Brentc.com

Asa and Ben both note that Firefox 1.0 RC2 is likely coming RSN [read: later tonight/tomorrow].

Exciting times as Firefox continues it’s march to the big 1.0.

So stardock has released v1.0 of it’s Blog Navigator, but I’m not going to even bother trying it. I’ve tried Bradsoft’s Feed Demon, and a few other feed reading applications, but everytime I do, I end up uninstalling them within 10-20 minutes of trying them out. As I’ve mentioned before I use a (heavily-hacked) version of Feed on Feeds.

The trouble with feed reader applications, at least with regards to the my subscribed feeds, is that 99% of the time, the articles I read make reference to other sites on the internet. This , of course, happens 100% of the time for articles that aren’t full-text-syndicated. So, with a feed reader application, I’m now stuck with the 2 options these readers offer to deal with this situation: open a new browser window to follow the reference, or read the reference inside the feed reader application.

The first option is just unbareable, and the second is fundamentally flawed. Opening a new-window is precisely the situation I escaped from when tabbed browsing was introduced, and lack of tabbed browsing is the #1 feature I miss whenever I’m forced to use Internet Explorer (about 1% of my usage I would guess). The second option, reading the reference inside the application, means that I’m now browsing the web in an interface only partially desinged for the web. “But several feed-readers have your prescious tabbed browsing” you say! Well, yeah some do (Feed Demon for one, and, it seems, Blog Navigator as well), but I choose to use Firefox for a reason. I use it because it’s a damn good web browser, and one which I can “extend” to my hearts content. More to the point, I am used to browsing the web through my web browser. Using a different interface, different hotkeys, different implementations of the features I’m used to in my web browser is unpleasant. I suppose if I were to use my feed reader application to browse the internet full-time, I would become used to that implementation, but for the reasons above, I choose to browse with Firefox (not to mention, I just don’t feel comfortable [read: safe] using Internet Explorer as my webbrowser [regardless of SP2, yet]). The inverse to using my feed-reader as my fulltime browser is, obviously, use my browser as my fulltime feed-reader.

With regards to browsing feeds in an feed-reader application, Robert Scoble says “Already only 15% of my Internet life is in the browser“, which may be valid when you have over 915 subscriptions, and subsequently no time to follow any of the references in any of the blog posts (kidding Scoble, :P), but if anything, I’ve found that the more subscriptions I get, the more time I spend in my browser, following new/interesting topics from the references within my subscrbed feeds. It seems to me, as long as the primary interface of feeds are web sites, their contents are going to be heavily laced with web-references. As long as that’s the case, feed reading needs to be done from within the browser.

“But you’ve already got feedonfeeds or bloglines moron,” you say. Well, yes, that’s true, so why am I even complaining? Well, I like feedonfeeds because it’s something I can customize to behave how I want (ie. change it from this into this) which isn’t doable with a web service like bloglines. Unfortunately work on feedonfeeds has seemed to come to a complete stand-still (unfortunately, well before the project has matured enough for my tastes *cough*layout-code-abstraction*cough*), and every month a new feed-reading application seems to be created. I just wish there was more attention being paid towards more alternatives for browser-based feed reading.

Today’s your last chance to cash in on the 25% off promotion for Bradsoft‘s Topstyle Pro, hands down the the best text/html/php/css editor in existence.

Nick Bradbury: Last chance to save 25% on TopStyle Pro

Joystiq.com has some impressions from a recent hands-on with two of Lucas Arts latest games: Star Wars Battlefront and Mercenaries. The title of this post came form that article.

It was funny so I thought I’d link to the article.

The RSS feed for Internet Archive’s Movie Archive has been going nuts over the last two days, with something like over 100 new movies added. Great news for old movie lovers. I personally recommend the original Night of the Living Dead (it wasn’t part of the latest blitz of additions, for the record).

So I’ve been using Mozilla.org‘s Thunderbird for quite some time now (since 0.2 I believe)… And I really want to like it. With thunderbird currently envisioning a mid-October 1.0 release, I still find my self constantly frustrated by thunderbird’s performance.

My primary gripe is with thunderbird’s IMAP support. Due to constantly coming across bug #224795 I forced to keeping my email client closed except when explicitly checking or sending messages.

Other little quirks keep appearing when changing folders or moving email around different folders (again always IMAP accounts, since I don’t use POP3 anywhere anymore). Thunderbird likes to crap out and no longer show the contents of folders, etc, etc. I’ve yet to bother searching for any corresponding bug entries in bugzilla because I find using bugzilla to be tedious and unmanageable.

So I continually find myself being tempted to switch back to Outlook. Of course, I just can’t bring myself to do it. As much as the quirks and bugs of thunderbird annoy me, I think it’s much better than the constantly discovered and exploited vulnerabilities of MS’s internet applications.

And one more another thing…

Why the hell does update.mozilla.org not have a search function?

Ok… I’m done my little rant.

While I expect thunderbird to mature someday to something quite solid… I don’t really feel like it’s progress from creation to 1.0 has been as strong as say another mozilla project. Perhaps thunderbird is being prematurely pulled towards 1.0 in order to coincide with it’s big brother‘s big 1.0.

So Robert Scoble has posted his 8 steps to getting your blog noticed. If you’re looking to get famous in the “blogosphere” (*shudder* god I hate that term) then these steps seem to be fairly sound advice. Of course, being the lazy guy I am, I plan on doing none of them.

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger
(oh crap… I think I just did #1)

Ok, so given that I’m taking six 3rd & 4th year physics and math classes this semester, I’m a little interested in finding a way to properly track all the assignments and due dates that have been thrown upon me.

I spent 20 minutes or so entering-in all the dates I’ve received so far into my yahoo calendar but was a little disappointed by the fact that the assignments I’ve entered as ‘tasks’ with due dates do not show up in the calendar view. Seems to me this would be a logical thing to do. So I thought I would sync the calendar with Outlook and see how outlook handled it’s calendar/task views. Unfortunately Outlook (2003) doesn’t seem to display tasks in the calendar view either. Am I the only one who would like this? A quick google search seemed to show several people asking how they could show tasks in the calendar view, but the response was usually ‘can’t be done’.

So anyhow… Anyone got and recommendations for any good time management software? Perhaps something geared specifically for students?

Oooh! Shiny!

Silver-plated USB Flash memory drive [engadget.com]

So someone has finally found the perfect compliment to the sleek designs, the smooth curves of the ipod design. I just have to say, I’m spellbound by the beauty of this ipod case:

The iPod superCase – Engadget – www.engadget.com