India and Silicon Valley based Zoho has launched full offline access for Zoho writer, based on the Google Gears open source platform.
Read more at TechCrunch
Showing posts with label online tools. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online tools. Show all posts
27 November, 2007
19 November, 2007
An Introduction to Feed Readers (aka Aggregators)
What are Feeds?
The Internet is a huge place. Literally billions of websites, and many of them keep changing day by day, if not minute-by-minute. How do you keep track of the latest things going on the websites / blogs we like? You can't possibly consider going to each and every site and keep hitting the 'refresh' button every now and then, can you?This is why RSS was introduced. RSS, or Rich Site Summary, is an XML output of the latest changes to a website's content. If the site is a blog, RSS will update itself each time there is a new post. The RSS output is called a feed, which will not contain any of the color information or javascript in the original post, but it will maintain the links. There is another feed standard, called Atom, which is usually shown as a second option when setting up a blog.
All popular blogging platforms such as Blogger, Wordpress, Typepad etc. have feeds, and are turned on by default. Some platforms even have feeds for comments to a particular post. Many forum softwares also provide feeds for latest threads, replies to a particular thread, posts made by particular members etc. There are even search engines which provide feeds to the latest results to search phrases!
How do we read the feeds?
"Ok", you'll say, "there are no more websites to check, but what do we do now? Open the feeds and keep hitting refresh button for the latest changes?!!?" HELL NO. There are dozens of online (web-based) and offline (desktop) softwares called 'Feed Readers'.NewsOnFeeds.com has a huuuuge list of offline and online feed readers
Feed Readers
If you are using a desktop-based (offline) feed reader, they'll register the feed:// protocol to themselves, which means that (if all goes well) when you click on a link to a feed, the feed URL (usually ends with .xml, some times its a query string such as ?output=rss) will be directly passed to the reader.In case you are using a web-based reader unsupported by your browser, you'll have to manually copy-paste the feed URL into that site.
Whichever the case, the reader then lets you tag the feed with keywords of your choice, for categorizing. Now, whenever you fire up your offline feed reader (or open/refresh the online reader's page), the reader will check all the feeds for updates, and shows you the content of the latest posts in a neat, single scrollable list.
Most readers let you search posts you have read in the past, star posts for later reference, email a post to your friends etc. Imagine searching all your favorite sites for a post, and you'll see how helpful this can be..
The good thing about online feed readers is that there is no installation to be done, which means you can use the site from public cafes or at a friend's computer, without changing anything. Just sign-in, and your own Personalized Newspaper is right there waiting for you.
Some bloggers / websites prefer to share only a portion of their posts via feeds, so that a feed subscriber who reads the summary (first few lines) of the post (or some times just the post title - as decided by the blogger), and finds it interesting, will visit the original site and see / click their ads. Oh I forgot to mention - feeds by default don't have ads - unless they are manually put in by the content owner.
Google Reader is the most popular feed reader worldwide. Head over to the site, and if you are not a user yet, they'll give you a quick intro as well.
How do I know whether my favorite site has feeds?
Sites with feeds usually display the orange feed icon (See FeedIcons.com for multi-sized samples), clicking on which you'll see the feed for the site. Some blogs show a list of feed readers, each with dedicated buttons which let you subscribe to their posts via specific readers in one click.Browser support
Modern Browsers (Opera 9, Firefox 2 & IE7 do, I'm not sure about older versions.) will display the icon at the right end of the address-bar itself. Click on the icon to see a preview of the current feed listings.If you are using Firefox 2.0 or above, it will show you a list of supported readers, from which you can set one as default, if you want. I've chosen Google as the option, which means that each time I click on a feed icon, a page asking me to choose either iGoogle or Google Reader shows up.
Latest versions of IE, Firefox & Opera have inbuilt feed readers, albeit simple ones. (Firefox's reader is called Live Bookmarks)
Feed-related Services
FeedBurner (now owned by Google) helps you monetize your feeds, as well as provide a permanent feed URL. You'll be able to change blog platforms without changing your feed URL. My feedburner URL, for example, is feed://feeds.feedburner.com/liveash/blog (the part after .com is customizable.) The monetizing part comes only after you have about 50,000 subscribers, so don't expect to make a quick buck just yet!Yahoo Pipes is a bit more complicated service; it lets you create mashups of feeds. That is, you can combine different feeds programmatically (with if/else , for/while loops and much more) to create a customized feed.
List of Geek Feeds
To help you get started, here are a few (geeky) feed URLs which I have subscribed to:- Digg / Technology > http://www.digg.com/rss/containertechno
logy.xml - Digital Inspiration (Famous Indian Blogger, Amit Agarwal) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/labnol
- GigaOm / Web (Om Mallik, a US-centric Indian Tech Blogger) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/gigaom/soft
ware - Google Blogoscoped (All things Google, and then some!) > http://blogoscoped.com/rss.xml
- Guardian Unlimited: Technology blog > http://blogs.guardian.co.uk/technology/
index.xml - TechCrunch (Michael Arrington, one of the most respected tech bloggers, posts here) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/Techcrunch
- Lifehacker - They cover a lot of topics, so you better go to http://lifehacker.com/about/#5 and choose a feed that suits your needs. They provide multiple feeds for each tag, for each author etc.
