Wu Wei

All you need to know about RSS

Or perhaps this should be called "all I know about RSS".

You don't need to know anything about RSS if

• you don't have a computer
• are quite happy keeping in touch with your friends by email or snail mail
• read a newspaper or watch television to get any news you are interested in
• don't know about blogs and don't want to read them
• you are quite happy rooting around with google to find things

This is not to imply you are in some way Luddite, just that your dynamics are different to those people who use RSS.

So here are the RSS FAQs.  (Lost already?  No hope for you, then.)

1.  What does RSS stand for? "Really simple syndication".  Now that really helped, didn't it?  Try here, then.  If it's good enough for the BBC, then it's good enough for me.

2.  What does syndication mean, and why do I want it?  Syndication is just another word for broadcasting or spreading stuff throughout the internet.  If you have a blog you want stuff to go to your readers automatically, and you want new readers to find your blog easily.  If you want news you want it to come to you automatically, not to have to search on google for it.

3. What is a (news) feed?  It's the way the news gets to you, as soon as it is published by a website eg on the BBC, or on a blog.  It's like a wire that the news travels down directly to you. 

4. What do I need to read a feed?  The really essential part is a computer connected to the internet.  If you only have dial-up internet, then you will only get updates when you connect, just like for email.  However there's not much point really is there?  If you really want the news NOW, then you have to have broadband and have your computer on all day to get the updates.  Now you can see that it's not for everyone.

The other thing you need is some free software called a feed reader (or news aggregator).  You can use Yahoo, or Google or MSN (even) or Newsgator.  I use Netvibes because I have it as my desktop.  I can do lots of other things with it as well, like have a page of work news separate from my fun blogs, so I don't read the wrong stuff all day.

5. What does a feed look like?  If it's from your blog, then it looks like your blog.  Well it has the titles of the latest posts and you can click on each and see the rest of the post.  Some feedreaders like Netvibes allow you to see the website, so each post looks just like on the website.

If it is the news, then it looks like a list of news headlines that you can skim and just read the ones you are really interested in.

As an example, I have given my friend Beate a free plug by putting her feed in the sidebar  of my blog.  So you can read her blog, while reading mine.  So go find Music and Life Everywhere on the side bar. It's just above the big orange button.  

Actually Typepad doesn't do a very good job in displaying the feed, there are only headlines and no box round it.  Boo to Typepad.  I'm really not good enough at HTML and CSS to fix that up.

6.  Do I have to do anything to set up a feed for my blog?  No, most blog platforms do it automatically.  But there are several different types of feed with names like Atom, RSS 2.0, XML, so they can blind you with science.  Stick an orange RSS button on your blog and all is solved.  

7. And where do you get the orange button from?  The simplest is the best.  Go to Feedburner (costs nothing, but you need an account) and get some bling for your blog.  Follow the instructions to find your feed, then choose the "publicise" tab to put stuff on your blog to make it easier for people to connect to their own feedreader.  That's where I got this stuff:

8.  How do I find the feed on a blog?  Are you blind?  It's in the orange button.  Most feedreaders allow you to put the blog URL in a search box and it will find the feed itself, without you even going to the blog. 

9.  How do I find a news feed as opposed to a blog feed?   Well, how many do you want and how difficult is it to choose?  Go here and the BBC will give you a start with 26 different sets of news.  Now do you think you will really have time to read them all? 

So what's the fuss all about?  Wouldn't you like this on your computer?  All my "fun" feeds and a few news feeds as well, all in one place, easy to see what's new.  Because Netvibes has tabs (did I mention I like Netvibes?) I have a tab for techie feeds (for when I'm really bored),  a tab for Bosnian feeds (because I'm working there), a tab for Lebanon feeds (because I might be working there and need to know more what it's like), and a tab for Russian feeds because all human life is there. 

As you can see, all the feeds are in boxes which you can expand to read the headlines. Then you can read the actual post, which expands to fill the page.  It's all so easy.

And now I must go to check it out again.  Anything's better than working.

Technorati tags: RSS, feed readers, news aggregators, blogs, BBC, news feeds, blog feeds, Netvibes, Feedburner

Cats and IT

Why is it that cats have such excellent IT knowledge? 

When they walk across the keyboard with such an innocent look, they always manage to find the exact combination of keys which will produce a serious disaster.

My cat knows how to:

• change the display resolution so your picture shrinks
• make the computer hibernate in the middle of  some crucial technical fix, never to be remembered again,
• make your perfect document disappear for ever, after hours of editing (and saving)
• change the font to something you never knew you had
• make the Google desktop sidebar appear no matter how many times I change my preferences.  (it now is see-through which makes my screen look like it is burning out from the edge).

