A recent favorable review of RSS Bandit on About.com pointed out a missing feature that I've seen more and more of our users asking for. The bottom line of the review reads

RSS Bandit is a nice and very capable feed reader that lets you browse news in an organized fashion. Its flexibility, virtual folders and synchronization abilities are great, but it would be even greater if it integrated with Bloglines and NewsGator Online, too.

Although we have various options for using RSS Bandit from multiple computers, many users find them inaccessible because they don't have access to an FTP server or a WebDAV server. Also in certain cases, one may not want to install RSS Bandit on a machine that was being used temporarily but instead use a Web application which could then be synchronized with RSS Bandit later on.

The main reason I didn't include syncing to Bloglines in the Wolverine release is that the Bloglines sync API is not very rich. RSS Bandit users can flag posts, delete them, mark read posts as unread and so on. None of this functionality is supported by the Bloglines sync API. Similarly users cannot add or delete feeds using the Bloglines sync API. This means that there really isn't any way I could fully synchronize the state of an RSS Bandit instance with a person's Bloglines subscriptions. It seems the API was designed with the assumption that the user would be using Bloglines as their primary RSS reader not the other way around.

The way FeedDemon got around this problem was to create a separate channel group for Bloglines subscriptions which has limited functionality compared to other channel groups but is synchronized with the user's Bloglines subscriptions. This looks like the only reasonable approach as opposed to waiting indefinitely for the Bloglines sync API to develop more functionality.

The above argument also applies to syncing with the Newsgator Online service.

In the Nightcrawler release I'll ensure that we provide syncing to both Bloglines and Newsgator Online. However this will be via synchronized channel groups which won't be compatible with the existing synchronization mechanisms that use FTP and WebDAV today.

This morning I found an interesting article about the growth of blogging entitled The Blogging Geyser: Blogs Blast from 31.6 Million Today to Reach 53.4 Million by Year End. Below is an excerpt about various blogging services which I found interesting  

Perseus prepared a segmentation of the key blog hosts by analyzing the sites on two dimensions - momentum (new user accounts averaged over the life of the service) and longevity (length of time operational) - establishing four key segments: Leaders, Challengers, Upstarts and Niche Players.

The leaders (high momentum, long-time players) were BlogSpot, LiveJournal and Xanga, all launched in 1999. At the end of the first quarter of 2005, each had between 6.6 and 8.2 million accounts. The primary challenger (high momentum, new player) is MSN Spaces , which launched in North America in December 2004 and was closing in on 4.5 million accounts at the end of the first quarter .

Upstarts (moderate momentum, new players) included Six Apart's TypePad and Greatest Journal among others. Niche players demonstrated longevity but little momentum.

Blogging Is A Feature, Too

One of the newer aspects of blogging is that it's now an added feature being incorporated into other web applications. Social networking sites like the reinvented MySpace.com and teen sites like Bolt.com now offer blogging as a standard feature of their online accounts. Blogging appears to be used by just 4.7 percent of Bolt's 4.5 million accounts and by a somewhat greater percentage of MySpace.com's 12 million accounts. While neither service has been included in this study, they are testaments to the continued expansion and growth of web logs.

A lot of us working on MSN Spaces have been pretty humbled and impressed by how quickly the service has grown. During the beta period the service was acquiring users at the rate of about a million signups a month. When the site had about 4.5 million users we were seeing about 160,000 to a 180,000 updates a day which is about 4% of blogs being updated a day. These numbers compare quite favorably with LiveJournal's statistics which currently show they have 6.7 million blogs with 350,000 to 370,000 updates a day which is about 5% of blogs being updated a day. Given that LiveJournal is one of the most active and tight-knit blogging communities on the Web, it seems that MSN Spaces is definitely doing some things right.

Given that the service is now out of beta along with MSN Messenger coming out of beta I expect that its growth rate will increase over the next few months. It is pretty exciting to realize that the stuff I'm currently working on as part of my day job will directly affect millions of people. 

Totally...freaking...awesome.   

PS: A minor clarification to the article. Spaces actually launched in 14 languages and 26 markets worldwide last year, not just North America. 

This is primarily a bug fix release that fixes a couple of issues that weren't caught in beta testing for the previous release.

Download the installer from here. Differences between v1.3.0.26 and v1.3.0.29 below.

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FEATURE: The 'Take over proxy settings from Internet Explorer' feature now supports proxy configuration scripts.

