Monthly Archives: April 2007

Browser Add-ons, Feed Sidebar, Mozilla Firefox, Programming, RSS, RSS Ticker

RSS Ticker (finally) updated to 1.9

I’ve finally gotten around to updating RSS Ticker. Among other things like new locales and code optimization, this version includes a rewrite of the options dialog and its related code, so any reported bugs related to the Options dialog should be fixed now. This includes the known incompatibility with the All-in-One Sidebar extension.

You can download the latest version of RSS Ticker 1.9 from the RSS Ticker homepage.

On a related note: I originally wrote RSS Ticker so that I could use Firefox’s Live Bookmarks to manage my feeds but still have an easy way to see new items from a small number of feeds. Since then, the number of feeds I follow has grown, and the ticker interface has become too restrictive for me. If this sounds like you, you might want to check out my new extension called Feedbar. It uses your Live Bookmarks for feed management like RSS Ticker, but it displays the new items in a sidebar, so it’s easier to scan through a large number of feeds.

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Digg, Programming, RSS, Social Media

Digg feeds still broken

It’s been a week since I first brought up the problem with certain Digg Search RSS feeds being broken. I reported the bug through Digg’s “Report a Website bug” form, and I mentioned it here as well. Has a week been enough time to fix what is most likely a simple programming error?

No. Initially, I had assumed that the feeds would be fixed within a few days, and I’d be able to do a nice little “I reported a bug and Digg fixed it in x hours/days” post, but now it’s turning into “How long can it possibly take?” Has anyone else ever reported a bug to Digg? How long did it take to get fixed? I’d hate to think that they’re not fixing the bug on purpose just because it was reported by someone they don’t care for.

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Blogging, Jason Calacanis, Netscape, Netscape.com

Let’s see if this works…

Jason Calacanis

Love him or hate him, controversial blog-boss Jason Calacanis knows his linkbait. Brooklyn-born Calacanis, formerly the editor of the Silicon Alley Reporter, made a “how-to linkbait me” post on his popular blog, which he writes with his trusty bulldog Toro by his side. (Jason is more recently known for being the impetus behind the relaunch of Netscape.com, which according to some traffic metrics, is now the most popular social bookmarking site on the Web. Kudos to you, Calacanis!)

Of course, I can’t mention Jason’s blog without linking to this great post from early 2005 where he outlines a typical conversation with a VC regarding the Weblogs, Inc. business. Classic Calacanis! This recent posts detailing what’s wrong with PayPerPost is a great read too – his observations are spot-on. Deception never works as a business model. (Or as Jason says, “The fact is no one in the world–NO ONE–wants to be covertly marketed to.”)

I remember back in the Silicon Alley days (or the SA days, as we liked to call it), when J-Dawg, Keepsie, and I would hang out late into the night, eating sushi and talking about the last marathon each of us had run. Oh, how we laughed! You might not be able to tell from his blog posts, but Jason is a great guy to just chill out with once you get to know him. Watch out though, because while you’re just chilling out, Jason has a way of getting you revved up for the next big thing he’s working on. Before you know it, it’s 6AM and you’ve been up all night working on prototypes and proofs-of-concept.

So anyway, back to the linkbait thing. In writing a piece explaining to others how best to linkbait him, hasn’t Jason in reality written the most effective linkbait of them all? Think about it – now that people know how to get Jason to link to them, the first thing they’ll do is follow the instructions, which include linking to Jason many times over (like maybe to his Twitter page or one of the many Digg articles about him). Now that’s smart linkbaiting. The only question is, will anyone fall for it?

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Digg, Digg Statistical Data, Social Media

Top 1,000 Diggers list now Web-friendly

Due to popular demand, I’ve made an HTML version of the Top 1,000 Digg users list. This formatted list will be updated weekly along with the CSV data files containing the same information.

I’m considering just making it dynamic and allowing people to grab the “Top X Diggers” list by specifying a “?users=x” parameter (where x is less than or equal to 1000), but for now I’ll just be updating the static lists for the top 100 and top 1000 to keep the resource-usage down.

Thanks to Universal and others for the suggestion.

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Blog, Blogging

Feedback

I’m kind of bored, so I’m pulling out the old standby that is almost guaranteed to provide some moderately interesting comments – a reader survey! The latest check I did of feed subscribers numbered in the low triple-digits, and I’m curious about what kind of people are reading what I write. So I submit these three questions for your consideration:

1. How did you initially find my site?
2. What would you like to see more/less of here?
3. Do you have a blog (and where is it)?