- Official Google Blog > http://googleblog.blogspot.com/atom.xml
- Mashable! (A bit too geeky, newcomer) > http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mashable
04 October, 2007
Zoho does it again!
The tech-blog world is buzzing today with posts (saw here, here & here) heralding the arrival of another killer online-office app from Zoho.com, called Zoho DB.
Demogirl has created a screencast for us, explaining the features of this online database tool, which is embedded below.
Note: Zoho is an Indian company, which seems to be beating the almighty BigG's offerings, at least on the Online Office front.
Demogirl has created a screencast for us, explaining the features of this online database tool, which is embedded below.
Note: Zoho is an Indian company, which seems to be beating the almighty BigG's offerings, at least on the Online Office front.
17 July, 2007
My Favourite Web Services, and why I prefer them (Part 1/2)
Everyday, we use many online services for keeping our data accessible from anywhere, anytime. And each time a new service finds success, others are sure to follow. I have my own reasons for choosing some over others, and even though its mostly a personal preference, the reasons might help you choose a better service. As you'll see, I'm a fan of Google's offerings :)
The good thing about using personalized online services from a single provider is that you only need to sign-in once to access all the services, and there aren't many (if any) companies which can match Google at the number of services provided.
# Webmail ( Online Email )
I don't think many will object to my choice of Gmail in this space. Google started it out as an invite-only email service with a previously unimaginable, humongous storage of 1GB. Later, the quota was increased to 2GB and it keeps on rising as we speak. Many competitors followed suit with GB-sized inboxes, but there are certain features that kept users glued to Gmail :
# RSS (Feed) Reader
Google Reader is what I use, being a simple and easy-to-use service. It wasn't the first service I used, but it is the only one I've used more than once. Even though it is a beta product (as with most of Google's services), it has been quite stable. The recent addition of Google Gears brought offline functionality to GReader.
# Word Processor / Spreadsheet App.
Simply because I don't have to sign-in to one more service, I use Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Features include collaboration with simultaneous edits, ability to publish documents, inbuilt chat with people currently editing the document, tagging etc. Competitors in the field include the Zoho Suite of products, which was recently in the news for bringing offline functionality to the browser using Google's own 'Gears' technology to its range of products, before Google could implement it in its own Online Office suite. Zoho does have a much wider variety of offerings, all of which are listed at www.zoho.com
If you have better suggestions, lets hear it in the comments.
The good thing about using personalized online services from a single provider is that you only need to sign-in once to access all the services, and there aren't many (if any) companies which can match Google at the number of services provided.
# Webmail ( Online Email )
I don't think many will object to my choice of Gmail in this space. Google started it out as an invite-only email service with a previously unimaginable, humongous storage of 1GB. Later, the quota was increased to 2GB and it keeps on rising as we speak. Many competitors followed suit with GB-sized inboxes, but there are certain features that kept users glued to Gmail :
- (Nearly) 100% spam protection - Web users used to be afraid of posting their email ids on any forums or giving to websites for subscribing to services, due to fear of spam. The amount of spam has tripled in the last two years, but Gmail inboxes remain clean. From the days of using 'honeypot' email addresses for possible spam, Gmail has taken users to the state where they can post their primary email address anywhere, and still feel confident that spam will never reach the Gmail inbox ( I did see one get past Gmail's spam protection yesterday, but that was in more than three months! )
- Conversation View - Google's novel idea of grouping related messages together was a boon to frequent email users. Before it, we would quote the original message thread in every message, increasing the size of mails being shuttled back and forth, thus increasing latency. Now, we can just type-in our response and send the email on its way without having to worry about losing track - as long as the subject line remains the same (even if 'fwd:', 'fw:' or 'Re:' are prefixed), Gmail will organize our mails for us.
# RSS (Feed) Reader
Google Reader is what I use, being a simple and easy-to-use service. It wasn't the first service I used, but it is the only one I've used more than once. Even though it is a beta product (as with most of Google's services), it has been quite stable. The recent addition of Google Gears brought offline functionality to GReader.
# Word Processor / Spreadsheet App.
Simply because I don't have to sign-in to one more service, I use Google Docs & Spreadsheets. Features include collaboration with simultaneous edits, ability to publish documents, inbuilt chat with people currently editing the document, tagging etc. Competitors in the field include the Zoho Suite of products, which was recently in the news for bringing offline functionality to the browser using Google's own 'Gears' technology to its range of products, before Google could implement it in its own Online Office suite. Zoho does have a much wider variety of offerings, all of which are listed at www.zoho.com
If you have better suggestions, lets hear it in the comments.
27 May, 2007
Geni - Make Your Family Tree, as easy as 1-2-3!
