Toni.org

Category: Technology

  • My first GPS

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    Toni Schneider
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    Following my tradition of being a late gadget adopter, I’m about to purchase my first GPS device (for our cross country drive this summer). I’m thinking of getting a Dash Express. It’s getting the thumbs up from Raanan and the Dash people have a WP blog – two big pluses.

  • Twitter changes?

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    Toni Schneider
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    I got a noticeable increase of “Twitter followers” in the last few weeks. This is amusing (I have a single tweet from over a year ago on my Twitter account, not much to follow there) and it also made me wonder what’s changed. It could be due to recent improvements that make it easier to…

  • EeePC

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    Toni Schneider
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    A while ago, I asked for a Firefox computer, a simple solid state laptop that’s optimized to run just Firefox. Yesterday I got an EeePC and it almost fits the bill. What I like: It’s affordable ($399, models under $300 are forthcoming) It’s small and light (and cute) The out of box experience was very…

  • The Firefox computer

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    Toni Schneider
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    Jon Callaghan has some thoughts on how easy it was for him to switch from a PC to a Mac. This made me think about the Windows Vista launch and the inevitable OS X vs Vista comparisons, and how come I’m deeply uninterested in any of it. I run a PC at home and a…

  • YDN Supports JSON

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    Toni Schneider
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    The Yahoo Developer Network just added JSON support for various APIs, as well as a Javascript Developer Center. Interesting side note: I just learned that the author of JSON, Douglas Crockford, works for Yahoo. He must be a modest guy because his name doesn’t show up on json.org (which he runs) or the Wikipedia entry…

  • Konfabulator 3.0 Goodness

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    Toni Schneider
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    There’s a new version of Konfabulator, now called Yahoo! Widgets, available at widgets.yahoo.com. Since Konfabulator became part of Yahoo! in August, we’ve seen some pretty amazing usage numbers (all of it organic – there has been no promotion or marketing): 1.5 million downloads of Konfabulator/Yahoo! Widget Engine (not surprisingly, almost 90% of that is on…

  • Two Cool Mashups

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    Toni Schneider
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    Two fun mashups I’ve recently come across: Find Lawton and Angie and Derek’s Videos. Both are simple and compelling examples of how online maps make for a surprisingly good UI into various bits of data.

  • Feed sharing

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    Toni Schneider
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    J Wynia has created an “OPML sampler“. It creates a nice summary view of someone’s list of RSS subscriptions. Here’s an example. This feels like a great basis for letting people share their RSS subcription lists. Instead of today’s process of having to import someone’s OPML file, subscribe to all their feeds, read the feeds…

  • A Digital Gap

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    Toni Schneider
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    Recently, I’ve been noticing people say things like “MySpace is just for kids – over 30 year olds will never use it” or “I still don’t get SMS, why would anyone SMS when you can just send email?”. It’s usually 35+ year olds who say those things. What struck me the other day is how…

  • Are Companies Really Getting Cheaper to Build?

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    Toni Schneider
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    Today’s Wall Street Journal says “Many Internet Start-Ups Are Telling Venture Capitalists: ‘We Don’t Need You’” (subscription required). The article talks about a theme that’s been discussed in Silicon Valley for a while: “It’s a scenario playing out all over Silicon Valley — and one with potentially big ramifications for venture capitalists. A new generation…

  • Personalized RSS Feeds

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    Toni Schneider
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    Over the years, I’ve found that one of my favorite uses of RSS are personalized, or parametrized, RSS feeds. They are feeds that track mentions of a specific topic, company or product that I’m personally interested in. I’m currently subscribed to a couple of ego feeds (tracking the (rare 🙂 ) mention of my name…

  • iRiver T10

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    Toni Schneider
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    Some quick impressions of the iRiver T10 as an iPod Mini replacement. + Seamless integration with the Yahoo Music Engine, I can drag any song, album or playlist from the entire 1+ million song collection onto the player and it just works (no extra software to install or per track charges) + 44 hours of…

  • I’m Dumping My iPod

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    Toni Schneider
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    As much as I like it, it’s time to retire my iPod. I’m switching from iTunes to Yahoo Music, and the iPod has to stay behind (because it only works with iTunes). I’d been holding off on switching because I listen to a lot of podcasts on my commute and iTunes has nice built-in podcasting…

  • Sphere Blog Search

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    Toni Schneider
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    Om Malik is writing about his early impressions of a new blog search engine called Sphere. I’m an advisor to Sphere and excited to see that they are about go beta. Back at Oddpost, shortly before we got acquired by Yahoo, we were working with two guys, Steve Nieker and Martin Remy of ThinkTank23, who…

  • Many Sidebars

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    Toni Schneider
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    So Google released Sidebar which is competitive with Konfabulator. What I find interesting about it is that they called it Sidebar. There is already a similar product called Desktop Sidebar. More importantly, Microsoft has been showing a similar feature as part of Vista, their next version of Windows, and they’ve been calling it Sidebar for…

  • RocKstar

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    Toni Schneider
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    It’s been a while, and I’ve been waiting for something important to blog: Rockstar: INXS rules! Just kidding (though Jordis is going to win). But seriously, I’ve been working on a very exciting project: Yahoo’s acquisition of Pixoria, the makers of the amazing Konfabulator software. As of today, Konfabulator is part of Yahoo and available…