wURLdBook Research

wURLdBook is no longer!

2011-04-11T19:13:00.000-07:00

We'll my servers finally gave up the ghost and wURLdBook Research is no longer on line.

It was an amazing 10 year adventure.

Now on to other things like iPhone app developement.

Check out http://blog.gunetools.com!

Thanks.

Still Plugging Along

2009-08-04T10:47:00.000-07:00

Just thought I'd check in here. I haven't done any new development on wURLdBook for a while now since I have been working elsewhere. The service is still humming along though like old faithful. I might get around to adding some cool new features if I'm in the mood...

Things still running along

2008-07-15T11:24:00.000-07:00

I'm not doing any active development on this service anymore. Just keeping it running along for my own enjoyment.

All systems nominal

2007-04-02T06:11:00.000-07:00

I've had quite a tumultuous last 4+ weeks. I moved to a different place and had to move wURLdBook too. So, all my services had to be reconnected and servers brought down and moved. I've also had some kind of db problem which was narrowed down to some hardware issue. To fix that I bought a brand new XServe intel 4 cpu system to be the database. I've got some super fast 15K drives on it so that is nice. I also brought my systems up to the lastest greatest OS version which is OS X 10.4.9 from 10.2x. In addition, I've upgraded to the latest FrontBase which is 4.2.x. This I hope should improve things and allow me to take advantage of new cool features to boost performance. Also, WebObjects is now at version 5.3.3 and there were some bugs I had to fix because of that. So my app servers are running that now too. Now wURLdBook should be alot more stable and hopefully faster too. I might bite the bullet and get another XServe to help with the app serving part to get a real speed increase but I'll have to think about it... Thanks to everyone for being patient with this.

Back online!

2007-02-15T13:41:00.001-08:00

Finally back online after my move and getting everything organized. Phew!

wURLdBook Will Be DOWN Feb02-Feb15

2007-01-21T10:01:00.000-08:00

I'll be moving so wURLdBook will be down and brought back up when the move is complete. Bummer, I know! UPDATE: Covad will be setting up the connection Feb 15/07!

Adding some new features

2006-07-23T16:11:00.000-07:00

Haven't added anything new as of late so I'm gonna do that. Otherwise, it's business as usual. I haven't really been working to hard on WB because I have a full time day job and am busy doing some other stuff but now I'm feeling a little inspired to add some more features and such that I think would be beneficial.

I'm back

2006-04-13T17:05:00.000-07:00

Looks like everything is ok now.

Site unavailable for today

2006-04-13T09:05:00.000-07:00

Site will be down today until I get home to see what's up with it. Sorry about that.

wURLdBook Availablility

2006-02-11T15:30:00.000-08:00

We were having some availability problems for the last week or so.
The problem turned out to be a bad disk. So that was addressed and now things should be back to normal.
I am using a temp disk until I get a replacement but performance levels shouldn't be affected, I hope.

Otherwise hope everyone is happy with WB and keep me posted of any issues or suggestions as usual. Feedback happily received.

wURLdBook Crew.

Easier to move subscriptions within relevance reading list

2005-12-31T15:13:00.000-08:00

I just added the feature cooresponding to number 6 on Jason's list.
So now the relevance can be modified easily in a dossier with active content that is in the reading list.

New Features released.

2005-12-30T20:00:00.000-08:00

Added ability to easily unsubscribe and or unsubscribe and delete a dossier with active content news feeds from the dossier in viewing mode without having to go into edit mode.
Also, added the reading list check box checked by default when adding a new feed.
Also, added some shadows to the reading list tool tips.
These are number 2 and 5 on Jason's list.
More coming.

New Suggestions

2005-12-28T10:41:00.001-08:00

I have received some suggestions from a one of wURLdBook's most esteemed members. Here is the email I got:

Hi Olav-

Was just checking out some of the new web-based aggregators that have come out in the last couple of months.
Tried gritwire, feedfeeds, google reader (sucks), and some others.
I still think you're way ahead of the curve and the best of the bunch, but some of them had some cool features, so I'm making a little wishlist.

#1 on my list, by far--I wish that WB was better at finding feeds.
I use the bookmarklet, and it seems like half the time, it won't pick up the feeds-even for my own website!
If I knew more about how to program, I'd gladly pitch in and try to debug.

2-Wish for easy feed pruning. Two buttons at the top of a feed's dossier would do it:
"unsubscribe from feed" and "unsubscribe from feed and delete dossier"

3-Wish for permanent cookies that don't expire after 24 hours!
A simple "remember me" checkbox would be grand.
this has taken on new importance to me because I managed to fubar Firefox's prefs.js file and now it won't remember passwords for some sites, including wb.

4-over at FeedFeeds.com, they have a cool little use of tooltips.
Hover the mouse over a news item and get the first couple of lines in the tooltip.
Click on the item and get an expanded thread (actually, they screw the second part up by making you open a popup to view the whole post.
stupid stupid stupid. but it would be cool to have the option to set it up like that, only better).

5-have "add feed to reading list" automatically checked.
I keep forgetting to check the box, then I'm left wondering why I don't get the feed.

6-make it easier to move feeds around the reading list somehow.
I have some feeds in 10 I'd like to move down, and some feeds in 1 I'd like to move up, etc.
Right now, it's too time-consuming.

7-Ability to change reading list headings from numbers 1-10 to headings like "baseball" "music" "news" etc.
Alternately, ability to add dossiers (with multiple feeds in subdossiers) to reading list would accomplish the same thing, but be less elegant.

8--most important!
Wish for you and your family to have a great christmas (or alternate holiday) and fantastic new year's!
I'll be away from the computer for a while starting next week, back around NYE.

Best!
Jason

These are all great ideas and I'll be working through them in the coming months. A shout out to Jason for taking the time to put the list together. Thanks!!

Happy Holidays

2005-12-28T08:16:00.000-08:00

Just want to wish everyone merry holidays and a happy new year! Thanks for all your support. The new year will bring new cool features and other great stuff too.

It's been a month

2005-11-15T08:20:00.000-08:00

Checking in again. Nothing new to report. Just working on some performance issues that arose otherwise everything is peachy. I hope everyone like using WB and finds it useful. Feel free to leave some feedback if there is a problem or if you have suggestions. - Olav

Hi Everyone! Short update.