I’ve turned off the requirement of filling in your name and e-mail for this post, so giving some feedback should be as easy as ever.

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Digg, Digg Statistical Data, RSS, Social Media

Top 1,000 Diggers: 2007/04/25

This CSV files contains the username, number of frontpage stories, number of submitted stories, number of stories dugg, and number of profile views for the top 1,000 users on Digg.

Top 1000 Diggers as of 2007/04/25

If you’d like to be notified whenever I release a new dataset, you can subscribe to the Digg Statisical Data RSS feed, which will include only the dataset posts, or my main RSS feed, which is updated with all of my blog posts.

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Social Media

Fark launches a redesign, community cries about it

Fark just went live with a new design, and the expected barrage of “Wahhh, I don’t like it, change it back!” comments is in full swing. Having been on the receiving end of these kinds of comments many times myself, I’ll give the new design a little time to sink in before I decide whether I like it or not. It’s definitely… different.

For now though, I’m just wondering what the cause for a redesign was. It can’t be just to allow for the big square ad spot on the right, and as far as I can tell, they haven’t added features either (like threaded comments). I hope they’ll post some details behind the planning, decisions, and execution of the redesign sometime soon.

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Browser Add-ons, Feed Sidebar, Mozilla Firefox, RSS, RSS Ticker, Software

Announcing Feedbar (Firefox extension)

About a year ago, I wrote my first RSS-related Firefox extension, RSS Ticker. It was intended to be used for getting instant notifications from a small number of feeds. As the number of feeds I follow has grown, I’ve found the ticker interface inadequate and frustrating, so I’ve been working on a new RSS extension for Firefox over the past couple of weeks.

I’m calling it “Feedbar,” and it’s a sidebar for Firefox that aggregates all of the unread items from your Live Bookmarks in one place.

Partial screenshot of Feedbar
Click for full view.

It’s not trying to be yet another standalone RSS reader that just uses Firefox as a platform (like Sage, infoRSS, or Wizz RSS). It doesn’t have its own feed manager – it just uses the feeds you’ve already bookmarked and shows you the items from those feeds that you haven’t visited. It’s intended to be simple, easy to use, and something that could be included by default in Firefox without seeming out of place. As far as I know, there’s not another extension already doing this.

You can download Feedbar 1.0 alpha 1 at the Feedbar homepage. Feedback is greatly appreciated.

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Christina, Home Improvement, Life

Software isn’t the only thing I build

Christina and I just finished remodeling the stoop in front of our house. What used to be crumbling concrete steps covered in peeling outdoor carpet is now a wider and more inviting stairway complete with flower boxes and new handrails.

Except for the handrail parts, we designed and built it ourselves from scratch (scratch being a pile of treated 2×12 lumber and some plywood). Now it’s onto cleaning up the yard as it’s late April and winter has finally ended in Minnesota.

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Digg, RSS, Social Media, Software

Buggy RSS feeds at Digg

I just noticed a strange bug with Digg’s RSS feeds: when you subscribe to a feed for a search term (to monitor submissions of your blog posts, for example), sometimes the feed will be invalid because it is missing closing </channel> and </rss> tags. This means that the feed won’t be parsed by most readers, and you won’t get updates of any new items in the feed.

The weird part is that this doesn’t happen for all search terms. I found that the chris, efinke, and charles feeds are all malformed, but the feeds for apple, kevin, and rose are not. My best guess as to the cause is that some item in each of the malformed feeds is causing the code that generates the feed to die prematurely, leaving the feed incomplete. At any rate, I’ve reported the bug to Digg, and it will be interesting to see how long it takes to get fixed.

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Digg, Digg Statistical Data, Social Media

Top 1,000 Diggers: 2007/04/18

This CSV files contains the username, number of frontpage stories, number of submitted stories, number of stories dugg, and number of profile views for the top 1,000 users on Digg.

Top 1000 Diggers as of 2007/04/18

If you’d like to be notified whenever I release a new dataset, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the Digg Statisical Data tag, which will be applied to all dataset posts.

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Digg, Digg Statistical Data, Social Media

Top 1,000 Diggers: 2007/04/11


Due to the number of requests I’ve been getting for data on the top Diggers, I’ve decided to start providing regular (probably weekly) exports of the statistical Digg data that I’ve compiled. The CSV files will contain the username, number of frontpage stories, number of submitted stories, number of stories dugg, and number of profile views for the top 1,000 users on Digg.

