racoma.com.phJ. Angelo Racoma on technology, economics, writing, problogging, and getting things done

It’s april fools day!  Reading through my favorite RSS
aggregator and a couple of other sites/blogs, I came up with this
aggregation of my current thoughts:

Newsgator vs. Bloglines

I prefer bloglines because:

1. It’s a free service
2. It’s easier to use
3. I can add just any site that generates XML feeds
4. I prefer the cleaner, more straightforward interface
5. I prefer the more straightforward registration
6. In general, I like the features better

I wonder why Newsgator is more popular.  Or as it claims in its website.  Anyway, check out my feeds
(these also appear as links in my left sidebar).  I find RSS
publication a really nifty feature by sites and blogs.  Never
before has content been so easy to aggregate and read in one
channel.  Of course, I still DO visit blogs directly, and that’s
when I find the content to be interesting (and usually, I only prefer a
summary of content to be displayed in Bloglines to save on bandwidth
and time).

Online registration forms

I just registered with Newsgator a few minutes ago, and it just dawned
upon me that most online registrations come with an “I have read the
terms and conditions” checkbox that users have to tick before clicking
the send/apply/next button.  I wonder if this makes the terms and
conditions an afterthought that users would only consider when problems
arise.  Of course, the form links to the actual terms and
conditions page, but I find it cumbersome to have to click on the link;
besides, how sure is reader that the page will not load in the same
window and that the data already encoded would not mysteriously
disappear?  I usually middle-click links (to open in a new tab
under Firefox)
but how many people do that?  I think it would be better if the
text of the terms and conditions were included in the signup page
itself (in a separate scrollable text box), for ease of reference.

Piracy

It’s a very sensitive issue, especially with us Filipinos.  Joey Alarilla posts again on the subject in his blog, where he responds to a post by Lyndon Gregorio in his own blog (a re-post of an email actually) which initially responded to Joey’s earlier inq7.net article (and also a blog post) on piracy, which I had earlier posted on. 
Confusing?  Click on the links to confuse yourself even
more.  Better yet, use firefox so you can instead middle-click or
ctrl-click and just shift across the tabs (way better than having to
navigate several windows under IE).

I feel that I have to mediate somehow, since it was I who introduced Lyndon to blogging, and it may have been my blog post that led him to read the inq7.net article, and since I’d been corresponding with Joey every now and then on blogging and other matters since he commented on a September 2004 post on the J Spot, which was then hosted with blogspot.  Anyway, I’m an avid reader of both Joey’s INQ7 articles and Lyndon’s Beerkada comic strip.

VOIP

VOIP (or
Voice-Over-Internet Protocol) is the wave of the future, IMHO, or at
least among the cool things we would expect to enjoy once the
technology matures.  At work, we commonly use VOIP to correspond
with overseas clients.  It had been illegal here to use VOIP for
commercial purposes (i.e. selling it as a service to consumers) unless
one has a telco franchise, until the National Telecommunications Commission announced that it plans to rule VOIP as a value-added-service, and can hence be offered by entities other than telcos (news here and here).  However, it may still be premature to celebrate, as stated by Atty. JJ Disini in his blog and Erwin Oliva in an inq7.net article.  Knowing the major telcos, we can indeed expect them to question this ruling.

Legal issues aside, VOIP is cool!  For instance, FWD (Free World Dialup) users may be called from any FWD-compatible software client or VOIP phone or thru the web via browser at http://fwd.pulver.com/callme.php
(sadly, the web client is only available to IE users, since it uses
ActiveX).  If I’m online (as can be seen in my right sidebar)
correspondents anywhere in the world with a fast-enough connection can
contact me at my FWD # (635397).

Isn’t that great?

If only WiFi hotspots were as wide-ranging and common as mobile
cell sites, and wireless connections were free or dirt-cheap,
WiFi-enabled PDAs and mobile phones would be the norm for calling and
messaging.  Imagine that.

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