I've implemented a Surveys generator for my blog. I just created the first one: How many RSS feeds do you read on a daily basis?. Please give it a try.

Let me know what you think of it.

Ovidiu likes NetNewsWire. So do I. Unfortunately it can't keep up with the 111 feeds I regularly monitor. I find myself using NewzCrawler more and more.

There are few things that I would love to see NNW support.

1. As mentioned b4, direct support of .url shortcut files. I'd also want to be able to drag & drop a shortcut from IE to NNW.

2. The ability to export/import subscriptions in OCS format.

3. Autodiscovery of OPML subscriptions lists. A nifty feature which was recently added to NewzCrawler.

4. Automatic handling of the ' XML entity.

5. The ability to trigger channel updates via AppleScript. It would also be nice to be able to add new channels that way.

6. Improved threads and groups management. I've pretty much given up trying to group anything. With so many subscriptions, moving channels around takes forever and a day.

But I'm probably the only person interested in most of that stuff.

Ultimately I think I'd much rather have Brent spend time working on features that are widely requested. He's got a good product and needs to focus on pleasing the masses.

Mike's got the blog-blues. Breaking up is hard to do. Come to think of it, marriage is no piece of cake either.

We're in the process of migrating one of our Resin/MySQL server from 2K to Red Hat. Fun, fun, fun. I'm such a unix geek.

Adam Curry: “I dunno, somehow Britney asking kids not to download is like telling 15 year old boys not to jerk off to her videos.”

We watched the season premiere of ER last night. It was so-so. Vicki figured out that Anspaugh was going to be back. I was betting on Benton showing up.

PMD is yet another Java source code analyzer. I haven't had a chance to try it, but will soon.

IBM and Sun endorse jCert/CIW Unified Certification path.

J2EE 1.4 previewed at JavaOne Japan.

KaZaA dares the recording industry to catch them. Beautiful!

NewzCrawler 1.3.0 has been released. The new version includes support for RSS 2.0 and RSS Autodiscovery.

I heard back from TechnoWarehouse. As I suspected TechCache is not compatible with 10.2. They also promptly informed me that it was not required with our iMac G4 Upgrade card and offered a refund.

They definitely get brownie points for providing quick and intelligent customer service. They've even already made (and notified me of) the modifications I suggested to their website. A+

Kelly's first single is numero uno on the Top 100. It sold more copies in its first week than any other single ever has.

Jeff asks whether to edit or not to edit?

I do. Whenever I find a typo I can't help myself. I do try to restrict edits to typos, missing words and the such… His question got me thinking too… Maybe I shouldn't.

I'm taking Vicki to a doctor's appointment this afternoon.

We watched The West Wing season premier last night. The second hour was the best. I suspect it was written as an hour-long episode which they stretched to last a couple hours.

I wonder if Rob Lowe's character exit strategy will be getting married to his ex-fiancée and quitting his job to give the marriage a chance.

I'm depressed. I just ran RevJava 0.8.4 on the latest build of jTalk. It gave me more critics than I could handle. Now I'm going to have to look into every single reported issues.

Beware of viral PLG software licenses! Funny…

Seems like my blog's category mini-icons are always showing up at Fyuze. Weird.

Cicerone 1.0 has been released. Cute!

I've installed Vicki's iMac G4 upgrade. The whole process took less than 15 minutes. But then again I've taken that machine apart more times than I really care to admit.

The speed increase is quite noticeable. Well worth the price.

We also bought the TechCache OS X driver, to enable the L2 cache. Unfortunately I could not get it to work with 10.2. I've already emailed them about it. We'll see what they have to say.

I'm also planning on adding more video RAM. I'm hopping it will help with the geometry bug.

Charles is running JIRA on an AS/400. Way cool.

We watched the premiere of Kelly's new video on MTV last night. Very nice. The duet with Reba in Vegas on Monday night was pretty good too.

Tomcat: Security Update.

Jason on Informa: They mention using OCS as a channel subscription format. Radio Userland uses OPML. Anyone have any thoughts on the pros and cons of each?

Looks like the biggest problem with OCS is that it closely resemble RDF, but cannot be parsed like a standard RDF document. The working draft for v0.5 seems to specifically address that issue.

OPML is pretty loose overall. There doesn't seem to be any kind of specification for channel subscription listings. I think everyone is pretty much using the same outline attributes though.

Ultimately any respectable news aggregator should probably support both. Portals, such as NewsIsFree and Syndic8, publish directories in either formats.

Understandable Software Award: NetNewsWire.

Okay. So Mike and Charles don't like me spawning new windows. Charles thinks I'm arrogant, presumptive and purposely messing up his carefully organized tabs.

<rant>I say get a life, you cry babies. This is my site. It reflects my personality, which includes my browsing style.</rant>

Maybe I should post some kind of disclaimer:

"There is nothing wrong with your browser. Do not attempt to adjust your settings. I am in control of your connection. I can spawn new windows, to sharpen or distort your tabs. For the next few clicks, I will control all that you see and hear. Believe me, there is nothing wrong with your browser. You are about to take an adventure. You are about to experience the awe which is associated with a journey through - Erik's Weblog."

That being said. I'm a nice guy. If you want to turn on/off the spawning of new browser windows for external links, click here.

Enjoy!

Brent: Apps working together. Now, that's cool!

I've been looking at the NetNewsWire RSS Clipboard Formats. Very nice indeed. I just wish NNW would also support basic .url shortcuts. Seems to me that the layperson would get a lot of mileage from it.

Blogging Roller: J2EE Container Shootout Summary.

Russel: Vapor, Thinlets and Jagger.

Jason: Update on RSS Aggregator.

Mike's feed isn't updating. I almost missed his Blog-rant for the day.

<rant>
I spawn new windows, and I like it. So stop your whining. It is no more of an usability sin than having to hit the back button numerous times because you forgot to right-click, control-click, shift-click or command-click. There is a valid logic behind opening a new window to display content that is located outside of your site. As a matter of fact it was one of Google's most requested feature, which is why they ultimately turned it into a preference.
</rant>

Four Free Software fallacies. The article itself is somewhat superficial, but the comments below are quite interesting.

JBoss 2.4.9 has been released.

Java Recipe of the Day: Regular Expression Syntax. Hmm… I wasn't aware of the POSIX-style character classes.

New version of KaZaA likely to ruffle RIAA's feathers. I'm downloading v2 as we speak.

We just received Vicki's iMac G4 upgrade. I will probably install it later on today.

American Idol in Vegas, tonite, 8pm on FOX.

An introduction to Component Versioning.

France became a republic on this day in 1792.

Another busy day. Later on this morning, we're going to help Vicki' sister move her washer & dryer. We're also planning to go see Ballistic: Ecks vs. Sever in the afternoon. The day will most likely end with dinner at the Claim Jumper in Redmond.

I've also implemented an experimental RSS 2.0 feed for this blog. Let me know if there are any problems with it.