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Do you have too many RSS feeds?

Do you not have enough time to read the RSS feeds that you do have?

Do you feel overwhelmed every time you open your RSS reader or Google Reader and think to yourself, “Life is too short to be this overwhelmed!”

Well, ladies and germs, have I stumbled upon a solution looking for this particular problem, called “Feedly.”

Feedly is a Firefox plug-in that turns all those multiple RSS feeds and Twitterstreams into your own personal online newspaper.

First, some dependencies: You need to use Firefox, as well as Google Reader and/or Twitter.

Why somebody didn’t think of this sooner I’m not sure, but it’s definitely an idea whose time has come.

I have been keeping an eye out for a tool like this for some time.  All those RSS feeds piling up in Google Reader and NetNewsWire, and no simple interface by which to scan them all. 

It felt like constant information overload.

And then just yesterday afternoon my longtime ibm.com amigo Kapil Tweeted about Feedly and I had to check it out.

Once you’ve downloaded the plug-in, and entered your Google account information, Feedly simply grabs all your various feeds and pulls them into a newspaper like digest (in fact, they call it “MyDigest.”)

It provides an easy-to-scan view of all your feeds, pulling out pictures and captions to highlight along the way.

It also allows you to highlight feeds using a star (not unlike Google Reader), so those you want to prioritize come closer to the top. 

But, you can get into the long tail of your feeds as well by going deeper into the pages of “your” digest (kind of like going deeper into the Google results pages).

If you’re a Firefox and Google Reader user, this one’s a no brainer.

Lest anyone accuse me of being biased towards golf, I wanted to quickly get this post out to remind everyone that the United States Open tennis championships kick off today.

I love, love, love the U.S. Open.

The U.S. Open was the very first professional sports event I attended when I first moved to Woodside, Queens NY in 1984 to attend college at NYU.

I literally had just arrived off the plane a few days before, never even having visited NY, and I stumbled my way over to the 7 subway line, completely clueless about how to get around NY, and somehow found my way out to the U.S. National Tennis Center.

I think I actually walked up to the ticket window to buy tickets (you could do that back then, although these days I recommend you visit this Web page to find out how to get the best seats), and I spent the better part of an afternoon watching Chris Evert Lloyd, among others, play on the former Louis Armstrong stadium court at the U.S. National Tennis Center.

If you've never seen a professional tennis tournament up close and personal, I highly recommend you do so during your time on this planet.

There's nothing like seeing two tennis pros whack that little yellow ball back and forth a gazillion miles an hour, a constant mixed barrage of strategy and tactics blurring almost faster than your mind can process it all.

There truly is nothing like it.

In 1984, the only technology option for those not watching the tournament in person was to watch it on TV.

I remember sitting in my small basement apartment as Jimmy Connors made easy work of Ivan Lendl that particular year, 6–3, 6–4, 6–1.

Today, you have options for taking in the U.S. Open...lots of them, and several of them brought to you by IBM.

First and foremost, the IBM-powered U.S. Open Web site, where you can check out Matt Cronin's first-round men's picks.

But also visit the Mobile section of the site to get this year's iPhone app, which includes live scores, USOpen.org radio (streaming play-by-play coverage), Twitter tweets from official U.S. Open coverage), and even on demand video.

And if you really want to risk being caught by the boss, you can check out live video this year for selective matches.

Of course, nothing beats being there live and in person...but there's a lot of action to cover, so also check out the NY Times' "Straight Sets" blog for some first day recommends.

Technorati Tags: ibm, iphone, tennis, us open, usta

Louisiana's Heath Slocum has to be one of the most relieved golfers on the PGA Tour.

Yesterday, on the final hole of the final round of the PGA Tour's first stop for the FedExCup playoffs, the Barclays, Slocum faced a daunting prospect: Sink that 20-foot putt for par and an outright win or face Tiger Woods, Padraig Harrington, and Ernie Els in a four-way playoff.

He sank the putt.

And this after he barely eked out a playing position (124th out of 125!).

Cinderalla golf at its best, and why the FedExCup continues to breathe new life into the latter part of the golf season.

It was a good thing Slocum sank that putt.

