Category: Uncategorized

Google Talk

Post ImageGoogle has certainly been busy as of late. They launched another new program recently, this one called Google Talk:

They say talk is cheap. Google thinks it should be free. Google Talk enables you to call or send instant messages to your friends for free-anytime, anywhere in the world. Google Talk is in beta and requires a Gmail username and password.

Another instant messaging client? Last thing I need, let me tell you. But curious as I am, I downloaded it tonight and tried it out (Dickson did too, so I’d have someone to chat with). Interesting enough, and simple to install, but largely a waste of my time. Here’s why:

  • This has got to be the most basic IM client in the world! Dickson created a better one for his class project last year.
  • You can’t change anything. Not your display name, not your font, not your font color, nothing.
  • No emoticons! Just colored text instead.
  • The application looks and feels like a web page – no doubt by design.

The program also has voice chat, and that feature appeared to work quite well. Essentially what it boils down to though is that it’s not good enough for me to replace my main IM client. I use MSN Messenger (feel free to add me, mastermaq@hotmail.com, just don’t email me there). Google Talk is an interesting experiment, but it doesn’t come close to being good enough to replace MSN, nor does it look like it will anytime soon. Heck, Skype and Yahoo Messenger are both light years beyond Google Talk. And that’s to say nothing of the fact that all of my contacts would need to have Google Talk too.

I suspect the only reason this program was created is so that Google staff can talk to one another using their own network, nothing more. Unless the second beta looks amazing, you won’t find me on Google Talk anytime soon.

Read: Google Talk

Google Desktop 2

Post ImageLooks like Google isn’t slowing down their efforts to become a software company! Today the company released Google Desktop 2:

Google has rolled out a beta version of its desktop software, adding such features as “Sidebar,” which offers a personalized panel of information such as e-mail, stock quotes and news.

The software, unveiled on Monday, also includes a scratch pad style tool for taking notes and tools for searching one’s desktop and Microsoft Outlook inbox.

Looks pretty interesting, though I haven’t downloaded it yet. The sidebar is a very thought-provoking feature. Longhorn once included a sidebar, but it is no where to be found in Vista Beta 1. Perhaps the Google Desktop release will force Microsoft to rethink the sidebar feature?

Read: CNET News.com

Pinging with Pingoat

Post ImageSpeaking of web feeds, how about spreading the word about your web feed? One of the best ways is to use a pinging service. I came across a new one tonight called Pingoat (hat tip to Mark Evans) and I quite like it – it’s so fast! What in the world is Pingoat?

Pingoat is a service that pings or notifies a number of services that keep track of weblogs and publish them. By pinging, you let the services know that your blog has been updated and hence, they crawl and index your site, publishing your blog contents, thus increasing your blog’s popularity.

The other cool thing about Pingoat is that it supports a huge list of pinging services – far larger than Pingomatic. Check it out!

Read: Pingoat

Now Featuring: A Web Feed!

There we go, I’ve updated my site to use a “web feed” button. I kept it orange, simply because most people probably look for an orange button if they are trying to manually find a web feed. Want the icon for your own site? Here it is in GIF and JPG:

(GIF) http://www.mastermaq.ca/2005/images/webfeed.gif

(JPG) http://www.mastermaq.ca/2005/images/webfeed.jpg

Enjoy!

Web Feeds or RSS?

Post ImageLots of discussion going on lately about whether or not Microsoft, and everyone else for that matter, should call RSS feeds “RSS” or “web feeds”. It all started with the first beta release of Internet Explorer 7, in which the term “web feeds” is used. Instead of delving into the complete history of this little debate, I’m going to instead point you to the excellent roundup by Ed Bott. Dave Winer, creator of the RSS standard, chimes in and says, “Don’t screw around with things you didn’t create and don’t understand.”

The debate is not much of a debate, in my opinion. There’s some really simple reasons that we should be calling them web feeds. When you ask your friend or co-worker about something on the Internet, do you talk about visiting an “HTML page” or a “web page”? Does your web browser (not “HTML page browser”) load up “HTML pages” or “web pages”? Clearly, you talk about web pages, and that’s what your browser loads. There are three very good reasons we use the term web pages:

  1. Saying “HTML page” is awkward. The masses like comfortable and simple, not awkward and complex.
  2. Calling a web page an “HTML page” is, technically, misleading. You’d be hard pressed to find any page on the Internet right now that consists of only HTML.
  3. Conceptually, a page that is only HTML, or combines HTML and JavaScript, or combines HTML, JavaScript, and CSS, etc., are all the same thing. When you load a web page, you don’t think about the technology behind it.