2005-10-10T08:37:00.000-07:00

Well, apart from using WB as my daily news reader and repository for all things WWW I'm doing minor bugs fixes that I'm catching because of all the use WB is receiving.

Also, I'm working on some cool new features but the progress is going slowly just because I have a day job to support my hobbies.

In addition I'm eventually going to do a system upgrade which is way down the path but I'm preparing and testing now.

Just to note I personally use Firefox so WB is set up optimally for that browser.

Anyway, that's it just wanted to say "hello" and as usually any suggestions are appreciated.

Just using my stuff

2005-09-15T10:03:00.000-07:00

Not much happening really. I'm just using my own stuff.
I'm going to add a better way to edit the reading list so you can delete and/or modify various parameters etc.
That's next.
I'm also going to be upgrading the systems in the near future but I'll post more about that when it's going to happen.

I'm back!

2005-08-17T18:51:00.000-07:00

O.K. Got the new router and I'm back up and running.
Only took about a week.
I'm super happy!

Should be back Thursday.

2005-08-16T17:33:00.000-07:00

Sorry for any inconvenience. I was promised my router Monday but now it should be here Wednesday and I should be back Wednesday night.
Keeping my fingers crossed.

wURLdBook is down until Monday.

2005-08-11T19:14:00.000-07:00

My router is broken so the service is down until Monday when I get a new one. Sorry for the inconvenience. Olav

Just checking in.

2005-07-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Hey everyone.
Just keeping things going and bug fixing etc. Developing new stuff but slowly now.
If anyone has any suggestions just throw them my way.

Thanks!!

Convenient webref delete added

2005-06-05T11:15:00.000-07:00

Just added the ability to quickly delete a web reference when browsing your content. Now you don't have to go into edit mode to delete a web reference. Should speed things up a little when you want to delete a few web references.

Thanks to Jason T. for this suggestion.

Removing RSS Ads

2005-05-28T15:15:00.000-07:00

I'm now removing all RSS ads that come in various feeds.
They are annoying and there are way too many when included.
Like ads from Google ( I hate Google ) and feedburner as I see more they will be toast too.

Adding Stuff And Other Crap

2005-05-10T08:25:00.000-07:00

Just checking in to tell you all that I'm adding a couple of features for convenience.
One is a quick delete of a web reference. I'm going to shitcan the aim link on a web reference and replace it with a quick delete instead.
I don't know if anyone noticed, which is good, but I am sucking out any freaking ads that are included in various RSS feeds as best I can. I hate ads. It's on going...
I'm doing some other cool stuff, well I think so, that seems to be taking a while to implement so I just thought I'd mention that there is new stuff a'coming.

Well, that's it for now.

Fixed problem when subcribing to a feed...

2005-04-16T16:20:00.000-07:00

If you subscribed to a feed that had a very long description wb wouldn't allow it. Now it's fixed so you can go ahead and not worry about that.
So, if you know who you are, you can go ahead and subcribe to the feed in question. :)

Some other minor issues were fixed also this week too.

Some new features are around the corner but in testing otherwise this is another maintenance type release.

If anyone has ideas and to how to improve wb send them my way!

New Feature: Mark Items Read in ReadingList

2005-04-10T12:19:00.000-07:00

You can now mark a ReadingList item as read without having to view the contents.
Just click on the icon of the ReadingList item and that should get ride to the item in the ReadingList.
I got tired of seeing stuff I didn't want to read and now I can clear up the ReadingList until the next round of new stuff arrives.
Thanks to Jason T. for badgering me about this. :)

Maintenance release

2005-04-05T05:26:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to say that I've haven't been adding new features lately but I've been doing some performance tuning and bug fixes that I have found (I can't believe it either).
I'm preparing my system for an upgrade and makng sure everything works on the new servers too.
Also, any RSS feeds that have ads embedded in them I now try to suck them out, I hate ads in RSS.
As for new features, I'm working on a Firefox extension too, that should be cool and other nifty stuff.

Just wanted to keep you folks in the loop.
Also, any suggestions are welcome!

New RSS Reading Feature

2005-03-20T07:08:00.000-08:00

Now, when viewing RSS feed items that have links included in their content you can see a site thumbnail of the location and you can directly add that link to your wURLdBook content too. You can also opt to open the link in a new window (that's happens anyway though).

Notice, on the top of the site thumbnail there are two links included that allow you to add and open the link.

I thought it would be cool to see some of the places without having to actually go there just to get a feel for the location also, there were some links that I found compelling enough that I didn't want to visit the site to web reference it. Now, it's super convenient to add stuff from the RSS content to your own stuff.

I did this as a result of noticing that some RSS content's links and images were broken so I wrote some routines to detect and remove the badly formed html. While I was in there I decided to add a little bit more. The new feature should work most of the time.
Some RSS feeds include ads which I now extract and throw away too. Yipee!

Hopefully, you all will like this new feature and find it useful. I do!!

There is one draw back in that I edit the RSS content as the feed gets checked so you all will see a lot of updated items in your reading list. That should only happen once, provided I don't find bugs and have to release the feature again. Anyway, that will be the reason if you notice that a lot of your feeds that have links embeded in the content have been updated.

UPDATE: Please note it will take a little time for this feature to be seen because the feeds have to change and be updated. When that happens the new site thumbs and tools will become available.

New Label Features

2005-02-27T17:55:00.000-08:00

A couple of new features regarding Labels.
You can now limit the number of items in a particular label. This feature is great for people who want to present a list of current web references of interest on their blog. You can designate a label as the main dumping ground for such links and still organize the web references into various dossiers (and other labels too). This way your label won't suffer from web reference bloat because it will be automatically trimmed to the designated size by removing the oldest web references from the label to make room for the newest. The removed web references aren't deleted from your collection only removed from the label that has a cap on it.
If you are publishing RSS from that label the max amount you allow the label to expand to is the maximum that will be published as RSS too.

Other label features: you are now able to sort the items when published according to newest to oldest, oldest to newest and alphabetically too, just like in a dossier. This is handy for publishing web references you want to share with others and use Firefox. You can have active links bookmarks for others to see your current collection.

