So much for that lazy Friday, my aggregator is now overflowing with juicy stuff. Alas, it's time for me to head out for a friendly game of pool with some former co-workers.

5:59:43 PM | Comments:

Ken Rawlings on RSS:

Is it just me or does all of this seem like baby steps to the whole "automated user agents" promise that was all the rage a few years ago?

Absolutely. Improvements in RSS reading are needed to cope with overload. Keyword filtering will help for feeds that have specific, indentifiable content of interest. Feedreader looks like it could be a winner for manually scanning lots of feeds, need to try it out sometime...

5:57:11 PM | Comments:

Bruce Loebrich:

My aggregator brought in an interesting story from The Shifted Librarian mentioning that Ken Rawlings had made a Google News Feed based on Bryce Yehl's wishlist. I thought to myself, great, I can stop using the stopgap feed I made using Mark Paschal's Stapler on March 16th. Unfortunately, the titles only format, while short, missed out on one of my favorite features of Google News, multiple sources with different points of view. This did spur me to both try out RSSDistiller and break my feed into seven feeds so each Google category can have its own.

[via The Shifted Librarian]

Sweet! Thanks to everyone who has stepped up to the challenge. Ken Rawlings was the first. John Beimler also e-mailed me a Python Google Groups Script, a solution to a slightly different problem.

5:43:28 PM | Comments:

Seth Dillingham: "Customers who buy gifts for their vendors? Just six months ago, I would have said that such things don't happen, but Brian is the second customer to do it this year." [via Scripting News]

I have received all sorts of gifts from customers for work that went above and beyond the call of duty (much less the terms of service). Last night I was working on a list, as I am trying to cultivate more job leads and high-profile references.

What sticks out in my mind is one customer who didn't send me anything, not even a warm "Thank You" letter to show my boss. An NBC affiliate's IIS/ASP web site was grinding to a halt whenever the URL was flashed on the evening news. Over the course of two weeks the problem had passed through a number of hands, on their side and ours, before someone finally called me in Germany. The next day they had replacement code that could handle the load and suggestions on how to better implement the offending sections.

They were billed only for my hours, a gift of several thousand dollars.

Not even a thank you.

5:20:52 PM | Comments:

Mozilla 1.0 RC1 was released yesterday. Probably a bigger deal for web developers trying to support non-Windows platforms than anyone else right now, but Microsoft's noncommittal stance on the future of IE/Mac may make Mozilla (or at least the Gecko engine) critical to Macintosh users down the road.

4:00:23 PM | Comments:

via ActiveWin:

• Using Threads
• Choosing Among File I/O Options in Visual Basic .NET
• Microsoft Slashes European Xbox Prices. U.S. Next?

My roommate has predicted that Sony will start the US price war in June.

1:12:21 PM | Comments:

It's shaping up to be a lazy Friday. I can live with that.

1:06:53 PM | Comments:

It occurs to me that the Zaurus may be well-suited for audio recordings of lectures, meetings, and concerts. The lack of a built-in microphone is an advantage: instead of being stuck with a lousy mic, you can purchase the right type of mic for your environment (omni-directional for meetings, directional for concerts and lectures).

2:06:27 AM | Comments: