods and properties on every element. These APIs simplify day-to-day programming and are very useful for building your application. Below are the list of element functions we added to Firefox. Again, check out MSDN for the details (linked for each item below) on how they work.
The currentStyle property returns the value actually being applied to the element. We currently support a subset of CSS attributes that we have found useful: border, margin, padding for Top, Left, Right, and Bottom; position; height; width; zIndex; color; and direction. We will most likely extend this list over time. Useful style properties We also extended the properties available on the style object with the extremely useful pixel* properties. These allow you to easily manipulate the dimensions of the element (assuming you are working with pixels). We also added the cssText property which gives you a serialized representation inline style. XPath Expressions When dealing with XML documents the ability to query for specific nodes is especially useful. Trying to decipher the difference between IE and Firefox for querying XML can be extremely painful. So, we provided support for two very straighforward IE methods, selectSingleNode and selectNodes. Creating xmlHttp Objects When you need to create a new XML Http Object, you can now simply use the standard approach, Parsing XML Last, but not least, you have a string that you want to load into an XML DOM - just use the standard DOM Parser object: var dp = new DOMParser(); var xmlDom = dp.parseFromString(yourXMLString); This concludes my very brief and fast introduction to our compatibility layer. We are continually expanding the functionality. For example, we have basic IE filter support (alpha filters assigned via script will also apply in Firefox). I will cover these in later posts. For now, resist the urge in your Gadgets to author code differently for each browser. Instead, take the easy road and let our compatibility layer do all your heavy lifting. Last, since it will inevitably come up, see the following post on why we support or don't support other browsers (while the post talks about start.com it is relevant to all properties on our framework).  |
| What we learned building Live.com (or why are we slow)? |
Over the last 18 months, we have explored how to build a highly-interactive, customizable, and extensible portal. The first iteration was a simple portal on Start.com. We created various iterations (start.com/1, start.com/2, start.com/3) which have evolved into the first fully extensible portal on Live.com. Today, from Live.com to the Kahuna (Hotmail) beta to MSN Spaces, and so-on, we are investing heavily in building very rich, interactive experiences. With these investments, we are learning a great deal on the right and wrong ways to engineer rich, interactive web-sites.
Underneath all our Windows Live properties, we share a common framework for how we engineer our client experiences. The framework is very client-centric where we composite most of the page client-side. For example, if you were to view Live.com’s HTML, you will notice that it serves a web-page “shell” and meta-data that describes the content. This meta-data is interpreted by the Live.com application and then rendered. This approach is extraordinarily flexible as we can quickly enhance and extend the application without any heavy server lifting. However, as we have learned and is being evidenced by our customers, without care, performance degradation can quickly outweigh all other benefits.
As you examine Live.com, and for the technically savvy, explore the underlying browser technology, it is easy to question whether we as Microsoft and the industry as a whole are pushing the browser too far. The current crop of rich applications while cool and interactive are starting to fare poorly performance-wise against their traditional brethren. So much so that an often posed question is, where do we go from here? And is it time to reexamine building rich applications?
First, let’s step back and very briefly look at the web versus traditional software. With traditional software, you would go through various design phases starting from specifications, to architecture documentation, to development, to usability testing, to testing, and eventually to ship. The entire approach had a fairly long lead time (up to years). Once released, updating the software was difficult and many times very cost prohibitive. This created a very high-bar. The web has removed almost all those barriers. On the web, we can now experiment and develop software with near real-time feedback and very fast release cycles.
I view the Web 2.0 phenomena as being very early in the development lifecycle. I am not prepared to dismiss any approach, pattern, or methodology as we are still in the learning phases. In the case of Windows Live, as we push the browser, we are also learning a great deal. Examining performance specifically - when I look at Live.com today, I see incredible innovation. We are pushing the limits of extensibility (gadgets), reuse (shared frameworks across all our properties), and are taking chances to drive new user-experience standards (look at how we present search results). On the contrary, I also see an application whose performance is starting to become painful to use. The page currently takes a long time to load, especially on the first visit. Beyond our user’s feedback (we do read all messages), broader industry pundits are quick to throw in the towel on the entire technology.
We are taking a different approach to this problem. We are challenging ourselves to prove that we can architect a performance driven, rich extensible experience. We are leveraging our gained knowledge shipping the many iterations of Start.com and all the beta products we are developing to improve our shared architecture and drive best patterns. Using the current Live.com as a simple case study, below I illustrate a few of the performance-oriented technical issues that we are working on quickly addressing:
Manage your Connections Carefully
If you were to examine Live.com at the network level, a reasonable person would quickly conclude that we are making too many connections. We decomposed this issue as follows: First, we are hitting an IE 6 issue that causes un-cached images applied dynamically via script to download on each reference. This issue typically manifests itself on slower connections – the time when bandwidth is most at a premium. We are baking a solution to this problem directly into our frameworks so that we pre-cache dynamically applied images before reuse. Next, every RSS feed and Gadget manifest is a unique request. This creates a web-page that is |