CSV: Top 1,000 Diggers as of 2007/04/11

If you’d like to be notified whenever I release a new dataset, you can subscribe to the RSS feed for the Digg Statisical Data tag, which will be applied to all dataset posts.

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Browser Add-ons, Mozilla Firefox, OPML Support

OPML Support Updated (1.3)

I’ve released version 1.3 of OPML Support for Firefox.

What is OPML Support for Firefox?

OPML Support is an extension for the Mozilla Firefox Web browser that adds OPML import/export functionality to the Firefox Bookmarks manager. OPML is a file type that is widely used to distribute lists of RSS/newsfeeds.

This version includes full support for multibyte and other non-ASCII characters, so importing and exporting files with Japanese, Chinese, or any accented characters should work now. Thanks to Hisateru Tanaka for his contribution to this fix.

Also included in version 1.3 are a Japanese translation (thanks again Hisateru) as well as Korean and German translations. You can download the update at the OPML Support homepage or just press the “Find Updates” button in the Firefox addons dialog.

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Netscape Blog

Netstripe: Netscape 9’s Theme for Firefox

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

Netscape 9 is on its way, but to tide you over until it gets here, we’re releasing Netscape 9’s theme (called Netstripe) as a separate add-on for Firefox. Here are some previews of the great work done by our designer, Andy Fraley. (You can install the theme by following the instructions at the end of this post.)

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Figure 1: Theme preview image

 

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Figure 2: Toolbar and tabs (click for full view)

 

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Figure 3: Add-ons dialog

 

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Figure 4: Bookmarks Manager

Netstripe is compatible with Firefox 2.0 through Firefox 2.0.0.*. To install the theme, you can either download it from Mozilla Addons or just complete the following steps:

1. If you are running Firefox on Windows, install the theme using this link:

Install Netstripe for Firefox 2 on Windows

If you are running Firefox on Mac OSX, use this link.

Install Netstripe for Firefox 2 on Mac

2. Restart Firefox after installing the theme.
3. Open the Addons Manager (Tools > Add-ons).
4. Click on the Themes tab.
5. Select Netstripe and press “Use Theme”
6. Restart Firefox.

On a separate note, we’ve been alerted that there are files out there masquerading as “leaked” versions of Netscape 9. You can be sure that Netscape 9 has not been leaked, and when it is available, the only legitimate (and safe) place to get it will be browser.netscape.com.

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Browser Add-ons, Mozilla Firefox, Netscape, Netscape Navigator

Netscape 9 Teasers: Week X

This week’s browser teaser is a big one: we’ve released Netscape 9’s theme (Netstripe) as an add-on for Firefox.

Netstripe Preview Image

“Netstripe is compatible with Firefox 2.0 through Firefox 2.0.0.*. To install the theme, you can either download it from Mozilla Addons or just complete the following steps:

1. If you are running Firefox on Windows, install the theme using this link:

Install Netstripe for Firefox 2 on Windows

If you are running Firefox on Mac OSX, use this link.

Install Netstripe for Firefox 2 on Mac

2. Restart Firefox after installing the theme.
3. Open the Addons Manager (Tools > Add-ons).
4. Click on the Themes tab.
5. Select Netstripe and press “Use Theme”
6. Restart Firefox.

More discussion at Netscape.com.

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Netscape Blog

Netscape Browser 8.1.3 Released

This post originally appeared on the Netscape Blog.

We’re pleased to announce the 8.1.3 release of the Netscape Browser (Windows only). New in this version are security updates to the 8.1.x browser line – see the Security Alerts page at browser.netscape.com for more information on the bugs fixed in this release.

Remember to uninstall your current 8.x installation from the Control Panel’s Add/Remove Programs dialog before installing 8.1.3. Your profile information will remain intact and will be recognized by the new 8.1.3 installation.

Download and install Netscape 8.1.3 today!

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Digg

Gotcha

If you viewed Top 100 Diggers list yesterday, you saw this message:

“The Top Diggers List has been removed at the request of Digg’s legal team.”

Yesterday was, of course, April Fools day, and if you had viewed the HTML source of the page, you would have found this:

<!-– Is it April 1 already? –->

April Fools! Now that it’s April 2, the list is back up, it’s still being updated, and to clarify, I never heard anything from Digg other than this single snide comment from Jay Adelson.

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Funny, the Web

See you tomorrow

Wow, the Internet gets annoying on April Fools day. The best April Fools jokes are subtle pranks, not long, drawn-out, unfunny “jokes,” and they do not include the phrase “this is not a joke.” I’m turning off my computer and I’ll come back online tomorrow when things have settled down.

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