It looks obvious

For months now I’m in a quest looking for the ultimate RSS reader ; I tried them all: the web base like bloglines , the simple one like sharpreader , the sidebar like sage and the more sophisticated one like feeddemon . They all left me frustrated.

I have to clarify: all the applications above are very good applications. The problem isn’t in the programming it is in the concept. All these applications , without real exception, handling each feed for itself and every post for itself. The syndication made simple, but it is only a first step.

I’m currently having in my reader more than 300 feeds and when I’m asking myself how many feeds should I manage the answer Is none. Put simple, as a user I do not want to know about feeds, RSS and XML – this are middleware tools between applications and should be handled by them.

It is clear distinction and we failed to make it – RSS is for the application, the user need the content. Learn my clicks and find for me the content that I want, according to my priorities and in the format I like. The concept itself isn’t so simple, let alone the actual development. Some pieces being assembled – Sphere’s new service is a good step in the right direction. However we are still far away from these goals.

I have no love to workers unions. Instead of protecting the rights of their member unions tend become obstacle on in the development of the companies and eventually they causing greater damage.  It interesting how organizations like unions, or governments, tend to broaden  their influence into areas.  I’m trying to understand how boycotting Israel protects the rights of the public employees in Ontario Canada, without any success.

Link:  Largest labor union in Ontario unanimously votes to boycott Israel

The largest labor union in the Canadian province of Ontario has voted unanimously to boycott Israel "until it recognizes the Palestinians’ right of self-determination" and accepts all UN resolutions relating to Palestinians as well as the right of return. The Anti-Defamation League harshly condemned the decision, calling it "deplorable and offensive."

The decision was made by the Ontario division of the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE), which has 450,000 members.

The union’s decision says that it is joining an international campaign to boycott Israel and to impose sanctions on it, until it fulfills all UN resolutions including Resolution 194, which recognizes the right of return of Palestinian refugees from 1948. In addition, the union intends to support pro-Palestinian organizations in an educational campaign, which will depict Israel as an apartheid state.

Tech crunch reports on round A financing for PageFlakes . I’m already lost with all the personalized pages that look basically the same and are un-useful in basically the same level.

Quick  and incomplete count of similar pages will include Live , NetVibes , Eskobo ,Protopage , Myhommy and the personalize page of Google . I guess that the VC money is given not because of the AJaX but because of the hope that these service will be the Web 2.0 version of the mythological portals . However, and as cool as all these pages are, they are going to follow the footsteps of the web 1.0 portals and fail.

The problem is that these pages, like most armies, fighting the previous war instead of the next one. Attempting to build a portal is futile regardless the richness of the user interface. Sadly all of this pages are very nice but they don’t solve any real need. The real challenge is how to make sense in the flood of content. How to deliver content that interest the user, when they want it. It is obvious that none of these pages even tries to confront this challenge.

My dream page will not ask me to subscribe to RSS , since RSS is a tool for the application not for the user. Instead it will offer me content, base on my interest and my priorities. It will find the content, not only the specific post but the entire content.

Until then I’m doomed to go through my hundreds of feeds, which none of these pages can handle in convenient way. What a waste of money.

Going to sleep today Tseela announce “I don’t want to get married, I want to stay with you daddy forever”. While I know that she is only 4 years old this kind of statement made me the happiest the daddy. And to anyone that might claim that there is nothing special in Tseela’s statement, and that all daughters saying something along this lines to their daddies I will only quote Scott Adams blog post from today:

I recently attended a school open house for the kids, ages 6 and 8. It was my first one and I didn’t know what to expect. The main point, as I learned, was for the kids to show their parents the projects they worked on during the year. The first thing I noticed was that our kids produced spectacular works of art whereas all the other kids produced utter crap.

More pictures can be found here  

On the way to the neighborhood’s park today we saw a small TV crew shooting. Curious that we are we asked what are they shooting and we found out it was some reality show about a couple that is getting divorce.

I never liked reality shows. It always seems to me like a failing attempt of the network to save money on real actors, directors and actual plot. However I never knew, not that I invested time finding out, how fake these reality show are.

