FEEDoTopia

Yahoo ABC News Alliance Brings Newsmakers To Yahoo!

2011-10-03T06:51:00.000-07:00

Yahoo and ABC just announced a major alliance between two companies to provide better news to the masses. The new, News and Information Alliance will bring more ABC presence in the Yahoo news.
Among the new news, will be the web-first video series that Yahoo news users will be able to experience. These videos will feature ABC anchors and will accompany Yahoo news articles. First of these videos will be a live stream of George Stephanopoulos and President Obama in an interview. It will be online at 2:35PM EST this afternoon.
Yes, there will be monetizing based on advertisements against the premium content.

Yahoo press release;

Yahoo! and ABC News Launch Premier News and Information Alliance
Powerful combination leverages Yahoo!'s massive reach, content breadth, and technology with ABC News' leading brands, trusted anchors, and global news gathering operation
Debut of GoodMorningAmerica.com on Yahoo! offers audience new ways to continue the conversation before, during and after the broadcast 24/7
Yahoo!'s and ABC News' new exclusive slate of original online video programming kicks off today when ABC News anchorGeorge Stephanopoulos interviews President Obama live from the White House
NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)-- Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), the premier digital media company, and ABC News today announced a strategic alliance that will enhance and transform the delivery of news and information across the digital landscape. This multifaceted relationship blends Yahoo! News' unmatched audience, as well as its depth and breadth of content, with ABC News' global newsgathering operation and unrivaled lineup of trusted anchors and reporters. Yahoo! News and ABC News reach a combined audience of more than 100 million people in the U.S. each month on PCs, mobile devices and tablets.
This unmatched alliance creates a powerful news experience that provides people greater access to compelling news and information, including more original news video online than ever before. It launches today with the debut of GoodMorningAmerica.com on Yahoo! and three new, online-first video series with ABC News' award-winning and trusted anchors and correspondents. "Newsmakers," an original interview series, kicks off today when "Good Morning America" anchor George Stephanopoulos interviews President Obama live at the White House at2:35 p.m. ET. The entire interview will stream live on Yahoo.com and ABCNews.com.
"Yahoo! is committed to building the richest set of premium and personalized content experiences for our users. Our deep collaboration withABC News further strengthens Yahoo! as the No. 1 online news source, greatly enhancing our already robust news content," said Ross Levinsohn, executive vice president of Americas at Yahoo! "ABC News and Ben Sherwood's vision is completely symbiotic with ours; together we can create highly engaging experiences for more than 100 million users a month that will set the standard for the industry."
"This relationship will give ABC News an unrivaled ability to reach across the Web, combining Yahoo!'s vast distribution and cutting-edge technology with our award-winning journalism. For years, we've proudly proclaimed that more Americans get their news from ABC News than any other source," said Ben Sherwood, president of ABC News. "Going forward, we will greatly expand this leadership by building a connection with a whole new online audience."
By bringing together two of the world's leading and most trusted news providers, Yahoo! and ABC News will deliver the latest breaking news, the biggest exclusives, and award-winning investigative journalism from a powerful lineup of journalists — all with the ability to extend across TV and online like never before.
Key elements of the alliance include:
ABC News will be the premier news provider on Yahoo! News — Greater, even easier access to ABC News material across theYahoo! News network, the No. 1 online news destination in the U.S. ABC News content will be prominently integrated into Yahoo! News, the Yahoo! front page, and other areas across the Yahoo! network.
GoodMorningAmerica.com launches today on Yahoo! — A co-branded and highly interactive online destination (GMA.yahoo.com) with robust video and information will let the "Good Morning America" audience continue the conversation online before, during and after the broadcast and deepen viewers' relationship with the program 24/7.
New original Web series will debut from ABC News anchors and correspondents — Yahoo! and ABC News are launching an exclusive slate of original online video programming, starting today with "Newsmakers," "Around the World with Christiane Amanpour" and "This Could Be Big." Additional programs will debut in the months ahead and throughout 2012 (show descriptions follow below).
