Sixty Second Tech

In a previous episode we talked about RSS feeds and I could hear you screaming at your iPod “Yes Cal but what do I do with it?” Thankfully, our benevolent overlords at Yahoo! have answered that for us with a sing word, Pipes.

Pipes is a web based application that provides a graphical user interface for building mashups. It allows the user to easily aggregate RSS feeds, web pages, and APIs to create Web-based applications.

Many times the feed you want to use only provides part of the picture, to get everything you need to add or subtract information from it. A good example is the “GeoAnnotated Reuters News” pipe. It takes the news feed from Reuters, runs it through the geonames.org RSS-geoRSS service to give each entry a latitude and longitude. The resulting feed is then plotted on a Yahoo map to show you where in the world the news is coming from. Normally a mashup like this takes a programmer, a case of Jolt Cola and a weekend to hammer out but thanks to Pipes, anyone with the imagination and a case of Jolt Cola can do it.

So if you’ve been looking for a way to mash up your company newsletter and your secret stash of pictures of the office Christmas party, Pipes is the answer you are looking for.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 Pipes! [1:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sixty Second Tech Episode 13
Cloud Computing

First there was the desktop, and Boca Raton smiled and said “this is good”. As time went on we needed more power though, so servers were invented. Now we need even more power, super-computer power without the price tag; enter the Cloud computing revolution.

Instead of building one huge computer that is smart enough to model the atmosphere or nuclear explosions, just link together many smaller computers. Specially designed software and networks allow scientists to link them to compute extraordinary results.

Cloud computing is, however, more than just a research tool. Thanks to companies like Amazon and their Elastic Compute Cloud, you can move your website to the cloud.

If your web site’s traffic fluctuates seasonally, expand into the cloud! With EC2 and other systems like it, you can setup a second, third or ninth server for a short time. They will get you over the hump and then spin it down until you needed again.

New management tools are coming online that allow you to automate the entire process so if your site gets popular on digg.com, you can handle the load, serve the pages, spread your message and make the sale. Then when the load dies, the virtual servers pack themselves away for another day.

So the next time that overpriced consultant you keep around because he’s your brother-in-law shouts “capacity planning” at you, tell him to go stick his head in the Cloud!

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 Get Your Head in the Cloud! [1:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

In the beginning there was the browser, and Sir Tim Berners-Lee said “It is good.” Now fast forward fifteen years and we are all tired of just surfing, we want to actually do things. It’s the new millennium and we are ready for a paradigm shift!

Thankfully one has been brewing all along. Back in the early days of the web a company named Macromedia released this toy called “Flash”, and sowed the seeds of the next revolution that we now call Rich Internet Applications.

Rich Internet Applications are applications that run mainly on a server on the Internet but pieces of it run on your local computer. Usually the server does all the heavy lifting while your computer only has to run the user interface.

Our overlords at Adobe have embraced RIAs and given us tools like Flash, its cousin Flex and its other cousin AIR with which to build them. AIR is the real gem as it allows web developers to build desktop applications.

For web programmers this means that they can now write applications that run outside of the browser. (Technically AIR has an integrated browser but let’s not spoil the fun.)

To get you started, try downloading a program called Spaz. It’s a twitter client written in HTML that runs on your desktop. Compare that to the traditional experience of going to twitter.com and you will begin to see what all the excitement is about.

My name is Cal Evans and I am your sixty second tech.

 

 Rich Internet Applications [1:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Howdy Minute Men!

Hey! I just wanted to drop a quick post into the feed to remind you that Sixty Second Tech is on twitter. If you don’t subscribe the feed and you don’t want to subscribe to the mailing list, you can simply follow us on twitter. Thanks to the miracles of modern technology (something we discuss a LOT on Sixty Second Tech) we post on twitter within seconds of each new episode being released. So if twitter is your thing, make sure you follow us.

Until next episode!
=C=

I’d like to thank all the early adopters who took advantage of the $20 special BETA price. The report is still available, updated to include new examples and tools. For more information please visit Twitter for Marketers.

=C=

 

 Twitter For Marketers: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Lifestreaming, according to wordspy.com, is “an online record of a person’s daily activities, either via direct video feed or via aggregating the person’s online.”

In other words, Lifestreaming is the new black!

Here it is in a nutshell. You have a blog, twitter, flickr, meetups, facebook, and a bunch of other shiny new web 2.0 toys. What do they all have in common? They all create feeds of your content. Someone interested in what you are up to can subscribe to these feeds individually but that can be a real pain. Lifestreams are a single feed that people can subscribe to that aggregates all of your feeds into one.

There’s nothing really new in this concept, people have been aggregating feeds for as long as there have been feeds. However, instead of a specific topic to aggregate around, the topic of your lifestream you!

There are several good services out there that will let you aggregate your lifestream like tumblr.com and jaiku.com. The one with the most buzz right now seems to be friendfeed.com. but I’m sure if you look, you can find others.

One word of warning, lifestreams open up your life in ways you may not be prepared for. Yes, all of this information exists already on the web but are you ready for everyone to have it all in one place? Think about it.

My name is Cal Evans and I am, your Sixty Second Tech.

 

 Lifestreaming! [1:01m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Welcome to the Sixty Second Tech Podcast housekeeping episode #2.

Well it’s been more than a month since I had time to record a housekeeping episode but even so, I’ll keep it brief.

First, thanks to everyone who have blogged about us. I try to get out to each of your blogs and post a comment when I see a post about Sixty Second Tech but I’ve been on the road a lot lately so if I missed your blog, I’m sorry. If you’ve not blogged us yes, please do. Those notes to your friends and family are what keep our number growing each week.

Also, don’t forget to visit the “Become a Minute Man” for more ways you can help support Sixty Second Tech. They are all quick, easy and best of all, free.

Here at Sixty Second Tech we are always looking for new topics. If you’ve got a topic you would like to see covered on Sixty Second tech, drop us an email at suggestions@sixtysecondtech.com We’d love to hear from you.

Finally, this Tuesday, May 6th, 2008, I’ll be appearing live on Small Business Trends Radio You can listen live at http://www.blogtalkradio.com/smallbiztrends or download the podcast for later listening.

That’s all for this housekeeping episode. Thanks for listening, make sure you tell some one today about Sixty Second Tech.

My name is Cal Evans and I am you Sixty Second Tech.

 

 Housekeping Episode #2 [1:17m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download