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Will Microsoft ever get the web?

Consider this a continuation of Will Microsoft ever play nice with the web?

Dear Microsoft, it’s 2005. Heck, it’s almost 2006, and you are still launching web sites (see Windows Live) that do not work in other web browsers.

How can the people who develop these things justify this? These are not good web citizens… But wait! Look, see, they are thinking of you!

Firefox Users
Firefox support is coming soon. Please be patient :-)

Oooh, that smiley is a nice touch. A warm and fuzzy, truly caring Microsoft.

I assume what they mean to say is “Windows users who happen to use Firefox, Please be patient”… But wait, there’s more!

What is Windows Live?
Your online world gets better when everything works simply and effortlessly together. That’s the basic idea behind Windows Live. So the things you care about – your friends, the latest information, your e-mails, powerful search, your PC files, everything – comes together in one place. This is a brand new Internet experience designed to put you in control. And this is just the beginning – you’ll see many more new services in the coming months.

Again, I assume that unless you and your friends all use Windows, you are not included. Safari, Opera? Mac OS X? Linux? Chances are you aren’t invited to the party…

As usual, file this under Humor.

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Polling Doesn’t Have to be Painful

Automatically unsubscribing from feeds? Blasphemy! Right?

Kellan and Phil both mention it feeling not quite right, or just plain wrong, and I agree that it could be misused, so I thought I’d revisit some of the features I’ve added into my current aggregator of choice Feed on Feeds. (Aggregator developers, feel free to use any of these ideas in your products, if the clients improve, we all win, right?)

Ratings: Each feed gets a rating from 0 to 5 *’s. This allows me to easily hit my aggregator and just view the important feeds. If I have more time to spare, I can view the lesser rated feeds. I’ve found this to be pretty valuable in managing my attention. I also set any new subscription to 5 *’s to start with, so it’s immediately in my face, and I can drop it down to a lower level if needed.

Polling Frequency: The other big feature I added was individual polling frequencies, so I can set how often a feed is polled. I’ve really only got a handful that are set to 60 minutes (1 hour is probably the minimum for hitting other people’s feeds.) This allows me to up the frequency for feeds I might be in control of, that exist on my server, from my applications. In this case, I’d hate to be limited by the 1 hour most clients use. More important than that is the higher setting. I’ve got a ton of feeds that get checked every 6 to 12 hours, every day, every week, etc. I do this either because I know the sites do not update that often, or they are not important enough for me to worry about on an hourly basis. This mean less requests from my aggregator, and less hits to the servers that host the feeds.

Anyway, I applaud aggregator developers willing to introduce new features. We can push beyond just being a river (or puddle) of news in so many ways…

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Rocket Zombies

My Zombie Lurch Part 1 video showed up on Rocketboom for October 27, 2005, though they got wrong the fact that it was in Madison, Wisconsin. The video even shows the sign I brought along, which says “Madison” on it… Anyway, thanks Rocketboom!

Update: Rocketboom corrected the error, thanks guys!

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Don’t Drink and Sword

I’ve told you people before! Don’t start drinking and then pull out the swords! Menomonee Falls man charged with felony in sword attack:

During a violent quarrel, Frevele jabbed the man in the chest and thigh with the sword before slicing open his left hand, creating a “severe” wound that included tendon damage.

When he was questioned by police, Frevele admitted wielding the sword, saying he did so after having consumed “four or five beers,” the complaint says.

The story doesn’t mention if he was dressed as a pirate.

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DNS Cache Flushing

Those pesky IT guys got you down? They been messin’ with the DNS again? Using Mac OS X?

Running the following command should clear your DNS cache, and is much easier that rebooting… 

lookupd -flushcache

Failing that, if you’ve just got a host or two you can’t connect to, you can always just add the hostname with the correct IP address to your /etc/hosts file…