Kazaa Loses Big
While I am a big supporter of P2P file-sharing, just like I support any technology that allows freedom of information, I was never in favor of the way Kazaa went about their marketing.
"What the &%$* is wrong with the newsfeeds?" "Why are all of my newsfeeds about Iraq?" "How come I don’t have any feeds at all?" "Why doesn’t my mother love me?"
I know that you (Kalup, Tawan, Ron, Gregg, David, Scott and Jon) are very tired of hearing these questions on a daily basis. Let me take a second to explain this and please bear with me as this may get very technical.
Moreover sucks!!! Their system does not allow us to query them directly. So we setup a cache (a database server on our end that stores the data from Moreover). Moreover has (had) terrible organization for their news. They weren’t grouping based off of any type of category structure. So we are trying to perform fulltext searches on the fly (each time the webpage is requested and the keyword is called).
So…Josh, what are you going to do to fix this? Steve Doria and I are working on a newsfeed system with Google. In fact it actually already works better (thanx to Doria) than the old Moreover system. However, Kelly has not had a chance to see it and we will not be able to implement it until he comes back from the "Most Magical Place on Earth."
In the meantime we received an update from Moreover and they have drastically updated their system. They now have categories and an API that will allow us to query the system directly. However, there is still a 3 minute delay between each query so we will have to use our cache. It will take us a some time to update our cache to their new schema and integrate the API. I am aiming to have this done by next week.
So please tell the client that we are aware of the newsfeed problem. Our BEST programmer is working on it. We are working on incorporating feeds from other providers to ensure relevance. It is not a political system that only wants to talk about Iraq. Your mother does love you, well….
Bye Bye Tivo. On Wed I will get the new dual tuner HD DVR box from comcast and I will be leaving you, Tivo.
If anyone ever asks you what is the point of open-source programming show them this: Google Maps + Craigslist Mashup.
TiVo’s new DRM system allows you to move video from your TiVo to your PC, but not as a plain MPEG file that you can slice and dice and watch in the player of your choice. Here are step-by-step instructions for converting TiVo-to-Go video to MPEG files. Link (via Waxy)
Digg has to be the coolest website I have seen all year. The concept is simple and yet it accomplishes so much. It operates on the same open source, user-controlled thinking that makes Wikipedia thrive. Users submit articles from blogs or commercial news sources. If you like the article, you simply click the Digg button and the article receives a vote. The articles with the most Diggs move up hierarchy towards the home page of its category. If an article is Dugg enough, it will wind up on the home page of the site. I quickly visit Digg a few times each day and I am always amused, entertained and informed. I would say that Digg has become RSS 3.0. While Digg isn’t replacing the current XML technology, it is the most phuking awesome form of syndication I have seen.
I have been