Tiger Woods had been on a tear for most of the last round, until he got to 18 and missed a 7-foot birdie putt that left the gallery gasping in disbelief (as well as those of us at home watching on TV).

But the real star of the weekend had to be the Liberty National golf course in Jersey City, New Jersey.

I never thought I'd see a golf tournament with the looming skyline of Manhattan as part of the mise en scene, or the Statue of Liberty looming behind as a golfer made an approach shot.

It was a breathtaking scene, and definitely provided an excellent theatre for TV golf.

The FedExCup playoffs now heads to its second stop in Norton, Massachusetts, over the long holiday weekend for the Deutsche Bank Championship.

Tiger still leads in the overall FedEx Cup points, and with his win, Slocum jumps from 124th to 3rd.

You can find the full rankings here.

As for my own golf game, it was somewhat inspired yesterday afternoon, probably because the Texas heat had dissipated quite a bit from previous days.

I was playing the Wolfdancer course near Bastrop, Texas, where I hit 9 of 18 greens in regs (which has to be a record for me) off the blue tees (74.3/130 at 6,836 yards) and shot 43-40 for an 83.

Highlights: I hit 3 of the 4 par 3s in regs, nearly drove the 315-yard par 4 15th (I was about 20 yards shy on the left front...hey, it was a great drive, what can I say!?) and birdied the par-5 18th.

My birdie putt on 18 was probably about 5 feet shorter than Slocum's.

Then again, I didn't have the population of the better part of the New York metro area, and the Statue of Liberty, waiting for me to miss.

Technorati Tags: fedexcup, heath slocum, pga tour, turbo golf

Earlier this week, IBM released results from its X-Force 2009 Mid-Year Trend and Risk report.

IBM’s X-Force research team spends its days cataloguing, analyzing, and researching vulnerability disclosures and has been doing so for 12 plus years. 

With now more than 43,000 vulnerabilities catalogued, it has the largest vulnerability database in the world, which helps our researchers to understand the dynamics that make up vulnerability discovery and disclosure.

This year’s results reveal an unprecedented state of Web insecurity.

According to the findings, there has been a 508 percent increase in the number of new malicious Web links discovered in the first half of 2009. 

Yet this problem is no longer limited to malicious domains or untrusted Web sites. The X-Force report notes an increase in the presence of malicious content on trusted sites, including popular search engines, blogs, bulletin boards, personal Web sites, online magazines, and mainstream news sites.

This year, the report also reveals that the level of veiled Web exploits, especially PDF files, are at an all time high, indicating that hackers have continued to increase their sophistication.  PDF vulnerabilities disclosed in the first half of 2009 surpassed disclosures from all of 2008.

It’s not to make you want to print out all those PDF white papers, huh? 

Then again, maybe not.

X-Force director Kris Lamb had this to say about the current state of Web (in)security:

"The trends highlighted by the report seem to indicate that the Internet has finally taken on the characteristics of the Wild West where no one is to be trusted.”

“There is no such thing as safe browsing today and it is no longer the case that only the red light district sites are responsible for malware. We've reached a tipping point where every Web site should be viewed as suspicious and every user is at risk. The threat convergence of the Web ecosystem is creating a perfect storm of criminal activity."

As we’ve seen in recent news, however, Web security isn’t just a matter of browser or client-side issues any longer.  Criminals are leveraging insecure Web applications to target the users of legitimate Web sites.  In fact, the X-Force report found a significant rise in Web application attacks with the intent to steal and manipulate data to take command and control of infected computers.

Take alleged credit card hacker Albert Gonzalez, recently indicted on conspiracy charges for stealing 130 million credit card numbers in the largest credit-card heist on record.

Gonzalez is said to have used SQL injection attacks to “inject” malicious code onto legitimate Websites for the purpose of later extracting credit card information and other personal information. Similar SQL injection attacks rose 50 percent from Q4 2008 to Q1 2009, and then doubled from Q1 to Q2 of this year.