New WB IM support thingy

2005-02-17T09:07:00.000-08:00

Just added a little icon to the bottom of the left side of the page after the ReadBack and published RSS list.
The icon indicates if I'm online with either Yahoo! Instant Messenger or AIM or both.
Feel free to click on it when it's active and start chatting with me if you have any questions, concerns, suggestions.

Preview RSS Feeds

2005-02-11T08:54:00.000-08:00

You can now preview a RSS feed that you are subscribing too via the "Add RSS" javascript bookmarklet to be sure that the feed points to a real working rss feed or just to see what the heck it looks like.
Kind o' handy.

Firefox sidebar sorting

2005-02-11T08:42:00.000-08:00

You can now sort the web references in the Firefox sidebar four ways to suit your needs.

Just go to the preferences page and pick your sorting pleasure.

Thanks to Bob R. for this suggestion.

New Feature: Site Thumbs

2005-02-06T19:59:00.000-08:00

Just added a cool little feature that shows an image of the site's main page that you have web refed.

You just need to hover over the date that you added the web reference to your collection. Most of the time an image should show up but, sometimes there isn't one and a broken image is displayed. I'll make is snazzyier (sp?) later I guess if that becomes a problem.
Thanks to Jason T. for suggesting this. I was sceptical at first but now think it's real cool.

LinkReel pre-beta feature

2005-01-30T14:39:00.000-08:00

[Update: I added a picture, I like pictures. Also, added new capabilities to the LinkReel feature]
I'm just releasing a pre-beta test idea to allow members to try out.
A LinkReel allows members to include news headlines from Yahoo! News or any blog with a RSS feed onto their blog or a web page in general. You can have one topic or a random selection from a list of topics to display on your page.
If you are familiar with HTML and CSS you might want to try it out. There are examples included and a more in depth explaination of the idea here: LinkReel
This idea will be coming to wURLdBook members to allow them to publish web references and such from their information collection.
I have included a LinkReel example at the end of this blog and an example of headlines along the side of a blog here: 914-6 Car Blog

Firefox sidebar available

2005-01-30T11:40:00.000-08:00

All members who use Firefox now have a sidebar available to them.
Just click on the menu item "SidebarNav" and save the link to your favorites toolbar and everytime you click on the link a side bar should open up with a list of dossiers and web references.
Thanks to Jason T. for suggesting that.

Maintenance Release of WB

2005-01-18T19:56:00.000-08:00

I just released a maintenance update of the wURLdBook System.
This release fixes a few bugs that were discovered by me thanks to the heavy usage my the awesomest members.
Also, just to clarify what technology wURLdBook is using:

Apple's WebObjects - A powerful Java application server.
Frontbase - A super fast database.
Lucene - An open source text indexing engine.

And the hardware is:

Apple's dual processor XServers

That's it in a nutshell.

What's New In January

2005-01-12T08:34:00.000-08:00

I've been busy lately adding a couple new features that was a result of suggestions from Jason T. an enthusiastic new wURLdBook member. Thanks Jason!

New features for January:

- Added a search popdown list to make is easier for new members to search their content and for people browsing member's public area. Now they don't have to have any knowledge of the special search character that are added before keywords.

- Made individual articles in the RSS preview tool tip clickable so you can now go directly to the article of interest.

- All labels are now sorted alphabetically for ease of finding.

- Any extra long published label or dossier names in the left side bar are shortened to look nice. Hovering over the name will display it in full.

- Fixed a few bugs that were discovered.

I'm adding a few more new features soon too.

Happy belated New Year to everyone!!

Thanks to everyone for ideas and and suggestions.

New Feature

2004-12-28T21:18:00.000-08:00

I just wanted to point out a new feature to the search mechanism. If you prepend a "@" to a search term that will now find all the dossiers that are like it.

For example:
@News

This will show all dossiers that start with "news" or it will navigate you to the "News" dossier. It won't show dossier's with active content though.
I like it!
(# will show you a label)
Now I'll get back to my Firefox extension.

Hope everyone had a Merry Christmas too.

wURLdCast Number 6

2004-12-21T09:12:00.000-08:00

wURLdCast for the week ending Dec 26/04

Ok, yet another informative wURLdCast. I talk about new features and what I'm working on now for future releases. How exciting!!

You will like what I say, or else.

Busy adding a few new features

2004-12-15T07:44:00.000-08:00

I've been working hard to add a few new features, nothing Earth shattering, to wURLdBook.
The new features are extensions of existing features that seem natural to add.
Also, fixing a few bugs that were un-earthed. There's no testing like production testing. ;).

Bug Fixes. Yeah!

2004-12-09T06:53:00.000-08:00

Thanks to all the new members a few bugs have been exposed that were lurking in the depths of my service. I'm sure there's more hiding here and there but, I have fixed the ones that have been found so far.

Thanks to everyone's help!!

Welcome new members!!

2004-12-07T22:42:00.000-08:00

Welcome all new members to wURLdBook. I hope you find your way around ok and if not please send me a message with any problems or suggestions.
I would like to make this service as handy as possible for everyone. There are some pretty interesting and unique features of wURLdBook that when combined together make it the service very powerful for both finding information and organizing it the way you want to.
For example, you can organize your content hierarchically and using labels (facets) which make wURLdBook very flexible indeed.
Try everything out! And, glad to have you aboard!!

Help Needed To Test On All Browsers

2004-12-06T06:36:00.000-08:00

I use Firefox on Mac OS X and also make sure Safari and the olden 5.2 version of IE for OS X works too on wURLdBook.
I haven't done any comprehensive testing on IE on any Windows patform except for ad hoc testing.
I don't have a clue about Linux browsers.
If anyone is using a browser and having some problems or has some suggestions please leave a comment or drop me an email or aim a message.
I'd like to know how wURLdBook is doing across a bunch of browsers.
Thanks!!!!!

wURLdCast Number 5 really.

2004-12-04T20:19:00.000-08:00

wURLdCast for the week ending Dec 3/04

I mention that my service was reviewed at Master new media (www.masternewmedia.org) and other stuff. You better just listen to it if you want to fall asleep where you are.

