Not yet having tried the software myself, I was very impressed after looking at the video on the site and the features provided. Very impressive. I think I’ll try it out real soon.

So far, I am impressed with how sites are designed. I have been actually working on a more simplistic version of a theme designer for WordPress. Progress is moving along slowly.

The bad thing about Squarespace. It’s not open source. I’ll stick with WordPress as my blogging platform of choice and continue to look for ways to make it easier for everybody to use by creating plugins and looking for other plugins created by the WordPress community.

I do love finding software like this. It forces the web to progress. Hopefully, in the future, I will try out the software and let you know what I think.

Why would somebody want an authenticated RSS feed? I personally would like one for a private blog that I have. Other reasons would include bank balance inquiries, enterprise applications, email, etc. Can you think of other reasons? There are lots of them.

Others have made a strong case for them. Be sure to read the comments in each of these posts. They add a lot to the conversation.

• Niall Kennedy
• Jon Udell
• Scott Hanselman

Many blogs and feeds have already implemented private feeds. The problem is that it is difficult to find an online aggregator that supports them. I know there are a few out there. But why isn’t it standard. Why doesn’t Google Reader, my aggregator of choice support password protected feeds.

I understand it is a complex problem. There are solutions that I could implement in a few nights of coding that would give my private blog support for private feeds, but I want it to be in a secure way that all of my subscribers could add to their reader of choice.

Reading other’s ideas may give me something to aim towards. Joe Gregorio uses encryption to secure feeds. How about the suggestion to generate a private token per user in the form of http://example.com/feed/rss.php?auth=463124cb359783.543­31382. Could OpenID be used in some way? As RSS becomes more ubiquitous, there will be various solutions so users and developers will be able to choose which solution is best for their needs. But I would like a solution sooner than that. Ideas?

I’m sick of creating a profile on just about every web site I visit. And then as I am looking for a job, companies want a copy of my resume (to only store, since they never look at it). This has become especially troublesome lately.

What happens if I update my resume? Each site that has my resume will not know about this change. And I realize this isn’t a problem that needs to be addressed immediately (my immediate needs include finding a job). Currently, I will update my resume on a site if I need to and I want a job bad enough from that employer. But if these employers want the best people, is their current solution the best way to go about it?

The same goes for every site wanting me to create a profile. I have created my share of sites where a profile is useful to each user and hopefully the site provided benefits to each of the users that went to the trouble to provide their personal information.

Let me give an example. When I first started my job search, I created a LinkedIn profile. I have been able to edit my profile, add contacts and have my contacts provide recommendations for me to be included on my profile.

Then last week I found Jobster. They have similar features once you create a profile. You are able to network with other users and have them added to your personal network. Although Jobster made it easy for me to import contacts, I noticed most of the contacts in my network on LinkedIn do not have a profile on Jobster.

I have already emailed some people to ask them to create a LinkedIn profile. Some have done so. Some I sure never will. But do you really think I want to do the same thing by emailing these same people to create a profile on Jobster and add me to the network? Not really.

I recognize that both LinkedIn and Jobster have very similar features, while some features are different. They both are trying to get me to use their network primarily.

What I am looking for is one place to be able to accomplish any task on the web. Ideally, it would be great if LinkedIn and/or Jobster provided an API to allow me and others to create a profile on my own web site and allow all the features that are provided on their own sites.

So when somebody is searching for a Java developer in Seattle, they are provided with my profile information that I updated on my own web site. Once they visit my site, they will also be provided with samples of my work, what I think about, perhaps a beautiful picture of myself. The point is I get to provide them with the information I want them to know and keep it updated on one site.

I know that many sites are starting to implement OpenID into their sites. For those who don’t know, OpenID provides a decentralized single sign-on system. This would make it so I don’t have to register on every site I visit. But not a lot sites support OpenID yet.

Back to the resume problem. It might be cool to have some kind of resume API or tagging system to provide to employers. They can then add it to their tools when trying to find somebody to fulfill a current job opening. I would just have to update my resume on my web site and I would still be found by those employers that need somebody with my skills.

Is there an opportunity here? Possibly.

I have heard a lot about people using their own web sites as a resume. I will be blogging more about that in the future.

Let me know what you think. Why does every site want my resume/profile? Why can’t I keep that information on my own web site?

A while back there was a debate in the blogosphere about what a blog is. Robert Scoble initially said a private blog is not officially a blog. Others disagreed.

Since I had a private blog, I totally disagreed. Scoble has since changed his mind due to apps such as Vox being released by Six Apart. I have thought about getting a blog with vox, but for some reason, I feel the need to keep my own blog using WordPress so I can do whatever I want with it. Perhaps I will get one in the near future to find out what mine is missing.