Other midyear X-Force report key findings:

• Vulnerabilities have reached a plateau. There were 3,240 new vulnerabilities discovered in the first half of 2009, an eight percent decrease over the first half of 2008. Trojans account for more than half of all new malware. Continuing the recent trend, in the first half of 2009, Trojans comprised 55 percent of all new malware, a nine percent increase over the first half of 2008. Information-stealing Trojans are the most prevalent malware category.
• Phishing has decreased dramatically. Analysts believe that banking Trojans are taking the place of phishing attacks geared toward financial targets. In the first half of 2009, 66 percent of phishing was targeted at the financial industry, down from 90 percent in 2008. Online payment targets make up 31 percent of the share.
• URL spam is still number one, but image-based spam is making a comeback. After nearing extinction in 2008, image-based spam made a comeback in the first half of 2009, yet it still makes up less than 10 percent of all spam.
• Nearly half of all vulnerabilities remain unpatched. Similar to the end of 2008, nearly half (49 percent) of all vulnerabilities disclosed in the first half of 2009 had no vendor-supplied patch at the end of the period.

Concluded Lamb, "Two of the major themes for the first half of 2009 are the increase in sites hosting malware and the doubling of obfuscated Web attacks. The trends seem to reveal a fundamental security weakness in the Web ecosystem where interoperability between browsers, plugins, content and server applications dramatically increase the complexity and risk.”

“Criminals are taking advantage of the fact that there is no such thing as a safe browsing environment and are leveraging insecure Web applications to target legitimate Web site users."

For more security trends and predictions from IBM, including graphical representations of security statistics, download the 2009 IBM X-Force Mid-Year Trend and Risk Report today.

Dude, I’m gettin’ a Dell!

Actually, I done got one.  I just always wanted to say that and never could.

I was in a meeting in the Bay Area recently and somebody had a real purdy Dell laptop. 

So I thought to myself, “Well, I don’t really need another computer, but that one sure is purdy, and I’d be helping the local Austin economy if I bought one.”

So, I did, via the Dell Outlet site.  It was real easy.

And then I got the call from Citicard about a fraud alert.

A fraud.  With my credit card?  Mon dieu!  I panicked and took the call.

Turns out, Dell had shopped their purchasing to another vendor, one not named Dell.

Well, that was confusing.  But then I finally determined that the purchase in the fraud alert was indeed the one I had made. 

To Citicard, it seemed like an anomalous purchase against my credit card profile, and so they had put a freeze on it just to be safe.

That's fine, that’s the way it’s supposed to work. 

But when I told the Citicard agent to go ahead and put the order through, that all was okay in the world, they told me I had to call Dell.

No you did-n’t.

Uh, I stammered.  You want me to call Dell? 

As in, call them and try to speak to a human being there? 

Why the ---- do you think I ordered this computer via the Web in the first place?  I don't want to talk to anybody from Dell!!!

Haven’t you ever heard of Dell Hell, Lady?

I don’t know what I did to deserve this, but that’s exactly what happened.  Over the next two hours, I called Dell’s 800 numbers three or four times.

Never once were they able to accomplish what’s known in the industry parlance as a “warm transfer.” 

Never once did my confirmation of the order number get successfully transferred from one person to another.

Never once could I find anybody to help me get my credit card approved and the order pushed through.  Not on the first go around, anyhow.

Never once could I get a clear line of sight to get my computer.

Dell had made it clear: They really didn’t want my money.

So much for helping the local Austin economy.

At the end of the day, I thought to myself, maybe I’ve been too hard on them.  Maybe I should give them one more chance.

So, I did.  I called at the end of the day, at the end of the day on a Friday, and I tried one last time.

I explained in plain English, as best I could, what had happened and what I was trying to do, and I said this directly: “I’m giving you people one last chance to take my money.  Do you want to take it or not?”

The dude finally helped me, the order went through, and my new Dell laptop showed up yesterday (a week and a half in advance of the estimated delivery date), and most importantly, just in time for an outage on the VPN that supported my MacBook Pro. 

Dude, I finally got a Dell, and so far, I have to say I really like it and it saved my productivity on Wednesday.

Now I’m just praying that I never, ever have to call Dell’s technical support.  I don't think my blood pressure could take it.

Hello Lotus Notes Community,

As of today, this blog about the design of Lotus Notes is moving to:
www.NotesDesignBlog.com

The contents of this blog will remain here for your reference.

www.MaryBethRaven.com  should already be redirected to www.NotesDesignBlog.com

I'd like to thank the developerWorks folks for hosting us for over 2 years. They have been very responsive to our requests.