It's ear candy.

wURLdBook review on Masternewmedia.

2004-12-03T13:48:00.000-08:00

Marjolein Hoekstra reviewed wURLdBook on the site. Although, they didn't use wURLdBook very much to see all the cool features and functionality to get a real feel for it they got the basics right. As with any relatively full featured application it takes time to get to know and if you don't put the time in you won't get the information out. Since, they are like the majority of people, they are in a rush to see what wURLdBook is about and miss the subtleties. But, that is ok. I appreciate the nice words regardless. Their critisism is justified in that I don't have a lot of help features on each page to guide new members along step-by-step. That's because I'm darn lazy and hope people would explore the application and use the HELP pages which are pretty good. I know I'm naive about this it but I built wURLdBook primarily do suit my needs and anyone else who appreciates a no-nonsense approach to just getting your important web information in reliable way. So, thanks Marjolein for reviewing my site!!

wURLdCast Number 5 actually 4.

2004-11-27T09:20:00.000-08:00

Yet another wURLdCast.

This week I talk what I have added to the wURLdBook system.
Mostly stuff for new members joining and for current members that want to get the most out of wURLdBook. I have added a series of tips that I will build upon that describes aspects of wURLdBook to make it easier to get started organizing your content.

Enjoy!

wURLdBook Research Press Release

2004-11-19T08:40:00.000-08:00

wURLdBook Research press release for November 22, 2004.

New features and benefits of managing multiple RSS feeds in one location.

wURLdCast Number 3

2004-11-19T07:28:00.000-08:00

Another week has gone by and another wURLdCast is born.

This week I talk about some minor improvements to the system, nothing Earth shattering and a little about new features that are in the pipe.
Also, another opportunity to hear my illustrious voice.

Enjoy!

New PodCast

2004-11-12T13:04:00.000-08:00

Hear my new incredible Podcast. It's exciting. I talk about new features and improvements I just added. The file is not too big either.

Enjoy!

Custom RSS Feeds With Enclosures

2004-11-05T15:33:00.000-08:00

With the release of the latest new features to wURLdBook I'm going to be concentrating on making some documentation that will explain the great uses you can put them too.
Now, wURLdBook can be used to create and maintain an number of RSS feeds, enabling members to flawlessly maintain and distribute multiple content streams.
I have already used a published label "PodCasts" with an enclosure to include my first podcast talking about wURLdBook.
I can also create a label (or dossier) called "My_Music_Picks" or something to put my favorite music in. Everytime is run across some (legal) music to redistribute online I can publish it in my label and add it as an attachment.

Now anyone subscribing or visiting my public label can see my music picks.

This is just one simple use. You can also share these publish labels (or dossiers) with other wURLdBook members if you know their wURLdBook member alias.

One advantage to this is you don't have to maintain a full on blog and can still publish an array of interests automatically sharing items with friends via their news reader of choice.

wURLdBook Podcasts

2004-11-05T03:16:00.000-08:00

wURLdBook now does Podcasts.
Hopefully I won't bore you to death, but I though I would try out podcasting to put a person behind the website. I'll talk about the service and tips tricks new features the future of wURLdBook and whatever.
On the left side of the blog page there is a podcast icon to get the rss feed.
I made this at 3:00 am so I hope I don't sound too bad.
It's my firt podcast!

Some new features released

2004-11-05T01:52:00.000-08:00

Just to let you know I have released a new version of wURLdBook with a couple more new features.
Firstly, you can now publish labels as RSS 2.0. No more having to put your published items in dossiers that don't quite fit. You can create a label say, "Music", and put all your music that you want to share under that label while the web references reside in the dossiers that they are supposed to be in like ambient, jazz or whatever.
I like this feature a lot.

Secondly, you can now add an attachment to a web reference. This is handy if you are subscribed to RSS feeds that have enclosures. Now the enclosure is saved too, into a web reference attachment. This is also handy if you want to create a podcast. Now you can publish a web reference with an attachment to a RSS feed which could be a podcast.
Attachments make it easy to share music, photos, quicktime movies etc via the public access or RSS. A [attachment] link shows up in the web reference tool bar and the size and type are displayed in a tooltip. Slick!

To create a published RSS label you click on the lable menu item and go through the hoops there. I haven't updated any documentation yet but that will be next.
Now, wURLdBook can be a central location to manage various RSS feeds.
I'm looking forward to hearing any comments regarding these features.

Call for suggestions and/or feature requests.

2004-10-26T13:20:00.000-07:00

If anyone has any suggestions as to how to improve wURLdBook Research or feature requests I'd like to hear them.
You can email me here olav@wurldbook.com
Also, if there is anyone having trouble using a particular browser I'll try to fix it.

Thanks,
Olav
resident code monkey.

The Power of Aliases

2004-10-25T08:45:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know about some powerful features to put to work.

wURLdBook Research supports the notion of an "alias". That is you can supply a unique keyword to a web reference and whenever you invoke that alias by typing it into the search text field you are instantly take to that location.

How is this handy?

Well, for starters, if you use aliases in conjunction with the FireFox search plugin or the wURLdSearch bookmarklet found here you can quickly navigate to your favorite or frequently visited locations.

For example, I use an alias for Yahoo! Mail: simply "ym" (yahoo mail, get it?). Now, whenever I type in ym I go to Yahoo! Mail. You can also alias dosssiers. Just web ref the link to a dossier and supply an alias, now you can instantly go to that dossier with by typing the alias.

Members who don't use Firefox should use the wURLdSearch bookmarklet, it works the same. But,not only can you resolve aliases but also do searches by prepending a ":" to your search terms. There are other comand characters, they are listed in the help pages and as a tool tip on the wURLdBook search text field.
This may seem weird but it allows for wURLdBook to provided nifty little tools like this without having a proliferation of UI widgets.

Hope you find this tip useful, wURLdBook has a lot to offer, you just need to explore.

