Sep
20
Sep
18
Feed Ideas: Authenticated and Private RSS
Niall Kennedy has an interesting post on his weblog titled, “Authenticated and private feeds” that reminded me of our early experience with SocialMail. When we launched SocialMail we had a few people who used the platform to publish their personal email via RSS. One prominent venture capital firm made this mistake and very quickly they began to see their emails appear in Technorati. Very quickly they learned what Niall commented about today:
Some syndication feeds are not meant to be displayed for the world to see. Our everyday lives contain private and confidential data we wouldn’t want anyone else to see, and especially not search. There are a few options for trying to keep things private in your feed aggregator but the implementations require proper coding and privacy from all implementors. Examples of private feeds intended for 1:1 communication include bank balances, e-mail notifications, project status, and the latest bids on that big contract. Data in the wrong hands could be dangerous, and many companies will stay away from the feed syndication space until they feel their users’ personal data is secure.
Niall’s post does a great job of summing up the various types of RSS security including: “Security through obscurity”, “Permission-based exclusion” and “HTTP Authentication”. His point is that adoption of RSS (feeds in general) could be significantly enhanced if large publishers knew their client’s data was private and secure. He suggests further “cooperation and collaboration” of security formats to get us past the current fears. Charlie Wood, our buddy from Austin, commented on Niall’s post that his service, Spanning Salesforce, helps add secure feeds to Salesforce.com (http authentication and ssl). He notes:
The problem I’ve run into is support on the client side. As you point out, most of the hosted readers (with the notable exception of NewsGator Online) don’t support secure feeds. Disappointingly, neither does the Windows RSS Platform. (It supports NTLM/Kerberos, but not Basic HTTP Auth. Microsoft says such support was planned, but was the victim of time constraints. Uh, ok.)
Sep
18
Social Tool Nabs Warner Music
YouTube announced that Warner Music Group will distribute and license its copyrighted songs and other materials through the companies system. The deal is fairly simple, YouTube will share ad revenue with Warner. The neat part for YouTube’s users is that Warner is going to extend the license to the users for use Warner’s songs in their homemade videos. Very smart!
This deal is very big. Warner, including labels such as Atlantic, Asylum, Elektra and Rhino, is the third largest recording company with revenues greater than $3.5 billion. It is big for Warner, big for YouTube and most of all big for all those kids making videos lacking background music…
Sep
16
As Seen on TV: Nip/Tuck Fancast
The Big in Japan team is working with Rupert Murdoch’s FX Networks (owned by News Corporation) to build a customized version of Fancast based on the highly popular PodServe podcast system. Update: For clarification, FX Network is a client of Big in Japan. The system combines a highly scableable ruby on rails application with a VoIP based phone system capable of handling more than 30,000 telephone connections.
This summer we began working with the producers of Nip/Tuck, the Golden Globe winning drama, on their community interaction efforts. The program is cables’ top-rated series with adults 18-49 with more than 2.6 million viewers. The first program consists of two fan generated podcasts. The first is titled the Nip/Tuck Fan Question Podcast. Where viewers can interview each member of the cast or crew. Each week five of the best questions are answered by the appropriate cast or crew member and then the content is posted to the system. The second is titled the Nip/Tuck Fan Comments Podcast. Each week the IVR system will prompt viewers to comment on various topics about the show.
The system consists of a white label version of PodServe using multiple load balanced DELL Poweredge servers to consume and organize recordings generated from Podcall using one or more Dell Poweredge servers running in series to generate dialtone, outbound calls, covert .wav and compress into .mp3 ready for iTunes. The tightly integrated system is known as the Fancast system. The servers are located in our state-of-the-art data center and network operations center. During programming our technicians watch the program on one screen, server and call statistics on another and errors on a thrid. Starting this week FX will begin to promote the launch of the system using television advertising.
Will it work? According to Arbitron/Edison Media Research more than 27 million Americans have listened to a podcast, half of whom are under 35 years old. Using the Fancast system, Nip/Tuck’s producers can empower their own community of 2.6 million viewers to deliver content via iTunes to more than 30 million iPod listeners. Converting just 2% of those iTunes users might deilver 600,000 viewers to the program. Additionally, FX has the option of inserting advertising into the consumer generated content as they moderate and process it allowing for additional marketing channels for their advertisers.
The Fancast system, launched in June 2006 and presented that same month at Under the Radar, combines PodServe and Podcall into a single platform allows users to easily create recordings for inclusion within hosted podcasts. Podcall is a multiprotocol PBX on Linux that provides all of the features you would expect from a high-end PBX and more. Podcall supports voice over IP in many protocols, and interoperates with all standards-based telephone equipment. Podcall can serve as a gateway to PodServe for inbound, outbound telephone lins (POTs or IAX) as well as conference bridges. Features include: Automated Attendant, Blacklists, Call Detail Records, Call Forward on Busy, Call Forward on No Answer, Call Forward Variable, Call Monitoring, Call Recording, Call Retrieval, Conference Bridging, Fax Transmit and Receive, Interactive Voice Response, Predictive Dialer, Route by Caller ID, SMS Messaging, Spell / Say, Talk Detection, Text-to-Speech, Graphical Call Manager, Outbound Call Spooling, and TCP/IP Management Interface.
Sep
11
Where did Weblogs Work Go?
If you are a regular reader of Weblogs Work you might notice the new look of the blog. The Weblogs Work logo is gone in favor of Big in Japan branding. For our RSS readers you may have noticed this change a month ago. We are still tweaking the theme, but you are seeing the new direction of our tools and our combined brand. First, note the header of the page (in black) with links to our services, blog, about and contact. This header will soon be found on each tool providing a common look and feel for each property. Each property will have its own specific navigation as seen next to Mt. Fuji (the navigation above is specific to the blog). Say goodbye to Weblogs Work:
For those of you missed our previous post; in July we decided to merge our two social media brands into one. The Weblogs Work brand was created more than a year ago to market our social media consulting services. The Big in Japan brand was created shortly thereafter to market our social tools. Over the past year we discovered that social media was a lot more than just blogging. That, combined with a shake-up in the team, was enough to convince us to merge the two into one and move forward with a single identity. We are still working on some of the visuals; expect minor changes and edits in the coming weeks. Soon all mention of Weblogs Work will be gone and we will be simply: Big in Japan!
Recent Comments