ABC News and Yahoo! News editorial teams will work together to develop premium news content — Editorial teams from both organizations will collaborate on branded content that will appear on both the Yahoo! News and ABC News sites. Teams will co-produce coverage for major news events and will have integrated bureaus in New York, Washington, D.C., and Los Angeles. Yahoo! editorial staff or content will appear on air.
Yahoo! and ABC Sales organizations will deliver powerful advertising solutions — The companies will create a suite of premium online video advertising opportunities and a variety of enhanced sponsorships designed to allow advertisers to benefit from the unique strengths of each sales organization. ABC will lead sales during the Upfront selling season and Yahoo! will manage sales throughout the rest of the year.
ABC News will continue to maintain editorial control of their sites, and Yahoo! maintains editorial control of Yahoo! sites. The Yahoo! News network will continue to feature content and perspectives from Yahoo!'s editorial staff and the Yahoo! Contributor Network, as well as content from other industry-leading providers and experts.
Original video programming
ABC News and Yahoo! have created a slate of original video programming with ABC News' award-winning and trusted anchors and correspondents featured across various Yahoo! and ABC News sites. With 10 of the top 10 original video programs online, Yahoo! knows how to create and distribute engaging and compelling video content. Jointly produced video programs debut this fall and continue to roll out throughout 2012, starting with:
"Newsmakers" — Everyone from politicians to global leaders to celebrities will engage in exclusive, online-first video conversations with Diane Sawyer, Barbara Walters, George Stephanopoulos, Katie Couric, Christiane Amanpour, Robin Roberts, and others. Consumers will be able to join the discussion and submit questions in a truly innovative, interactive, social platform.http://news.yahoo.com/newsmakers/
"Around the World with Christiane Amanpour" — The first global program produced entirely online leverages Yahoo!'s enormous reach and Amanpour's unmatched international relationships. The world's top international journalist will bring explanations, context and analysis to the biggest international stories of the day. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/the-world-according-to/
"This Could Be Big" — The invisible plane, a car that gets 200 mpg, a building that generates its own electricity, an eye implant that allow the blind to see … these are just a few of the glimpses into the future of innovation that "Nightline" anchor Bill Weir will explore each week. http://news.yahoo.com/blogs/this-could-be-big/
About Yahoo!
Yahoo! (NASDAQ:YHOO) is the premier digital media company, creating deeply personal digital experiences that keep more than half a billion people connected to what matters most to them, across devices and around the globe. And Yahoo!'s unique combination of Science + Art + Scale connects advertisers to the consumers who build their businesses. Yahoo! is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California. For more information, visit the pressroom (pressroom.yahoo.com).
Yahoo! is home to the No. 1 sites for finance, sports, news, entertainment news, and more.
Yahoo! and Yahoo! News are the trademarks and/or registered trademark of Yahoo! Inc. All other names are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of their respective owner.
About ABC News
ABC News delivers a big picture understanding of the world to empower and inspire viewers to make confident decisions for themselves and their families. More people get their news from ABC News than from any other source. ABC News is responsible for all of the ABC Television Network's news programming on a variety of platforms: television, radio, and the Internet. With an average television and radio audience of 180 million people in a given month, ABC News surpasses the competition. More than 2,400 affiliate stations broadcast ABC News Radio's global news coverage. In addition, ABC News NOW is a 24-hour news and information network currently available to 44 million users across cable, broadband, and mobile platforms. NewsOne, the affiliate news service of ABC News, provides live and packaged news, sports, and weather reports, as well as footage of news events, to 200 ABC affiliates and more than 30 domestic and international clients.http://abcnews.go.com/blogs/headlines/press-release/
Yahoo! Inc.
Cory Pforzheimer, 1-408-349-2686
coryp@yahoo-inc.com
or
ABC News
Jeffrey Schneider, 1-212-456-3587
jeffrey.w.schneider@abc.com
Julie Townsend, 1-212-456-4934
julie.townsend@abc.com
Michelle Levi, 1-212-456-6872
michelle.m.levi@abc.com
Source: Yahoo! Inc.
News Provided by Acquire Media

Reddit Passes One Billion Pageviews. (oh a Month!)