New Feature: Introducing "Labels"

2004-10-24T09:14:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce a new feature we simply call "Labels"

You can now identify web references by ascribing a label to to them. As many labels as you like.
Sometimes you need to save a web reference in possibly two or more places. Copying them into extra dossiers is a hassle and putting special keywords in the meta info to search against is a hack. Now you can create labels on the fly without having to create special dossiers for temporary filing. Now you can label important web references as "Important" and quickly see them.
For example, when you find interesting web references that assists you in researching a particular subject that you want access again quickly just put them in a dossier that you would normally put them in say, if you were researching particular medical issues, you would file the web references in their corresponding dossiers such as liver diseases, osteoporosis, etc. Now, you can apply a label called "Important Medical" and have access to those web references found in disparate dossiers.

All the labels appear in a new menu item called "Labels". Just hover over the link and a menu will appear with all you labels in it.
To create new labels just select existing labels from the list when adding a new web reference or create one right then.
It's pretty easy and convenient. Hope you enjoy this new feature. More are on there way!!

Scheduled Network Outage

2004-10-22T16:23:00.000-07:00

My ISP has informed me that they are going to do some maintenance Oct. 27

We are writing to inform you of a Network Maintenance Event.

On Wednesday night / Thursday morning, October 27th and October 28th 2004, we will be performing scheduled maintenance on the Point of Presence (POP) through which your Broadband connection is routed. As a result, your service will be interrupted for up to 4 hours, beginning at 11:00pm PDT Wednesday night and ending by 3:00am PDT Thursday morning.

Sorry for any inconvenience dudes.

Member Power Tips for RSS Reading.

2004-10-13T08:57:00.000-07:00

Here are a few tips to organizing your RSS active content dossiers for easy access and fast reading.

Grouping Dossiers with RSS Content

Instead of putting all your active content dossiers in the reading list you can group similar active content dossiers in a dossier and put that dossier in the Reading List.
Now, you can see the total number of unread items in all the active content dossiers and using the hover menu you can see individual dossiers and their contents and navigate directly to them.
You won't be able to preview headlines this way though. But you can go to the top level dossier and preview headlines there.

Jump To Menu

Once you are in active content dossier with a parent that contains multiple active content dossiers you can now access a jump to menu. This allows you to quickly navigate to the next dossier in the parent without having to go up a level and then down into the desired active dossier. Very quick and efficent for reading.

That's all the tips for now. I'll post more later.
I encourage you to explore and find other neat tricks to do with wurldbook.

Instead of groups create dossier networks.

2004-10-12T18:18:00.000-07:00

A unique feature of wURLdBook Research is the ability to leverage RSS to create dossier networks.

Why are they called dossier networks?

Well, because traditionally if you create a group and the group creator goes away so does all the collaborative efforts of the group. A group relies on a single point to ultimately distribute the collectie information. With dossier networks, you can publish your dossier's contents in the form of a RSS feed and the collaborators can subscribe and view the contents. Now, the collaborators can in turn publish a dossier, for example, with similar content to which the those collaborators can subscribe. If the original publisher decides not to publish anymore content then the other collaborators can still maintain the collective conscience of interests with the loss of a single collaborator. If there is enough collaborators the loss of a few collaborators is not felt, while in the traditional group everyone would lose. To represent a network create a single dossier that would the totality of subsriptions specific to your interests.

To create a dossier network you need to have collaborators. In wURLdBook you can add collaborators to your collaborator list. Once you have added a few collaborators you can instantly see what dossiers they are publishing as RSS and preview the contents before you decide to subscribe to the contents. They, in turn can add you as a collaborator and see what you are publishing. A benefit of publishing in RSS is you are not restricted to using wURLdBook, any news reader can view the published content. The power comes when you publish and subcribe to dossiers with content of a similar nature with other members of wURLdBook Research your efforts are multiplied.

When this kind of a dossier network is established the loss of one collaborator for what ever doesn't disrupt the over quality of the network and it is available from mutiple sources since any news reader can selectively subscribe to sections of the totality. Also, if one collaborator is contributing low quality content it is easy just to unsubscribe from that collaborator while keeping the rest rather than having to sort the "wheat from the chaff" problem. This would be an option at the subscriber level. So, one persons wheat could be anothers chaff.

Also, with the nature of wURLdBook's published dossier you can capture anothers collaborative content and annote it to suite your personal needs or just let it flow by.

This indeed is a very powerful feature that creates a lot of flexibility for the subscriber.

Yahoo! News RSS Preview

2004-10-11T07:30:00.000-07:00

Now you can preview Yahoo! News RSS feeds and subscribe using your favorite news aggregator. I just wanted a way to preview the feeds before I subscribed to them. This makes it easy. Especially for wURLdBook members. rss preview

Network back to normal

2004-10-10T06:33:00.000-07:00

Ok, the network should be back to normal now. Hopefully, my ISP has everything fixed. Sorry for the outages everyone.

Network Status update

2004-10-09T18:10:00.000-07:00

There is going to be a scheduled outage for wURLdBook.
We are writing to inform you of an Emergency Network Maintenance Event that will impact your Speakeasy Broadband service(s).
On Sunday morning, October 10th 2004, we will be performing emergency maintenance on the Point of Presence (POP) through which your Broadband connection is routed. As a result, your service will be interrupted for up to 4 hours, beginning at 12:00AM PDT Sunday morning and ending at 4:00AM PDT Sunday morning.

This is right from SpeakEasy.

Speakeasy Network Down Again

2004-10-09T17:06:00.000-07:00

Once again the network is unavailable.

Update: 10/09/04 05:00:13 PM
Broadband services in northern California are back down, do to a repeat of this issue. We're working with our hardware vendor to identify the cause of this problem and prevent further repeats.

Network Issue Resolved.

2004-10-08T14:17:00.000-07:00

Ok, we're back.

Network Down.

2004-10-08T14:08:00.000-07:00

Speakeasy has done it again. There is a network problem. I'll keep you posted. Sorry for the inconvenience.

There network is down.

wURLdBookDock Update

2004-10-08T13:53:00.000-07:00

Just to let you know I have updated the wURLdBookDock.

I added the ability to select the option to speak the new items if there are any and to optionally play a sound.

If you want to change the default sound you need to open the Terminal.app and at the command prompt type in:

defaults write com.wurldbook.wurldbookdock "Update Sound" "Submarine"

"Submarine" in the name of the sound.