FEATURE: Traditional Chinese translation added.

FIXED: Application would crash on startup with the following error message; "ArgumentOutOfRangeException: Length cannot be less than zero"  

FIXED: Dates in the RFC 822 format not containing the seconds caused problems

FIXED: Search scope settings in search folders are lost after restart of the application

FIXED: A web search engine cannot be removed from the list of defined search engines

FIXED: Column layouts not synchronized during remote storage

FIXED: RSS 2.0 feeds with extension elements before the <rss> element could not be read

FIXED: HTTP Digest authentication was not supported for feeds

FIXED: Enable Alert Windows for New Items setting resets on remote feedlist download or on restart

FIXED: Feed Desktop Alerts now display the newest item(s) first

FIXED: Feeds with invalid value in the HTTP "Last-Modified" header could not be read.

FIXED: Application would crash with the following error message; "NullReferenceException caused in WinGuiMain.SaveUIConfiguration() at ThreadedListView.FeedColumnLayoutFromCurrentSettings()"

There are some words that when I read in prose, such as blog posts, immediately let me know the author is either a pretentious windbag or just plain clueless. The most recent addition to this list is Web 2.0. For an example of what I mean, read Technorati, Bloglines, and The Economics of Feeds.

I suspect a lot of the people yacking about Web 2.0 now are the same ones who were gushing about the New Economy a few short years ago.

Despite my dislike of the term, it is likely I'll be at the Web 2.0 Conference this fall.

*sigh*

Jonathan Pincus contacted me a few days ago about being part of a birds of a feather session on "20% Time" at the 15th Annual Conference on Computers, Freedom & Privacy. It will be held at the Westin in Seattle at 9PM on Thursday, April 14^th.

It seems there'll be someone from Google there as well which should interesting. I'd like to hear how Google handled some of the issues raised in my post Some Thoughts and Questions About Google 20% Time.

I saw an link to an interesting site in Robert Scoble's post Paul remixes Google Maps and Craig's List in interesting new way  where he writes

What happens when you mix Google Maps with Craig's List? Paul Rademacher shows us.

This is a cautionary tale for Microsoft: them who has the best API's will get used in the most interesting new ways.

Like Ballmer says: developers, developers, developers, developers, developers...

Actually this has little to do with APIs given that there is neither an official Craig's List API nor is there a Google Maps API. This looks more like a combination of HTML screen scraping for getting the Craig's List data and good old fashioned reverse engineering. I suspect Paul didn't have to do much reverse engineering in the Google Maps case because Engadget already published an article called HOW-TO: Make your own annotated multimedia Google map which shows exactly how to build your own applications on top of Google Maps.

Despite that this is definitely a cool hack.

This shows one of the interesting side effects of building an AJAX site. You basically have to create an API for all the Javascript callbacks from the web browser back to the server. Once you do that, anyone else can call this API as well. I doubt that the Google folks anticipated that there would be this much interest in the API the browser uses the talk to the Google Maps server.

PS: Is anyone other reader of Scoble's blog irritated by the fact that he can't point to anything on the Web without throwing some Microsoft spin on it?

I just stumbled on a post by Phil Gyford entitled With great audiences where he discusses whether bloggers have a responsibility to do more fact checking once they grow to having a large audience. Phil writes

With this greater audience comes a greater responsibility. If 100,000 people are reading your words you need to be more certain about what you say than if it’s just for a bunch of mates. I can’t help feeling that Boing Boing has stepped past the hazy mark where it can get away with publishing off-the-cuff posts about events in the world without spending some of the time and money we assume those ads are generating on checking facts. Let’s look at a couple of examples that might have benefited from more research.

In January there was a post about a man who was arrested for attempting to hack a tsunami appeal website. For Boing Boing the juicy story wasn’t that the man was arrested (as reported by BBC News a week earlier) but that he was arrested for using an unusual browser, which the company managing the donations mistook for a hacking attempt. It’s a great story, but Boing Boing’s basis for this report comes from a source on an unnamed mailing list. Cory’s introduction to the mailing list quote reports the event as fact, not rumour, and this no doubt contributed to hundreds of other weblogs in turn reporting the event as fact.

Leaving aside the mindless gullibility of all these other webloggers, when readers start assuming what you post is fact this is probably a sign that you should be checking those facts a little more.

