A scoop for iPodlounge:
Jake Tapper of the ABC News Shuffle podcast has interviewed Apple CEO Steve Jobs about iTunes 4.9 and podcasting. You can download the podcast interview or read a transcript of the interview online.
Due to some glitch I couldn’t get the podcast - perhaps it’ll be available later…
(via digg/apple)
Talkr provides a service that allows you to listen to your favorite text-only news sources rather than read them. If you can point us to an RSS feed (a machine-readable version of your favorite blog or news source) we will convert that feed from text to speech.
Talkr can also provide you with a podcast of your favorite news sources. This means that you can plug your MP3 player into your home computer once a day and Talkr will provide you with hours of audio content with no additional work on your part. Talkr will keep tabs on your feeds and send audio to your computer as those audio files become available.
As an example, listen to Richard Macmanus’s post about this service.
Also check out his post on Yahoo’s My Web 2.0… or listen to it.
(via Read/Write Web via Dogma Radio)
You can now download symphonies 6 - 8 on BBC - Radio 3
The 9th will be up (the day after) tomorrow - for just a week.
Subscribing to, downloading and listening to podcasts in the new iTunes 4.9 works really well.
My first subscriptions are:
Good Value!
From another perspective, though, not everyone is so chuffed with Apple for going it alone in extended RSS for podcasting.
As Dave says:
Net-net, it would have been a really good idea to get a community review, like Microsoft did, before shipping. We could have done a lot better. Permanent link to this item in the archive.
Clearly Apple has yet to grok the community idea… like Microsoft seems to have done, at least in this regard.
Update: June 30th:
Added the BBC’s Go Digital podcast to my subscriptions.
Highly recommended.
Update: July 4th
Added the Micro Persuasion Podcast!
Also. just found Edd Dumbill’s more thorough assessment of Apple’s iTunes RSS extensions.
Steve Rubel is way ahead of everyone, already considering this issue on Micro Persuasion
What I would like to see in IE 7 are some basic Microsoft.com feeds (e.g. support/security alerts) to prove the concept to the everyday user and then a Favorite that points to an open directory of feeds. This could be either a new directory that Microsoft creates or one or more established indexes, such as Nooked. Either way, the directory needs to be open so that anyone can submit their feed and categorize it.
I also think that Microsoft should put a major marketing effort behind RSS in Longhorn whenever it ships. It would go a long way to helping consumers understand the value of RSS. Sign Elton John now to sing “Feed Me” at a big 2006 event on the Redmond campus.
That’s what I call forward thinking.
I can see the rivalry between the likes of Bloglines, Technorati, PubSub and Feedster get really hot to be awarded such a concession.
Kyle Rankin on O’Reilly Developer Weblogs: Like a Kid in a Candy Store
A totally new release of Knoppix was unveiled at LinuxTag 2005, Knoppix 4.0. This is the release that introduces the split between “maxi” DVD and “mini” CD releases. I’ve tried out the 4.0 DVD and let me tell you, I’m like a kid in a candy store.
Note: This DVD is not yet available for download. Klaus often creates a special version of Knoppix for LinuxTag that then gets released to the general public (often with some updates) a few weeks afterward. In the case of Knoppix 4.0 I imagine the DVD being handed out at LinuxTag will be pretty similar in features and software to what gets released to the general public. Still, think of this review as more of a preview of what the download release likely will be.
Our welcome from (and to) the community
Never thought I’d be doing this, but I’ll subscribe to that.
NASA animation of the impending Deep Impact Comet.
(an) artist’s conception” of the Tempel 1 Deep Impact mission. Nobody knows what will happen when 820 pounds of metal slams into the comet with 5 kilotons of force, but whatever happens, Maas’s digital precreation is probably way more entertaining than NASA’s imagery is likely to be.
(via Slashdot)
Update:
Some related animations submitted in the comments - for hardcore fans there’s also a 10 min (28MB) nuclear interception sequence.
A High-Performance AJAX Web Service Broker
del.icio.us direc.tor is a prototype for an alternative web-based rich UI for del.icio.us. It leverages the XML and XSL services of modern browsers to deliver a responsive interface for managing user accounts with a large number of records.
I’ve just been trying this out and must say w00t!
With this interface extensive tagging definitely pays off - now if only one could edit from here too.
Just has to laugh at some of the Slashdot comments:
Apparently it’s going to be called SSS - Sorta Simple Syndication
(…)
SSSSLOLSUCKTOWN…
Sorta Simple Syndication Supporting Lengthy Ordered Lists So Users Can Keep Track Of What’s New
In all fairness, though, after watching the Channel9 video one has to give the MS-RSS team credit for a couple of really insightful enhancements:
I’ll subscribe to that!
One issue which I’m sure will be addressed - eventually, is the fact that the IE subscribe button (in the interest of ease of use) seems to just picks the first feed it encounters in the source. That’s no good when multiple feeds in a page aren’t interchangeble versions of RSS /Atom, but actually altogether different; one for headlines, another with complete posts and yet another for comments and still another of a sideblog…
SHANGHAI, China — Twenty-eight floors above the traffic-choked streets of China’s most wired city, blogger and tech entrepreneur Isaac Mao sums up his opinion of Microsoft and its treatment of the Chinese bloggers with one word. “Evil,” says Mao. “Internet users know what’s evil and what’s not evil, and MSN Spaces is an evil thing to Chinese bloggers.”
Mao, 33, knows something about the topic. In 2002, he was one of China’s first bloggers, and since then his ideas on harnessing blogs, peer-to-peer and grass-roots technologies to empower the Chinese people have made him a respected voice in the global blogosphere.
Jon Udell: Collaborative filtering with del.icio.us
There are currently 6550 del.icio.us folk with whom I share common bookmarks. As nobody will be surprised to see, my link affinity with that population displays the now-familiar long tail…
There’s a recommendation engine lurking in there somewhere, and I’ve decided to try to flush it out…
‘ can’t wait..
It also made me think of gre.gario.us, though sadly no longer operational, a service that definitely had the promise/potential of exploring such affinities…
It turns out that the developer, Justin Russel, has gone on to create UFeed - a very different but nonetheless interesting looking service that enables combining your weblog, flickr photos and del.icio.us links, all in one place.
Dave Winer lets us in on what’s brewing:
In April I visited Microsoft to hear about some interesting ideas they had about RSS. On Friday they will explain these ideas publicly. Today, with their permission, I have a preview of part of what they will talk about. I hope everyone who’s interested in RSS listens carefully. I know I will.
More on Microsoft, lists, RSS and me.
Some interesting comments too.
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