Sounds are found in your home directory at ~/Library/Sounds/ or in /System/Library/Sounds/

I didn't make a fancy GUI because I was lazy.

wURLdBookDock with notification features.

2004-10-03T19:14:00.000-07:00

Announcing the wURLdBookDock with notification features. I'm pleased to announce the release of version 1.2 of wURLdBookDock Now you can be notified to changes in your active content dossiers, that is, any dossier with a RSS feed associated with it. wURLdBookDock is only available for use with MacOS X. More details available here: More wURLdBookDock Info

ISP network issues.

2004-09-23T07:23:00.000-07:00

Due to my ISP "upgrading" their system last night there has been a catastrophic failure of their network! According to their notice:

09/23/04 06:02:06 AM SFO backhaul malfunction after upgrade Region : San Francisco E.T.A. : unknown Services Affected : all internet services
After completing last night's upgrade in San Francisco it appears that traffic is no longer passing. Our engineering dept is currently analyzing the situation and will attempt to repair the problem as soon as the cause is apparent.

wURLdBook is now back online! Sorry for the inconvenience!

Compatible with SideKick II

2004-09-14T08:24:00.000-07:00

Compatible with T-Mobile HipTop (SideKick)... For those of you with HipTops (SideKicks), wURLdBook is fully compatible with them. I have a SideKick and made it so. You can read your news and browse your content. It's pretty handy, I was in Kauai on my honey-moon and was browsing the news via wURLdBook there with no problems at all. It should be fine on other pocket pc devices too but, I don't know for sure. hiptop info

Welcome Members!

2004-09-10T06:42:00.000-07:00

Welcome new members! To get started with wURLdBook you can upload you existing bookmarks and don't forget to subscribe to some news feeds. Some examples you can find here. There is a lot of interesting things you can do so if you have any questions just ask, send an email to "info at wurldbook.com". I would like to hear any suggestions too.

2004-09-08T15:30:00.000-07:00

I found my wURLdBookDock on Apple's "Made4Mac" page here. Too bad there isn't a link directly to the product. Seems a little confusing hopefully people can find it o.k. by exploring a little.

2004-09-08T13:12:00.000-07:00

I just released a little tool to preview custom Yahoo! RSS News Feeds based on search terms you supply. This is a modification of this guy's RSS Yahoo! News Search thing that he shared with us.

I created it because I got tired of trying searches out only to find they didn't suit my needs. Now you can preview a bunch of searches before subscribing to it. Hope you find it useful.

You can find it here here

2004-09-03T06:48:00.000-07:00

Why is the Canadian flag on the top of the page? Because, I'm Canadian but living in the U.S.

2004-09-03T06:44:00.000-07:00

Remember, if anyone has any suggestions please tell me, I really would like to hear them. I just finished all the suggestions I received from my first round of the beta test. Thanks to everyone for them.

2004-08-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

Just released the wURLdBook guided tour. Going to add a little more to it, but I think it's a good start. For those of you who asked for it, it's dedicated to you.

2004-08-25T18:28:00.000-07:00

Ok. The Mac OS X wURLdBook client apps are go! Now you can search your RSS feeds too. Also, it's cool to create an alias to your favorite RSS dossier and go visit it to see if there is anything new. To do: modify the app to activly notify you of RSS feed changes. That would rock.

2004-08-25T14:52:00.000-07:00

I'm busy getting the Mac OSX client applications working again. wURLdBookDock and the services package are currentlly broken because I changed the wURLdBook URL. I'll get them back up and running today!

2004-08-14T12:43:00.000-07:00

Things went pretty well for the production release, only a few minor glitches that were quickly pointed and and fixed. Minor problems found in the bookmark upload application. The explainational text was too small for some people to read on windows. It's been enlarged now. Changed the color scheme, looks much better now. Fixed some minor things I found in the advanced features. Added ability to link directly to inspecting a public web reference useful for RSS published dossiers. Some of these bugs seem to show up only in production :) and only customers can find them. Very mysterious. There's also a funny bug when logging into wURLdBook via a SideKick. I'll have to track that down but it's not a show stopper because you just log in again and it's fine. Weird or what. I'm working on some cool new features such as adding attachments to web references and subsequently the attachments can become enclosures when published as RSS. That will be cool. That's it for now.

2004-08-04T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'm pleased to announce wURLdBook Research has been updated with a whole bunch of new features and bug fixes. The wURLdBook system has been ported over to pure Java from Obj-C and now runs on Apple XServers. The internet connection should be more reliable too as it has been ugraded also. New features include: RSS news reading capability, new page layout for quickly accessing news items, better searching, robust data handling, RSS publishing of dossiers to enhance the collaboration experience, and other great enhancements to make capturing a recalling important information easier.

2004-07-30T09:21:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be releasing wURLdBook to the main domain tonight. Pretty excited. Finally. I wanted to finish some additional features before the release, but I figured they can wait. It's not mission critical functionality but I want them so they will turn up eventually. The postponed features included: uploading OPML, I'm almost done but not yet; topic watch custom search dossiers, can sort of do it now with a web referenced search, but I'll add something better; adding attachments to web references, that will be done later too, I just have to add the UI and only full members will be able to realize that feature so it won't affect to many people. I guess the list will never end anyway to keep pushing the envelope to see where this service will evolve too so, I have decided to let everyone use the current news reading etc. features that have been tested and work great so far.

2004-07-21T19:43:00.000-07:00

Ok, I now removed the /WebObjects/ part of the URL and changed it to /Apps/ finally. I've made the URL nice and short and customized to my liking. I've finished the PayPal integration and the porting of my original payment processing system. That was a pretty boring endevour but I'm glad it's done. I'm moving on to parsing OPML files so you can incorporate previously subscribed to news feeds without having to add them one by one. I've also fixed a couple of bugs I ran into by my ad hoc testing. I'm almost ready to officially release the new version of wURLdBook to the wurldbook domain, yipee!! I'll have to upgrade all my servers first etc. That will be fun, not. That's all I can think of for now that I have done off the top of my head. I'll report on my continuing progress later.

