Here’s how the SplashCast folks defines a splash cast:

SplashCast enables anyone to create streaming media ‘channels’ that combine video, music, photos, narration, text and RSS feeds. These user-generated channels can be played and easily syndicated on any web site, blog, or social network page. When channel owners modify their channel, their content is automatically updated across all the web pages ‘tuned’ to that channel.

Go check out SplashCast and let me know what you think of it. I’m going to try it.

Post from: EveryJoe

SplashCast – Mixed Media RSS

(Credit: Yahoo)

I must be one of the ‘lucky’ ones. Carolyn reports “The new My Yahoo is not readily available; rather, it’s in a limited beta that only a handful of random Yahoo members can opt into thus far. The full version will be rolled out over the next few months.” Here’s the thing – if you have a MyYahoo page and you go to the link and say you want to look at it, it’s yours. And I swear it said I could look at it – now it says Upgrade Me! <LOL>

Anyway, here is what Yahoo! says about their new page:

A fresh new look
Newly designed Yahoo! modules
New page colors and themes

More flexibility and control
Drag and drop modules anywhere
See more stuff with a new four column layout

Save time with fewer clicks
Read articles without leaving your page
Get quick overviews with the editable Personal Assistant

Plus more…
Share your page with friends
Choose what you see with advanced settings

Check it out and if you already have MyYahoo, be careful what you click! Let me know what you think of it. I’ll write more about it in the coming days since I have it whether I wanted it or not! Yep – the joke is definitely on me.

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Post from: EveryJoe

The Yahoo! Joke Is On Me!

CnetNews.com has coined a new word – metagators. This obviously means a huge aggregator but how does Pageflakes get that honor? It’s not more feature laden than Netvibes or My Yahoo or any other start page I can think of.

What makes this feed reader special enough for someone to invent a new word to describe it? Here is what Pageflages says about itself:

Pageflakes is an easy and fun way to get everything you love on the web right here on your personal homepage. You can arrange the sections you see here – ‘flakes’ – any way you want. Just drag and drop them anywhere!

Pageflakes users are always creating new flakes and shared pages for you to discover. Click the “Add Flake” button above right to add flakes for news, e-mail, games, events, photos, music, videos, and just about anything else you do on the web. For lots more news, try the “Add Feed” button.

I’m sure this is a fine reader but I’m not sure it should be classified as something new and meta!

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Post from: EveryJoe

RSS Metagator?

Unlike other web based RSS readers like Google Reader or Bloglines, myFeeds tries to learn from what you read regularly and accordingly displays news items / blog posts that might be of interest to you.

myFeedz can read a list of your favorite feeds (via OPML files) and give you a personalized river of news view. Another useful feature is that you can sort articles by date or by popularity. Your reading history is also taken into account while calculating what stories are more relevant for you.

I signed up and entered 7 keywords. It returned 4 articles! That’s it. I think it is trying to teach me what to read, not the other way around. I’ll mess around with some more. And yes – the same 4 articles appeared after I clicked on ‘Show All’.

I’m underwhelmed. Have any of you tried this new offering?

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Post from: EveryJoe

Adobe Enters The RSS Fray

Here is Yahoo’s definition of this service:

Pipes is a hosted service that lets you remix feeds and create new data mashups in a visual programming environment. The name of the service pays tribute to Unix pipes, which let programmers do astonishingly clever things by making it easy to chain simple utilities together on the command line.

They also posted this yesterday:

02.08.07: Downtime

As many of you noticed, we’ve had some downtime today as we try to cope with the unexpected heavy load. We’re working on adding more capacity and hope to be back to normal soon.

I’ve been trying to check out this service but can’t get in to do anything so this is only a heads up about it. I’ll keep trying and let you know more as the service becomes more stable.

If you are able to do anything in Pipes, post a comment so we can all learn about it.

