John Robb is calling for advertisements in RSS. InfoWorld has been experimenting with adverts in their RSS feeds for a few months now and they are hard to rut out. They embed the advert text in the description, as John suggests. If we are going to do this, let's do it right. An advert is an item, a special kind of item, but an item nonetheless. An advert is dumb, not smart. What needs to be smart is the method by which the advert is presented to the user. A news aggregator needs to be able to tell the server generating the feed or a Ping URL in the advert item that it is rendering the advert to the user. It is as simple and complex as that. What this doesn't take into account is the method by which the advert is placed in the RSS feed to begin with. That's where a smart indexing engine like Google comes in. I should be able to send it my post via XML-RPC, it crunches my post, and returns the best advert via XML-RPC.

posted: 10:54:07 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

I started studying for the Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) a couple of weeks ago. I was amazed to find that a lot of the topics covered in the Common Body of Knowledge (CBK) are pretty familiar, making the whole process a lot more tolerable. I have never been one for certifications. However, I am beginning to understand that they are a tool for communicating my credentials with people who don't understand the skills and experience I have.

posted: 10:33:22 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()    

I spent the better part of this weekend moving from my Powerbook G4 to a new ThinkPad X31. This is the second time in a year that I have changed laptops. This move was precipitated by my new job. No matter how you look at it, changing machines is no fun. It seems I've become a pro at moving between machines. I start by making a list of things that need to be done in the order they need to be accomplished. My list usually starts with installing new applications on the target machine and testing each of them. I then get simple file moves out of the way. Next are application specific data migrations, such as Radio, email, databases, etc. As the data for each application is moved, I test the application to make everything is working properly. Once I check off each application, the target machine should be ready for use. This entire process can take up to three days. I am still working out bugs today.

posted: 3:22:32 PM  permalink  trackback ()  comments ()