2004-07-10T09:51:00.000-07:00

I've been busy lately. I finally hooked up mod_gzip to work with OSX Server on Apache. I got help from here because the darn source wouldn't complile for me. Now, it works great and speeds up my service and reduces bandwith, always a good thing. I've also hooked up PayPal to wURLdBook so now you can chip in some cash to help out with the service. I've broken down the the voluntary fees in to three levels: patron at $25.00 a year, that's not much and if you like the service why not chip in. Next is supporter at $40.00 bucks a year hey you'll feel better and I'll love you for it. And finally, Full Membership at $60.00 a year. I thought the real generous people who use wURLdBook a lot would feel like throwing $60.00 bucks a year at me. It's for the professional types and business users mainly, a commercial membership of sorts. If you feel like supporting wURLdBook $25.00 bucks a year is perfect though. I'm also just finishing up wURLdBook's credit card processing application in case you don't want to go through PayPal, just go through us and it's secure and safe etc. Soon, I'll be moving on to importing OPML and adding enclosures/attachemnts to web references so you can publish them with the enclosures and what not. Then I'll be ready to release the new wURLdBook with all the cool new features for everybody. That's it for now. Thanks for watching this channel.

2004-06-28T08:22:00.000-07:00

System Changes Announcement

You may have noticed the links are now broken to wURLdBook Research applications. I have removed the /cgi-bin/ from the URL to make it shorter and cleaner. Your links to wURLdBook Research will work as before you just need to remove the /cgi-bin/ from them. Sorry for the inconvenience.

2004-06-24T13:50:00.000-07:00

A cool wURLdBook Research trick: In the search textfield if you want to find the last n web references you have added just type:

:lastadded 5

This will show you the last 5 web references you have added. Handy.

2004-06-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

Fixed a few bugs added some features:

When exchanging a web ref with no comments now fixed
When sharing a dossier with no alias defined now fixed
Not a bug, a feature: shows updated RSS items and new items in list.
Added link to updated dossiers when using the notifier
Remove duplicate RSS items, found in Yahoo feeds mostly
Added a subject field in RSS items where applicable
Fixed problem where some RSS items were erroneously called new when they were not.
Fixed a pub date parsing issue

Those are some things I fixed and features added. Have a bunch more to add before I go live for real. I have so many ideas I'm drawing a line.

2004-06-18T10:11:00.000-07:00

We use RSS 2.0 to allow members to publish dossiers and attachments to facilitate collaboration amoungst groups. The publishing of desired web references as RSS allows non members and members alike to share information and to keep people informed in an unobtrusive manner. A simple broadcast mechanism that can lead to richer forms of communication. Through the use of enclosures members can distribute documents for editing or muli-media files without having to maintain a large list of recipients and can use a news aggregator of their choice. Two wURLdBook members working together can publish dossiers and subscribe to their friends dossiers to maintain independent collections of information dividing responsibility evenly. Members can opt to save anothers information as there own and even republish it with their own ideas/notes added. The publishing component is very powerful when a teacher or "librarian" is managing a set of information. Then a single point of distribution is maintained and all people of relevance can be kept in sync to changes. Rather than email, which could get lost, there is a constant record of the RSS news item and when the information is no longer pertinent it can be expired. This one aspect of wURLdBook is very powerful, easy to use and facilitates collaborative knowledge transfer. It can also be looked at as a custom link blog.

2004-06-15T16:38:00.000-07:00

I'm begining to understand my delema. I'm pretty much a Ralph Waldo Emerson fan and his seminal essay Self Reliance pretty much permeates my psyche. I kinda think people can think for themselves and be resourceful. Of course I'm dead wrong. Just count the fast food restaurants. Anyway, I guess I expect my members to exhibit a little self reliance and resourcefulness. I'm full of crap anyway. Hey, anyone listening? I thought not. Go back to sleep.

2004-06-15T15:30:00.000-07:00

Ok, I'm getting more feedback regarding the beta testing of my RSS aggregation/web reference (bookmark) management service. Generally, I call it web information aggregation.

Why do you call them dossiers
You need a document on what to try.
Where do I start?
You need a guided tour

I do supply a lot of information regarding the service, so I thought, but it seems people are either:

inherently lazy
don't want to spend the time to think
don't look for the information like tell tail help links
are supperficially interested and just want to be spoon fed
really don't care in the first place

I could be way off base here but, perfectly intelligent people that I consider quite computer savvy seem to be either playing super devil's advocate or are running in a different mode. Unfortunately, I am guilty of designing as service that caters to an advanced user right out of the box and they don't exist. But, I do have all the information available to answer all the questions and instructions as to how to use the service but they are simply not used. I look in my web server logs to see how often the Help System is used, zero times. None. Nada. Zilch. None of my system info files are ever accessed either. Oh, I lied, it was looked at once and the remark was "It's kinda wordy". Don't know how to respond to that. Maybe if I make it more entertaining, infotainment help files. Arg. What am I supposed to do? I guess bite the bullet and write even more documentation that never will be looked at. Why do I call folders dossiers? Because it's different.

2004-06-15T08:13:00.000-07:00

I was looking into making a Firefox/Mozilla extension. How the heck do you go about making one? I was looking online for some examples, tutorials even source. Can't find it. Anyone know?

2004-06-13T14:52:00.000-07:00

Cool Features of wURLdBook Research

I think a cool feature of wURLdBook is that it keeps your context. Say you are doing a search and you find a web reference and you want to edit it. You can go ahead and edit it and you will be brought right back to where you were. You don't have to redo the search. Same with just navigating through your information collection.

2004-06-13T07:26:00.000-07:00

You can now register to become a member of wURLdBook Research. I just release the registration application so you no longer have to email me to join the public beta. I would only recommend signing up if you want to do beta testing because once the system goes live to the wurldbook.com domain your data will unfortunately be lost unless you export it. If you export it you can import it to your new account which you have to create again by registering again. (I know, that sucks). I have to do the same thing to transfer my data.

New Features

I have added the ability to AIM RSS news articles. Thought that would be cool and it was low hanging fruit so I added it.

