DragonStyle

DragonStyle has changed

I've made a couple of important changes to DragonStyle. Here's the highlights:

1) My former main blog, which was designed to have many well thought out, well written, tirades devolved into a wasteland.  I actually saw a tumbleweed blow across the page last time I went there.  That got demoted to 'DragonStyle gets personal' and can be viewed here (don't get depressed by the vast emptiness).

2) I transitioned my former link blog into my main blog. I have been writing more and posting more there anyhow..

These changes might've broken RSS links, etc...  Most likely this affects approximately 3 people, so to you 3, if you experience any interuption in DragonStyle service, my apologies.

River of News

More discussion about 'river of news,' this time coming from Nick Bradbury, author of FeedDemon. Looks like the new surfer view has the goodness of the 'river of news' and the some of the interactivity of the Onfolio Newspaper (and it looks nice too). Nice!

From: Nick Bradbury

Looks like the screenshot of the "Surfer" newspaper style linked in my previous post has received some nice comments, so I thought I'd talk about how it came to be.

Link to article...

Chad Dickerson: "Maybe the beauty of podcasts...

Wonder if this is why aggregators aren't taking off- most people really don't need anything that hyperefficient to read some web pages. How about favorites that turn bold when the page has been updated?

From: Scripting News

Chad Dickerson: "Maybe the beauty of podcasts is that we are forced to step away from our hyper-efficient RSS news aggregator world and actually listen for once."

Link to article...

Murdered blogger's post leads to killer

Who is keeping track of how long until we see a Law & Order using this story line? And how badly will they brutalize 'blogging'?

From: Lifehacker

A post to blogger Simon Ng's journal just before he and his sister were killed in their New York apartment led police to his murderer. In his Xanga journal, Ng wrote:

Link to article...

Bono, Chris Martin on Radiohead

"I'm in love with a lot of things. Some of those things love me back. And some of them don't" - well said, and true.

From: green plastic radiohead

The Chicago Tribune recently interview U2's Bono and the subject of Radiohead was brought up:Kot: You said the other day, "We've 'Kid A'd' ourselves to death." It was a funny line, but I'm disappointed to hear that. [A reference to...

Link to article...

Ed Bott offers a week of Office tips

A week of office tips? I have to admit that this hooked me and I am subscribed!

From: The Office Weblog

Few people on the planet know more about how to wring the most you can from Microsoft Office than Ed Bott. His blog has been an anchor on my RSS list since I first began reading blogs. His Tip of the Day feature is a great resource and this week he is …

Link to article...

Media Tuner : Flash based Aggregator to view Podcasts and VideoCasts

I took a quick look at this- it has a nice looking ui, but it is just a 3 pane reader on the web. Why not take the best of the web and the best of client apps and merge them rather than just make a standard 3 pane in flash? I think they could do a lot more with a rich flash tree control on the left and a flowing html layout of news on the right...

From: The RSS Weblog

Media Tuner is an interesting new application that seamlessly integrates an RSS news reader, Podcast listeners and a video blogging features. It is built using one of those new fangled RIA (rich internet application) technologies which was …

Link to article...

First Day of Summer

It may feel like the first day of summer in Austin, but in Cambridge it remains cold and cloudy. Will the summer hurry up and arrive in New England?!

From: Moonwatcher

Today is one of those days when the signs are unmistakable. And every one of those signs is telling me to shut down the computer, throw on a t-shirt and some shorts, and get outside. It's summer in Austin.

Link to article...

The Problem With River Of News

Disclosure: I actually work at Onfolio so of course I love Onfolio.  That said, I keep reading Dave's posts about the 'River of News' and I can't help wondering if he's seen Onfolio an thought that the newspaper view offers the best of the 3 pane readers _and_ the 'River of News'...

Dave Winer posted a pointer to an RSS reader developer struggling with the best way to present feeds to users. Dave points out (rightly so) that he has been suggesting a 'River of News' layout for some time (like 3 years). And Dave is mostly right- 'River of News' is a great way to read. A web page has a form factor that is simply superior to most alternatives- it is a flowing layout with large fonts, images, and scrolling behavior that works for users.  It is like reading a web page, which is a pretty awesome experience.

This works pretty well.  The problem I see with the 'River of News' is that it pays no mind to what you've read and what you haven't read. For some feeds, this isn't really much of a problem- if I miss a post from Engadget, not a big deal. I do have feeds, however, that provide extremely valuable information (how about search feeds about the product that I work on, search feeds for our competitors, or my feed from our support forum). I care a lot that I read each of the posts and that I don't miss any.  So what I want is a 'River of News' that maintains read / unread state- it provides the reading experience of a web page, but is mindful of making sure that I see new things and don't see old things.

That's why I love the Onfolio newspaper view- its designed to deliver on the 'River of News' but preserve my read state so I don't miss anything.  Maybe the river needs a little updating after 3 years?

Bloglines Security Hole

Wow.

From: Moonwatcher

Embedding user credentials in URL's is a bad idea. Exposing those URL's to the world is an even worse idea. Bloglines does both. Ouch.

Link to article...