2011-02-02T20:47:00.000-08:00

Reddit is telling us that their Google Analytic page has three commas for pageviews number and like anyone and everyone else they are pretty happy, and the song below has become the favorite song of the Conde Nast site.
Reddit Via Mashable (just following Mashable new habbit of hiding the source)

Bloglines Gone To Deadpool

2010-09-10T21:25:00.000-07:00

Bloglines, the venerable RSS feed read of the yesteryear, is going the way of yesterday on October 1st. Bloglines will cease it's operations and if you are Bloglines user, ask.com is providing tools to export your feeds to another reader.
A $10 million product in 2005 for ASK.COM, Bloglines quickly lost it's ground to Google Reader and who ever were left, have lately defected to real time news sources like twitter.

That said, plenty of people are still RSS aggregator-faithful, and Bloglines was lucky enough to be the news aggregator of choice for many of them. I want to thank these users for their support through the years. We are posting notification today, providing a three -week period to export feeds to another service – more detail and instructions can be found on the Bloglines website.

Techcrunch has added Bloglines to it's Deadpool.

Official Google Reader Blog: Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

2009-10-23T08:26:00.000-07:00

Google Reader is bringing in some changes that will aid you in locating more interesting content than you already have discovered. When Google launched the Personalized Search in 2005, we were skeptical because we were worried about personal information. But we came to realize that it helped us in our searches.
Now the same search feature is helping you with your reading habits, that you do with your Google Reader.
The Explore section helps you find new content, with the two new features Popular items and recommended sources, which uses your Reader Trends and Web History (if you're opted into Web History) to generate a list of feeds we think you might like.
Personalized Ranking will help you with sorting your articles, using "Sort by Magic" under the Feed Settings menu in your reader. The traditioanl sort options are still there but better because it is based on your reading and sharing habits. If you try these out, please let the them know about how you feel about them on Reader help group, Twitter or the Reader section of Get Satisfaction, a third party support community.
Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking
Reading gets personal with Popular items and Personalized ranking

Your Feeds "Talks" To You, If They Are On Android

2009-10-01T03:44:00.000-07:00

Yes there is an App for that, certainly on Android based phones. So Android users now can listen to their news out loud while your hands are busy to handle phone.
Or just take the case of the author of the article and the app, Stephane Doyon,that I have pointed at the bottom, who is blind.

The Talking RSS Reader does the task via text-to-speech library adapted from android eyes-free project, helping mobile phoning for visually impaired. Sometimes I am amazed at what a mind could do to solve simple tasks ans this is one of them! Here are some facts about the App from the project page.

It begins reading each article out loud as soon as it is displayed. The sentence currently being spoken is colored in green.
Speech can be interrupted and restarted by pressing the CALL button.
To move to the previous or next sentence, spin the trackball up or down while the app is talking.
If the text is scrolled, speech will pick up at the first full sentence from the top of the screen.
Links can be selected with the finger, or trackball when the app is not talking. Clicking a link launches the browser, which does not talk.
You can have sentences spoken one at a time by holding the CALL button and spinning the trackball up or down.
The Next and Prev article buttons are located at the bottom corners of the screen, where they can easily be tapped without looking. Each article is marked as read after you click Next.
If you are a first time user of Google Reader, you may need to initialize your account by going to http://google.com/reader.

Google Open Source Blog: Talking RSS Reader for Android

Feedburner Subscriber Status Might Change, Starting Today.

2009-09-26T12:33:00.000-07:00

Google Feedfetcher, one that keeps an eye on subscribers to feeds on behalf of Google Reader and the iGoogle has shaken up it's dust and updated it's database after a long period of inactivity.
So this update could take you Feedburner subscriber count will reflect this change which could either be up or down.
Feedburner folks assure us that the changes will begin to show up in feedburner subscriber counts starting today, 26th of September.

Google Sidewiki, Anotate Me Please!

2009-09-23T14:32:00.000-07:00

Google released Google Sidewiki today. Sidewiki allows one to;

Publish helpful information
about any web page right in your browser
Read insights in context
from Sidewiki entries added by others
Share Sidewiki entries through
Blogger, Facebook, Twitter and Google profiles

There is a link to learn more after the jump.

