Yahoo Pipes (beta) is a kind of RSS feed aggregator mixer board for creating mashups. It has debugging helper tools, great filtering, and then you can publish the feed to use in your favorite feed reader.

I’ve long used Geckotribe’s CARP and GROUPER to do RSS mashups, and always found there to be tremendous power in this technology. When you can group, adjust, filter and publish resulting data feeds you have enormous power - thanks to the standards of XML.  UNIX Pipes (geek warning) are a way to send the output from one operation as input to another, and while the concept sounds simple, it allows for a rapid build-up of powerful and amazing tools using nothing more than simple pieces.Â

About 9 in 10 times I mention RSS to someone outside of the Internet industry, I have to explain it, so I don’t think we’ll be seeing a flockage of users to the new service just yet. For me, I’ll be using it to visually construct mashups I can then deploy with Carp and Grouper.Â

Another unexpected suprise in the Web 2.0 space. Fun!

Warning - geeky post.

I had been putting off setting up an apache test server (Apache 2.2 with PHP 5.5) here in the “lab” until this week and allowed about 30 minutes to set it up. Two hours later I was still mucking about.

The Apache service kept colliding with another service on Port 80 - okay, freak out time. What could be running on port 80 on my machine…. After scouring to be sure that IIS was completely and totally GONE, scanning my httpd.conf and php.ini files until my head hurt, I finally got some wisdom and looked at the event log to find that SKYPE (of all things) is answering port 80. Whew… Nasty little option there, obviously meant to give those with laptops a way of bypassing hard-core firewalls when using Skype on the go.

With Skype running, Apache cannot start. The fix is to go in and un-check the “Use port 80 and 443 as alternatives for incoming connections” box on the connections tab. Restart Apache and you’re good.

What made this so tricky is that it matters what order you load things up in. Whichever service binds to port 80 first gets to keep it, and neither one seem to do a good job of alerting you of problems.

I’ve been meaning to post about this for a while, but the ZDNET At The Whiteboard page is probably one of the coolest, geekiest marketing ideas I’ve seen in a while. I found myself chomping to figure out how I might be able to use it someday. Why I like it?

a) it’s all content. No fluff.

b) it talks to me in a mode that I’m used to.

c) it’s well paced.

Check it out.

One of the most important priorities in my life is to, um, have a life.

As far as I can tell, most entrepreneurs also have this on their goal-sheet, possibly as their top goal for going into business on their own. So why is it that even the simplest technologies don’t support this?

Take soho office phones, for example. In order to get a basic “after hours” switch, I have to spend $600 on a Talkswitch24 (highly recommended.) Every other phone system requires that you remember to flip a switch at night. I don’t even know of cell phones that have after hours modes despite their full-featured OSs.

So now, I’m a heavy Skype user. More and more of my clients are using it, and for good reason. It’s cheap, it’s crystal clear, and the chat mode on it is fully encrypted. End of those praises, leave it at that.

Skype is really light on features (just look at Pamela’s offering and you get a feeling for what’s missing… VOIP voice mail, call recording, and voice memos are some incredibly useful things that Pamela allows.) But neither allow you to set your business hours and have Skype adjust your phone modes based on them.

I know, give and take, features are risk, etc. Few people probably want it. So what I propose to the Ebay-Skype empire is that you add several simple command line options. I will use Windows scheduler to send the right commands to Skype’s command line This should require almost ZERO code change for Skype Engineers.

Current Skype Command Line Options

/nosplash - do not display splash screen when Skype starts
/minimized - Skype is minimized to system tray when it starts
/callto:nameornumber - call the specified Skype Name or SkypeOut number
/shutdown - close Skype
….that’s it?

Command Line Wishlist Options To Support “having a life”

/mode=m - set running Skype into mode m
/forward=number - forward my Skype calls to this number
/forwardstop=number - stop forwarding my Skype calls to this number

with the “mode” command, I’d set up a scheduled windows event that would change it to “do not disturb mode” after 7:00 PM, and then turn it back to “available” at 7:30 AM. It would be unavailable Sat and Sunday.

With forward modes, I’d set up a shortcut on my start menu that would turn forwarding to my cell phone on or off. One click and it’s forwarded, one click and it’s not.

I really don’t want to add-on anything. Pamela gives me enough headaches with Skype. But if you know of something please speak up.

I think every web designer should have a great setup of monitors. So, even though
I’m often ribbed about my bank of three monitors in my office. Now I have a new setup in mind. Wow. This setup rocks

24″ high-resolution screens; industry’s top-quality LCD panels24″ super-premium Samsung LCD panels 5760 by 2400 resolution (6X 1920×1200 WUXGA panels) 1000:1 contrast ratio; 500 cd/m? brightness 178? (H) / 178? (V) viewing angle Ultra-fast 6 ms response (G to G) Digital DVI and analog D-sub connections TV video inputs with PIP (picture in picture) option Backed by industry-best Zenview Quality Guarantee Exclusive Zenview Manager multimonitor utilities Introductory Web Price: $11,999

I just got this neat Internet Phone Wizardfrom Actiontec. It’s a little box (about the size of a mini-hub) that you plug into your PC with USB. It then has a phone plug that you stick your phone into.

It makes using SKYPE the same as your regular phone. I can use my much loved Plantronics headset for all calls rather than having yet another pc. of hardware laying about my messed up desk.

So far, it is working great. I have it hooked to line “2″ of my phone system. This way, I can choose local or long-distance calls easily. The Skype voice quality is very good but it is a few db quieter than the same call on an analog phone. Some folks said I was quiet. I’ve boosted my mic some and that helped.

Another neat thing is now I can conference in lots of folks AND record the calls using my “Pamela” Skype tool. So far it’s working great. Hopefully I can both improve service and save a little mula as I work.