RSS Headphones

RSS-headphone
Originally uploaded by Poldo™.

Here's reason #475 to love Flickr: Graphic artists creating their works of digital art and publishing them on Flickr.

This user's name is Poldo.

Google Toolbar 4.0: Surprise!!

I fired up the old Internet Explorer 6 this evening when I was almost startled by a Google pop-up. Google Toolbar 4.0 now installed. Pretty fancy. New functionality that takes advantage of users with Google Account: Bookmarks, search histories, search-specific button downloads (this seemingly insignificant new feature, which can search specific sites, may prove to be the most ingenious of all), and more. Still haven't checked it out completely.

If you have the Google Toolbar already installed, then the new version should be appearing on a browser near you.

YouTube: A Digital Archive of Retro Music Videos

2 words: Def Leppard.

Song title: Photograph.

Music video via YouTube: Click here.

Graphics

Microsoft prepares "Expression Web" software

So long MS FrontPage.

Hello Expression Web, er, Expression Web...?

From Steve Bryant's InterMedia comes the hard news: Microsoft's FrontPage file format bows out and makes room for Expression Web web design software, now in beta.

Bryant writes, "It's [Expression Web] much smoother and intuitive than Dreamweaver, which suffers from years of legacy code."

Should Adobe Dreamweaver be worried?

News: Google launches news archive search

Today I read that Google launched something called Google News Archive Search.

According to the BBC News website, Google News Archive Search "allows users to explore existing digitised newspaper articles spanning the last 200 years and more recent online content."

News archive, eh.

When will Web browsing get interesting again?

I asked myself this question last night after reading a BBC article that discussed a new web browser. While the web browser in question, called Browzar, which claims to provide increased anonymity to users while on the Web, has received at least one review disputing its anonymity claim, the thought of a new web browser nonetheless filled me with some excitement.

Since I was in the download and test mood, I visited the Browzar site and downloaded the free web browser. It requires no installation. I downloaded the software right onto my Iomega Mini USB drive and double-clicked the Browzar icon.

This is the home page screen shot:



As you can see, Browzar is very bare-bones: no bells, no whistles, no fancy widgets, either. Just the basics: "Back" and "Forward" navigation buttons, "Home" and "Print" buttons, as well as a URL address and search fields. I suppose this is the price one pays for anonymity.

I am not an overly technical guy, but I suspect this browser is really a sort of Internet Explorer prophylactic - it protects one's identity while still using Internet Explorer's page rendering engine.

Before making any recommendations, I would rather and wait what the larger community of users has to say about Browzar's anonymity claims.

Coming back to my original question: When will web browsing get interesting again?

Back when Firefox was released, I was ecstatic . What a breath of fresh air. This browser demonstrated what integrating new tools and extensibility could do for web browsers. Despite a lag in innovative changes in recent releases, Firefox still remains a powerful browser.

Now we wait for Microsoft Internet Explorer 7. I do not know its release date, but I do know that it will be available to Windows users "as as a high-priority update via Automatic Updates." [Source: Microsoft]. According to the IE 7 official blog, IE 7 will include many new tools and functionality (some of which I am sure we have seen in Firefox).

As we wait and see, I wonder:

1. When will we see a web browser that becomes a unique expression of the user?
2. When will we see a browser that gives users a solid and secure framework in which we can create, design, and interact with the web in ways that we define and tailor to our needs?

With several companies competing, perhaps the bigger question is who? Who will deliver the next-gen web browser?

Welcome to September

As I flipped my wall calendar from August to September, I was struck by how fast the summer months had passed. It seems like only a few weeks ago we were starting the balmy month of July. And now look: September 1st. Labour Day Weekend. Time flies, folks. Tempus fugit.

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Yesterday, August 31, was Blog Day. I wasn't aware of this celebration, but the idea of celebrating blogging by recommending 5 new blogs to readers sounds like fun. So here goes:

1. SpellboundBlog.com - Is an archives-oriented blog by Jeanne Kramer-Smyth, an archives student at the University of Maryland. I found SpellboundBlog via Mike A. Matienzo's super-cool ArchivesBlogs aggregator blog.




2. Andy Carvin's Waste of Bandwidth - I just starting reading this blog, which talks about the Digital Divide, and I find it quite interesting. The author, Andy, has recently accepted a new job at the Public Broadcast Service [Correction: I goofed. He currently writes a blog at PBS. His new job is with National Public Radio (NPR). Thanks, Andy!], working on some Web 2.0 technologies. His writing style is what got me hooked.




3. Publish.com - "News and opinion on Web 2.0, online media and graphics tools." Not a blog per se, but a website with tons of web-related goodies, current and emerging technologies and trends. The website does offer a RSS feed.




4. Intermedia - A blog written by Publish.com associate editor Steve Bryant, who writes about multimedia and web. A lot of what Bryant discusses on his blog will in some way impact the Web. Always good to stay ahead of the curve.




5. Finally, for those interested in good web design and web technology blogs (with tips and techniques), here are a few: Adam Kalsey, Cameron Moll, and TechCrunch (mostly web news).