Well, i went to google news, thinking, “of course, they probably already have rss feeds of news searches, just like technorati lets you have of blog space.” Well, I couldn’t find it, so I looked around and found a couple tools, including RSSgenr8 by XMLHub.com. Then, in an hour or so I cooked together a little tool for me to use to track some news stories via my bloglines account.

Anyway, if it’s useful to me, it’s probably useful to someone else. If others find it useful, I may make the code look nice and release it as GPL.

For now, you can try it out: rss-a-tron-o-matic

Edit: Removed Link, google news supports RSS now.

Tags: google, news, rss, web2.0, rss-a-tron-o-matic, xml

• The browser is the platform.
• Microsoft has embraced this and has released Office as an ASP.NET 2.0 Ajax application for enterprises.
• Microsoft is continuing its push into ‘Software as a Service’
• You can now rent Office XML Application Server for Windows Server 2007
• All of your enterprise users, using IE7.0, Firefox 2.1, Opera 16, or Safari can now access all their office applications from their desktop. (No, IE8.0 still won’t be out, but Firefox will be at 25% marketshare, and I’m not even going to guess at what Firefox will be alled then — how about ‘Burning Rabbit’ ?)
• Here’s the catch — When users click on that ‘Microsoft Word’ button (or any of the office apps), a local application doesnt load. It loads a rich web application that closely mimics what we now think of as word.
• All of the users have their own document storage on your Windows Server
• All of the users have access to their documents seamlessly through existing methods (the remote storage automatically shows up in a user’s ‘my documents’ subfolder, apple’s finder/searchlight, etc)
• Users can specify permissions on these centrally stored files, and they are easily shared — people don’t have to navigate to a random person’s desktop to get a document they shared, and a person doesn’t have to email it to them. The documents on the server are all searchable by the user’s local desktop (depending on permissions).
• When it’s time to upgrade to a new version of Office XML Application Server, the upgrade is done on the server, once, and all clients automatically have their update.

I know some of this isn’t new OR likely, but it’s fun to take an old idea that was once pure ‘out there’ thinking and bring it down into the realm of “I see how this is possible even if it’s not either soon or likely”

Also, who knows if it will even be microsoft who does this? Maybe it’s SUN, maybe this will all play out on linux desktops first, with “OpenOffice Network Server” — who knows. I think the day of the browser as a platform IS coming, and I think we’re going to see REAL productivity applications created this way, and I think it’s going to come to the enterprise first.

They’re the ones who can see the real cost savings and increased productivity — through ease of deployment and upgrades for the former and ease of collaboration in the latter.

Tags: microsoft, office, xml, web3.0, openoffice, deployment, safari, opera, firefox, burningrabbit

If you don’t know, TopJax is basically the unix Top command ported to the web with Ajax techniques. It’s basically a, “hey let me do something that gets my feet wet w/ Ajax while also doing something potentially useful”

Tags: topjax, top, unix, ajax, xmlhttprequest

Then, I signed up for the service and realized it’s all just a big marketing ploy to get you to buy products that they’re offering.

To sign up for their marketing gimmick, you can go here.

Tags: american, express, amex, rss

TopJax might be for you.

TopJax is essentially the “top” unix utility ported to the web via Ajax using Sack of Ajax. It provides the ability to view system processes, sort processes by various fields, pause/unpause monitoring, and hide idle processes.

TopJax is released under the GPL.

Note: This is probably highly insecure. I don’t encourage you to run it on a public server.

• See TopJax in action
• See the Documentation
• Download it

The permanent address for TopJax is http://emergent.urbanpug.com/topjax

If you’d like to keep up-to-date on the progress of the project, you can subscribe to this site’s RSS feed –

Notes: I’ve separated all styling information from the code, because I know I’m not the best person with CSS. If anyone wants to help by providing alternate stylesheets, I’d be very happy.

If you want to help out by making a small donation, that would be cool.

You could also buy a Threadless shirt using me as a referral.

Tags: top, unix, ajax, topjax, xmlhttprequest

What does this actually get you? Well, alone, you might be able to do some system administration w/o having to use SSH, which might be an “ok” thing — but really, the key concept is really to provide a new way of accessing old applications. I know there are companies out there that have been really pushing hard to get old green screen applications pushed into the present by doing various things like wrapping the old “screens” in HTML, using java to interface w/ the old application, providing a slightly fancier interface to the old app.

Now everyone’s got a new choice for doing this kind of thing. What i’m more interested, being a linux guy, is the ability to do with ajaxified methods some of the basic things i would normally have to do by opening up a shell, logging into a server, and running some commands.

I’m working on a little utility that i myself will find useful, and i hope others will too.

Also, after macromedia’s recent announcement of flash-javascript interoperability, now comes flashjs.

Both of these are added to the Ajax Toolkit and Project List. I think i’m going to start calling it something else — maybe “rich web framework toolkit and project list” — because it doesn’t really cover “just” ajax anymore.

1. Tony Soprano — How many times do you hear the mobsters mention the ‘RICO’ laws?
2. Rico….. Suave!

Now, I think Rico is exactly what the “Rich Web Application” community needs. Not because of what it is, but because of who is behind it. Sabre is a fairly large company, and they’ve been sponsoring Rico, finally releasing it into the wild. It’s nice that toolkits exist, but you really need an all-encompassing package that supports lots of functionality.

It’s hard to develop an application with lots of little pieces. Prototype is nice, but it doesn’t have all the pieces there. Backbase is great, but it’s not open source, and costs some real money. Dojo will be nice, when/if it gets here. I’m not criticizing, they’re new — they just need time to get everything put together.

For something as complicated as a rich web app framework, you really need some financial backing to put enough people on the project to make it worthwhile. Lone developers go so far, but we need more. I think that’s what we’ve got with Rico. Dojo might have it, i’m not sure how many people from Jot work on Dojo, and how much money Jot has / will have to develop with.

Anyway, I think Sabre’s shown some “enlightened self interest” with releasing Rico, and I think that it’s going to take the web app framework community to new, very good, places.

Oh yes — i’ve added Rico, Drag and Drop w/ Prototype, the Javascript Gamelib, and CPAINT to the ajax toolkits list.

Oh, and here’s something i wished i had yesterday — Live Http Headers — This is a mozilla extension that gives you the ability to see http headers as they’re sent.

All of this is over at my page of ajax toolkits & projects

Tags: livehttpheaders, headers, http, ajax, backbase, greasemonkey

Anyway, I’ve been wanting to learn more about how it works, so when I ran across Dive Into Greasemonkey, I thought, “hey, cool”

So i’m off reading this crap about greasemonkey, now. What will i figure out first, Greasemonkey or Dojo/Ajax?

Ugh. I am too compelled to figure this shit out.

Tags: ajax, greasemonkey, dojo, firefox, plugin, customize, javascript