The second example is Boing Boing’s post about a high-school principal who “banned blogging” because it “isn’t educational”. Part of the blame lies with the source story at the Rutland Herald whose over-eager sub-editors misleadingly headlined the story “High school bans blogging”. In fact the school banned a single website and the principal simply issued a sensible warning about children weblogging — as with any activity online, kids should be careful with the information they make public.

But Boing Boing got carried away with the newspaper’s headline, repeating it in theirs even though a cursory read of the newspaper article reveals that no one “banned blogging”. The newspaper claims the principal doesn’t think blogging is educational, and Cory could certainly have criticised him for this alone, although it would make for a less dramatic post. The repetition of the lie about the principal banning blogging, rather than his apparent opinion, is possibly also what prompted a reader to suggest people should email the principal to complain.

A professional publication should have called the school to verify the story before simply republishing it. Otherwise the publication would, perhaps, end up criticised on Boing Boing like the Indian news agencies that blindly repeated a hoax in February.

I found Phil's post via Clay Shirky's post Banning blogging, 'Toothing, and Yoz. Clay Shirky seems to agree with Phil and goes one step further to admonish bloggers who simply echo what they read on the Web without applying critical thinking to what they are reading. He also points out that Boing Boing is not alone in this behavior by writing

Phil posts about BoingBoing, but the pattern is quite general — you can see misleading posts like San Francisco Attempts to Regulate Blogging almost daily on slashdot.

My employer is a victim of the half truths and rumors Slashdot spreads on an almost weekly basis. There are lots of stories about Microsoft that are now part of the IT culture which are mainly rumors started on Slashdot. A few months ago the MSN Spaces team was the target of a flood of critical posts in the blogosphere after a misinterpretation of the terms of use for the service were posted to Boing Boing. This doesn't seem much different to me than supermarket tabloids that are always reporting rumors about  Brad & Jen, Nick & Jessica or J-Lo & P.Diddy. 

The most interesting response to Phil's post I've seen is Danah Boyd's post in defense of BoingBoing (or why i'm not a journalist) which argues that Cory and Xeni (Boing Boing editors) are simply blogging as a form of self expression and the fact that they have a large readership should not be considered a responsibility by them.

Maybe I'm just a corny comic book geek but I've always felt "With great power, comes great responsibility". To each his own, I guess.

The final version of MSN Messenger 7.0 is out.

You can catch the offical word from the press release Global Availability of MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces Connects People Around the World. Highlights below

 MSN Messenger Makes Instant Messaging More Dynamic Than Ever

Globally, more than 155 million customers rely on the MSN Messenger service each month to connect with their friends and family and, collectively, exchange more than 2.5 billion instant messages (IMs) every day. MSN Messenger 7.0 is available today worldwide in 26 languages and introduces improved video, voice and personalization features that allow people to communicate in more meaningful ways than ever. Available for download at http://messenger.msn.com, MSN Messenger 7.0 has added new features since its December 2004 public beta release, including these:

• Free PC-to-PC video conversation. The new, free MSN Video Conversation service,1 powered by Logitech technology, connects people with one-click synchronized audio and video, and offers full-screen video viewing - the next best thing to really being there.
• Ability to talk over the Internet for free. MSN Messenger 7.0 includes higher-quality audio functionality so customers can enjoy free,2 real-time PC-to-PC voice conversations with friends and family around the world.
• PC-to-mobile communications. Customers will soon be able to stay in touch by sending IMs to friends and family who aren't on their PC. Customers in selected countries will be able to send SMS text messages from MSN Messenger to mobile phones - even if the person they are sending to doesn't have an MSN Messenger account - and the mobile user can reply to the MSN Messenger user.3 This feature will be available in multiple markets this spring.
• Greater personalization. New personalization options, including Winks, Dynamic Display Pictures and theme packs, help customers show their personality and their mood. Customers can choose from a selection of free content or get premium content from companies such as AG Interactive, the media subsidiary of American Greetings Corp., Wisepost/YNK, 3H Group PTY Ltd., Saw-you.com and Techno Design Internet Programming for a small fee.
• Instant MSN Search capability. MSN Messenger 7.0 offers a Shared Search button in the conversation window so people can find answers instantly through MSN Search while they continue their conversation.
• Photo-sharing options. Customers can have more fun with their friends by sharing photos during a conversation and viewing a slide show together. People can save shared photos and add pictures of their own to the photo swap session.
• Unique presence options. People can now display a personal message alongside their Messenger name and status. The customized message can include a greeting that expresses their mood or show the name of a song the person is listening to on Windows Media® Player or iTunes Player. With one click, customers can go to MSN Music to purchase the song or listen to a snippet.