Beta Test Observations

I have noticed that unless people are spoon fed as to how to use this service they probably won't "get it". Drat. I am so lazy and have tried to avoid all the flash/fancy tours of how to use this service. I have created a useful help system and information page as to what the service does. I have explained it pretty well all the features. It's not like I haven't done anything. I was hoping that I would get some "advanced" type savvy users that are starved for a tool of this caliber. I'm living in a fantasy world and I can't get out. I'm so mad at myself, dam. Oh well I'll continue to develop the service to be super useful for people like me. And since I'm a one in a million kind of guy there are 6,000 of me out there. Some suggestions include:

Do a guided tour
Change capitalization of wURLdBook
Change the name of the service to "MyLinks.com" or something
Spell out the service more clearly on the first page
Develop a catchy phrase like "Links from anywhere"

The second to last suggestion is pretty reasonable but I don't want to do that because I like low key. And once people start to use it I'm sure they will appreciate low key. It's a trade off. I'm glad I'm getting suggestions and if I get a lot of them that keep saying the same thing I guess I'll have to bit the bullet and do them. I'm good about features but not about marketing. I suck at marketing. Real badly.

2004-06-12T06:57:00.000-07:00

The origins of wURLdBook. (Part I) Back in 1995 when I was sitting in the lab at my university programing on my NeXT Station I had the idea to to create an application that managed URLs. I had a bunch of places I visited and Yahoo was just coming around. I had my obligatory vanity site, now you could call them blogs, where people could read my movie reviews and leave their movie reviews etc. I also listed my interests and passions. As a matter of fact you can still visit my first site at my first vanity site. As a result I visited a lot of places and wanted to manage them better. The only tool I had was the built in bookmark features in browsers which weren't useful enough for what I wanted to do. And they haven't evolved much to this day. Thus the idea was born. At first I envisioned a client based application to organize my links, or web references as I like to call them now, then I decided since web references are web based information pointers why not make the whole application web based to get at my web based resources from anywhere. That's when wURLdBook started or whatever I was going to call it. I had a bunch of names like "Book of URL" and stuff like that but eventually I settled on wURLdBook.

2004-06-07T07:38:00.000-07:00

Just working on getting wURLdBook Research out the door. Need to finish off a list of six things:

User Registration
Integrate PP
Implement Topic Watch
Add Attachments
OPML upload
OPML generator from external source
Bugs fixes

New Feature

Added cool AIM feature so you can AIM a RSS item.

Power User Tip

Really cool idea for power users is to create aliases to dossiers. That way you can quickly navigate around your internet intelligence. You can even home page different sections of your wURLdBook Research depending if you are at work or home. That's what I do anyway.

2004-06-03T13:11:00.000-07:00

I just added a little text field on the left sidebar to allow anyone to convert an iTunes Playlist to RSS. Just enter in your playlist id, usually a 5 digit number like 43482, and hit enter. A RSS 2.0 feed will be generated suitable for any newreader. I could make it more useful by providing more links and such but if you press the link to the channel source it should open up iTunes for you to get all the details. If people change around their playlist you can always see what they are playing at any particular moment. Just thought this would be a neat thing to do as suggested by Kathleen Otter. I wanted to see how long it would take to implement the core idea.

2004-06-02T15:21:00.000-07:00

I should be releasing wURLdBook public beta with registration activated and a few more features by the end of this month if all goes well. I got a few more ideas that I want to implement that should be pretty valuable and powerful, plus I want them because I need them. It's good to see so many major news web sites supporting RSS. I'm going to be writing a tool to make it easier to subscribe to these sites various RSS offerings en masse instead of having to tediously add each one individually. I'll give more details in the future but right now I'm going to concentrate on just getting wURLdBook out so people can actually use the new super cool features.

2004-06-01T11:42:00.000-07:00

I'm back from vacation/honeymoon so now I'm ready to get back to work. I've got some new ideas I want to implement and need to complete the registration process too. Just have to fill my fridge up with food and get adjusted to the new timezone. wURLdBook worked flawlessly while I was away and performed great on the SideKick. It was real easy to read news and keep up-to-date in Kauai.

2004-05-22T18:34:00.000-07:00

I'm in Hanalei bay at Java Kai having a coffee after snorkeling at the HBR beach. It was awesome, Patricia and I saw a school of needle fish and trumpet fish. Patricia found a really cool shell, hard to believe that they just come out of the ocean all perfect. We checked for critters and there were none. We went to the Hanalei farmers market and got some super sweet pineapples, the white kind, sugar loaf, they are so tasty and simply melt in your mouth. This sidekick rocks.

2004-05-21T15:17:00.000-07:00

I'm in Kauai for the next two weeks on my honeymoon. I won't be doing anything new with wURLdBook but I'll be checking to make sure all systems are nominal. I've been accessing wb from my SideKick and it's been working flawlessly. Getting all my news and stuff. I'm going to finish up importing OPML when I get back in addition to the registration procedure. I'm only blogging this because I got a bit of a sun burn and am not going out in the sun today so I thought I would just write a little. That's all for now.

2004-05-16T10:25:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this from my HipTop in Pacific Grove. I released a service yesterday thar takes a published iTunes playlist and converts it to RSS. All you need to provide is the playlistId. PlayListToRSS and you get RSS. All you need to supply is the playListId at the end of the URL and you can see any play list in RSS. It is Kathleen Otter's idea, I just got interested in it to see what it would take to make it happen.

2004-05-13T07:20:00.000-07:00

One thing I have noticed is that most people don't exploit the full potential of wURLdBook. My guess is that the service offers so much and has quite a few innovative features that it is a little overwhelming for the majority of casual web surfers and even seasoned surfers. Most people don't have the attention span to dig into wURLdBook because there is so much out there, so many distractions and it just doesn't matter or make a difference because a mediocre service will do. I'll have to figure out a way to get at the people that are like me, who really need a hard core, high quality, web based information organization tool. I built this tool for me and thinking that I wasn't alone in my desire to have an information management tool that is not like any other I thought I would share it. It certainly will be a challenge trying to get at those few quality people out there, but in the mean time my friends and family are using wURLdBook to great success. I guess because they have a personal wURLdBook trainer helps. Reuters has RSS feeds available now.

2004-05-12T12:29:00.000-07:00

Just came back from a walk, now I'm getting back to work on implementing OMPL importing because that would be cool. Maybe some sort of synchronization functionality too, for people with multiple news readers.