Now that I’ve started experimenting with w.bloggar, I’m looking for a good RSS aggregator. I’m specifically looking for one that caches the feed data for offline reading. So, I started out by doing the obvious, I Googled for it.

Without spending too much time sifting through the 10,000-odd results, I came up with a few options:

NewsMonster

A very promising application by Kevin Burton which has exactly the feature set I’m looking for, except for the fact that it does NOT work in Firefox 1.0, as I learned the hard way letting it totally mess up my Firefox install. Looks like the entire NewsMonster project has gone defunct, which is no surprise considering Kevin’s a co-founder and lead engineer for Rojo, a start-up whose product is pretty much what NewsMonster does but without an offline component. What a real pity, this would have been perfect, if it would just work on Firefox.

NewsDesk

This looks interesting, but I can’t find any mention of offline capability. Another strike against it is using MSIE embedded for rendering HTML – the whole reason I’m using Firefox is to get away from using MSIE for browsing. At least NewsDesk is free, but I’m not trying it, yet.

NewsGator

They’re pushing their free online version hard, and it looks like the offline version requires Microsoft Outlook. That’s great, if you use Outlook. For me? Not today.

SharpReader

Looks nice, but no mention of offline capability. Probably integrates MSIE for its embedded browser, too. I’ll pass.

…

So, what did I finally decide to do in the end?

Bloglines

Yes, I know, it’s an online-only service, but I really like their user interface. I’ll settle for using this until I find a solution that gives me the offline capability I’m looking for. If you have suggestions, let me know.

In the meantime, let me put forth a really simple idea that solves my problem. Maybe expressing the ideas will motivate me to actually build it … so, here goes:

• thin HTTP client, authentication and proxy capability, maybe even gzip/deflate support – for fetching RSS data
• thin HTTP server, to run on the desktop – for serving the app. to whatever browser you want to use

I’m thinking this could be a really cool app. to build using AOLserver since it’ll run on Win32 and Linux/Solaris, etc. Essentially what I’m suggesting is to build this as a traditional web application but run the web server locally on the client machine (bound to some port on 127.0.0.1 by default for security). As long as the web app. is designed with cross-browser compatibility in mind, users could choose to use either MSIE or Firefox or Opera or whatever.

Guess this’ll just go on my heap of “cool things to build with AOLserver if I ever get the free time” … or maybe someone else will beat me to it, which would be way cool.

I don’t know how large of an intersection there is between the number of people who are interested in AOLserver and the number of people who use LiveJournal, but I went ahead and created the aolserver community on LJ.

Not sure what to do with it yet, but feel free to monitor it if you’re interested. You can even subscribe to its RSS feed if that’ll make it easier for you.

After telling Carl Garland about manually reposting entries from my main blog into my other blogs, he told me about w.bloggar.

Consistent with the four phases of change (denial, resistance, exploration, commitment), I denied that manually reposting entries was tedious enough to warrant using software to do it, then I resisted the idea of using w.bloggar with lame reasons like “oh, it’s some desktop Win32 app and not a web app” or “where are the screen shots?” This was several weeks ago.

I started thinking about why I blog so infrequently and thought, “it’s because I really don’t have the time to blog often.” Then, while reading and admiring Jeremy Zawodny’s blog, I wondered how he finds the time to update even several times a day. I discovered that Jeremy uses w.bloggar, and has been for a long time. It occurred to me that being able to author blog entries off-line, saving as you go and publishing once it’s finished, would let me jot all sorts of things down without having to commit to saving them to the actual blog software — or, needing to be online to do it. It would also make it easier to repost entries to the different blogs that w.bloggar supports. Basically, it takes away my excuses to not blog more frequently and that’s good.

So begins my exploration phase of change, with my downloading of w.bloggar v4.00 and installing it, setting it up, and getting familiar with the interface. It’s a bit weird, but I think I can get used to it. We’ll see if I reach the commitment phase, or uninstall this thing. But for now, things look pretty good.

Joe Grossberg wrote in his blog about emacs, the famous GNU editor, and I commented on the syndicated copy at LiveJournal. Here’s my comment:

Eventually, newbies get a clue and stop using emacs (you know, the editor they learned in college because either that’s what they were shown by some other newbie, or that’s what the default was).

Yes, vi (or, vim, if you’re so inclined) is the One True Editor. I’m not starting a holy war, here — I’m ending it.

