Browser Wars

Many remember the good old days of browser wars where Microsoft and Netscape would battle for the best. These days its the Mozilla Firefox team against the big giant. Firefox is an obvious better browser, but M$ still has a huge market share. Mean while a little company has been making a browser for 10 years. Opera is a cross platform browser that gives Firefox a run for the money.

This is not a complete review in any stretch of the imagination. I downloaded Opera yesterday to test it out, and my initial reaction is good. I like the interface and I am exploring the features now. Firefox is a great browser with lots of features, but I may switch over to Opera soon.

The downside to Opera is it is Ad supported. They did have a promotion for a free key to honor their 10 year anniversary, but it was only good for today so I wont bother posting the link.

Anyway. As Internet and web 2.0 becomes more focused in our lives, tools that we call browsers today will play a very important role in how we conversate and do business.

Scoble Fanboy

We all know Robert Scoble the famed "A-list" blogger at Microsoft . He is pretty passionate about blogging and a lot of times we don't agree with him, but you just can't delete him from your RSS subscription. So what to do? Become a Fanboy.

Yes give in to the madness and follow his every move. Search for him on technorati, look him up on Flickr. He is all over the blogosphere. Name your kids after him. Create a blog about him. You too can be a Scoble Fanboy. All you need is an RSS feed and a t-shirt that shows your true fanboyness. I took the liberty to make t-shirts here. Don't forget to subscribe to his feed.

Scobleize: scoble

Busy

You know when you are busy when you have 146 items to read for Digg.com. God bless RSS...........

See you all soon.

Iclectic Podcast August 27, 2005

Another Dave Winer style podcast using my trusty Iriver media recorder. Today I talk about:

Google Talk

Tivo

Volunteering at Ourmedia.org

30:00 min podcast

Direct Link here

Google Talk: The Skype killer?

So Digg and all the sites posted Google's new IM solution was available for download. The IM client is called Google Talk and it can turn out to be the Skype Killer.

So I guess all the rumors that the big G will buy Skype is kinda dead. Well Google has the advantage of always having traction, so a lot of people will be talking about it. Even Microsoft's Start.com team is talking about it.

Over the next few days people will be giving reports of the easy of use and light footprint that Google talk offers. I unfortunately cannot attest to all those easy of use features, because once again Google has ignored the Mac and Linux communities. Now I know there is a small install base, but it's Google, I am sure they have some money to hire a Mac developer. yes it's frustrating to be a minority in the OS sphere, but hopefullly these companies will not succumb to the evil M$ empire by supporting their monopoly.

Scott Rosenberg at Salon.com has a good write up of this issue.

Update: Another good post from apophenia :: on this.

Technorati Tags: google, mac, apple, talk

Light post: Unplug for the weekend

This weekend I was unplugged. Went down to San Diego to spend some quality time with my boo. It was nice to hang out and have fun, but on Sunday I was at a cafe in Ocean Beach and people with powerbooks were sucking up free wifi. I was jonesing to bring up bloglines to see what was going on, but the urge passed as I went out to walk on the beach.

Geeks, I recommend you unsubscribe or unplug or just get out and have some face time with the ones you love....

Cheers for now. Working on a Bloglines - rojo - pluck et al piece for this week, stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: unplug, san diego

What is in a name Part Deux

The RSS battle has been going back and forth with Scoble Vs everyone else. A good point was made that Firefox calls RSS "Live Bookmarks" and their documentation has no reference to RSS, only to "Feed". Dealing with so many vested parties is difficult, because everyone thinks their way is best. In the end, people need to focus on the users. What will mom and pop that uses AOL do with RSS. The challenge then is not to see RSS as a brand but a common naming convention for RSS. If it is RSS, then it will die? Will the AOL users of the world get it?

I wish I had the magic answer to give to MS and Apple and Yahoo, but I have a feeling they are going to do what they want to differentiate their brand.

So where do we go from here? I suspect there will be a continued debate, Dave and Scoble and the rest of the sphere will continue to make it a lively topic and then RSS will change.

