News.com has a new(?) service called Newsburst, which I liken to a pseudo-RSS-aggregator. It gives you a bunch of recommended news sources, but you can also add RSS feeds you find on the web by pasting their URL into a box.

It’s similar to Google’s Personalized Home page, except that it’s just news and RSS feeds, and it’s got a more distinct look.

Speaking of Google, does Google Reader work? While writing this story I loaded it up and it’s still telling me I “recently subscribed” to stuff I added weeks ago.

Anyway, I like Newsburst.

I switched from Yahoo Mail to Gmail at just the right time.

I still check my Yahoo account every one or two days, and coinciding almost perfectly with me switching to Gmail, I’ve started getting between three and six emails — every day — that Yahoo’s spam filters don’t get. I typically only read the subject line on them, and they all appear to either be random words strung together or current headlines from news websites. I mark each of these messages as spam, but apparently Yahoo’s filters can’t figure them out.

Google Web Accelerator is now available for download to all users. For a while there it was in closed beta, after a very brief open beta when it first rolled out.

I installed it, and apparently I have saved 43.4 seconds because of it. It’s using about 12 megs of RAM last I checked. I now have a lot of memory committed to Google applications … it’s enough to make me look seriously at buying more RAM. All these small applications are nice, but they run all the time and they put a hit on performance.

Once again I take a look at all these browser features. It’s enough to make you think that Google should just get it over with and put out a Google Browser that has all these applications built in. Plus there’s Flock now, which appears to be the most app-integration-centric browser yet. I wonder: Will this will spur Google into pushing up the initial beta of its browser as to avoid being an also-ran?

I read an article on PC World titled Building a Better Browser: Flock Has Landed.

Flock is a web browser. As of this post its latest version is 0.4.8. I bring it up for two reasons, the same two reasons why PC World did an article on it: its attention to bookmarks and blogging. Regarding bookmarks, it integrates with del.icio.us. That earns it points in my book. Regarding blogging, it works with Movable Type, TypePad, Blogger, and my choice, WordPress.

Flock also integrates with Flickr, which I do not have an account with but which several of my friends do.

The fact that Flock integrates with all these various online services makes me wonder if its owner/developer is working at all with anyone, or if it is merely writing hacks to take advantage of these services. For example, if you want to use the Flock browser’s bookmarks system, you must go to del.icio.us and get an account. This leaves me just slightly wary — particularly when it comes to my blog. Currently my blog has a password unique to all my other passwords, and it’s only written down in a php script that exists on my hosted server … if I type it into a settings dialog in my browser, does the potential exist for a malicious website to view that data? The risk must be higher than in my current setup.

To shift gears for a second (even though I discovered this while reading the afore-linked PC World article), Amazon.com’s A9 Toolbar features networked bookmarks. Just like the Yahoo! toolbar, which I no longer use.

When is Google going to enrich its bookmarks system and when it is going to integrate its bookmarks system with the Google Toolbar? Or with the Google Sidebar?

Got word from Smiz today that WCIFT is now powered by WordPress. This officially makes me an opinion leader and Lewis a laggard.

Now before you click on the following headlines, just read them:

AOL snaps up blog publisher Weblogs

VeriSign snags Weblogs.com

Almost looks like one of them’s got to be wrong, right? But they’re not. The company AOL acquired is Weblogs Inc., whose URL is weblogsinc.com. The two companies offer different services. Weblogs.com is a ping service, which alerts users when blogs are updated. Weblogs Inc. hosts several blogs.

You could say it’s a coincidence and not a trend because the companies offer different services, but I think it’s a trend because large, high-profile companies are scooping up small companies focused on blogging software and services.

Google bought out Blogger.com over a year ago. Look out for WordPress or MoveableType to get gobbled up.

Google should just acquire del.icio.us. Or at the very least come up with a competing system. Why not targeted advertisements that cater to your interests based on the websites you bookmark?

I’ve been waiting for Google to implement a decent online bookmarks system (better than what they offer now) for several months. Four of my previous posts have talked about it to some degree — if you don’t believe me just type “google bookmarks” into my search box.

The Quick View box in Google Sidebar just doesn’t cut it, and the personalized homepage kind of provides the functionality, but now that I use Sidebar I don’t use the personalized homepage anymore …

So I heard about del.icio.us a while ago, probably from Lewis, but I never registered for it. I was probably using Yahoo’s Bookmarks by then, in conjunction with the Yahoo Toolbar (which is still the best online bookmark implementation I’ve seen). The thing is, I switched from Yahoo Email to Google’s Gmail, and I’m about 90% certain that the Yahoo Toolbar slowed down Firefox a little bit. So after my last format I didn’t install the Yahoo Toolbar.

Fortunately Yahoo offers bookmarks.yahoo.com, which is where you need to go to rename or rearrange these bookmarks. It’s also the only way to access them if you don’t have the toolbar installed. Well, a few days ago the site broke. You type it in, you get the login screen, you submit your password, and … you end up back at the login screen. Every time. 100%. Browser independent. And I can find nothing on the Internet about this happening to anyone else. Also, I can find no way to contact a person at Yahoo about this problem. So they can F off.

So I registered for del.icio.us. It’s good, not great. I want a menu, not a website. But I don’t want to keep track of them on my computer for when I format my hard drive. Networked bookmarks just make too much sense!