Paul O'Flaherty

Google Gears and Sync Errors

Google Gears Error

I’ve had Google Gears (Beta) on my system for maybe 30 minutes now and this “error” is starting to annoy me because I’ve seen it 3 times already while using Google Reader.

This first error is bugging me because there is nothing wrong with my connection. It has been working perfectly each time the error occurred.

It’s more likely that the error is with connecting to the Google Reader server or whatever server Gears needs to connect to.

The text of the error box makes it appear as if the fault is at my end. Damn Beta software

Connection error.

A connection to the internet could not be made. Would you prefer to read in offline mode? 

 

Google Browser Sync Error

This error with Google Browser Sync has been occurring for a couple of days now and hasn’t been resolved by uninstalling / reinstalling the extension or upgrading to the latest version of Firefox (2.0.0.4).

Google Gears – Google Reader Offline and more

Typical, just five minutes after I post about the need for an offline version of Google Reader I find Google Gears.

It’s in beta and I haven’t tested it but it promises to offer some of the functionality I’m looking for including using Google Reader offline!:

Google Gears (BETA) is an open source browser extension that enables web applications to provide offline functionality using following JavaScript APIs:

• Store and serve application resources locally
• Store data locally in a fully-searchable relational database
• Run asynchronous Javascript to improve application responsiveness

I’ll let you guys know how well this works after I’ve played with it for a while!

Via Steve Rubel on Twitter.

Duplicate post detection in Google Reader

I’ve been thinking about RSS readers and specifically Google Reader (my reader of choice) since watching the video below after seeing it on Hackzine.

For me, the most interesting part of the video is not the process that Robert Scoble goes through to read 622 feeds but his comments about the need for Google Reader also to be available offline.

It would be over the moon  if Google released an offline version of Google Reader that synchronized with the online version.

Then when I’m traveling I can download my feed to a PDA or laptop and when I get to another internet connection log in and all the feeds I’ve read offline will be marked as read online and vice versa.

Robert is also one the money that when he says that the search in Google Reader needs to be improved.

But what he misses or fails to mention in the 11 minute 38 second long is one important problem with most / all feed readers. They fail to filter out duplicate posts.

This is something that has been bugging me for a while, but Rob Neville brought it to the front of my attention today in his post:

For example, if I’m subscribed to lifehacker, I can get a new feed item from them, then if its popular then I’ll get the same article from delicious hotlist about 3 or 4 times a day, and from Digg, and if it’s a topic I’m monitoring via a search, then I get it there too. How hard would it be to check if I’ve gotten the article via some other means already??

Obviously we’re not talking about different people writing about the same thing.

We’re talking about the one blog post coming in on multiple feeds. So if you’re subscribed to O’Flaherty and if, heaven forbid, Scoble saved my post to his link blog you’d get to see my post twice.

Possibly even more times if multiple link blog creators had saved it. 

Google already have Google Desktop and they definitely have the resources to release an offline, synchronizing version of Google Reader with the ability to automatically hide duplicate articles (showing only the original post of course).

 If they do this (and why wouldn’t they?), it would be enough to ensure Google Readers supremacy (at least in my workspace) as the king of feed readers for the foreseeable future.

For those of you who haven’t already seen it, here is the video of Scoble talking about how he scans his 622 feeds everyday.

Hat tip to Tim Ferriss who originally posted the video.

From Spam comes Wisdom

Steven Murray sent me this today as one of those annoying emails which get mass mailed to everybody in your address book.

While I usually regard these things as spam (they are) this one holds a grain of wisdom that is worth keeping in mind (I stripped out all the stupid GIFs that were embedded between the paragraphs):

Johnny wanted to have sex with a girl in his office,
but she belonged to someone else…

One day, Johnny got so frustrated that he went up to
her and said, “I’ll give you a $100 if you let me
screw you. But the girl said NO.

Johnny said, “I’ll be fast. I’ll throw the money on
the floor, you bend down, and I’ll be finished by the
time you pick it up. ”

She thought for a moment and said that she would have
to consult her boyfriend… So she called her
boyfriend and told him the story.

