Pterodaktyl…

Reading through the Slashdot news this morning, I spotted a link to DesignTechnica’s “The Best of Web 2.0 Guide. Most of the applications they discuss are ones I’m already familiar with - Flickr, Del.icio.us, Bloglines, Google Maps - but there we a couple of things I hadn’t seen before that caught my eye. One is Vimeo, descibed as being “like Flickr for videos”. Admittedly, I don’t have a lot of videos I’d want to post, but the idea sounds cool and I plan to check it out.

The second thing I discovered was Netvibes, a customisable “start page” similar to Personalised Google or Windows Live. For the last month or so, I’ve been using FeedLounge to keep track of all my RSS feeds. It’s certainly a very powerful reader, with a nice way of organising feeds, but even after recent upgrades I find it too slow to use as a start page. Then of course there’s the $5 a month subscription - not a lot, but it still comes to around £40 a year.

Before switching to FeedLounge I’d been using Personalised Google both as a start page and to keep track of feeds. The interface and options were fairly basic, but it allowed me to glance at all the latest news every time I started my browser. Well, after about 10 seconds of trying out Netvibes I was sold - it’s Personalised Google on steroids! You can pick feeds from their directory (quite sparse at the moment, but I’m sure it’ll grow) or add your own. It has gadgets to display weather, Gmail and POP inboxes, a to-do list and a bookmark manager. For me though, the best bit is that when you click on a feed item, it opens it in Netvibes own reader pane instead of taking you straight to the site. Here you can flick through all the current feed items, and mark them all as read or unread (the start page shows the number of unread items in each feed, so it’s easy to tell when new stuff arrives).

Screenshot 1 - NetVibes Start Page

Screenshot 2 - NetVibes Feed Reader

If you track a large number of feeds, or want to group your news items by tagging, then Netvibes probably isn’t for you. If you want a fast, smart looking homepage for you browser with some decent feed-reading capabilities, it could be worth a try!

BBC NEWS | Business | Microsoft to give access to code

I know Windows has many faults, but surely the 1000s of programs already available suggest that it’s possible to develop perfectly well for it without the source code? Yes, MS may have too much of a monopoly, but to force a company to release every last detail of how their software works seems a little over the top, not to mention a security risk!

When I’m developing a sim add-on (and bear in mind this is working with software that’s meant to be expanded upon by 3rd parties) I regularly have to deal with poor documentation about the simplest things… should I be petitioning the EU to get me the source code?

After umming and ahhhing over it for ages, I’ve finally decided to get a hosted site and set up my own blog - so here it is!

It’s powered by WordPress 2.0, and uses a modified version of the K2 theme. I’m still working on getting the layout how I like it, especially the sidebar - so you may find things broken occasionally.

Criticism of the layout and functionality in various browsers would be welcome; I’m still finding my way around WordPress and theme modification in general, so I need to know what I’m getting right and what I’m getting wrong!