Francis Shanahan[.com] » zollage

Before I Forget: BusinessWeek

Francis — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:20:00 +0000

Before I forget; Today I took a call with Olga Kharif from BusinessWeek [LINK]. She’s doing a piece on social networking and Google, specifically Orkut. I doubt I’ll be quoted but will watch out for the article in any case. Here’s a link to the last time [LINK] I was interviewed by her colleague Robert Hof [LINK].

This Blog Nominated in Irish Blog Awards

Francis — Mon, 12 Feb 2007 06:25:00 +0000

In the words of Pat Ingolsby, welcome to my head, please remove your shoes.

The Irish Blog Awards are currently open for voting and this blog is nominated in the Technology category [LINK]

It’s nice to be nominated in the Technology category but more so it’s nicer to be nominated in the IRISH technology category. It’s also a great way to uncover other Irish bloggers in this space.

I often struggle with categorizing this blog as it covers a weird mix of stuff.
The list includes various projects I’ve written such as the Audiovox 8600 cell phone utility [LINK], the Movie making Screen Capture tool [LINK], and RoboCast [LINK]

I’ve screwed around with Ajax quite a bit resulting in Zollage [LINK] and Zuggest [LINK] among others.

But it’s not all software, I also blog on Computer building [LINK] and my book [LINK] along with CardSpace and how to Boot Linux from your MP3 Player [LINK].

But this is a full-service blog so along with technology stuff, you also get into things like Wood Working [LINK] and Gingerbread [LINK].

The occasional thing I do gets mentioned in BusinessWeek [LINK] or Ajax Patterns [LINK] or even Sun’s training material (slide 9) [LINK].

So if you like this blog…VOTE FOR ME!!! [LINK].

Voting is easy, go here [http://www.awards.ie/vote/], put your name and email in and scroll down to "Best Technology Blog/Blogger" and pick my name from the list.

Voting will close at 5pm on Friday February 16th.

Here’s the Tech Nominees…

Best Technology Blog/Blogger – Sponsored by Bitbuzz

Zuggest featured in Ajax Patterns Book

Francis — Thu, 26 Oct 2006 06:51:00 +0000

The recent book by Michael Mahemoff entitled Ajax Design Patterns featured a write-up of my Amazon search utility, Zuggest.

Zuggest implements the common-sense idea of submission throttling. Rather than submit a query for every single key-stroke the user hits, it waits until you’re done typing and then searches.

It’s always surprising and interesting to me to find that one man’s common sense is another man’s design pattern but there you go.

Read the sample chapter [Link] and search for "zuggest".

My own book: Amazon.com Mashups will also mention Zuggest along with TagLines and Zollage and so on so you can make your choice as to which one you buy.

And finaly a note to AUTHORS: If you are planning on including a reference to one of my applications, that’s great and thanks! But please drop me a note to let me know!!!! Common courtesy and all that.

Lance Weiler, Head Trauma and my First Podcast

Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:26:00 +0000

Lance Weiler is a film maker and fulltime blogger. His latest movie entitled “Head Trauma” (http://headtraumamovie.com/) looks really professionally done and I’m looking forward to its release in October.

Lance and I had a discussion wherein he asked me a lot of questions on Baebo and Zollage a few days back and he has posted the podcast on his website. This is the first time I’ve been podcasted!

Check it out.

This Little Blog of Mine, I’m Gonna Let It Shine.

Francis — Wed, 11 Jan 2006 19:09:00 +0000

What a crap blogger I am eh?

It’s been 10 days since my last blog-a-boo. Oh well, that’s what happens when you have kids. Time management is critical and sleep is now a major focus of every day. It’s amazing how little you actually need to function. I say function but then again, was I ever really firing on all cylinders to begin with? Who knows.

Hopefully in another few months Ethan’s stomach will grow to the point where he can ingest enough food to sustain him through the night. That’s my engineer’s view of how to determine when a baby will sleep. In the meantime we’re feeding every couple of hours and the little mite has gained an amazing 2lbs already. Way-to-go champ!

Now, on to some news.

Seems my forays into the world of mashups, ajax, web services and remixes has attracted some attention. What started as some idle curiosity as to how best to integrate web services and xml has produced some interesting experiments: Taglines, Zuggest, Zollage, Baebo to name a few. Just when you thought the party was over, the mainstream media has taken hold.

David Berlind and Doug Gold have announced the first Mashup Conference or Un-conference in San Fran this year, read all about it here: http://mashupcamp.com/. The notion of an un-conference is quite unique and echos the underground nature of mashups themselves quite appropriately. Let’s hope they get some funding though, who wants a conference without swag right?