Although I disagreed, I did dislike some things about a private blog. The way I set it up prevented it from being syndicatable. Being able to syndicate a blog is the biggest advantage, I believe, of blogs. I still have it set up this way and I am bugged by it. Therefore, this weekend, I am modifying my private blog to make registration required which will make it so friends and family can subscribe.

Since I am changing how my private blog is accessed, I thought I would document how I did it in case others are interested. It’s simple and very effective for sharing personal information with friends and family.

1. Download the latest WordPress blogging software.
2. Create a robots.txt file in the root of you web server to disallow search engines from indexing your site (details).
3. Create a .htpasswd file if you are using an Apache web server (tutorial).

That’s it! It’s a simple solution. For those of you who aren’t technical and don’t want to maintain your own blog but still want a private solution, check out Vox. I have heard great things about it.

I want 2007 to be even better. Here are my goals for the new year to help me accomplish this.

• Market myself better using this blog.
• Find ways to network with other people.
• Manage my time more effectively and become more organized.

That’s pretty much it. I think about these things often. I will go into more details on why these are a big deal to me and how I plan to do it. Perhaps I can get suggestions from others that will help.

Since I have started my blog, I have shared it with my friends. Although the content of this blog doesn’t fit their preferences, they consistently return and leave comments. A few months ago, many of them even started their own blog. A few started a couple of blogs.

Some have learned how to use their blog to benefit them. All learned that blogging takes time and gets difficult at times to sit down at a computer and write a blog post. They suffered from the infamous blogger burnout.

So I want to know, are you guys still reading my blog? Why have you stopped blogging? Do you see any benefits to blogging?

I feel like I can make a case that everybody should blog. Many people that are prominent in the blogging community believe that resumes should be no more. Just give prospective employers you blog address and let them judge you from that. I personally disagree with that. But are we moving in that direction?

I’ll be the first to admin that I have suffered from blogger burnout. I have more than one blog. It gets very difficult at times to maintain both. But I love doing it.

After a seamless install, when I try to login, it crashes my server. I’m just getting ready to walk through the code. If anybody out there can help me, let me know.

I tried the IRC node for lyceum but nobody is there to help. I’ll try that again later.

Tags: lyceum

Behind the scenes of blogs exists a technology called RSS (Really Simple Syndication). Using RSS, a reader can subscribe to a feed. In other words, if I find a blog I enjoy reading, I can subscribe to it using a blog reader application (online or desktop app).

Suppose you subscribe to my blog. That would mean you would not have to return to my blog every day or week to see if I have updated it. The application you used to subscribe would simply know because of RSS. Using this technology, my good friend Shane will not have to visit his entire blogroll each day to see if each blog has been updated. He simply will need to us his reader to see if they have been updated. These readers really magnify the power of blogs.

Another word for this software is an aggregator. You can read more on aggregators on Wikipedia. There are a lot of different aggregators available-either desktop or online. I prefer online because I read them on multiple computers.

I am currently using Google Reader. They have made it very easy to look at all of my feeds. Just last week they made some really nice enhancements. (Google Reader does require a Google account. If you have problems setting one up let me know.) I have also tried Bloglines and Newsgator and various desktop apps. A lot of email clients also support RSS feeds.
Once you pick your aggregator, you will need to subscribe to feeds. Most aggregators allow you to simply type the blog address and then the app auto-discovers the blogs feed address. Or you can find a link to the feed and copy it into the aggregator.

On Picklewagon, you can find the subscribe box and copy the links. I have to feeds setup, one for just posts and one for comments. It is also possible to subscribe to categories in my blog. The possibilities are endless with RSS.

I invite you to add my blog to your aggregator. If you don’t have one setup, please get one. It will save you a lot of time and you will enjoy reading blogs even more than you do now. It is the only way I do it.

Please let me know if you have further questions. I will explore other things that are possible using RSS in future posts.

So I guess my blog is paying off. If only I blogged more I could rise to the top.

If you all want to help me rise to the top, just make sure you link to me and my intriguing blog posts. From what I understand, there are two things to do to optimize search results. So if I want to rise to the top, I need to update my blog more often and I need other blogs and web sites to link to me.

Also you shouldn’t use aliases.

As long as I am asking for links, I thought I should update my own links. So far I have added only friends’ links. If you feel left out let me know so I can add you.

That would have been a fun time. I love how he just invites people to come and have a meetup for lunch when he is travelling. I’m sure there was a good group of people present.