Learn more about sidewiki

Blogger Joins the Hubbub Via The PubSubHubbub Protocol

2009-08-19T08:38:00.000-07:00

We have been working with the PubSubHubbub protocol for a while now to adopt it for Feedotopia. Now that Blogger has adopted it, we will have instant updates from millions of blogs under Blogger wing.
Basically the PubSubHubbub protocol turns web feeds in to real time streams and as developers adopt the protocol, feeds will appers in readers in near real time.
Google Reader, my favorite reader has also implemented PubSubHubbub. You can find a link to at the bottom of this article.

The protocol in a nutshell is as follows:

An feed URL (a "topic") declares its Hub server(s) in its Atom or RSS XML file, link rel="hub" ... . The hub(s) can be run by the publisher of the feed, or can be a community hub that anybody can use. (Atom and RssFeeds are supported)

A subscriber (a server that's interested in a topic), initially fetches the Atom URL as normal. If the Atom file declares its hubs, the subscriber can then avoid lame, repeated polling of the URL and can instead register with the feed's hub(s) and subscribe to updates.

The subscriber subscribes to the Topic URL from the Topic URL's declared Hub(s).

When the Publisher next updates the Topic URL,, via. the publisher software pings the Hub(s) saying that there's an update.

The hub efficiently fetches the published feed and multicasts the new/changed content out to all registered subscribers.

The protocol is decentralized and free. No company is at the center of this controlling it. Anybody can run a hub, or anybody can ping (publish) or subscribe using open hubs.

Blogger Buzz: Blogger Joins the Hubbub
Official Google Reader Blog: PubSubHubbub support for Reader shared items

DIGG Bans Laughing Squid

2009-08-03T20:31:00.000-07:00

According to Laughing Squid, DIGG has blocked the popular blog without reason or warning. We like LS, both the blog and the hosting company.
Hope this get resolved soon!

NewsGator Adopts Google Reader As Its Online COmpanion

2009-07-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

RSS Readers
From Agust 31, Google Reader will become the online vehicle for NewsGator. News Gator has announced that Googlr Reader will be the companion and the synchronization platform for its RSS Reader applications. NewsGator has FeedDemon, for Windows and NetNewsWire, for the Mac as RSS readers. It also has an iPhone App, NetNewsWire for the iPhone, one of the favorite nes readers.
New versions of FeedDemon and NetNewsWire are available as of today, NewsGator mentions NetNewsWire for iPhone will be available soon.
If you need any futher encouragement, following paragraph will give you plenty;
"Users of FeedDemon, NetNewsWire for Mac, and NetNewsWire for the iPhone will have 30 days to download new versions of these applications that can synchronize with Google Reader. Syncing will give you a consistent reading experience across your PC, Mac, iPhone, and web browser. For example, if you add a new RSS feed, organize your folders, or mark some stories as read on one device, the changes will immediately reflect across the others. Users of NewsGator Go! can select from the mobile RSS reader options that synchronize with Google Reader."
NewsGator

Party with Blogger & Google Reader At South By SouthWest (SXSW)

2009-03-07T12:45:00.000-08:00

Google Buzz just announced that it is going to host a party together with Google reader team at the SXSW and if you are attending, check out the venue at Six Lounge (117 W 4th St @ Colorado) on Sunday,
Blogger Buzz: Blogger & Google Reader Party @ SXSW

Transfer FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts, More Info

2009-02-27T12:46:00.000-08:00

Google Adsense for Feeds blog has published following information as of February 28th 2009, people will have problems managing accessing Feedburner accounts, if care is not taken. Simply create a google account and information is availale after the jump.

The FeedBurner functionality of analyzing, optimizing, publicizing, and monetizing your feeds is not being shut down or reduced in any way. We have made some strategic decisions to remove some of our functionality that is not directly relevant to managing feeds for reasons we hope will become apparent over time. Names may change, things may move around, but in general our plan is to provide a lot more functionality that makes sense in 2009, and beyond, for all publishers. Learn more here.