Her boyfriend says, “Ask him for $200, pick up the
money very fast, he won’t even be able to get his
pants down.

So she agrees and accepts the proposal. Half an hour
goes by, and the boyfriend is waiting for his
girlfriend to call.

Finally, after 45 minutes, the boyfriend calls and
asks what happened.

She responded, “The bastard used coins!”

Management lesson:

Always consider a business proposal
in its entirety before agreeing to it and getting!

Blog Resource is back!

That’s right! Blog Resource is back! Returned from beyond the grave.

But it’s not what you might think!

The first incarnation of Blog Resource was as a blog and podcast directory which became pretty popular.

You could say it became too popular because Alec and I were forced to close it down as the demands on us became to great.

Now it’s back but this time it’s a different beast.

This time Blog Resource is a Blog Search Engine built on Google Co-op.

This incarnation is more of a personal tool than anything else as I wanted an easy place to search all of my favorite blogs and the blogs of the O’Flaherty readers.

Then, when I’m researching a post it’s easy to spread the link love among the O’Flaherty readers and avoid getting bogged down in the quagmire that is “A-list” only linking.

Once I had things in place I decided that the more blogs were searchable the more useful it will be, so with that in mind, I decided to open it up to everybody.

At the moment there are 149 blogs listed. I want to make that in to thousands but all of the blogs need to be quality blogs.

The site is still in need of a lot of work, but I’ll get all the bugs ironed out over the next few days.

You can drop along to this post on Blog Resource to find out what you need to do if you want your blog listed and maybe generate a little extra link love from me and other bloggers who may use the search.

14 Days to Upgrade?

For those of you who were wondering what the outage was 10 minutes ago, let me enlighten you.

The downtime was caused by me finally getting my finger out and upgrading O’Flaherty to WordPress 2.2.

I know! I should have done it ages ago! I normally get it done withing 14 minutes of release

Things just kept getting in the way annd typically, my blog was the last in a long line of sites that I upgraded to 2.2.

Upgrading was relatively painless but there was one scary moment when I looked at the site and all the sidebars were not displaying what they should be.

The problem was easily solved. As widgets are now in the core of WordPress they displayed in the sidebar when I upgraded. It was fixed by simply going into the widgets panel and removing them.

A simple little problem but it gave me a scare all the same.

Oh, one last thing. I’m posting this using the ScribeFire add-on for Flock. I just wanted to test the waters and try a different blog posting tool.

I don’t know if it will drag me away from Windows Live Writer! I’ll have to use it a bit more first.

What I really do like is having a good blog editor inside one of the browsers on my new dual monitor setup!

Twitter Twit-bits for 2007-05-25

• Uploading O’Flaherty #13 #
• O’Flaherty Podcast #13 is now up… http://pauloflaherty.com/podcast/ #
• My podcast is now on my Facebook profile using SplashCast http://tinyurl.com/228ehy #

O’Flaherty Episode #13 – Hail to the King!

Hail to the King!

Alec and I talk about Google, FeedBurner, privacy issues and Bruce Campbell?

Links

• Google Buying FeedBurner is pure evil!
• Google
• Google Reader
• Google AdSense
• FeedBurner
• Pheedo
• Xoops
• WordPress
• One.com
• Army of Darkness
• Bruce Campbell

Credit

• Podcast Theme: Derek K. Miller
• Music: “Burn down the Mall” for Blue Valentine on PodsafeAudio.com
• Audacity
• Alec Palomo

Subscribe to Podcast Feed:

Download Podcast MP3:

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  11.2 Mb 0:24:32

Visit the blog at http://pauloflaherty.com or email paul.oflaherty@gmail.com

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Lend and Borrow with Lending Club

The blogosphere is buzzing today with talk of the new Facebook platform.

LendingClub is just  one of the apps which is built on the new platform (See all the apps here)but it caught my attention because fellow blogger and friend, Rex Dixon is writing their blog.