David and Doug asked me to go and I’d love to attend but it’s just too hectic right now on the home front. Family comes first. Combined with Ethan, I’ve taken on one other project which will likely keep me up nights long after Ethan’s sleeping through them. More on that once it’s confirmed.

I’d imagine my buddy Jeff Barr of Amazon will attend and Robert Hof of Business Week also. Should be a great networking opportunity.

I’d also be very interested in any discussions on how to monetize mashups. Perhaps they’ll capture session notes and publish on the wiki. We’ll see.

It’s surprising how many folks I’ve consistently exchanged emails with but never met in person. Hoping to rectify that in the coming year.

Lastly, Baebo has had both good and bad reactions. People like the functionality but are violently repulsed by my crappy user interface design. Some have been quite vociferous about it. Oh well. So I’m in the process of re-designing the UE.

The 2nd thing about it is that it’s been so popular that I’ve already used up the monthly limit of API calls for EBAY. That SUCKS because the whole point is to query multiple sites at the same time. Yahoo, Amazon, Google, Youtube and Technorati continue to work but if you’re wondering why searching EBAY returns no results, that’s why.

Zollage mentioned in BusinessWeek

Fri, 15 Jul 2005 13:40:00 +0000

Happy Day! Robert Hof has written an article on “Internet Mash-Ups” called Mix, Match, And Mutate which appears in this week’s BusinessWeek. He was nice enough to call me regarding Zollage which I’d done a while back (thanks Rob). Here’s the Direct Link to what Robert wrote.

Zollage was mentioned in the article’s companion piece which is a slide-show entitled “Sampling the Web’s Best Mash-Ups”.

Among the list are

Quite a nice thing for my little site to be listed along with these other excellent examples.

Article: Building Rich Internet Experiences with XmlHttpRequest

Thu, 30 Jun 2005 23:07:00 +0000

I’ve written the following article which appears in Visual Studio .NET Developer July 2005.
The article covers XmlHttpRequest and the notion of RIA(Rich Internet Applications).
Click here to read the article.

The techniques presented in this article are in use in Zollage, Zuggest and my Ajax Enhanced Blog. I’m sure you can dream up some other innovative uses.

As always feedback is appreciated.

Shanahan in the Seattle Business Journal

Mon, 25 Apr 2005 13:31:00 +0000

Some more blatant self-promotion here: The Seattle Business Journal, a prominent local paper in the WA region has done a small piece on the Amazon Zollage technology experiment.

If anyone would like a poster, I’d be happy to produce the electronic format for you to take to Kinko’s.

Sort of embarrassing in one sense but think at some point everyone needs to toot their own horn. I don’t think it’s too much of a transgression.

Bloglines and Visual Studio 2005

Wed, 20 Apr 2005 15:30:00 +0000

This is interesting. Today I noticed a referral from Stephen O’Grady (must be Irish?). He listed this blog as one of “Five Developer Blogs You Should Read”. Very flattering.

Upon searching in Bloglines it looks like there’s 11 subscribers to this feed. That’s cool. Thanks for the mention Stephen, I’ll definitely be blog-rolling the other developers on the list.

In other news: Yesterday my download of Visual Studio 2005 Beta 2 finished, all 2.7GB of it.

After a quick update to Service Pack 2 on my machine, Studio installed with only 1 error. The error I got was that SQL Server 2005 could not be installed. I think this was due to the fact that I have SQL Server 2000 on this machine. I was able to install SQL Server Express edition side-by-side with SQL Server 2000 but it looks like the 2005 Bits are not as easy-going.

Some preliminary testing last night indicates that the Beta 2 will work with SQL Server 2000 so I think I’ll leave well enough alone. I’ve already played with SQL 2005 (on a machine I no longer have access to) so I know what to expect there.

The next few days I’ll be playing with the drag&drop databinding, enhanced visual styles support and a few of the new controls.

Today, M/Soft launched a free learning site: http://msdn.microsoft.com/elearning/. By taking a course you’ll be entered in a drawing to win a 50″ Sony Vega tv along with other home-audio goodies.

Last item for today: Last week I was interviewed by Carol Tice, a reporter for the Seattle Puget Sound Business Journal. She’s planning on running a piece on Amazon Zollage. Pretty cool. Should hit the streets soon.

Amazon Zollage Gallery

Francis — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 23:23:00 +0000

A very quick update: I’ve created the following six “Ajax Interactive Images” or whatever you’d like to call them. Still plenty more enhancements and tweaks. My next target I think will be flickr.

Some new pics of The Syd now that the weather’s warming up. Enjoy.