The full headline reads “NewsGator Technologies Acquires FeedDemon; Acquisition of FeedDemon and TopStyle Strengthens NewsGator’s RSS Platform; Nick Bradbury Joins NewsGator Team” — can’t believe I missed this news (press release). I probably wouldn’t have had if I’d been subscribed to either Nick Bradbury‘s or Greg Reinacker‘s blogs — now I am.

I’m not a user of NewsGator nor FeedDemon — instead, I just use Bloglines — but it’s still interesting. If Bloglines offered RSS syndication of your Bloglines subscriptions (your own personalized RSS feed containing all the aggregated entries from all your subscribed feeds), then using Bloglines with something like Mozilla Thunderbird’s (really lame) RSS aggregator support would be just as useful, to me, as the NewsGator/FeedDemon offering.

I’ve been so busy lately that I haven’t been able to keep up with Slashdot so I totally missed this. But, luckily, while reading Justin Frankel‘s blog and listening to the output of an IRC Ninjam session, I caught wind of the news I missed via this entry:

Finally, I’m happy to see AOL open source AVS/Milkdrop/NSV/Ultravox. Woot.

So, I had to Google around and found the BetaNews article from June 3rd, 2005, covering the release. It’s cool that AOLserver gets a nod in the article, even though they call it AOL Server. I guess that’s better than no mention at all.

Here are the relevant links to all the newly open-sourced stuff:

• Advanced Visualisation Studio (AVS)
• Milkdrop
• Ultravox and NSV

So, in an effort to cut down on my monthly expenses, I discovered that my local and long distance telephone service at a minimum costs me ~$150/mo for my four phone lines, before any per-minute usage charges. Now, since I also have a cell phone (that costs me ~$100/mo), I don’t use my landlines much any more, so this is a great target for savings. But, how?

I’d tried various IP telephony product attempts, several years ago, and wasn’t impressed, so I assumed that all the recent VoIP hype was just some new perfume on top of an old stink. Hoping that this wasn’t just some marketing ploy to turn old crap into new sexy, and realizing that it’s probably been at least three years since I last evaluated IP telephony and a lot must have changed since then, as well as a real need to save some money, I decided to give it a try. Especially since today’s VoIP offerings come in pre-paid, no contract terms, it really lowers the risk factor down to zero. When I’ve got things set up the way I like, I’ll write another blog entry about it, but this entry has a particular purpose, which is …

Help me find the perfect VoIP headset (for my own requirements)!

So, what am I looking for? I want a monaural (not stereo), over-the-ear or on-the-ear headset that is ultra-light, with a voice tube or noise-canceling microphone, with either two 3.5mm jacks to connect to a computer’s headphone and microphone jacks or one 2.5mm jack to connect to a cell phone’s headset jack. If it has two 3.5mm jacks, I’ll need a small adapter that joins to one 2.5mm jack so I can interchange the headset with the cell phone, or if the headset has one 2.5mm jack, I’ll need a splitter that has two 3.5mm jacks so I can interchange the headset with my computers. Bonus if all of these accessories can be had cheaply — say, $30-$40 per set.

The closest I’ve come to finding anything that’s suitable would be either the Plantronics Mirage H41 headset (~$80) or, the Plantronics Mirage H41N noise-canceling headset (~$95). I’d need to use these Plantronics headsets that have some goofy looking connector, I’d need to either get a Plantronics 6in. 2.5mm quick disconnect cord (~$10) and the Plantronics Computer Sound Card Cable (~$30) which similar to the 2.5mm quick disconnect cord except it terminates in two 3.5mm jacks.

So, without searching hard for the Absolute Lowest Price Anywhere!™, it looks like one “set” (headset, jacks) will run between $120-$145, well above the target of $30-$40. To be honest, I almost don’t mind paying the premium if the headset really is worth it. Anyone who has one of these headsets, please leave a comment or email me with your feedback. Please be specific as to what product you’re referring to — include model name and number if possible — thanks!

Tags:
lazyweb,
voip

John Panzer writes in his blog about yesterday’s launch and announcement of AIM Blogs, the free-to-the-web version of AOL Journals for AIM users. All you need is an AIM screen name which you can get by clicking here, then you can go and create your blog.

While I think it’s great that AOL is embracing the free web audience and offering up some quality products, I keep fearing in the back of my mind that this could be deja vu of what AOL did to Usenet by unleashing its millions of members there without any kind of guidance of netiquette, best practices and so on. With the issue of bandwidth “stealing” through hot-linking images and other rich-media assets directly from other people’s websites, imagine what will happen when millions of AIM users start creating blogs and hot-linking images all over their blogs. Or AIM bloggers who just plagiarize other people’s content without providing the appropriate attribution to the sources where the content is quoted from?

Time will tell if the reaction to AIM Blogs is “welcome, new members of the blogosphere!” or “aww crap, there goes the neighborhood.” I’m praying for the former, rather than the latter, but in AOL tradition of just handing products over to the technologically ignorant 50% of the Internet’s users without any guidance or education on how to be good corporate netizens, I fear it’ll be the latter. I hope I’ll be proven wrong.

Esther Schindler recently posted about what can be called “flowerbox indicators” to the Extreme Programming Yahoo! Group:

In a Bank of America ad about their investments in crappy neighborhoods (they didn’t phrase it that way), the speaker said they knew they’d succeeded, “when the flowerboxes begin showing up on front porches.” Teams have the same sort of indirect indications, too, for good or ill.

The notion of indirect indicators and tell-tale signs of a team or project’s direction are nothing new. What I really like is the catchy name, “flowerbox indicator.” Thanks, Esther.

I just discovered that AOL News has a section devoted to blogs called Blog Zone. Smells a lot like MSN‘s Slate Magazine but done on a much smaller scale.

What’s somewhat disappointing is that AOL News: Blog Zone offers no RSS feed! How do you create a product in 2005 about blogging and blogs and not offer an RSS feed? I won’t go so far as to hold Robert Scoble‘s position about firing someone for not having an RSS feed, but it’s pretty embarassing.

Still, it’s a sign of forward progress and hopefully this is just a shallow view of many more improvements that AOL will bring to its free web offering in the months and years to come. Stay tuned …