See: http://billharlan.com/pub/emacs/

Use Emacs in Vi Mode

I have long recommended Emacs in Vi mode (called VIP) to those who were moving from Vi to Emacs. Now I advocate this mode for everyone. Why? The control and meta sequences that Emacs provide for cursor motion and text manipulation will destroy your wrists. As the O’Reilly book “Learning GNU Emacs” (p. 10) says about the Emacs menu: “People who have or are at risk for carpal tunnel syndrome can avoid reaching for the CTRL key, an action known to aggravate that condition.” Is it a coincidence that James Gosling, the originator of Emacs, and Richard Stallman, the major developer, both have severe wrist problems? Emacs sequences use your pinkies constantly in a strained position. Vi sequences balance the load between fingers, with the fewest possible strokes. (I don’t know how Bill Joy’s wrists are doing.)

Needless to say, in over 16 years of typing on average 8-12 hours a day and I type 90-120 WPM, I’ve never once complained of CTS or RSI. Of course, I’ve been a vi user since day one.

Keep insisting emacs is better than vi, but one thing’s for sure: vi’s healthier for you.

Google has posted a job to CraigsList for an Open Source Program Manager in their New York office.

It’s exactly the kind of work I’m doing now and I keep talking about how “if I could only get a job at Google …” — the universe is out to get me. What temptation …

OK, well, it’s in the InternetNews — I was interviewed for an article: AOL Updates Its Open Source Web Server. I officially became project leader of AOLserver back in May 2004, and now in January 2005, I’m being quoted in a news article. It may not seem like a big deal, but I’m quite happy and excited about this.

Hopefully 2005 will bring more positive press for AOLserver and help raise awareness about it throughout the software community and the world at large. I can dream, anyway …

EDIT: I just discovered that OSDir.com has also linked to the article. Yay.

EDIT: theWHIR also wrote an article based off the original InternetNews.com article!

Considering this was already on Slashdot earlier today, it’s virtually “old news”, but it’s still worth talking about: Michael Stonebraker, the “father” of the modern database, has done it again, implementing a “stream processing engine” that can analyze data in near-realtime. As his trend seems to go, he’s started another company, called StreamBase Systems, Inc., to commercialize this new technology.

Now, what the world needs is a free, open source implementation of this technology … the applications for this technology are limitless.

I just went to check for updates at LiveJournal and was greeted by this text:

Our data center (Internap) lost all its power, including redundant backup power, for some unknown reason. (unknown to me, at least) We’re currently dealing with bringing our 100+ servers back online. Not fun. We’re not happy about this. Sorry… :-/ More details later.

It’s 9:18 PM US/Eastern on Jan 14. Guess the folks at LJ just learned the “all your eggs in one basket” lesson. I bet the Six Apart folks are thrilled.

Saw this on epiclevelregina and coyotegrrrl‘s journals, figured I’d give it a try. Of course, my iTunes MP3 collection is only a small fraction of my music (too lazy to rip all my CDs), but it’s still enough. I created the playlist in iTunes creating a new Smart Playlist with “limit to 10 songs selected by random”.

OK, so in the past several years there’s been an explosion of blogging and online community sites. As I come across them, I can’t help resist joining up if for no other reason than to make sure nobody else gets the highly coveted “dossy” username.

So, here’s a list I’ll periodically update with links to all the various sites and my profile on each:

• Friendster (Profile)
• MySpace (Profile)
• LiveJournal (Profile)
• Bloglines (Profile)
• BlogExplosion (Profile)
• Tribe (Profile)
• Multiply (Profile)
• Evite (Profile)
• Tickle (Profile)
• Blogger (Profile)
• craigslist (New Jersey, Westchester)
• LinkedIn (Profile)
• Orkut (Profile)
• StumbleUpon (Profile)
• del.icio.us (Profile)
• AIM Pages (Profile)
• OKCupid! (Profile)
• Netscape News (Profile)
• Brainbench (Transcript #2813476)
• Twitter (Profile)
• Dodgeball (Profile)
• Yelp (Profile)
• Pandora (Profile)
• Last.fm (Profile)
• Virb (Profile)
• MetaFilter (Profile)
• Ohloh (Profile)
• Mashable (Profile)
• Digg (Profile)
• GyPSii (Profile)
• eBay (Profile)
• Facebook (Profile)
• YouTube (Profile)
• FriendFeed (Profile)
• Bebo (Profile)
• Naymz (Profile)
• BrightKite (Profile)
• MyBlogLog (Profile)
• TripIt (Profile)
• Quora (Profile)

I’ll edit/update this list periodically, so check back once in a while. I’ll try to add new entries at the bottom of the list, but at some point I might get motivated to reorganize the list (into “sites I use often” and “the rest”).