As a team, however, we decided to move to the new blog for a variety of reasons, including the fact that we'd have more control over the layout and be able to have little side panels for IdeaJam,  and PlanetLotus. Of course, John Lance is also itching to actually use the new blog template that he designed.

We look forward to continued participation of the Notes community over on the new blog.

Over on his blog, Bruce Elgort asserts that voting on idea jam has come to a halt.

And he asks why. The common consensus appears to be that it's because nobody saw that it made any difference with the product.

That might be a completely valid assertion. I cannot remember when Idea Jam went live. I think it was right around the time that Notes 8.0 shipped, or shortly thereafter.

Let's say it was about a year ago. In that case, it was too late to influence anything in Notes 8.0, and we've shipped only a point release, Notes 8.0.1 in the meantime.

We have been trying to get a few things (most notably the number-one voted client thing, the roaming html signature-- or something like it) into Notes 8.5.

 It still takes a while to get something into a release cycle (We are also working on making them shorter/doing other inventive things).

So please do not abandon voting on Idea Jam just yet,  and don't stop responding to this blog, because your feedback can still honestly make a difference.

Heh. Alan will not be in town on the original date (seems the new job has him traveling already!.. and working hard... he sent me a note about rescheduling at around midnight...)

Please join us onat Flat Top Johnny's on  WEDNESDAY AUGUST 6

Directions: http://flattopjohnnys.com/contact.htm

IBM-ers and non-IBM-ers alike are all invited  HOWEVER, please post a reponse if you plan to come so that we can have an idea of how many people are planning to attend.

(For those IBMers who received an actual LOTUS NOTES calendar invitation, response to that, and not here, please.)

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you there.

Please join us on Wednesday July 23^rd at Flat Top Johnny's in Kendall Square (walking distance from the Cambridge office) to celebrate Alan's time at IBM and his new adventure. The party starts at 5pm, so feel free to drop by whenever is best for you. Rumor has it Johnny's has Canadian beer on tap, so the fun will probably continue well into the night.

Directions: http://flattopjohnnys.com/contact.htm

IBM-ers and non-IBM-ers alike are all invited  HOWEVER, please post a reponse if you plan to come so that we can have an idea of how many people are planning to attend.

(For those IBMers who received an actual LOTUS NOTES calendar invitation, response to that, and not here, please.)

Thanks, and I look forward to seeing you there.

Patient  users,

Notes 8.5 will bring Samantha an improved user experience for setting large fonts.

First, as in previous versions, you can go to your operating system and say to use large fonts.  And this will make the font in your title bar and menu bar larger.

Now, in Notes 8.5, there is a new preference, and she can choose to use normal, large, or extra large fonts, as shown in the picture below.  This changes the fonts in the views (including java views) and forms to large font.

I do realize that Samantha has to go to 2 places to set large font, which is not ideal (but it's a little bit friendlier than an ini setting...). And yes, there is a third place that she can go to set the font family-- the preference called "Basic Notes Client Configuration", which has a "Default Fonts" button that lets Samantha choose her default serif or sans serif font. We did not put the new control there because that dialog pertains ONLY to the "traditional" Notes client, where this new Large font preference pertains to both the old and the new java parts of the client.  Also, I wanted to completely replace that default fonts dialog because it is not clear to Samantha which fonts get affected where, plus she cannot set the point size... but we did not get to fix that part in this release.

I've tried to illustrate what you have to set where in the following picture:

• Provide more ways for users to show they like/dislike things in an article or tutorial.  Currently we have ratings enabled and comments.  Are there other ways you'd like to talk back right at the article or tutorial?
• Recommend similar content based on what you are reading. 
  
• Recommend related community elements, such as forums and wikis
• Show you other dW users who are interested in what you are reading about

• There were 5 million notes created in the last week on this meme alone within FaceBook
• At 10 minutes per note, that is 800,000 hours of collective writing. 
  

• I cursed (silently of course)
• I became irritated
• I trotted off to go find some other site that had the coveted 90 seconds of footage I was looking for.