Nick Bradbury

Why do firewalls have to be such a PITA?

I'm in a ranting mood today, so it's the perfect time for me to complain about the state of firewalls.  Specifically, about how they're an incredible pain for desktop developers and support technicians to deal with.

Here's the deal: every single time a new version of FeedDemon is released, we get complaints that it no longer connects to the Internet.  And every single time the culprit has been a firewall which silently blocks the new version.  Now, I can certainly understand why a firewall would warn the user that an executable has changed - it should do that - but I fail to understand why it would block a changed application without informing the user.  As far as the end user is concerned, the application just doesn't work.

Even worse is that some software firewalls continue to block applications even after they've been disabled.  So savvy end users who disable their firewall in an attempt to determine whether it's blocking an application are led to believe that the firewall isn't the problem, so it must be the application's fault.  And unbelievably, we've even seen ZoneAlarm continue to block applications despite the fact that it has been uninstalled (figure that one out, folks)!

This is so clearly insane that I have to think it's on purpose, like it's part of a vast Web 2.0 conspiracy to get people to stop using desktop applications by making them impossible to support.

OK, so maybe that's a stretch, but visit the support forum of any desktop application that connects to the Internet, and I'll bet you'll find people complaining that they upgraded to the newest version of the application and now it won't connect.  This situation is wasting countless hours for end users, programmers and support staff alike.

Surely firewall developers can do better than this?

NewsGator Support Blog

If you use FeedDemon or any other NewsGator product or service, be sure to subscribe to the new NewsGator Support Announcements blog.  Our support team uses this blog for general support-related announcements, including new product releases.

Ray Harryhausen Weekend

This weekend I introduced my kids to the magic of Ray Harryhausen, who created some of the world's greatest movie monsters (including my personal favorite, the cyclops from The 7th Voyage of Sinbad).

I loved monster movies when I was a kid, so it was great fun watching some of them again while curled up with my children.  I was afraid that they'd be unimpressed by the rubbery creatures - after all, they've both been exposed to the technical wizardry of the Star Wars films - but they were as spellbound as I was by Harryhausen's creations.

My five-year-old daughter Hannah in particular was thrilled by them.  At 6:00 this morning she crawled out of bed, crept into my office, and asked, "Can I watch Sinbad again?"  So I shut down my email, and we started our day by watching The Golden Voyage of Sinbad.

FeedDemon Feature Poll

We're running a simple poll in our forums to find out which feature request is the most popular of all.  If you're a FeedDemon user, please take a minute to let us know which feature you want the most.

Special Secret Feature Inside

Of all the new features in FeedDemon 2.1, the one I use the most is pretty well hidden (and I should probably correct that in the next release).

The feature is "Mark page read and goto next page," which is accessed by hitting Ctrl+D.  If you're more of a mouser than a keyboarder, you can add a toolbutton to the toolbar above the subscription tree which performs the same action (if you're not sure how to add a toolbutton, all you have to do is click the arrow at the far right of the toolbar).

This simple feature saves me a lot of keystrokes and mouse clicks.  In one single action, it takes care of marking items as read and moving to the next page in the newspaper.  Even better, if you're on the last page of a newspaper, it automatically moves you to the next feed which contains unread items.

If you're using FeedDemon 2.1, give this feature a try - I think it will make it even quicker for you to move through all your unread items.

Link Dump: November 20, 2006

• Beneath the Metadata: Some Philosophical Problems with Folksonomy
• It's a Malformed World
• Al Jazeera English RSS feed (via Kevin Burton)
• Brightcove.com goes full-screen
• The Laws of Simplicity
• Data Portability
• 10 Tips for Moving From Programmer to Entrepreneur
• Google… the OS for Advertising
• YouTube: Red Hot Chili Peppers - Higher Ground
• YouTube: Rush - YYZ
• YouTube: The Beatles - Revolution

ANN: FeedDemon 2.1 Now Available

I'm pleased to announce that the final release of FeedDemon 2.1 is now available.  Changes in FeedDemon 2.1 include:

• Pagination: FeedDemon's newspapers can now span multiple pages, which provides a significant performance boost when viewing a large number of items. Note that the number of articles per page can be customized on the Reading tab in FeedDemon's options.
• Popular Topics: Select "Popular Topics" from the Browse menu or click the "Popular Topics" toolbutton on the toolbar above FeedDemon's browser to see which are the most frequently linked articles across your subscriptions.
• Redesigned subscription search: Hit F3 to search your subscriptions, and limit your search to any feed or folder.
• Security lockdown: FeedDemon now completely disables scripting in its newspaper view, so even if malicious script finds its way into someone's feed, FeedDemon won't execute it.
• Keyword highlighting in watches and subscription search results.
• Keyboard navigation of news items and single-key shortcuts when the newspaper has the focus.
• Integration with Windows Live Writer. If you don't already have a blog publishing tool configured in FeedDemon, FeedDemon will automatically detect Live Writer. Otherwise, click the "Auto-detect" button on the "Configure Blog Publishing Tools" dialog to add Live Writer.
• YouTube Video Search
• Send any article to Digg
• ...and the usual assortment of performance improvements and bug fixes!

For a complete list of changes and fixes in this release, please refer to the FeedDemon 2.1 release notes.  And if you have any comments or questions about the new version, let us know by posting to our support forums.

Enjoy :)

Web 3.0 Does Not Validate

This weekend much of the geekosphere was buzzing about the "Web 3.0" article in the NY Times, but from where I stand, Web 3.0 does not validate.

Apparently, Web 3.0 is the latest re-branding of the Semantic Web, an attempt to turn the Web of documents into a Web of data. Don't get me wrong - the goals of the Semantic Web are good ones, and I believe many of those goals will be met in my lifetime. But too much of the Semantic Web relies on data being valid - that is, valid XML, XHTML, RDF, etc. - and too many of us will never publish valid data.

Unless the world comes up with a way to punish those who publish invalid data, invalid data will always exist. Yeah, companies like Google could be the punishers by refusing to index data that isn't valid, but what are the chances of that happening? Google's Web search is successful in part because it makes sense of the chaos of the invalid Web. Why mess with that formula?

If the Semantic Web hopes to exist, it's going to have to deal with invalid HTML, badly-formed XML, and RSS with vague entity escaping. It's also going to have to filter out every new variation of spam, and be smart enough to know when people lie.

The Semantic Web may happen, but if it does, it's going to be a helluva lot messier than the architects would like.

Hate Mail

OK, I'm used to getting an assortment of smear-laden campaign flyers around election time, but today my mailbox is practically stuffed with them.  Only one of the mailings even mentioned what the candidate stood for - the rest were filled with talk about the "questionable values" of the other candidate.

It's getting increasingly rare that I vote for someone instead of against someone, and sadly, this election season looks to be no different.

ANN: FeedDemon 2.1 RC1 (Build 2.1.0.8)

FeedDemon 2.1 Release Candidate 2 is now available - and Glenn Slaven has already figured out how to tap into the new "Send To" feature.