On February 28th, if you have not moved your feeds to a Google Account, the traffic to your feeds will not be cut off or terminated, but you will not be able to view or manage your feeds until you have moved to a Google Account, unless you use MyBrand. Technically, this means that all traffic will now be served out of our Google data centers, and there will still be a way to move your account that will be in place indefinitely.

If you used MyBrand at www.feedburner.com, you absolutely must move to a Google account and update your DNS CNAME records by March 16, 2009, or else your MyBrand URLs will return a 404 error. If you use MyBrand and have not moved, you should have already received an email from us with detailed instructions. If, for some reason, you have changed the email address associated with your FeedBurner account, you will receive another message once you have finished the move process to the email address associated with your Google Account.

Transferring FeedBurner Accounts to Google Accounts FAQ

Feedly, As Explained By Robert Scoble

2009-02-14T20:14:00.000-08:00

Feedly brings together Google Reader, friendfeed, twitter, and anything else to bring you a better and bigger News source. Robert Scoble spoke with Feedly CEO Edwin Khodabakchian and prests us how the newest incarnation of the application works. Get Feedly here.

Your Quotes, For The Last Five Years, On Google News!

2008-10-26T09:23:00.000-07:00

If you thought the feeds that we get too much and there should be a better way to check out the news, I am with you. I have three separate news feeds that, I use to manage daily doze of various news. Still they fill up fast, 1000-2000 articles each. But until I have a better way to parse these, I have to deal with it.
Main while Google News team, has done something marvelous with the "Quotes" system. I have used the thirty day span of quotes by various people many a time. But now I am able to do that for a span of five years!
Just imagine indulging yourself in analyzing quotes by various people over last five years. I can forget about parsing my news as I will be spending a quite a bit time, with these quotes!
Just check out the quotes by Presidential Candidates, Obama and McCain.
But if you not into politics, there are many other people who uttered good and bad stuff, that might interest you.
To access these new features, first search for a person's name on Google News. If Google News has a recent quote, it will be shown above the search results, and if there are more quotes, you can expand on it!, which is again sortable depending on date or relevance. Go get quoted!
But the custom edition was much more enjoyable.
Google News Blog: Words matter

Google Toolbar 5 Ready If You Got Firefox

2008-09-28T08:13:00.000-07:00

Sneaking behind Google Toolbar for Firefox users, Google updated the Google Toolbar for IE with new features a few months back. (What? how could that be?) Yes a few others also thought so and promptly emailed the toolbar team asking when those new feature will be available to Firefox users.
The answer and the new toolbar is ready. You can download the Google Toobar 5 in 29 languages and it is the the first Toolbar launched out of our St. Petersburg, Russia office. So head over to Google toolbar for Firefox site get yours.
The Autofill stands out as you can keep your profiles ready to be filled on your computer and those pesky sign up forms could be filled with just a one click.
Of course what is the toolbar without Google gadgets? you can add any gadget from the Google Gadget Gallery.
So lastly here is a video, that shows the virtues of Google toolbar 5 for Firefox.

Official Google Blog: Google Toolbar 5 now available in Firefox

Google Reader Brings Friends Everywhere, And Gets Friendlier.

2008-09-24T09:46:00.000-07:00

Google Reader Blog posted about some improvements to the Google reader. First of all it the sharing feature that was only available to US friends, now expands to the rest of the world. The other feature is that there is a new way to sort your feeds, if you do not like to drag and drop to arrange them, alphabetically.

Official Google Reader Blog: Friends Everywhere, and other Friendly Features

Tags: Google Reader, feed aggregator, RSS Technology, feedotopia

Sergey Brin goes blogging.

2008-09-23T03:37:00.000-07:00

Sergey Brin goes blogging. With the first post about Parkinson's disease, shows that it is truly a personal blog. He also tells us what Google got to do with Googol.

BOTW To Buy DMOZ! (End Of Free Reviews?)

