Francesco's Blog

How much is your blog worth?

Francesco — Fri, 21 Oct 2005 18:30:18 +0000

Ever wondered how much you could gain from selling your blog?

Well, I guess not many people could be interested in a personal blog, but just to start dreaming, Business-opportunities can value your blog.

Butter sculptures

Thu, 20 Oct 2005 15:42:19 +0000

A couple of pictures made in butter!!
Darth Vader

Yoda

Learning C++ and Java… with a board game!

Francesco — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 10:15:57 +0000

Now you no longer need to study those thousand pages’ books to (try to) learn programming languages.
All you need is a table, a few friends and this Computer Programming Board Game.

If only I could be a kid again!

via PopGadget

Rss feeds about everything

Francesco — Wed, 19 Oct 2005 09:28:00 +0000

Interested in Pablo Montoya (F1 driver)?
Want to keep updated about your Honda Civic?
Fanatic about Los Angeles Lakers?
Curious about Paragliding?

You can get rss feeds about all this and a lot more on Topix

100 oldest .com domains

Francesco — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 15:55:11 +0000

Just think that the first .com domain (symbolics.com) has been registered on March 15th 1985. It’s a little older than 20yrs.
While the first I know (xerox.com) was born on January 9th 1986.

Here’s the top ten:

15-Mar-1985 SYMBOLICS.COM

24-Apr-1985 BBN.COM

24-May-1985 THINK.COM

11-Jul-1985 MCC.COM

30-Sep-1985 DEC.COM

07-Nov-1985 NORTHROP.COM

09-Jan-1986 XEROX.COM

17-Jan-1986 SRI.COM

03-Mar-1986 HP.COM

05-Mar-1986 BELLCORE.COM

Here’s the full list.

via BoingBoing

Jakob Nielsen about blog usability

Francesco — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 11:43:49 +0000

Jakob Nielsen (guru of web usability) wrote a top ten list about blog usability.

No author biographies

No author photo

Nondescript posting titles

Links don’t say where they go

Classic hits are buried

The Calendar is the Only Navigation

Irregular publishing frequency

Mixing topics

Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss

Having a domain name owned by a weblog service

Broken bookcase

Francesco — Tue, 18 Oct 2005 09:23:50 +0000

It really looks like a broken bookcase

but if you fill it with books it looks very nice!

You can find it here.

via BoingBoing

Presentazione Zen

Francesco — Mon, 17 Oct 2005 15:02:51 +0000

Presentation Zen is a blog that talks about presentations.
It examines both existing presentation styles (for es: Steve Jobs‘s iPod Video presentation) and new presentation methods (more or less effective).
Check it out!

Misspelled auctions on eBay

Francesco — Sun, 16 Oct 2005 18:27:39 +0000

Everybody makes mistakes.

But if an eBay seller misspells the name of the item he wants to sell, it will be very difficult to get some offers.

But now this site can help.

Just enter the correct word (Nokia, Disney etc) and it will search eBay for items on sale that have misspelled names of what you inserted (Mokia, okia, nikia etc).

So the seller will get some offers, and you will get the item at a very cheap price!

Ben Hammersley small conference in Milan

Francesco — Sat, 15 Oct 2005 19:26:48 +0000

Last thursday evening I attended a meeting organized by Milan Java User Group (JUG).
Title: “RSS and the future of media”
Reporter: Ben Hammersley

Ben is a weird guy. Completely bold, he presented himself with a scottish kilt (and this made me understand his obscure phrase on his website “I’ ve not worn trousers for six months now”), an Apple Powerbook and an iPod.

He has spoken about rss feed, podcasting and the Long Tail.
I had already read something about these subjects, so I hoped he was going to explain them in a thorough way.
Unfortunately the time was too short, so he could only give a very quick panoramic view of everything, leaving many questions unanswered.

I have however discovered what “water cooler programming” means (we’re talking about the tv programs that everybody talks about in the morning, normally during the break around the water cooling dispenser).
Moreover Ben’s words have made me think about the fact that using rss feeds, the content becomes king again. It is no longer lost within a website, but assurges to its own status without frills around to distract the reader.
I hadn’t thought about this, but actually too often a site is evaluated more for how it looks than for what it says. A rss feed allows the reader to concentrate on the content, on the news, not on what’s around it.

So, in the end, I have been a little disappointed because not all subjects have been deeply explained, but I managed to learn some new things all the same and that’s the most important thing.