I have been putting this off for a long time; been using Geni more than a month now - So here it is: A review for Geni : The flash-based, easy to use family tree service.
Geni is not the first team to venture into genealogy, the study of pedigree (ancestry); which deals with the bloodlines which connect you and me. Others, like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Genealogy.com, Genealogy.org etc. have been in the field for many years (See for yourself if you want; the basic services are free for all.), but Geni steals the prize by being simple.
Just seven weeks after going public in January this year, Geni caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of people through a simple, intuitive interface which far surpassed the interfaces of the competitors. Another major reason behind its popularity is its viral nature : you invite, say, 10 relatives, they invite 5 each, and so on - soon, your tree will contain hundreds of members you've never even heard of!
The service caught my sight when it was mentioned in Digit Magazine as a free service for building family trees. I was actually looking for a way to re-connect with my family members; its quite hard for me to remember the exact relationships when meetings are quite rare with distant relatives - sometimes, even close ones. So I didn't waste a minute and jumped online to www.geni.com...
Needless to say, I was instantly Hooked! Hectic days of compiling relations ensued, and within just 3 days I had added 500+ relatives to my tree (Yeah, I'm impulsive like that :) ), thanks to my parents who helped a lot by making dozens of phone calls to get names & long-forgotten bloodlines. (You don't have to do all the work yourself; inviting relatives to join is the recommended way to compile the tree.)
Here is a screen shot of the tree view:
You can add more members to your tree yourself, or can invite relatives to join the tree. Only those you invite to your tree will be able to see it, so there is no privacy threat. If a member joins Geni through your invite and chooses a password, their profile will become un-editable by others; otherwise you can edit any profile in your tree.
Every member gets a photo album by default. Uploaded family photos can be tagged with the names of those who are in the photo, which will automatically add the photo to their profiles. For example, if I upload a photo of my cousins, and tag it with their names, all the cousins' profiles will have the picture in their album. Nice!
Recently they added the option to invite your family friends to Geni, which will enable those who join via the invitation to see your profile and your immediate relatives (but not their profiles).
In the true spirit of Web 2.0, Geni carries a 'beta' tag; they are still working on many of the features frequently requested by users, such as ability to import trees from other genealogy programs, an option to merge trees, exporting the entire tree as a GEDCOM file (industry standard for genealogy information) etc. Expect much more, soon.
So why wait? Go to Geni.com and start your tree - maybe one day you'll beat the old-school members of ancestry.com, with over 30,000 relatives(!!) in their trees...
Geni is not the first team to venture into genealogy, the study of pedigree (ancestry); which deals with the bloodlines which connect you and me. Others, like Ancestry.com, FamilySearch.org, Genealogy.com, Genealogy.org etc. have been in the field for many years (See for yourself if you want; the basic services are free for all.), but Geni steals the prize by being simple.
Just seven weeks after going public in January this year, Geni caught the attention of hundreds of thousands of people through a simple, intuitive interface which far surpassed the interfaces of the competitors. Another major reason behind its popularity is its viral nature : you invite, say, 10 relatives, they invite 5 each, and so on - soon, your tree will contain hundreds of members you've never even heard of!
The service caught my sight when it was mentioned in Digit Magazine as a free service for building family trees. I was actually looking for a way to re-connect with my family members; its quite hard for me to remember the exact relationships when meetings are quite rare with distant relatives - sometimes, even close ones. So I didn't waste a minute and jumped online to www.geni.com...
Needless to say, I was instantly Hooked! Hectic days of compiling relations ensued, and within just 3 days I had added 500+ relatives to my tree (Yeah, I'm impulsive like that :) ), thanks to my parents who helped a lot by making dozens of phone calls to get names & long-forgotten bloodlines. (You don't have to do all the work yourself; inviting relatives to join is the recommended way to compile the tree.)
Here is a screen shot of the tree view:
You can add more members to your tree yourself, or can invite relatives to join the tree. Only those you invite to your tree will be able to see it, so there is no privacy threat. If a member joins Geni through your invite and chooses a password, their profile will become un-editable by others; otherwise you can edit any profile in your tree.
Every member gets a photo album by default. Uploaded family photos can be tagged with the names of those who are in the photo, which will automatically add the photo to their profiles. For example, if I upload a photo of my cousins, and tag it with their names, all the cousins' profiles will have the picture in their album. Nice!
Recently they added the option to invite your family friends to Geni, which will enable those who join via the invitation to see your profile and your immediate relatives (but not their profiles).
In the true spirit of Web 2.0, Geni carries a 'beta' tag; they are still working on many of the features frequently requested by users, such as ability to import trees from other genealogy programs, an option to merge trees, exporting the entire tree as a GEDCOM file (industry standard for genealogy information) etc. Expect much more, soon.
So why wait? Go to Geni.com and start your tree - maybe one day you'll beat the old-school members of ancestry.com, with over 30,000 relatives(!!) in their trees...
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