For the very same reasons, we should be using web feeds, not RSS feeds. The term “web feed” is comfortable and simple. It doesn’t exclude RDF, or Atom, or RSS with extensions, and so it isn’t technically misleading. And finally, a web feed is a web feed, regardless of the technology that powers it.

There’s other reasons “web feeds” is better than “RSS” too. For the technology to become as natural and invisible as web pages, it needs a simple name. And the technology is so very young – who’s to say that something newer won’t be created that does the same thing, but in a different or better way? Think Atom 1.0 here.

There’s really no reason to publish more than one web feed, and thus no reason to call them anything else. Certainly the applications which consume web feeds should support multiple technologies, like both RSS and Atom, but publishers shouldn’t really have to worry about what technology to use. They should, just as with web pages, pick the technology best suited to the task at hand. You don’t have separate browsers for HTML and HTML with CSS – same goes for web feeds.

If you’re reading this post on the web, you can no doubt see that I am pretty hypocritical. No where on my site will you find the term “web feed”, and I publish both RSS and Atom feeds. Well, my excuse is that until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to the terminology I used. Heck, I even use the orange “XML” icon for my “RSS” feeds (talk about confusing!). Now that I have given it some thought however, I’ll definitely be making some changes. Look for a web feed button soon!

CBC workers to launch competing service

Post ImageNormally I hate unions, but this bit of news caught my fancy. In addition to the current Telus strike, the CBC is facing a labour dispute all across the country. And as Tod Maffin reports, things are about to get interesting:

Next week, locked-out workers of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation will use the Internet to compete against their employer. They are even setting up office and studio space in Toronto.

The site will have a national daily newscast available via podcast or download, released at the usual time of CBC Radio’s flagship World at Six news program (currently off the air). Phase two will include local and regional news, expanded current affairs coverage, and perhaps video-casts.

Watch for the new site at CBCunplugged.com. At least, it sounds like that’s where things will be located:

Turns out a number of locked-out producers have been working on a podcast/news site of their own and they’d planned to call it — go ahead, guess — CBC Unplugged. Great minds think alike I guess. Rather than cause confusion, I’m going to hand the domain over to them and let them run with their own service. So as of next week, CBCunplugged.com will be managed by a different group of people. Stay tuned, they have some exciting things planned!

Will be pretty interesting to watch next week. Apparently if works volunteer ten hours a week on the new site, they only have to walk the picket line half the usual time to get their strike pay. I wonder if anything like this has happened before? I doubt it. Ah, the wonders of the Internet.

Read: I Love Radio.org

Can podcasting save hockey?

Post ImageI’ve been pretty silent about the NHL and its labour dispute, but before you start laughing at the above title, check out the post of the same name by Matt May, in which he says:

The NHL is going to need a full-court press to get and keep the fans’ attention and interest. OLN will also need to increase its exposure, as it treats its NHL content as a draw for its other programming. And Comcast, which owns OLN, is heavily invested in digital cable and broadband Internet. Comcast will be pushing NHL content on its on-demand cable services as well as online.

So, we’re most of the way there: a sports league and a television network both with a vested interest in reaching people more people than they currently have access to. This is a great situation for podcasting, and even better for video in RSS enclosures. I don’t think we’re quite ready for full-game feeds, and we may never need them, given the real-time nature of sporting events. But OLN will be creating hockey-related content around their coverage, and that’s no good to them if nobody is watching it at 11pm. They will already be offering it on demand. Why not serve an MPEG for download on their own broadband network?

He makes a number of good points in his post, noting for example that ESPN recently refused to pick up the NHL coverage for the next few seasons, forcing he league to hook up with the Outdoor Life Network. NBC has also picked up rights for the next two seasons, but without any license fees. Basically, it comes down to the NHL needing to be creative in finding delivery vehicles for its content.

Would people subscribe to NHL podcasts? Might seem crazy, but I think you’d be surprised. Websites for sports are often extremely cutting edge, with advanced real-time statistics, audio, and video, so it’s not unlikely that at least some fans would be willing to try it out. It’s definitely an interesting idea.

While the other major sports in the US are all still swirling their toes in the online water with monthly subscription charges for streaming content, the NHL has a real chance to rebuild by letting more people in. There are millions of monthly impressions to be had. Even OLN and Comcast stand to benefit in this arrangement by increasing their own profile. It would be fascinating for everyone involved to see the league and the network take such a bold step.

I don’t think podcasting is going to “save hockey”, but I think it would be an excellent experiment in delivering content to fans.

