Nov 18

FaveBot – RSS aggregation unleashed

By Stefano Buliani Technology, Thoughts, WWW No Comments »

I recently came across FaveBot. The site aims at aggregating and filtering RSS feeds from the most renowned news sites and blogs all over the internet and has recently received a major update functionality-wise.

The site doesn’t exactly look beautiful but its minimalistic simple interface makes it incredibly easy to use.
Once the really brief signup process is completed you are all set to go. Through the “My Trackings” tab you’ll be able to specify search keywords and the categories of feeds you want the site to search in. Results are immediately accessible from the “MyDiscoveries” section.
The categories currently available on the site are blogs, books, DVDs, events, music, news, photos, podcasts and videos.

Another spiffy functionality is the possibility to upload your iTunes library file and let the site aggregate for you all relevant news about your favorite bands.

The only thing I find quite confusing is the fact that while you’re allowed to create multiple tracking filters the results are then all mashed together. the only way to access the outcome of a single search is to click on the number of results in the Trackings summary page.
The site would, perhaps, grow at a considerably faster pace by letting its users add new fees to its database. At the moment the list of feeds to be spidered seems to be “hard-coded”.

The idea looks solid and fairly useful. With just a few fixes and usability improvements it could probably turn into a profitable business in its niche between Feedburner and Digg.

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Nov 18

All you have to do is ask

By Stefano Buliani News, Thoughts, WWW No Comments »

Last month Valleywag reported that Facebook employees are allowed to see all members’ profile, even if set as private, through a super-user access, which already raises some privacy questions. Apparently the social network has now taken its loose privacy policy one step further.

A poster on the AR-15 Forums, a firearms-enthusiasts website, says her bosses asked Facebook for permission to see her profile – which was set to private – needless to say Facebook docilely complied.
Facebook privacy policy clearly states that they might share your profile if asked by law enforcement or a private litigant armed with a court order.

We may be required to disclose user information pursuant to lawful requests, such as subpoenas or court orders, or in compliance with applicable laws. We do not reveal information until we have a good faith belief that an information request by law enforcement or private litigants meets applicable legal standards. Additionally, we may share account or other information when we believe it is necessary to comply with law, to protect our interests or property, to prevent fraud or other illegal activity perpetrated through the Facebook service or using the Facebook name, or to prevent imminent bodily harm. This may include sharing information with other companies, lawyers, agents or government agencies.

Now from what I’ve heard this woman’s boss had no court order or any real reasons to ask for access to his employee’s profile. Said profile apparently contained some photos of the woman holding firearm, which she legally detained and acquired during her own time.

This really is worrying. Facebook clearly wanted to avoid lawsuits or any legal problem which may ensue but I feel this is hardly good for its “interests or property”. Such a Chinese-ish data sharing policy is certainly not something Facebook’s users want to deal with or be worried about.

Tthis is a big hit for the entire social-networks category. Certainly before joining the next hip community I’ll make sure to read its privacy policy carefully and that it will treat its customers data gingerly.

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Nov 17

Google pushes for corporate adoption

By Stefano Buliani News, Technology, Thoughts, WWW 3 Comments »

Google takes yet another step in its battle against Microsoft for domination of the corporate environment.

The software giant has recently released a set of APIs which will make migration from a Microsoft/any-other-system-you-may-use to Gmail incredibly simple.

“We’ve provided developer documentation and sample code that allows developers to build extremely sophisticated mail migration tools, some of which can be run by administrators to migrate centralized mail and some of which can be run by end-users to migrate mail from the desktop,” — Gabe Cohen, Google Apps product manager.

I couldn’t find any data about the usage of Google documents around. I expect the uptake of the application to be extremely high among non-corporate users. However, It seems that it will take a bit longer for small businesses and startups to get used to the service and start using it. Especially considering that most users have been educated in a Microsoft-ruled environment their entire professional life.

Google had previously released another set of tools to allow users and system administrators to migrate from most IMAP-based e-mail systems to Google Gmail.

Furthermore, as much as this set of APIs is a very interesting development, I hardly see a big corporation spending a considerable amount of dough and development time to migrate its entire system, similarly it’s going to be even harder for small business find the time and money to dedicate to this. Don’t take me to seriously now though. Companies like Capgemini, with 80,000 employees are in fact putting a first toe in the water and using Google Apps for some of its employees.

Nevertheless I’m sure all sort of open-source/free applications will sprout all over the internet to let disgruntled Outlook users switch to Gmail.

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Nov 17

The Funded revealed

By Stefano Buliani News, Technology, WWW No Comments »

The FundedThe Funded, a controversial website which lets entrepreneurs rate VCs performances and behavior, has pulled off a major PR stunt 2 days ago when the mind behind the project revealed himself to the press.
Unfortunately the entire thing didn’t exactly work out as planned as information leaked to the press/blogs well before the scheduled announcement time. TechCrunch and GigaOm among others were already reporting the name of The Man behind it hours ahead of the official announcement.

Adeo Ressi

The man, “Ted”, behind “The Funded” is Adeo Ressi. Ressi founded and sold casual gaming site Game Trust to RealNetworks this September for around $20 million. He also serves on the board of the X Prize Foundation, best known by their cash prize for civilian space exploration.

Not only entrepreneurs but also VCs can create a profile on the site and set the story straight – or rather, tell their side of it.
Oddly enough The Funded is not venture backed.

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