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Friday, April 30, 2004

Microsoft's Live Meeting Connects with Lotus Notes. Microsoft offers an addition for Lotus Notes users to schedule and launch Office Live Meeting 2003 Web conferences from within the groupware client. [eWEEK Technology News]
9:07:09 PM

Cisco Uses Linux in Enterprise Content Caching System. While the open source community works on developing affordable substitutes for Cisco routers, Cisco itself is using Linux to power its Application and Content Networking System (ACNS), a caching and content delivery product for enterprise companies. [Netcraft]
1:19:40 PM

Washington Post Net Falls, Revenue Rises (Reuters). Reuters - Washington Post Co. (WPO.N) said on Friday that quarterly net profit fell from a year ago, when results included a gain from the sale of its stake in the International Herald Tribune, but revenue jumped on the strength of its educational unit. The Kaplan educational division, which last year surpassed the publishing unit as the company's biggest source of revenue, saw quarterly revenue grow 45 percent to $258.3 million. [Yahoo! News - Entertainment]

Kaplan owns Concord Law School.

1:15:01 PM

9th Circuit to rehear Internet jurisdiction case en banc. The US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit has agreed to reconsider en banc the issue of Internet-based jurisdiction. Read the Order. A 9th Circuit panel previously held in Gator.com Corp. v. L.L. Bean, Inc. that the Maine retailer's web store created enough commercial activity in the state to establish general jurisdiction. Read the decision here [PDF]. The Recorder has more.[JURIST's Paper Chase]
8:45:08 AM

Will RSS Readers Clog the Web?. Sure, news aggregators are handy tools, making Web surfing a breeze. But the programs are greedy little buggers that swamp websites with unwanted traffic. Something has to change, and soon. By Ryan Singel. [Wired News]

Despite the tone of the headline, this article does a good job of highlighting some the growth pains being experienced in the RSS world.

There are 2 areas worth noting that can make RSS and aggregation more efficient and avoid the clogging problems. For content providers, limit the amount of content in the feed. Give just enough information to get the point across. If the consumer wants to read more, they can click through to the site. If you encapsulate all of your content in a publicly available feed, you tie up lots of bandwidth and don't draw people to your site.

For aggregator developers, remember that RSS is not email. While the RSS format is simple, aggregation shouldn't be. A good aggregator will only check sources once an hour, will have a database backend to archive feeds as needed, and will check RSS feeds to only fetch the feed if it has changed. All of these are key to keeping bandwidth usage to a minimum.

Taken together these things will help reduce the clogging effect caused by RSS feeds. Beyond this work needs to be down to determine if the use of RSS feeds using HTTP for transport is a good scalable and long term solution. If not what are the alternatives? SOAP? XML-RPC? A new protocol for feeds?

8:36:06 AM

Nasty Malware Fouls PCs With Porn. An especially evil new browser hijacker is sweeping the Net, spying on users of infected machines and pummeling them with truly vile pornography. Some folks are screaming for vengeance, but the problem is finding out who unleashed the vicious code. By Michelle Delio. [Wired News]
6:42:04 AM

More Reasons to Love Google. Google pulls off an incredible feat. No, not the attempt to raise $2.7 billion through an IPO. They write an engrossing filing -- yes, engrossing -- that you wouldn't mind reading at the beach. In it, the company comes close to giving Wall Street the finger. By Joanna Glasner. [Wired News]

More on the Google IPO, an interesting read. Look for the anticipated value of the IPO:-)

6:37:29 AM