codedread

I’ve had this happen a couple of times now, so I know I’m not alone: I monitor a lot of web feeds (RSS/Atom/RDF) using Mozilla Firefox’s “Live Bookmarks” feature. Firefox is not the best web feed viewer, so I also recently started use RSSOwl, but my list of feeds in the browser far outweighs the list of feeds that I track using RSSOwl, and there doesn’t seem to be an easy way to export the Live Bookmarks to OPML for importing into RSSOwl. Thus, I haven’t made the switch over to a dedicated web feed aggregator… yet… Anyway, as part of my morning ritual, I usually go get a nice and hot beverage, open up Firefox and check all my feeds to see if there are any new entries I might like to read. The way it’s supposed to work, Firefox lists the most recent entries first, so I usually just remember the title of the last entry I’ve read and base my scanning off of that. This can lead to problems though. Click To Read More...

Mileage may vary depending on your reading and voice acting skills, but I thought I’d list some books our boys have enjoyed in case there are any parents out there looking. Warning! This entry for parents only … and beware of shameless ads. Click To Read More...

NYT: ‘The challenge? Take any movie and cut a new trailer for it — but in an entirely different genre. Only the sound and dialogue could be modified, not the visuals”. The hilarious result.

Check out Tex Avery’s classic MGM cartoon Red Hot Riding Hood on Google Video. Nice! Not exactly a cartoon for the kids but still innocent by today’s standards. Incidentally, the sexy character Red was the inspiration behind Jessica Rabbit in the great film Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

About Google Video, I think it’s coming along nicely. The quality of this video is about what I expected. It’s odd, this video seems to be from a ripped version (as shown in the last frame), so I wonder if Warner Brothers (who owns the rights to the MGM cartoon library) knows about this. Shhh! Don’t tell them!

Just last week, I posted about how impressed I was with Outlook Web Access 2003. On slashdot today along comes the story that MSN Hotmail is going to undergo a much-needed Ajax facelift (called “Kahuna”). The screenshots look very similar to Outlook Web Access 2003 but with ads, so I’m sure most of the code is shared.

The update is going public some time in 2006, though phase 2 of the deployment, rolling out to 200,000 “technical enthusiasts”, is starting today. Hey, I’m an “enthusiast” too…maybe I was 200,001st on their list…

This is good news, not just because Hotmail feels woefully outdated after using Gmail for a year, but I’m sure this means they’ll maximize their user base and ad revenues (and avoid holy wars) by fixing the broken bits in Outlook Web Access when using browsers like Firefox and Opera. Those fixes should logically trickle back to Outlook Web Access 200x and this would strengthen the case for alternative browsers in the corporate environment…. Hmm, maybe it’s not so “logical” after all

I think this is the first time I’ve ever installed Mozilla Thunderbird, the email client provided by Mozilla (the same foundation that makes the excellent Firefox web browser). At least the first time I’ve given it any serious thought. Up until now, I’ve used Microsoft Outlook for my work email and a web browser for all my other emails (at least 5 other accounts). But with the release of the second Beta of Thunderbird 1.5, I thought I’d give it a whirl and post my comments. Click To Read More...

Yesterday I thought I’d try and step up my web-feed game by downloading a few “feed readers” and check them out. I did a search to try and find some good ones. Wikipedia has this page listing many, but it unfortunately it is light on details and (of course) does not provide a review-type information since Wikipedia’s goal is to be non-biased. Click To Read More...