RSS Mystifies Most Blog Readers - mediaweek
Piece "Blog readers, thought of as a young and tech-savvy audience, by and large do not understand how RSS works, according to a study.
Nielsen//NetRatings polled 1,000 members of its research panel who read blogs. It found that nearly two-thirds of the respondents either never heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication) or did not know what the technology is used for. The study found only 11 percent of Web log readers use RSS to monitor blogs.
Web logs were early adopters of RSS technology, which routes headlines and content snippets from Web publishers to users' desktops. By using RSS aggregators or Web pages like My Yahoo, readers can monitor and access personalized content without visiting individual Web sites."
AOL continues wireless push with mobile user Web site - rcrnews
Piece "America Online Inc. continued its aggressive move toward wireless Monday, unveiling a new Web site for mobile users as well as a WAP version of its Web site.
The Internet giant launched AOLmobile.com, which allows users to manage cell-phone features and preferences including alerts and forwarding instant messages. Users can browse for cell phones and service providers, as well as shop for content including ringtones, images and games."
U.S. Visa Problems for Israel - redherring
Piece "Israel’s high-tech industry is expected to be hit hard by a U.S. Homeland Security Department announcement that the quota for professional visas for the 2006 fiscal year has already been used up.
The H1B category visa is the most common visa granted for foreign engineers and scientists working temporarily in the United States.
“This will have an impact on all companies, from U.S. multinationals with local offices to Israeli startups that need to send employees to the U.S.,” said Liam Schwartz, founding partner of the Kan-Tor & Schwartz law offices of Tel Aviv, Israel, which specialize in immigration issues. "
Taming the Wild Web - time
Piece "Consider: in July, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp. spent $580 million to acquire Intermix Media, a U.S.-based company whose prime asset is MySpace, a site that lets members share their blogs, photos and favorite music. In March, Yahoo! bought Flickr, a photo-sharing website, for an undisclosed sum. All that activity makes sense, given the rapid growth and expansion of both personal blogs and networking sites like Friendster, LinkedIn and MySpace. Harnessing the power of social networking is viewed as a key component of the soon-to-explode local advertising market, which will be worth $10.9 billion globally by 2009, according to analysts Kelsey Group. The individual pages contained on any of these sites or their blogging cousins may appear trivial: minutiae about cats' feeding habits, or the favorite break-up songs of teenage girls. But companies are banking on the notion that, in the aggregate, these pages represent a gold mine of credible consumer information. "Whether you are referring someone to either a great restaurant or a local hairstylist, since the lead came from a trusted source, there's a good chance that the person will be much more qualified to react not just to the content on the page, but also to the advertising," says Andrew Shotland, vice president of business development at Insider Pages, a Pasadena, California-based company that aims to use people's opinions to create detailed local directories of businesses and services. "We are seeing these referrals convert into business at a much greater rate than leads from other forms of advertising." "
SAP: We'll do on-demand right - news.com
Piece "In most cases, hosted applications have been seen as a replacement or alternative for on-premise software. Vendors such as Siebel Systems and Oracle offer a mix of hosted and on-premise alternatives under what they classify as a "hybrid" model, but SAP appears confident that some customers using its hosted tools might be likely to move back to on-premise someday.
SAP hasn't yet said whether the launch of the hosted applications will coincide with the delivery of its latest on-premise CRM system, also due in the fall, or, if so, whether the company will market the products in tandem."
Gates' Microsoft Wins Browser Turf From Firefox - forbes
Piece "Firefox, which recently seemed like the mouse that roared, may be singing another tune.
Though relatively wee, the free Internet browser from software firm The Mozilla Organization was steadily gobbling up market share from Microsoft's (nasdaq: MSFT - news - people ) Internet Explorer (IE).
By one account, from January to June of this year, Firefox had posted monthly market share gains of between 0.5% and 1%--at the expense of IE. "
Microsoft beats Apple on patent covering iPod technology - financialexpress
Piece "Apple Computer’s iconic iPod still has the huge advantage in the market — but rival Microsoft suddenly has some bragging rights in the patent office. Creating a surprise twist in the portable music wars, the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has denied Apple’s application to patent its method of using hierarchical menus to navigate through the iPod’s contents. The basis for the denial: A similar method outlined in a Microsoft researcher’s patent application, filed after the iPod was introduced but before Apple sought its own patent. "
McAfee readies home Wi-Fi security tool - infoworld
Piece "McAfee's software is designed to keep intruders - either malicious "war drivers" or neighbors who just want to freeload on a broadband Internet connection - from getting on to wireless LANs and from deciphering the packets that travel over the network. Once on a wireless LAN, intruders can steal information, intercept messages and install harmful programs. As consumers rapidly embrace Wi-Fi for their home networks, many are not using any security, usually because they can't figure out how to set it up, according to industry analysts and other observers."
Microsoft exec defends RSS rebranding - infoworld
Piece "In a recent post on his Web log "Torres Talking," Mike Torres, MSN Spaces lead program manager, made a clear distinction between the branding of the RSS technology and the underlying technology itself. He also said that Microsoft is adding its own functionality to RSS in the version the company is implementing in Internet Explorer (IE) 7. Because of this, its renaming of RSS is not a sign the company is trying to remake the technology for its own purposes but rather a way to make a distinction between RSS and a feature of IE.
RSS is primarily used by Web loggers and Web-based news publishers to keep subscribers informed when new Web log entries or news articles have been posted to Web sites. Microsoft is adding RSS functionality to the next version of Windows, Windows Vista, primarily through the IE 7 version of its Web browser. Both Windows Vista and IE 7 betas are available now."
The Second Wave of RFID Technology - newsfactor
Piece "Sharp Escalation
That's also going to make the cash registers of RFID suppliers, including Intermec Technologies , Texas Instruments , Philips , Alien Technology, and Boeing vendor Symbol, start to ring with an ever-increasing frequency. The $1.7 billion RFID industry is expected to balloon to $5.9 billion by 2008, according to technology market researcher Venture Development. RFID suppliers should see a sharp escalation in demand in mid-2006. That's when manufacturers are expected to first start moving from pilot tests to large-scale RFID deployments as new, industry-standard RFID technology comes to market, says Tom Miller, president of RFID systems supplier Intermec, part of automation giant UNOVA. Called Gen 2 RFID, these new readers and tags will be cheaper, a lot more accurate, and work at distances up to 30 percent longer than their predecessors. "
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