Microsoft Loves RSS
A major win for RSS as Microsoft announces support for the format
Webalizer.conf hacking
I’ve been working on cleaning up my webalizer.conf file in order to get better statistics. Since I haven’t seen anyone posting the following information, I figured I would, since it might interest people who are using the Webalizer stats tool. Adding the following lines to your webalizer configuration file (webalizer.conf) will allow you to get much cleaner reporting of user-agents. GroupAgent Check&Get Program: Check&Get (Bookmark Manager) GroupAgent eXactSite Program: eXactSite (HTML authoring. stupid user!) GroupAgent FavOrg Program: FavOrg (Bookmark Manager) GroupAgent Fetch Program: Fetch (Offline browser) GroupAgent GetRight Program: GetRight (Download Manager) GroupAgent HTTrack Program: HTTrack (Website Copier) GroupAgent Lachesis Program: Packet Loss Report (ftp.intel.com) GroupAgent lachesis Program: Packet Loss Report (ftp.intel.com) GroupAgent MSFrontPage Programming: Microsoft FrontPage (stupid user!) GroupAgent Offline Program: Offline Explorer (Offline Browser) GroupAgent Powermarks Program: Powermarks (Bookmark Manager) GroupAgent SuperBot Program: SuperBot (Web Site Copier) GroupAgent Teleport Program: Teleport Pro (Offline Browser tenmax.com) GroupAgent WebStripper Program: WebStripper (Offline Browser) GroupAgent WebZIP Program: WebZIP (Offline Browser) GroupAgent Alcatel- Device: Alcatel Mobile Phone GroupAgent AvantGo Device: AvantGo (Offline Browser) GroupAgent Blazer Device: Blazer (PalmOS browser) GroupAgent DoCoMo Device: I-mode Compatible Mobile Phone GroupAgent Elaine Device: Palm browser GroupAgent Ericsson Device: Ericsson Mobile Phone GroupAgent MOT- Device: Motorola Mobile…
A matter of Style
The WTH Remix contest has ended and the winners have been announced, showing that sometimes, the net community can do better than standards creator. The grand prize winner is a visually arresting page (compared to the original) that has only a few small things missing in order to make it perfect. First of all, I would ensure that all the links have proper titles, something that a lot of people tend to forget when designing pages but which can be useful for disabled users. Second, I would replace the validation logos with a much friendlier CSS only alternative, similar to what some have done with the XML button. Second, I would put the A-to-Z elements in a list, as they should properly be. This would also take care of clearly differentiating them instead of using a CSS trick to hide special characters. The descriptive text about the consortium is needed on the page and could go above the news section in that design in order to match the existing information available on the page and the proper RDF tags would need to be reinserted in the page to ensure its continued progression with the semantic web. Last but not least…
Geeks to English
CNN is running an interesting article about information data stores and the semantic web. A very sad thing was the following statement about the semantic web: One hopeful journalist from the Economist asked Berners-Lee to give an example of how companies could make or save money using it, but he didn’t have an answer. This is clearly an illustration that often geeks speak in terms that most people do not understand. I am often guilty of it myself (a cursory look through recent entries will give you an idea of why I’m making this statement) and I realize that we need to do a better job in explaining some of the key concepts in new technology. XML, RDF and other technologies related to the semantic web are indeed hard to understand when you talk to techies. As a result, they often get dismissed as too hard. In order to help people get a better understanding, I’ll try to come up with a simple example. Right now, this page is served to you either in HTML or RSS. Those are two different languages. One, HTML, is understood by your web browser. The way text is bolded, for example, is that I…
Suggestions for RSS .92 spec
I’d like to suggest a few optional additions to the specification. Here are some ideas I’d like to throw around for discussion: At the item level : This would allow us to specify a particular date for an item. I think it would be nice for those of us who have several days’ worth of content in their RDF channel. At the channel level: These could be encapsulated in to an section that would include all links to outside of the channel. : Much like points to the page the channel is for could point to a page of information about this channel. this could link to a FAQ or more information about the channel. : Points to a page where wireless devices can go. : Points to a page where broadband devices can go. : Points to a page where narrowband devices (browsers for blind people, text-only browsers, etc..) can go. : Points to a P3P page to check the privacy rules. : Points to either a VXML source file (which can be read by a VXML browser) or a sound file. For example, it could serve up a radio feed related to this story. : Same as above…