As cool as this list of features is, it isn't exhaustive since it doesn't mention features that shipped in the beta from last year such as setting your online status on login, gleams or contact cards.

I definitely have been overusing features like showing the name of the song playing in iTunes, Dynamic Display Pictures and Winks. This release is off the hook. Grab it.  

As some of you may have noticed the MSN Spaces homepage changed last night. It is officially out of beta and there have been a few enhancements to the service made in the transition.

You can catch the offical word from the press release Global Availability of MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces Connects People Around the World. Highlights below

Over the past year MSN has seen consumers' appetite for richer, personalized online communications services surge globally, as evidenced by the rapid growth of MSN Messenger and MSN Spaces. Since the MSN Spaces beta version was introduced in late 2004, more than 4.5 million Spaces have been created, making MSN Spaces one of the fastest-growing blogging services in the world.

...

MSN Spaces Offers Consumers Easy Way to Connect and Share Photos, Music and More

With today's launch, MSN Spaces, a blogging service, will now be available in 15 languages and 30 markets worldwide. While MSN Messenger enables people to connect in real time, MSN Spaces augments their IM relationship by enabling people to connect on their own time, letting friends and family know they have something new to share via "gleam" notifications on their MSN Messenger contact list. MSN Spaces is a dynamic online scrapbook where consumers can easily post blogs, photo albums, personal music lists and more, essentially telling the story of their life. Customers have control over whom they share their Space with: limiting it to a few, sharing only with those on their MSN Messenger contact list, or opening it up to the worldwide Internet.

But enough of the official spiel. As always the good stuff is to be found in the blogs. One of the changes made is that about 50 new themes have been added, providing users with more choices when deciding to customize their Space. Karen has the low down in her post new themes!. I saw a bunch of complaints while Spaces was in beta about the available themes being "ugly". A number of the new themes are quite simple yet elegant which I'm sure will appeal to the aesthetic folks out there.

We've also made some storage improvements as Mike points out in his post More storage, better comments... and more! . Specifically we've tripled photo storage space from 10MB to 30MB and there's no longer a length limit on comments. Also URLs in comments are automatically changed to hyperlinks (with rel=nofollow applied).

My favorite changes are the RSS & pinging enhancements which I had some input into. As Mike writes

Clicking on the orange RSS button or the "Syndicate" link above will no longer spit out raw XML to your readers using a modern browser.  Instead, they will see a "pretty printed" RSS feed with a link to learn more, subscribe in My MSN, or subscribe in an aggregator supporting one-click subscription (feed://) 

To see an example of what this looks like in practice, check out the RSS feed for my Space. If you are wondering what RSS readers support one click subscription, the list includes Shrook,  RSS Bandit, NewsGator, NetNewsWire, FeedDemon, Awasu, SharpReader, FeedReader, WinRSS, VoxLite, and NewzCrawler.

Another cool RSS enhancement is that the number of comments one each post is now provided using the slash:comments elements. Now users of aggregators like RSS Bandit can track the comment counts on various posts on a space. I've been wanting that since last year.

Last year, Spaces sent pings to Weblogs.com when new posts were created. With last night's release this list has expanded to include Feedster, Technorati, PubSub, and My MSN.

Enjoy.

Yesterday I saw the post entitled Running RSS Bandit on linux? where the author wrote

I am seriously thinking about throwing windows out of the window and moving back to linux for my home desktop.
The programs I use the most, like Eclipse, Firefox or Thunderbird, all run perfect on linux.
But there is one thing that is keeping me from switching right now: I am pretty hooked up to RSS Bandit, the C# based rss aggregator. One very nice feature is for example the possiblity to remotely storing the read state of the feeds.
Now the problem is that this application needs the .NET framework to run. I know there is a linux alternative for the .NET framework called Mono, but I don't have any experience with that.
Maybe this is a silly question, but would it be possible to make RSS Bandit run on linux using Mono?

It's rather flattering to know that at least one person finds RSS Bandit useful enough that it's all that's standing in the way of switching operating systems.

With regards to whether it is possible to run my favorite RSS reader on Mono, I doubt that will be possible. We use COM & Win32 interop in a bunch of places including when communicating with the Internet Explorer component.