Dear Reader,

I just love the Japanese… Robots that help out elderly people. It’s lovely!

So whenever my girlfriend is not behaving “correctly”, from now on I start threatening her with “Robot Replacement”…

Hope that helps

Thank you.

Dear Reader,

Quite a number of (not-so-tech) friends of mine asked me to put a quick RSS Client Tutorial with a few examples on this blog. So I am happy to do so.

Note: This article is targeted at end users who whish to subscribe to RSS feeds, not users who want to learn how to produce RSS themselves. Those should maybe check out pages like this one.

So, let’s start: RSS is an abbreviation for whatever. It doesn’t matter. What you have to understand is what it is and how to use it. If you are interested in the content of a particular website, you usally have to go there from time to time in order to see if any updates happened. When the number of those pages rises, you would have to remember all those pages. “That’s just too much for the brain”, some people thought.

So they went out and defined what is called RSS. It is a certain “XML grammar”, nothing more. But the way it is used helps managing all the webpage updates of interest, without any pain on the brain. Think of RSS like a newspaper subscription. Without your interference, the newspaper just keeps coming and coming. As long as you pay the invoice that is.

Some webpages decide to offer RSS subscriptions to their visitors. All that they have to do for it, is to publish a link where some nerdy xml file lives. Whenever a change is done to their webpage, that file changes a bit too. Have a look at the RSS file for this page:

http://www.theyellowmarker.org/blog/feed/

Pretty, isn’t it? Now of course nobody wants to read this. After all it is just another webpage that people would have to check from time to time. So this alone doesn’t solve the problem. What is needed on the other hand is a client program. A program that is installed on the end users computer. This program then does periodic checks of that page and notices any changes. (The reason the format is so ugly for humans is the exact reason why machines find it easy to read).

There are many programs out there. Standalone programs like RssReader, online readers, such as the Google-Reader that comes along with your google account and such readers that are integrated into the programs you use everyday, like email clients and browsers.

For example, if Firefox detects an RSS link on a page, it will display the “orange RSS Icon” on the right side of the adress, like in the picture below:

By clicking that symbol (the upper one), you add a “dynamic bookmark” to your bookmarks. It will then appear like the symbol in the lower circle. By clicking on it, you will always see the latest topics, like on the picture below:

So whenever the editors of the page put a new topic online, your list in your browser will grow accordingly.

I personaly prefer to use my mail client, which happens to be Thunderbird. I think this is most convinient, because the “news” pop in as if they were new mail. Let me show you how to setup “RSS Accounts” in Thunderbird.

For example, to subscribe to new entries (or comments) on this page, you would have to find out where the RSS-XML file lives on this website. You do this by “finding” some indication of RSS, in this case on the top-right side:

By clicking on “Entries”, you will get the URL, the adress of the RSS-XML: http://www.theyellowmarker.org/blog/feed/ This you have to copy, the adress not the page content, and tell it Thunderbird like this: Go to the menu Tools -> Account Settings… Then say “Add Account…”. Choose “RSS News & Blogs”

Then click “next” a few times. You will get a new top level folder on the right side panel inside thunderbird that will look a little bit like this:

Right click “News & Blogs” or whatever you chose to call it and select “Manage Subscriptions”.

Choose “Add”.

And paste the RSS-XML URL in that you found previously. - That’s it. From now on, whenever the authors of your chosen RSS supported webpage change their content, you will almost instantly notice it…

So next time I startup Thunderbird, I will get this message

[to recurse is fun ]

So you understand RSS now. To summarize, it is a webpage that machines can easily read. The machines who do the reading work like email programms that check that webpage form time to time and let you know if change happened. That’s all.

Also notice that there is an extension to “frozen” RSS, called Atom (RFC 4287)

Thank you.

Dear Reader,

Ok. EDV is out. It is the german short for “Elektronische Daten Verarbeitung”. Thats like “Electronic Data Processing” in English. Almost as old school as “the EVA principle”. First time I heard it was once when I took a walk with my dad, back in the 80ies. He told me about DOS, Norton Commander, POKE and REM…

Please don’t try to find a job with these abbreviations. It won’t work.
Just saw it on austrian TV. The guy, age 52, does EDV… no fucking way!!!

P.S: Indian friends, please don’t worry, you were well secured by the cold war at the time. So please don’t bother to read/learn about it. It is VERY MUCH OKAY, if you don’t know about the C64 and the pre-win3.11. Not to worry…

P.P.S: The chat I watched was on christian “free” (aka mostly exremist) chruches who’s members don’t want to make around before the lord doesn’t agree. More on this topic later.

P.P.P.S: “EVA” is even better than EDV, funwise: It means “Eingabe-Verarbeitung-Ausgabe”, in English: “Input-Processing-Output”. Imagine, that is just about the most old school machine one can imagine. A very easy view that doesn’t help your understanding any more. Monkeys trying to use typewriters…

Thank you.

Dear Reader,

Well well… just been watching a program on BBC World. Appartenly the second fast growing economy, that is India, after China of course, is running into a shortage of IT professionals. They will face a shortage of IT-savy people in the next few years, they say… well that is if the expected growth rate is to be as predicted. And only then. On the other hand it means, India is still producing too cheap. The bubble is still expanding. There will come a time, when indias price level will be high enough, so that it will come apparent, that masses alone cannot do the job alone. In high price/labour level countries, creativity is what you get paid for in the IT sector, not slogging.

When the internet bubble bursted, invenstment went down on IT. Leaving a whole lot of people unemployed who got used to big salaries in the boom but who actually had too little eduction in computer science, or none at all, in order to survive the transition to reduced demand and hence to better educated employees.

In 2000, lots of people used to be professionals in something far form IT, like gardening. But at the time, when the CEO entered the conference room, overlooking the garden in front of the lobby, he used to go: “Who the hell, employed the gardener! We have IT workplaces unused! If the guy can cut a tree, he must also be able to use a mouse! I want to see THAT guy out at the customers site by next week! AT THE LATEST!”

The downside to this story is that, at least here in Switzerland, quit often some ex-IT people who happend to realise that they couldn’t keep up with their new standard of living, go totally crazy and started killing their families and so on. It happend often here after the bubble crush… (There were lots of discussions on this in the national newspapers with topics like this: “how dangerous are IT guys?” However, they didn’t see the connection to the Internet bubble crush. They thought the IT employee is a potential killer by nature. Oh well…)

So my Indian fellows, I have seen a lot of eagerness in learning lots of stuff, “EVERYTHING” if possible, amongst you fellows, when I visited Bangalore in late 2005. However, those of you who want to make it into the next round, those of you who want to survive the thinning out will have to take the next step. And this will happen due to increased standards of living in India (The IT centers Bangalore, Chennai, …) in the long run and may even sooner happen due to the Chinese economy that is catching up (and that is still not running short on IT staff - yet - as YOU are…)

Learning books by heart will not help you then. There has to be genuine creativity. Unfortunatly one cannot learn that. And the harder one tries to pretend it, the worse it gets to have to witness it.

Here my advice on behalf of creativiy is: less is more.

P.S.: But that just holds true for India and China. In the relaxed world, the part with the lazy teenagers, the U.S. and Europe, for them my advice is: more is more and even more is better but probably still not enough in the long run - You savy Indian guys who read the text books on macroeconomics and social sciences (and the purely creative minds) got the clue, right?

Thank you.