tranquilidad

My Yahoo! RSS upgrade

Last week Yahoo announced the launch of their My Yahoo! upgrade which is largely focused on increasing both the availability and readability of RSS feeds.  Although we all signed up for My Yahoo accounts at the beginning of the semester, I have reverted to using the Sage feedreader for the most part. But for those of you who use My yahoo and haven't made the upgrade, it seems to be much more user-friendly.  It's easier to customize and rearrange your page, and its readability is better all around.  Not to mention the increase in content availability, which they doubled to 300,000 searchable feeds.  Check out this  yahoo news article for more info or go to your own My Yahoo! page to upgrade if you use the service and haven't done so already.  

Google sees benefits in corporate blogging

I recently came across an article that relates to the class's recent blog converation about the use of blogs in the workplace, specifically for promoting bottom-up change. Check it out here.  According to the article, shortly after Google's acquisition of Blogger, they instituted an internal blog for their employees.  Some of the employees' uses of the blog include "people keeping track of meeting notes, people sharing diagnostics information, people sharing snippets of code, as well as more personal uses, like letting co-workers know what they're thinking about and what they're up to."  Sounds a lot like our class blog.  Of particular interest in the article is the mention of the emerging market of business enterprise blogging.  While many companies have the capabilities to institute a casual employee blogosphere, the demand for more formal  and functional systems is sure to increase in the future.  While this is somewhat different from our class's previous discussions about the possibility of blogging for profit, it is interesting to think about the value of having blog expertise with the increasing interest in blogs as business communication tools.

Yet another use of RSS

I recently missed my opportunity to buy tickets to a show that I really would have wanted to attend had I known it was coming to the D.  Too bad they sold out before I found out they were available.  More often what happens is I hear about a show through the grapevine too late to get decent seats and I end up in the nosebleed seats stage far, far right or up in the balcony.  Sure I save money, and if i really want to stay on top of the music scene, I could actually take time to ready the weekly emails I get from Ticketmaster, but usually these just end up with the rest of my spam in the trash.  I think a much more effective way of keeping up to date would be through an RSS feed, so I checked to see if Ticketmaster had an RSS feed.  As far as I can tell, they don't but I did find an RSS feed here at tickets4u.com.  You can pick a feed based on city, MLB team, or NFL team.  Pretty cool... I wonder when Ticketmaster will get on the ball. 

laptop shopping

While I may not be as avid a blogger as Big Blog in the Sky, it is not without good reason. As I mentioned in a previous post Computer Recycling? my desktop recently crashed. I have been holding off from buying a new laptop, but it is just not efficient for me to wait any longer. It is difficult to remain active in the class blogosphere, not to mention staying on top of computer assignments, emails, and papers, while doing all my work from a computer lab. That being said, does anyone have any suggestions or recommendations for particular laptops to consider as well as where the best place to buy from? I am going for the best bang for my buck since my personal budget is very limited. I'm thinking around the $1000-1200 range. Some people have recommended the union computer showcase. Does anyone have any experience buying computers from them?

Thanks for the help....maybe someday I too will be a moblogger....

Bloggers In Election News Again

"A week after bloggers accused John Kerry of cheating for bringing a black pen into the debate, new questions have emerged regarding a screen shot taken of Bush during last week's debate...Critics of Bush, especially bloggers, have suggested for sometime that Bush wears an earpiece during public events in order to assist him with his speeches..."

The preceding is an excerpt from the following article: Was Bush Wired for Sound?
A conspiracy theory circulating throughout the blogging realm or a potentially detrimental piece of information resulting from participatory journalism? check out the article and the corresponding comments/blogs, see what other information is brought to light, and decide for yourself.

Computer recycling?

This post isn't really related to anything in class, but I thought I would make use of the wealth of technological knowledge available via our blogosphere. So here's my issue: My dektop computer recently fell victim to a nasty virus that damaged either my hard drive and/or my motherboard. I could pay an exorbitant amount to have it fixed, but it is already 4 years old and at this point, I will probably just purchase a new laptop. I know I could just have my old comp disposed of, but does anyone have any use for it or know of any organizations that refurbish/recycle computers for future use? Open to comments and/or trackbacks!

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