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September 16, 2004
Firefox Support for RSS
The latest version of the Firefox browser autodiscovers the RSS feeds of sites that you visit and puts an RSS badge in the lower right-hand corner of the screen. Clicking on the badge let's you add the feed to your bookmarks folder. Then, clicking on the bookmark folder gives a list of the most recent posts on that site. At this point, I'd say "good start." Here's why:
The great thing about this little innovation is that it turns certain bookmarks into dynamic, rather than static links. Rather than linking to a site, I get a dynamic folder full of the most recent content on that site. That's good.
Even so, its not a feedreader. The RSS feed looks like a folder and opening the folder gives you the titles without any content. You still have to click out to the site to read the article. Not quite the experience I'm looking for.
So, this is a handy addition, but doesn't collapse my browser and feedreader into a single tool. Still, I'm hopeful. Since Firefox is open source, it will undoubtedly inspire lots of people who want coolness to play with the incorporation of RSS into the browsing experience.
A note about autodiscovery of RSS feeds: The autodiscovery, actually relies on a <link/> tags embedded in the site's homepage. It didn't work for my weblog, so I tweaked it. Here's the right format:
<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title=\"RSS\" href="{full url to rss file goes here}" />
This is placed in the header. I use Radio for my blog, so I checked a few other Radio-based blogs and they all seemed have the same problem (except a few). They don't even have a <link/> tag. I had one, but it was malformed, at least according to Firebird. Mine had "meta" instead of "alternative." I don't remember why. I checked my Movable Type-based blogs and they all seem fine.
02:11 PM | Recommend This | Print This
State Networks Cracked
Utah State technology workers have apparently had their hands full the last few days dealing with people cracking the State's network. Here's a short blurb from the Deseret News and here's a different one from KSL. Apparently the attacks have been going on since 9/11. The State says that their systems are well protected, but its nearly impossible in a system as large and uncoordinated as the State's network to batten down every hatch. For example, there are all kinds of computers with public IP numbers simply sitting under people's desks. Likely as not, these systems are running operating systems that haven't been patched in years. The sole protection in this kind of scenario is firewalls and intrusion detection. What we have is a classic battle between security and local control. The State's been lucky and not had many serious attacks; consequently local control has won out so far.
01:53 PM | Recommend This | Print This
Directory to RSS Feed
Andrew Grumet has a handy little Perl script for creating an RSS feed, with enclosures, of the contents of a directory. Cool.
08:58 AM | Recommend This | Print This
The Rumors of Sender ID's Demise Are Exaggerated
In a piece entitled The Rumors of Sender ID's Demise Are Exaggerated, Yakov Shafranovich explains the recent IETF decision on SenderID. His conclusion is that SenderID in its current form is dead, but there are compromise solutions that are not.
08:55 AM | Recommend This | Print This
Public Fiber Projects
When I saw this puff-piece for the monopoly telecom providers in Wired a few days ago, I didn't bother to point it out because I'm frankly tired of debating the issue. Doc's done a nice job however: "It isn't just competition, dudes. It's service. Here's what we want from that service, in addition to speed: Symmetry, and lack of restrictions. No port 80 and port 25 blockages, for example. We want anybody to be able to set up a business, or do whatever business they already have." Indeed.