Read: Corante

Edmonton man addicted to updating gas prices

Post ImageWhen I posted about the price of oil on Tuesday, I linked to EdmontonGasPrices.com as a resource for checking out where the cheapest gas is in the city. Then today, reading the Journal, I came across an article talking about Scott Widney:

It’s only noon, but already Scott Widney has earned 450 points as a tipster for GasBuddy.com, a gas-price tracking service that posts good deals on fuel for more than 170 North American cities.

Using the screen name oilmaster, the 46-year-old logs into local gas-price tracking site edmontongasprices.com and reports the price changes at six south-side gas stations about three times a week.

“It’s pretty addictive,” he said Tuesday, the day gas prices at most Edmonton stations shot up to 102.9 cents per litre.

Whatever floats your boat, I suppose! Granted, he does get entries into contests for free gas for every 150 points he earns, so it’s not like he gets only satisfaction out of the deal.

Though I have always thought GasBuddy and EdmontonGasPrices.com were kind of a funny concept. If you found cheap gas, wouldn’t you instinctively want to keep it a secret? To keep it all for yourself? Maybe I’m just selfish. The other reason I thought it was a funny concept is that it allows gas stations to see how their competitors are pricing gas around the city without having to make some phone calls or (gasp!) drive around. Seems to me it would be easier to raise your prices just because someone else did.

Read: Edmonton Journal

Microsoft sets Xbox 360 pricing

Post ImageMicrosoft has finally revealed the pricing for the forthcoming Xbox 360 console, and it looks bad for Sony, especially if they really are going to price the PS3 quite high as expected:

Pricing on the much anticipated Xbox 360 will start at $299.99, Microsoft announced Wednesday.

Scheduled to launch in North America in time for the holiday season, that core version of the tech giant’s next-generation game system will include the console, one controller, a white faceplate and an audiovisual cable.

But wait, there’s more!

For $100 more, gamers can upgrade to the premium edition. That package will feature, in addition to the standard equipment, a headset, remote, membership to the Xbox Live entertainment and chat network, and a 20GB hard drive for storing games, music, and other content downloaded from Xbox Live. It will also swap out the wired controller for a wireless one.

The premium edition will be known as the Xbox 360 and will have a cream-colored shell, while the lower-priced version will be called the Xbox 360 core system and will come in a light green box, said David Reed, director of platform marketing for Xbox.

Yeah, so why you’d purchase a core system is beyond me. Seems like a waste when you get the premium for only a hundred bucks more. Even Microsoft’s director of platform marketing for Xbox David Reed knows it, “There’s no question we’re going to sell a lot more Xbox 360 this holiday than we are of the Xbox 360 core system.”

Read: CNET News.com

Average Joe Podcasting

Post ImageIt seems that big media has decided they want to get into the podcasting game, with everyone from MSNBC to Fox to BusinessWeek announcing podcasts in the last few weeks. I think that’s great! You know what they say, the more the merrier! And let’s be honest, no matter how much you like listening to an American couple talk about their sex life, you probably wouldn’t mind adding some news or commentary to your daily playlist.

Unfortunately, now that big media (or mainstreamedia) is on board, there’s a good crop of pundits and critics who seem to think that podcasting is over, because the average joe won’t be able to make any money podcasting. The big media players get all the coverage, and thus the advertising dollars.

Except that average joe probably doesn’t want to make any money from his (or her) podcast! Not everyone who starts a podcast is going to want to make money from it, just like not everyone who blogs does so with the intention of making a living. I read a lot about podcasting – news articles, blog posts, etc., and I can’t help but feel that far too many individuals and organizations focus on the “making money from podcasting” idea. Sure, there will be some podcasts that generate revenue, but I don’t see any reason that podcasting should be different from blogging: there are a lot of business blogs, but there are far more personal, average joe, I do it for myself/my family/my friends kind of blogs.

As soon as starting and maintaining a podcast is as simple as starting and maintaining a blog, I think we’ll see the same breakdown in podcasting. Lots of average joe podcasts, and far less big media or big business podcasts. Podcasting is not radio! You can decide what you want to listen to, whether that’s corporate marketing podcasts, flashy radio sounding podcasts, or something more real.

And one last clarification: just because I call them “average joe” podcasts, doesn’t mean they have to suck or sound bad! There will probably be some professional sounding average joe podcasts produced. All I mean by the term is podcasts not created for the sole purpose of making a monetary profit, but more as a labor of love. Or maybe even just ’cause it’s the thing to do 😉