The street was closed and they were taking shoots of the participant walking around and doing stuff, which seems to me like a lot of thing but not reality. They had the participants crossing the street many times until they were happy with their performance.

We went to the park and had fun; when we walked back home the TV crew was still there faking a reality show.

As a bright contrast, in the park we saw a rehearsal for “As you like it” . What a fun the young actors of Hudson Shakespeare Company , and we, had…

Yahoo! Took the tag cloud one step further. Beside of the hypnotic effect I didn’t found any real use for this service , but hey I can’t say I care for the tag cloud as it is.

The last controversy about the web 2.0 conference trademark brought up some indirect topics of interest.

I found the Sphareit service of Sphare really useful in discovery of related posts on issues that interest me. Running the little JavaScript on post bring results of similar posts and help to see many views, check facts and such on topics of interest. Unlike services that identify the most popular topics, mostly based on links, this service identify relations base on key words. This is much more interesting development and it can develop into content discovery based on personal interest and not necessarily based on rating.

The second issue raised by Nick Carr. For long time he represent somewhat elitist approach that is concerned with the effects of the crowds, or as he once called it : “the cult of the amateur”.   In one of his responses to the web 2.0 conference trademark, Nick Carr wrote about the blogosphere reaction:

“Even if you believe that O’Reilly made a mistake in trying to trademark "Web 2.0," or that he made a mistake in trying to enforce that copyright - and reasonable people can certainly come to either or both of those conclusions - the gang mentality that’s playing out right now has to turn your stomach. What we’re seeing is a mob using reputational blackmail to impose its will on somebody else. Everyone seems to feel a need to put his or her boot in, often yelling out personal insults in the process.

Is this the future?”

This is a very interesting point. Is a public reaction that isn’t led by old media, professional politician or union leader is “Mob reaction”? I don’t think so.

What I observed was amazingly fast reaction of the public to event. I was able to get fair coverage of all available opinions without deep research, which wouldn’t be the case with old media and the coverage was for sure fair. What in fact we could have seen how the blogosphere had the ability to effect the event by expressing displeasure.

For long time I argue that the market can regulate itself and government involvement is not only nonessential but actually harmful.  The web 2.0 trademark case demonstrate the better option.

One might argue that I’m ignoring the mob blackmail but I don’t. I don’t think that CMP would change its decision so fast if they did not realize how bad was the mistake they made.

As much as I enjoy writing about technology, politic and such nothing is more enjoyable to me than my daughters. Today Ronie start playing in the exersaucer,  and I couldn’t avoid posting here pictures.

More pictures can be found here . At least you can thank me that I’m not flooding your email…

I guess this was what Steve Robel meant when he wrote this post. This also a good example why I strongly disagreed with him.

I don’t know how effective the damage control activities are going to be, however by nature damage control intend to minimize the effect of a damage. There is no special reason to love a company that saying “we suck” , and that is effectively what the O’Reilly people are saying, I much favor a company that isn’t.

I avoided in the morning’s post to discuss my opinion about the whole legal aspect of using a common name such as web 2.0 as a trade mark for conventions. I would only say that CMP has some merit because , as I wrote before, the term itself is a marketing slogan for the convention and not the other way around, as one might expected to be.

It is only interesting that such fierce defense on a trademark , shaky as it is, coming from the same people who advocate for open source code.

When I saw this I was ready to write a long post of rant. I was ready to discuss the danger to the way we are thinking enforcing political correctness newspeak . I was also looking for references about the decline and the loss of confidence in the western culture.  I joined Ron’s wonder if the education system in Michigan is in such good condition that nothing left to solve but the use of the words “America” and “Americans”.

But then I decided to check the actual decision and found that such decision doesn’t exist :

“In an opinion piece crafted by Michael Warren in today’s Detroit News, the former State Board of Education member incorrectly states that the Michigan Department of Education has “ordered that our hard-working teachers not utter the words.”

No such edict has gone out to school teachers across Michigan, nor will one, said State Superintendent of Public Instruction Mike Flanagan. He explained that an independent association of Social Studies educators has discussed the issue of official U.S. documents or titles, but that any recommendations regarding changes in school curriculum have not even made it to his desk for review.”

Oh well, it could have been such a good rant…