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Post from: EveryJoe

Yahoo Pipes

Here are just a few things it can do:

Keep a to-do or reminder list that’s always visible to you on the web or using your RSS aggregator. Result: manage your daily life or keep the family up to date!

Take notes in class or during a meeting just by sending short IM messages to Sabifoo. Result: an online log you can refer to later or easily share with your friends or coworkers!

If you can send IMs from your mobile phone, then you can use Sabifoo on the road. Result: an instant travelogue without needing to bring along a laptop!

It also works on an existing blog:

If you already have a blog with a system that supports RSS integration for posting, you can use your Sabifoo RSS feed as a data source. Result: blog via IM!

The company behind this genius is Spiffy Tech. There certainly might be big things in their future.

It is in beta and free to download. I’m definitely going to try this. Let me know what you think about it! And let’s see how many ways we can come up with to put this to good use!

Post from: EveryJoe

Create Your Own RSS Feed Even If You Don’t Have A Blog

Just ran across this cool aggregator. It’s called earFeeder by sonicswap. It scans your system for music and automagically detects your favorite artists. Then it generates an RSS newsfeed tailored to you. It subscribes to those feeds so you never miss anything about your favorite artists. The feed contains news, new releases, announcements of ticket presales, and more. Oh yes – it’s free.

UPDATE: Many of you have said how impressed you are with this program. How do you feel about it now that you’ve used it for a few days? Any compliments or gripes?

Post from: EveryJoe

RSS For Your Ears?

“I was suprised to read your opinion about our announcement without even reaching out to us. While skepticism is healthy – cynicism is not.

A press release does not lend itself to offer much technical detail. It does however, offer a way to initiate a discussion. I welcome the opportunity to explain what we have done here, include having the gadget evaluated by outside security experts.

Just to give you some highlights of what we have done:

web-based gadgets cache their information on 3rd parties servers (like Google and Yahoo) – we create direct links to the back-end system and store NO information on the 3rd party server. Nor do we pass any data through a 3rd party server.

once we do create the connection to the back-end system, we use the native security mechanisms – whether it be username/password, token, single sign on or something else. We DO NOT rely on some authentication scheme we invented, nor do we store credentials anywhere in our system.

all communications can use SSL end-to-end

we have taken all necessary steps to prevent cross site or cross gadget scripting.

In short, I would be happy to explain what we have done here and why this is secure. The responses so far show that the way this works is not understood. Otherwise financial institutions would not be talking to us about providing feeds to customers.

david “

So, I did reach out to him and we are having a nice little chat. He is very busy for the next few days – something exciting that I will write about later today – but he has offered to write an article for you explaining this new technology. Look for it in the coming weeks.

Post from: EveryJoe

Serendipity Responds!

Here’s what a screen looks like:

The point is that you can group your feeds into folders and then read them all by just opening the folder you want. The developers call this a ‘combined view’.

What you need to install this is IE7 and Windows XP / 2003 / Vista. So, Vista isn’t a requirement.

I just installed IE7 (but I believe it will take more than this to get me to switch from FireFox) and will be checking this to see if I like it better than other aggregators I’m trying. So far, I like Netvibes. Yes, I know it’s a ’start page’ but if that’s what you like, why not? I would venture to say that most people don’t know the difference. It’s a matter of what you like.

I’d like to know if any of you are plainning to try this or if you are already using it, what do you think?

Post from: EveryJoe

IE7 RSS Add-On

Here is what they say, “…consumers will be able to securely receive customer-specific information from stores, banks, utilities and other organizations.”

David Lavenda, VP of marketing and product strategy at Serendipity Technologies further said, “This unique Web 2.0 tool was created to demonstrate how workers will soon be able to receive protected enterprise application information, right on their desktops or personal web pages”.

My question is, how do we know it will be secure? I think I’ll log in to each of my personal banking and credit card accounts with my password and the yellow lock on the page for quite some time.

Will you use this or something like this?

Post from: EveryJoe

Is It Safe Because They Say So?