LendingClub is essentially social community where people can borrow and lend money from and to one and other.

The online nature of the network allows them to bypass banks, credit unions and other money lending organizations and get better interest rates than the would at the more “brick and mortar” institutions.

It’s an intersting concept to try this kind of money lending within online trusted social networks and it looks like they’ve put together a good team to ensure everything runs smoothly.

I’ll be keeping a close eye on this one, not least because Rex is heading up their blog site.

What’s my name?

What’s my name? Sometimes I’m not sure.

Looking at the referrers log to this site I’m sure a lot of people think my name is “this guy”, “that guy”, “a certain blogger” or some other inane convention which avoids using my name.

It’s not just happening to me.

I see it on other blogs all the time. People linking out with little more than a “this guys says that”.

Well thanks folks, the link is appreciated but your readers might appreciate it more if you told them who you were linking to.

Another annoying habit of some bloggers, and one which I alluded to in a previous post today is for people to reply to you without even mentioning your name.

They’ll link to your post, but again the readers are left wondering where the link ultimately leads.

Come on bloggers.

Let’s make it a little easier for our readers and say who we’re linking to. Lets not leave them in a position of being forced to click a link to see who the post author is replying to or linking to.

It’s just a thought!

Yeah? Well my dad’s Bruce Lee!

Todd Cochrane of Geek News Central replied to my post “Deathmatch: Kirkpartick VS Cochrane“.

It went a little something like this (I encourage you to read the actual post ) :

No name blogger blah Online Deathmatch Blah Blah.. can’t see past the end of my nose for the fear or data mining.. blah blah blah…

SplashCast.(EVIL) WAAAH!!.. bah blah blah… FeedBurner.. Blah!stance is not new… blah blah.. .. blah…

Spread some more fear.. blah blah blah…

Okay, that’s not really what Todd wrote but it’s what I go out of it.

I’m sorry Todd but I think that you’re way off base with your post.

I never said you and Marshall should have an online deathmatch but instead an  MTV Celebrity Deathmatch. You know, the claymation show on MTV? I though it would be a fun thing to watch!

Anyway, I guess “a certain blogger” is just nitpicking.

The point of my post was that there is no apparent love lost between you and Marshall and your comments yesterday were simply far below what I’ve come to expect of you as a blogger and podcaster.

Marshall’s comment was simple yet very effective. Simply pointing out the existence of the MyBlogLog widget on your site showed and obvious bias in your thinking with regards to large companies collecting data on users.

There was no need for Marshall to discuss the rest of the article.

Yahoo is no different to Google in wanting to gather as much information on users and their habits as possible.

Google may be the top dog now, but it was not always so and it may not remain so.

Anyway, I digress. This post is not about my thinking on the issue of Google buying FeedBurner and collecting user data. That’s a whole other post.

The point here is that Marshall pointed out the MBL widget and your replying comment was, well, childish to be honest.

It was almost like something I would have expected in an exchange between 2 children on a playground.

There was no need to bring up the SplashCast incident in relation to the discussion. Simply no need.

It as if  you were trying to rub Marshall’s nose in it, like a dog who has misbehaved or simply saying “My daddies bigger than your daddy”.

Some people might even call it primitive chest beating.

That’s the issue.

That was the point I was writing about.

Not the past or the future. Not what may or may not happen. Not what your stance on various issues was before.

It’s about a blogger and podcaster that I like and respect being childish and petty with his comments.

We all do it from time to time. I’m no angel! I’m sure I’ve done it loads of times and I’m sure my readers will suitably chastise me if I do it again.

You’ve got to see the beyond the individual trees and look at the whole forest.

The SplashCast thing is over and done with. There is no need to keep rubbing salt in old wounds.

Yes, you may think Google buying FeedBurner is bad for privacy. Some folks don’t.

People will decide if this is good or bad for them and make their choices accordingly.

We just don’t need respected bloggers being petty and childish while discussing it.

That does not make for a good conversation.