After wreaking the damage, she nonchalantly perches on my shoulder like a parrot, smirking at my efforts to find the reverse key combination to undo her efforts.

I'm sure they know all about RSS too. 

Technorati tags: cats, IT, computers

Is there life without RSS?

Isn't it amazing how there are people out there who still don't know what RSS is, or blogs, or news aggregators? I've had to explain them to two separate friends this weekend, both of whom I regard as intelligent clued up independent women. They still live their lives without this sort of essential kit, both for work and for fun.

I don't think they teach stuff like that at school either, being stuck with the IT equivalent of the 3 Rs, Word, Excel and Powerpoint, with the internet and Google as an afterthought, though most kids learn the internet when they are weaned, it seems. How do all those illiterate and innumerate kids that Britain produces communicate now? Or are they so out of it, they don't use the internet? Despite all her fancy stuff, Bee's production of her school Yearbook on Word was treated with contempt by the printers who had to shift it into Photoshop. "Don't you have that at school?" You can guess the anwer.

Now I seem to have developed a reputation as a techie. I suppose it's true that I am a bit of a geek, and still better at IT things than my kids. On Friday I was in a meeting in Sarajevo with an Advisor to the Minister and got a text message from Oxford "what is the password on the internet". Since this was clearly a matter of life and death in our household, I had to leave the meeting and send three possible passwords down the line. Of course it was none of them, and the problem was the wireless not the internet (aren't they the same? says Sloph). I was reduced to texting "it's the one on a post-it note on the book shelf and it begins with FF". Luckily that worked, though probably because the cleaner never dusts my bookshelves.

Voice recognition

It's not every day that I get beat by new technology, or perhaps I should say let myself get beaten.

I got hit by a massive bill for electricity and gas when I got home. I just assumed that it was the kids fault, they had managed to let the heating to come on at night and go off during the day. God knows what routine they were living in not to notice.

Anyway having paid it, I spent a lot of time turning things off and grumbling. Finally I woke up in the middle of the night realising it was probably an estimated bill, overcharging me.

So I stood on my head reading the meters in the cupboard under the stairs and rang the electricity and gas company with the results. I was expecting the usual wait for a call centre in India, but I got a message passing me through to the meter line robot. It was a robot with a friendly human (female) voice. She asked me to say the numbers for the account and told me to say yes or no if she had understood them correctly. I was so shocked by this, I insisted on pressing the keys instead. I found I was too shy to talk to the female voice even if it was friendly. I also couldn't really believe that the robot was so well trained in voice recognition.

Or perhaps I was afraid that I would be tempted to divert the conversation along the lines of having a fridge downloaded by internet, as enidd was here.

Anyway it seems that I shall be lending the electricity and gas company a tidy sum of my money till the next bill, since I don't suppose they will actually pay it me back.

Keeping up with comments

I don't get a lot of comments on my blog, so it's good to get them (thanks to Vilhelm this morning) by Typepad email. Since there aren't many, it's nice to reply to them personally by email and make new friends and chat about the comment.

Sometimes the chat with new information needs to be posted on the blog as a comment from me to update something. Then it's a bit strange finding an email from Typepad notifying me about my own comment on my own blog. But how do the real commenters know that something new has been added?

Is there some etiquette for dealing with this?

I guess if there is a very popular blog, it is worth subscribing to the comment feed for a particular post. And if you comment a lot on popular blogs then Cocomment might be worth it, though I found having to log all the blogs I read, compared with the number of comments I actually made, was too much effort.

Just looking up the link for CoComment revealed that there are two other competitors: co.mments and commentful. Technocrunch review here. What's your experience with any of these?

What does everybody else do?

Skype and call centre problems (or DTMF dial tone failure)

Has anyone any experience using Skype with call centres? I can't get Skype to respond to the requests to press a key: press 1 to go in an infinite queue (all call centres) , press 2 to enter some data which will not be used to route your call as it claims (Sony Vaio and Citibank) etc. The operator says that what has been entered is not recognised.

I can't find anything on Skype's website, though the feedback questionnaire which pops up after some calls seems to suggest that I am not the only one with some difficulty

I'm using Skype with the computer's own speakers and microphone. Maybe it works with a Skype phone?
Maybe you have to use special number keys on a laptop?

Without it, one of the big advantages of Skype disappears: the ability to make long international calls to banks and other call centres we know and hate, but have to use:)

Any suggestions welcome, even ones pointing out how stupid I am.