It seems there is a push to further take RSS to a new standard with RSS3. New site is up at rss3.org and from the first forum posts, no one is happy about it. I wonder what Mr Winer has to say.

In any event, it is an exciting time for people that are involved in blogs and RSS. I am sure the future will bring change.

Technorati Tags: blog, RSS

RSS mess and MicroGoogle

With all the talk about RSS in the blog-O-sphere it is interesting to see what will happen. Yes RSS is still edgy. With only geeks and psudogeeks using it, it is not worthy of mainstream. It does bring up valuable points that people can learn from. How do you make something techie non techie? It is a difficult problem that can be solved with easy to use tools like bloglines or start.com. But the big problem is getting over the nomenclature. Email is easy to explain. The web is easy to explain. Why is RSS so hard to explain? What M$ calls RSS doesn't much matter to me. I know what it is and how I can use it. What is in a name anyway?

I do agree that it has traction and should remain consistent, but you can never tell what will happen. It should be interesting.

Another side note:

Scoble announced a Blogger tool for Word so all you spammers can use your pirated copy of word to create more spam blogs. Thanks Google and Microsoft. You just made Mark (icerocket) complain again.......

Technorati Tags: blog, Microsoft, google, RSS, software

Attention Trust

After Listening to the latest Gilmore Gang (the best podcast around today), I decided to take a look at Attention Trust Steve Gilmore's new venture. I signed up and it looks like I am member #264. Check it out.

Getty Center Art Lecture

The lecture by Artist John Nava was excellent. He is a great artist and was able to communicate the point of his lecture very well (full review and podcast to come). Some lectures at the Getty are given by scholars and researchers, so they can be very dry. John said he is not a historian or researcher, he is an artist. Great presentation on Rembrandt late portraits of saints which is showing until August 28th.

Anyway the recording of the lecture was not up to par, so it will be a summary podcast of the highlights. Sorry, but I couldn't jack in and the room was just too big to get it in the air.

Bonus: His presentation was done on a Powerbook.

Testing Ecto software

I thought about using an offline editor for blogging on my laptop. I saw a post on blogging software and decided to try a Mac friendly ware.

Technorati Tags: blog, software

Getty Art and free wifi

I am sitting outside the Getty auditorium waiting for a lecture to start. I will be podcasting tonight's lecture by John Nava. The topic is Rembrandt and painting religious figures. Nava has provided work for Our Lady of Angels cathedral here in Los Angeles. His tapestries of saints are magnificent. I am glad the Getty center has these free lectures from time to time. Being involved in Internet and technology can take you away from other cultural treats. Los Angeles has a great museum base and often you can find events like this.

I am glad the Getty was able to provide free wifi. I opened up my laptop and here is an nice open network. I am not sure this is legit, but I would think the Getty would have the IT staff to lock down their network if they wanted to.

I will post more after the lecture. Now I am going to enjoy my beer and podcast.

Cheers.

Iclectic Podcast August 6, 2005

A Dave Winer style podcast on the road in LA. I talk about New Media and old Media. In addition I question cable monopolies and digital media. In error I call the new Tivo style internet content service AKIMBO, akimo or akido. But you get the point.

Enjoy

Direct link here







Tag for sale:

new media
big media
akimbo
ourmedia.com

Rome has Free Wifi

via Robin Good under: Wifi

Rome has installed wifi in the Villa Borghese and it's free. An incentive to take my new ibook to Rome when I go in November. The article indicates you have to login to a host and provide minimal information. No word if there is a pricing scheme for the future but all you Italians can chat and skype your way in the great city of Rome.

Side note:

Rome is an amazing city and the villa borghese park is wonderful. Hopefully I can test out the wifi when I go back to Rome....

Ciao


cartellino di technorati:
rome
wifi

Quickie post- Scoble MIA

Scoble is missing in action, and I am getting stuff done. Scoble has unsubscribed from himself this week due to the lashing he has been getting. I hope he recharges and gets thicker skin. We are all human, but you have to take the flack if you are going to jump in and stir the pot. Scoble, you know what to listen to and what to flush down the toilet with that copy of Windows Vista.

The blogosphere needs it's OC. Where are you Scoble.

His most recent post