2008-09-18T08:42:00.000-07:00

According to a post on Shoemoney, BOTW, Best Of The Web is on it's way to acquire DMOZ. DMOZ had so far maintained a premier position on the web directories due to several reasons. The strict control of listing, and the association of companies like Google that relied on the directory maintained by AOL to create it's own Google Directory.
According to the article, BOTW has already hired those top editors away from the DMOZ and by any means doing much better than DMOZ already.
In the age of Google looking down on web directories, (Page rank drops etc) DMOZ (and BOTW) maintain a heafty ranks. But there is a big difference between DMOZ and BOTW. DMOZ is free and wether your site get included might boil down to a boil in the pants of those volonteer editors. I have managed to get some of my sites included but sometimes I wonder if it is worth it.
BOTW on the other hand charges a $249.99 review fee which is a prerequisite. BOTW also makes the point that their review for inclusion is not a guarantee of inclusion in their directory.
But I doubt that many people get excluded but I have not tried nor do I know the inner working of BOTW. But Google thinks they are good enough to give them a high PageRank.

I have no idea nor the Shoemoney, how the drama may unfold. But it might turn pages, web pages pretty soon. May be it is time we down loaded a copy of the directory. A few years ago we started parsing the directory for one of our search engines but I have not visited the DMOZ recently. Hope BOTW do good to DMOZ.

Google Gadgets For Your Blogger Blogs!

2008-08-12T02:51:00.000-07:00

Fresh out of Blogger's own testing ground, Google Gadgets have now been enabled for all layouts blogs. This new interface allows for the integration of iGoogle Gadgets directly into your sidebar, with an array of customization options for easy tweaking. Also built into Gadgets is our robust Gadget Directory, which lets you browse through thousands of cool gadgets and add them to your blog with a simple click of a button.
Blogger Buzz: Spice Up Your Blog with Google Gadgets!

Happy 4th Of July America!

2008-07-04T12:55:00.000-07:00

Happy 4th Of July America!

Tags: 4th of July, America People We See, Independence day

Super Charged Blog List, RSS Powered

2008-06-06T07:43:00.000-07:00

This example at work on the sidebar on the left side, scroll down to see.

Blogger has released a new page element for Layouts blogs: Blog List. If you were using Link List before to create a list of your own or friends blogs, Blog List is the link list with a woomph!. Instead of the static links, now you can have dynamic list that uses blogs’ RSS and Atom feeds to show update times, post titles, and snippets.

Here’s a quick summary, that I took from Blogger Buzz, of the features that a Blog List gives you:

Link to blogs, web pages, and feeds from your blog’s sidebar, with an optional favicon
For pages with RSS and Atom feeds, Blog List can show last updated time, post title, and a snippet of the latest post
Sort links alphabetically or by last update time
Show all links, or hide some behind a “show all” link
Import subscriptions from Google Reader
Blog List links are visible to search engine crawlers, so your blog’s PageRank and reputation flow to those you link to

Read more here and watch a video.

Blogger Buzz: Show off your favorite blogs with a Blog List

Tags: RSS feeds, Atom Feeds, Blog list, Link list

Bloglines VS Google Reader, Show Me The TOPDOG

2008-05-30T11:39:00.000-07:00

I came across a post by Heather Hopkins of Hitwise about how Blogline doing it's deeds against Google Reader. I use both bloglines and Google Reader and so does my collegues. So who is the top dog? Who does the best fetching? (TOPDOG is the best hotdog around where I live and where we get our midnight snacks, usually two dogs! Calabrese and Hot Link, eaten on the street, leaning against the car! So this dog fetches me, time to time)

According the analysis done by the lady and her firm Hitwise, Bloglines is still running in the front but Google Reader is steadily closing in.

I am more of a numbers guy than a word guy, so I am going to grab some graphs and let you go and digest the words of Heather later. The graph above is how they stood in August of last year and the one below is how they are doing now. Both are heavy climbers and Google Reader seem to be doing some catch up. There are other players as well but these two dominate the scene now. (until Feedotopia shakes the ground!)

