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You would remember that several weeks ago I was asking if Juice will ever support Atom feeds because internally in IBM we have a huge repository of podcasts, videos, webcasts, presentations, etc., for which Atom feeds are provided to subscribe with a podcatcher.

So I tried to use iTunes to subscribe to the podcasts and at least when I was subscribed to just one feed it was working, not completely good but was working. Then I decided to add a couple more and that’s where things started to go wrong. When I added the third feed, iTunes was not able to retrieve anything about it. Well, it looks like it retrieved the name of the feed but it assigned it as the name for the first podcast I subscribed to. Yep, you read it right, it overwrote the original (and good) name of the first podcast with the name of the third I added.

To make things worse, since the date I added the third feed, it doesn’t retrieves any new file from any of the podcasts.

Could someone please do me a favor and send the Apple developers this link to the specification of the Atom format? I’ll appreciate if they can at least implement the basic stuff that is retrieve the files from where the enclosures point to. Well, no, I’ll really appreciate it if they also do not install, along with iTunes, ‘Bonjour’ nor the MobileMe thing that I don’t need at all.

With great excitement I can tell you now that IBM Lotus Symphony 1.0 is available for everyone to download for free!

It has good support for ODF, OpenOffice, MS Office and Lotus SmartSuite documents, so you can get rid of all of those other office applications and have just one installed (as I’m gonna do next!).

I was just informed today that one of the few supercomputers that UNAM got last year partially burned. It never worked well, and when it reached the 50% utilization it burnt. Won’t mention here any of the strange things that seemed to happen in the deal between HP and the University ‘cause you can read them here (in spanish).

The question that remains is, was it really a supercomputer ever?

I just read the article “Some Viruses Come Pre-Installed” by the Associated Press in ABC News and the fact that any type of gadget (hardware) coming from China could contain several viruses and infect your computers is very bad.

Not only gadgets come with several viruses each like iPods, digital picture frames, the TomTom navigation gear, external hard drives, etc., but there’s toxic toothpaste, poisonous pet food and toy trains coated in lead paint.

Be sure to check that your computer has the latest antivirus signatures before plugging in whatever gadget you buy. Almost always, the cheap stuff turns out to be more expensive.

I just read an article in the IBM Systems Magazine titled “Preparing for V6R1” which I suggest you go and read if you’re planning to move to V6R1. It’s concise and well explained. The only thing that seem to not work is that I get a Server Error when trying to see the figures, I’m getting an “HTTP 404″ from the “Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.832; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.832″… no wonder why, really.

There’s an “Impact on Domino” supplement that is good also.

I haven’t posted anything here regarding Domino and V6R1 because we’re trying to have everything properly documented. You’ll see the redpapers for i5/OS, information in the Domino for System i ibm.com page and not sure if in the Release Notes. I’ll probably talk about something if I see anything missing in those.

For several months now I’ve been interested in topics related to the technology industry, and one of them is that there are not much women doing development for Operating Systems, Applications, networking or hardware stuff. So I have been in the lookout for information, articles actually, that talk about the different skills involved (intelligence, social, etc.).

I found this article that mentions a couple of things that I agree on:

• They are more collaborative
• Groups work much better when at least one woman is in the group. They bring a different perspective and viewpoint.

Just spot on! That’s what I have seen in my team for a couple of years now. You need different “forces” to maintain a good team.

We already knew that Vista’s a fiasco, but I have to say that the information in some Microsoft emails is quite interesting!

Things are not going right lately. In the last 2 or 3 weeks Firefox is freezing when I’m trying to log into Gmail or when clicking the ‘Spam’ folder (to do manual cleanup).

I’m now more careful when I have more tabs opened in Firefox. I don’t lose them if a freeze happens because I have the Session Manager add-on, but it’s annoying anyways.

Haven’t really researched about this. Any pointer will be welcome!

Here’s some interesting stuff I’ve been hearing and reading lately, mostly heard on the Daily Source Code, tech5 and No Agenda podcasts which I really like.

First thing that [doesn’t] surprises me is that Microsoft won, again, a first place. This time because of Windows Vista being the Most Disappointing Product of 2007, I must say… Well deserved guys!
Did you notice how many Microsoft and Apple products are on the list?

Looks like HP paid Staples $100 million dollars to not sell inexpensive third-party ink cartridges. As John C Dvorak said, how many they’re doing from just ink? (FYI: a considerable portion of the company’s profits come from ink.) Ink definitely is overpriced. This makes me think about another company that pays to make its bad operating system be installed instead of Linux, although it isn’t working too well, right?

Another interesting tidbit is that the Intel Viiv initiative is officially dead. Hmm, I never heard about it before, could that be the cause?

And a non techy thing is that the U.S. actually “outsources” (sort of) the army (Blackwater) and jails (for example, this one) where by the way, people are put in prison even when they shouldn’t be there, but since these private companies may charge the government per “capita” then you know what that means, right? Go check the interesting commentary of it on the No Agenda podcast episodes 3 and 4.
Weird use of taxes.

I just finished seeing two very good videos on IET.TV. The first one is a lecture from Grady Booch on The Promise, The Limits, and the Beauty of Software. The second one is another lecture, this time given by Roo Reynolds, with the name of Walking the Digital Dog - Work, Learn and Play in Virtual Worlds.

Definitely you should not miss them!

One strange thing is that the webcasts doesn’t show up when using Firefox, I had to use IE.