Update: Enidd has helped by pointing out that this is called DTMF dial tone failure

Don't buy a Sony Vaio and expect a decent repair service

This has been prompted by trying to manage computer repairs while out of the country. So I have spent a lot of time on my mobile phone at vast expense.

I have to say that my experience with Sony Vaio this has been completely awful. Last year when we sent Bee's computer back they were a model of efficiency and communication, with the whole thing taking a week. So when Bee's computer developed the same cooling problem plus a power connection problem, we thought we could be clever and time it for half term at the end of February. This has proved a disaster, not only because Sloph's computer also went in for repairs, (not a Sony) but also this is prime revision and course work time for GCSE, when computers can hardly be spared.

This year I tried to get my extended warranty registered for my new computer. The Sony Style online shop sold me the wrong product for my computer (somehow that was my fault, though I don't see how) and it has taken the combined efforts of me and Sony Style about six weeks to get Sony Vaio to provide the warranty. They simply did not respond to phone calls or emails to do something.

For Bee's computer, they have taken a month (of non communication either by phone, email or online tracking) to repair things that did not have problems as well as things that did, and have left the software not as they found it. As a result I had to spend about 90 minutes on SkypeOut faultfinding on a remote computer.

The last straw, which prompted this post, was being rung by the so-called Quality Team, asking for feedback on the repair. As you can imagine, I gave them plenty. However the girl was only interested in ticking her boxes: Would you recommend Sony to a friend? No, which is why I am posting this! How would you rate the service you received? After listening to my complaints, she actually proposed 4-5 out of 10, which I corrected to 2, (on the assumption, perhaps wrong, that more was better). Finally she ended with the lamest of offers, coming from the Sony service: Someone will ring you. Do I believe it, after the last six weeks? I don't think so.

I can also report that the Sony online registration page went down for maintenance (at least that's what it said, but I hardly believe it since it was at 3 in the afternoon) just when I was checking that my computer did have an extended warranty. I did manage to see that despite Sony acknowledging that Bee's computer was registered and under warranty, it was not listed.

Can they do anything right at the moment?

It's a shame, because the computers themselves are quite good, and mine is the third we have bought. But after this experience, they have to go on my blacklist.

The best on the web

It's not often I bother to follow recommendations on the web to watch videos, since they are often poor quality and low level interest for me. So it was only because I was waiting for a phone call that I tried this one. And I can definitely recommend it to you because:

1. It's a high quality production.
2. It's an interesting subject made accessible and amusing by the lecturer.
3. It doesn't contain any power point presentation (though he does have some pretty nifty presentation software).
4. Don't blink and you will see Slovenia. (Thanks to glory of carniola for the link)

It's a lecture by Hans Rosling, a Swedish Professor (with one of those sexy Swedish accents) on global health statistics, how they have changed over the last 50 years, and how our preconceptions are all wrong. Don't think you are interested in tables? There are no tables, only really slick, interesting and relevant graphics. You can learn a lot but it's fun as well.

Hans Rosling is professor of international health at Sweden's world-renowned Karolinska Institute, and founder of Gapminder, a non-profit that brings vital global data to life.

It's not short, so grab yourself some coffee and get comfy, and watch one of the best examples of how the internet brings information to billions. link. I struggled to get a graphic for the link, but it defeated me.

It's one of the TED podcasts.

How many countries?

I just noticed that my Neocounter totals have reached 10,000 visits since July 2006. OK, some of them are my visits when I was in Kosovo, Slovenia and Ukraine, but even so, things are looking up from last year when I was feeling like giving up.

I was pretty pleased when I crossed the hundred countries mark (now at 110) but it seems there are 183 (or perhaps 184 with Montenegro) so quite a long way to go. Maybe not all of them have internet. On the other hand you probably need it more in a very small country, to keep in touch.

Neoworx have a new widget out, with three variants, but not sure I need a third set of flags on the blog.

I also added Mybloglog widgets but they doesn't seem to provide much information, so I'll probably take them off soon.

Google queries and my blog

People often claim they can't find the answers they want using Google. Actually, I don't find it's so big a problem. But then I am sure that answers to some of my questions probably don't exist.

But recent queries which landed on my blog were:

rory stuart dhl office
alan rickman's family tree
tattoo germanic tribes (rather popular this one)
how does wuwei correct life (I'm not sure how to respond to this one)
how many children go to the doctors in greece
that animal park on tv near ikea not the one in london we went to 2 milton keynes
the killing pit photograph russia
did alan rickman cheat on rima (not as far as I knew, when she lived in my house, in the 80s)

I don't think my blog contains anything like the answers to those questions.