But the gem of the analysis was the graph below!. These are the downstream visits to publishers from both Bloglines and Google reader. This makes me want to have Google Reader be my traffic cop. Because except shopping, Photography and personal blogs, Google Reader seem to be doing wonders. I think Photo attributes to the new Flickr feed module in Bloglines Beta. I use the feature a lot and I like it. Further more if you are a Shopping or Retail site, it is better to have Bloglines behind you!.Following is Heather's view of it;

The top downstream category for both feed readers was News and Media. However, Google Reader sent 61% more visits to News and Media websites than Bloglines.
Bloglines sent almost as much traffic to Blogs and Personal Websites as to News and Media (9.98% and 9.95% respectively). By contrast, Google Reader sent more than twice as much traffic to News and Media websites. This indicates that Google Reader users are more inclined toward mainstream media - using the reader as a front page of a newspaper - while Bloglines seems to be used more for following blogs.
Bloglines users are also more inclined toward Photography websites, while Google Reader users are more inclined to visit Television websites.
And the last difference I'll highlight is that Bloglines users are 24% more likely to continue on to a retail (Shopping & Classifieds) website.

You can see more data and Heathers analysis at her Blog, here is the post.
Bloglines Beta.
Google Reader
TOPDOG

RNews 0.91 With a bunch of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements.

2008-05-18T20:50:00.000-07:00

Rnews has released a new version, 0.91, at the beginning of this month. I have tested RNews in many test settings but yet to deploy in a production environment. Perhaps this new release will convince me to do so. I have just downloaded and soon will replace one of my test setups of old version.

This release has a raft of new features, bug fixes, and performance improvements. It's definitely the best Rnews, yet. Thanks to everyone who contributed ideas and bug reports!

Feeds are scored using personalized statistics, one- and two-column block views are more flexible, keyword search is supported, heuristics try to fix broken feeds, and feeds may be added using bookmarklets or a Firefox extension.
New user options were added for keeping stats, expanding articles in single-feed view, and opening links in a new window.
Rnews received a styling upgrade, with rollover icons and more AJAX interaction.
IP-locked cookies are now optional (though recommended).
Many bug fixes, in caching, IE presentation, redirects, and elsewhere.

Database structure has changed, but there is now an automatic upgrade process (from 0.8x only). See the instructions on the download page.

Update: minor bug in 0.90 is fixed in 0.91, which is drop-in compatible.

Shorten your Net Time With RSS Subscriptions.

2008-05-12T17:43:00.000-07:00

I always use my Google reader to go through my favorite blogs. I also have a bloglines account setup for blogs that I read infrequently, like once or twice a week. You take it for granted, just like email, I read it a few times a day. But you assume everyone knows about it. But today I read an article by The Net Fool, (A young guy but by reading his posts you never guess. You have to visit his about page and I think you will say great!)
But the reason for this writing is that the net fool is out to tell teach others about making money online and his lesson on RSS, simple but very informative. He explains virtues of RSS feeds as we do here but never wrote actually how to use it. So without my rumblings, here is the article;Five Reasons Why Subscribing to RSS Feeds Is Worth Your While.

VisualRank, A Pagerank For Your Logos, Photos Or Any Image On The Internet!

2008-05-02T11:29:00.000-07:00

Google has unveiled a new tools and plans to rank images on the internet better. Today most image search engines rank images based on text description of the image. But this might not bring out the best image! The researchers have sighted two searches on Google image search for "Eiffel Tower" and "McDonalds", as examples. The Eiffel images were relevant but McDonalds were not exactly what you want if you were looking for "McDonalds"
Image search has always fascinated me, from large database pattern matching, (You draw a doodle of the image you are searching for with your mouse on a slate) to face recognizing for security purposes. Both the subjects are bordering each other as well as my latest fascination with medical imaging with pattern matching. But the Google researchers may look at it from another angle.
So how does this work?
The algorithm, (which is also presented in very technical and theoretical paper, which is very interesting if your field is image processing.) is to collect a bunch of images based on the search and then analyze the results to select best possible image among them.
I will be reading both the papers that were presented by Official Google Blog article, Visualrank,
Pagerank for product image search and YouTube datamining (which I have read before).
The see the Google blog, click on the link below.

Official Google Research Blog: VisualRank