(See? I promised my next post wouldn't be about gigs.)

I realized a few months ago that, unlike pretty much everyone else I know, I don't regularly use an RSS reader. Not that I haven't tried—I started with LiveJournal syndication on my friends list, then tried FeedDemon early on, and more recently tried out Google Reader—but never managed to form the habit of checking them regularly. Both of them are fine apps; the problem was with me. Every time I sat down and saw that I had a gazillion unread items in my hundreds of feeds, I didn't know where to start. Eventually I just gave up trying to keep up.

Around the same time I came to this realization, Adobe AIR 1.0 was publicly released. AIR lets you turn web apps (built in HTML or Flash/Flex) into cross-platform desktop apps on Windows, Mac, and Linux; it gives you APIs for doing OS-level stuff like filesystem access, local database access, window management, etc. I wanted to try to write an AIR app just for fun, and it occurred to me that I might be able to make something that would solve my RSS problem.

The result is Snackr, a ticker-like widget that lives on the bottom (or side) of your screen and scrolls random items from your RSS feeds. (It's called "Snackr" because it lets you nibble on your feeds. Guffaw.) Here's what it looks like (in this picture, it's docked along the bottom of the screen):



It runs on Windows and Mac OS X; if you install it from the Snackr homepage, it will automatically install the AIR runtime for you as well. It also runs on Linux if you install the Linux AIR alpha from Adobe Labs.

I'm actually finding Snackr really useful—it helps me keep up with blogs I want to keep up with, and also gives me a great smattering of items from sources I wouldn't normally read regularly. If you try it out, let me know if you like it.

Tags: flex, geek

[Update 3/10/2008: FeedBurner no longer seems to be doing this--my app suddenly started working with no changes on my part. Odd.]

When I try to access a FeedBurner feed from my Flex app, FeedBurner decides to hand me an HTML version of the feed, instead of, you know, the frickin' feed. Of course, if I go to the same URL in Firefox, it gives me the right thing. What do I have to do to get FeedBurner to realize that I actually want XML?

[Addendum: I know I can append "?format=xml" to the URL, and I guess I could just automatically add that onto any URLs I get from FeedBurner. But if I go to the base URL from Firefox, FeedBurner knows how to hand it XML; I want to figure out how it's doing that, so my feedreader will work with other sites that try to do the same trick (I've noticed at least one other site doing it).]

Tags: geek, inter-nets[tm], lazyweb

Dear Professor Lazyweb,

Let's say that, for some stupid reason, I'm thinking of implementing Yet Another Blog-Aggregator-Type Thingy that I want to work with most blogs and syndication feeds that exist today. Which formats do I need to support? RSS 0.91? RSS 1.0? RSS 2.0? Atom? Others?

(I know I probably also want to support OPML for importing a list of feeds as well.)

Regards,

nj

Tags: geek, inter-nets[tm], lazyweb

In the house we're moving to, the various devices that need wireless access are going to be more spread out than in our current house, so I'm thinking one wireless router isn't going to cut it. I currently have a Linksys WRT54G.

The obvious thing to do is buy a range extender ($99). But it seems like just picking up another WRT54G would be cheaper (on sale various places for around $50).

Is there some way to set up a second router to basically act like a range extender? From my (very limited) understanding of IP routing, it seems like the standard way to get two routers to talk is to have them own different subnets, and then set up a static route between them. I'm fine trying to figure out how to set that up (assuming it's fairly straightforward), but I'm wondering if there's a more seamless way to do it, so it looks like they're basically sharing the same network (the same way a range extender would).

If I do end up carving them into different subnets, should I just make them each be in the 192.168.0 range (e.g. 192.168.0.[0-127] and 192.168.0.[128-255]), with subnet mask 255.255.255.128?

Tags: geek, lazyweb

While rummaging through boxes in preparation for our impending move, I discovered a 4mm backup tape from when I was leaving SGI in 1996. I probably made the tape on an Indy.

I'm guessing there are places out there that I can throw money at to extract the data from the tape onto some more usable medium like a CD-R or DVD-R. Does anyone know of a company that will do this at a reasonable price?

Tags: geek, lazyweb

People who clearly expected to make a lot of money selling Wiis on eBay (because they set their "Buy It Now" prices at $600 or $700, or set reserve prices too high) are only getting $350 for them. I guess they weren't paying attention to all the news that suggested Nintendo is shipping enough consoles to meet demand over the next few weeks.

(SSC: I dropped by a Target before it opened yesterday to see if I could get one, but I was 10 people too late.)

Tags: gadgets, geek, idiocy

People finally discover one reason why paying lots of real money for objects in a virtual world is stupid.

Tags: geek, idiocy, inter-nets[tm]

The project I've been working on for the past year and a half, Adobe Flex Builder 2, has just gone out the door, along with the rest of the Flex product line. (Actually, it went out the door last Friday, but is officially available today.) If you build web apps with any kind of complex UI, or if you do Flash web app development, you should really check it out--download the free Flex SDK or a trial of Flex Builder.

As part of the launch, an article I wrote for the Flex Developer Center on creating graphical skins for Flex apps is now live.

And, just for the heck of it, I'm starting a work-related blog, much ado about something. Now I have two blogs I can let languish for long periods of time.

Tags: flex, geek, work

I have an iPod which doesn't have enough capacity to hold my entire music library. If I uncheck a bunch of tunes in my library, is there a way to get iTunes to tell me the total size of the checked tunes? I can't figure out how, so it's just a guessing game trying to figure out how much more stuff I have to uncheck before it will fit.

(Up until now, I've been using the "playlist sync" method to get around this, since it will actually tell you how much stuff is in a playlist. But I'd rather default to new music being in the list, and then finding older stuff to remove, as opposed to having to remember to always drag new stuff into the playlist I'm syncing to.)

Tags: geek

When Arthur C. Clarke said that any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic, I think he must have meant that it would be impossible to understand rationally, unpredictable, and occasionally dangerous.

Tags: geek, silly