Sunny.Molini » blogging

Dave Winer Complains About Google Reader

Sunny — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:42:01 +0000

Dave Winer, one of the creators of RSS, has always been vocal about his vision of the way RSS ‘should be used.’ He has always been fairly critical of the way that Google Reader shows RSS data. I’d like to equate this to the inventor of the hammer complaining that people use it to actually remove nails in addition to pounding them in.
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Mr. Winer, I fully appreciate the great contributions that you’ve made to the Internet. Your input on the variety of new technologies that have and are emerging are invaluable and I subscribe to many of your feeds. I do, in fact, agree with your perspective of RSS as a river of news, the vast majority of which can and should go unexamined. I must say though, that your ire against Google is significantly misdirected.
In the first place, you assume that the model of email is that it is general practice for users to examine every email that enters their inbox. I can assure you that this is certainly not true for many people. I have no desire to read my 5-6 daily emails from twitter telling me about each individual new follower I have, but they are good to have because I can then go back through those emails and examine for possible followbacks. Email is as much for record keeping and formality as for actual communication. Good email programs help the user prioritize and sort emails into ‘read now,’ ‘read later,’ and ‘just store for reference later.’
Different users have different needs for RSS too. The biggest difference is that RSS is generally public, and widely accessible. As opposed to email which is single target. Users want to be able to sort their feeds into ‘catch every one,’ ‘check frequently,’ and ‘mostly ignore, but scan for headlines.’ Google Reader gives users exactly that kind of flexibility. In fact, I use Google Reader precisely because it gives me the level of granularity of control that I need and provides a great river of news look. Only thing that could make it better would be auto-refresh and the ability to suppress the ‘unread’ on selected folders if I wish to.

Code Guard Blog

Sunny — Wed, 15 Jul 2009 19:24:10 +0000

Just want to put it out there that my uncle Jim Molini has started a blog where he covers some major issues in the software security field. That’s a topic that gets largely ignored by John Q. Public because it’s against almost everyone’s interest to spend much time talking about the risks of bad security.

Sales people just don’t want to make their customers anxious about their products, and many black hats are now smart enough to keep their intrusions quiet as long as possible to simply leech information out of their targets. Most people simply don’t think about security until something goes wrong. (ISC)2 [International Information Systems Security Certification Consortium] is working to expand the knowledge base on security in the market by providing certifications and resources to security minded professionals.

Welcome Tony

Sunny — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 17:47:12 +0000

My friend Tony has expressed interest in blogging as a better way for us to have those long conversations.
Let me say welcome to the best publishing platform in the world. As soon as you let me know you have a blog up, I’ll absolutely link to you, Tony.