I will no longer maintain this blog...  I really enjoyed writing here but I am moving to a new blog because my company has started a new blog service for everyone in the company so I will be using my company`s blog.

Please visit my new blog and leave me a message if you are one of the people who regularly read my blog (although there weren`t that many).

Bye

Another feature that is really useful in Xpyder is the Channel List (OPML) synchronization feature.

You can use this feature to upload and download your channel list to the Xpyder website.   In order for you to use this, you will need to register with Xpyder website.  You can do this at the website or you can do it in the application.

By using this feature, you will be able to synchronize your channel list between your Xpyder app on your office computer with the Xpyder app on your home computer.  Also, you will be able to check your RSS feeds directly on the Xpyder website using the web-based RSS Reader.

Xpyder has a lot of features that first time users probably are not aware of.  One of the features that I really like is the search and dictionary feature. 

As seen in the screenshot above, if you highlight a word and right-click your mouse, you will see several menu items.  You can either do a search on this word or find a definition for this word.  You will find this feature very useful.

This is a screenshot of Xpyder. 

If you want to know what other people are saying about Xpyder, check out the following links.

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My company, Xfiniti, has launched a new RSS Reader application, Xpyder (¿¢½ºÆÄÀÌ´õ).  It`s the first Korean RSS Reader so try it out.

Xpyder is also an RSS Portal with a directory to a lot fof useful RSS feeds in Korea.  If you sign up on the website, you will also be able to synchronize Xpyder desktop application with the online service.  Xpyder website has a simple web-based RSS reader which will allow you to read RSS feeds online.

eMarketer presents its key trends to watch in 2004.  Has some interesting comments related to  online advertising and consumer portals.

After you read this article, I`m pretty sure you`re going to want to stay away from eating too much McDonald`s.  I personally love McDonald`s but I`m going to have to do my best to stop eating this crap.  McDonald`s will kill you.

LAST February, Morgan Spurlock decided to become a gastronomical guinea pig.

His mission: To eat three meals a day for 30 days at McDonald`s and document the impact on his health.

Scores of cheeseburgers, hundreds of fries and dozens of chocolate shakes later, the formerly strapping 6-foot-2 New Yorker - who started out at a healthy 185 pounds - had packed on 25 pounds.

But his supersized shape was the least of his problems.

Within a few days of beginning his drive-through diet, Spurlock, 33, was vomiting out the window of his car, and doctors who examined him were shocked at how rapidly Spurlock`s entire body deteriorated.

"It was really crazy - my body basically fell apart over the course of 30 days," Spurlock told The Post.

His liver became toxic, his cholesterol shot up from a low 165 to 230, his libido flagged and he suffered headaches and depression.

This is the new 1 Terabyte external hard drive from Lacie.  It will be shipped in February and costs US$1200.  It`s amazing that we can have so much storage packed in a device that is about the size of a cigar box.  This low cost of availbility of storage only means that our growing problem with informatio glut will get worse.  I remember when I thought 1gigabyte was a lot of memory.  One terabyte (1000 gigabyte) is just absurd but I`ll probably buy one when I have enough money.

There have not been too many things to be happy about in the telecom industry.  We`ve witnessed companies like Worldcom file for bankruptcy and number of major wireless service providers layoff thousands of employees in their attempts to reduce their huge debt resulting from buying 3G licenses.

I`m not sure if telecom (fixed or wireless) service providers will enjoy any growth in the near future but telecom equipment manufaturers are placing their hopes on VOIP.  It has become the light at the end of the tunnel for equipment makers such as Nortel and Lucent Technologies.

It`s been reported that Verizon  Communications and Nortel Networks have agreed on a new VOIP equipment contract.  Nortel will be exclusively supplying Verizon with equipment that sends phone calls as digital packets over the Internet.  Verizon plans to spend as much as US$2 billion over the next two years, if necessary, to update its network with Internet-based technologies.  This is huge for not only Nortel but also other equipment manufacturers who have been waiting for telecom carriers to start investing into network technologies that enables voice over IP. 

VOIP signals the beginning of an end to the traditional telecom business model based on switch networks.  VOIP removes the need to connect to such a specialized network as a telephone company. Making phone calls will become just one of the features provided by broadband service providers.

There will be three different types of VOIP business models in the future:

At one end of the scale is KT`s use of its Internet backbone - Kornet - to deliver long-distance calls.  These calls could be dialed from a traditional telephone by a KT customer in Seoul, converted into digital packets by KT and carried over its Internet backbone, and converted back again by KT in Pusan, where it is received on another traditional telephone by a Hanaro Telecom customer.  This is combining the public switched network with an Internet backbone to deliver VOIP services.  This service requires no additional investment by customers.  This type of VOIP service is what the tradtional telecom service providers will provide to their users.  This service is most expensive out of the three services.

At the other end of the scale is Skype (P2P VOIP Service).  This service is available only to members of Skype, doesn`t use phone numbers, and completely bypasses the public switched network with a special software that communicates with each other over broadband Internet connections.  This service requires the users to connect their PCs to broadband connections and make calls using PCs to other users who are also simultaneously connected to the Internet on their PCs.  This service is completely free.

In the middle of the scale is a service by Vonage.  Customers make calls with a broadband connection, but Vonage can deliver the call to a traditional phone on the public switched network.  This service requires the user to use a special calling device and also may require customers to get new phone numbers.  This service is not free but it is still less expensive than the first service type.

No matter which service type you choose, you will be rewarded for choosing VOIP over tradtional PSTN.   All customers who choose VOIP will enjoy significant cost savings while maintaining similar level of service quality.

[via John Lam]

Yahoo News reports that Internet Applications are the primary way that people connect to the Internet. I think it`s a good thing that the web is being relegated to being mostly an information browsing resource. Even that is being threatened since most of my information comes to me in the form of RSS feeds these days.

Applications like Quicken and Money, which I`m using a lot these days, sport a web interface mostly because it allows the authors of those programs to provide a rich UI. However, I`ve run into a number of usability issues that could easily go away if financial institutions lessen their dependency on providing information using a web browser. For example, downloading statements to Money is complicated by the fact that I have to first log into the bank`s web site before I can do anything else. In the day and age where that information is only a Web Service call away, the need to interact with my bank through a browser will finally go away.

It will be very interesting to see what a personal finance application circa 2006 will look like. On Windows, it will most likely sport a XAML front end that calls via Indigo against Web Services provided by the various financial institutions. I suspect that news feeds will be provided by some sort of RSS-like mechanism so that the application can render the news in such a way that it looks consistent with the rest of the application. It will be an "Internet Application", but one that will likely not use a browser at all. I can`t wait.