If you suspect you might be having a problem with your Java installation, click here to go to the Java web site and update your installation.

Notice the big “Download Now” button? Just click it and follow further instructions.

As of Release 2.7 we are now offering conventional installers for Windows, Mac and Linux. The Java Web Start (cross-platform) launcher will continue to be offered as well. There are two very common issues people run into when launching BlogBridge via Java Web Start.



“I know I installed and ran BlogBridge, but I just can’t find it to run it again!”

This is the most common point of confusion. You ran it once, and now you can’t figure out how to run it again. You probably looked for an icon on your desktop and can’t find out, and (if you are on Windows) looked for something on your Start menu, and couldn’t find anything, right. Not to worry.

Solution #1: You can just go back to the same link you used the first time (somewhere in the Download area of this site) and click it again. BlogBridge will not download again, it will just run.

Solution #2: This will take a few more steps, but you might like it better. Run the “Java Web Start” Application. See the BlogBridge icon in the Java Web Start Application Manager? Select that icon and choose the Application menu, “Create Desktop Application” command. This will create an icon on your desktop that you can use from now on to run BlogBridge.

Notes: On Windows, you can probably find the Java Web Start Application under your Start menu, All Programs. Different models of Windows computers might have it in slightly different locations. On Mac, you can probably find the Java Web Start application under Applications/Java/Java Web Start.

“In the download instructions, when I click Open BlogBridge, all I get is a message on my system asking me what application I want to use to open this application.”



You see this message either when you don’t have Java installed or your Java is out of date. This is really easy to correct.

Go to Java.com (http://www.java.com) and click “Download Now!.” Java is free and easy to install and will allow BlogBridge and many other wonderful applications to run.

Relevant FAQs:

• I forgot to ask for desktop integration. Is it too late?
• When I am installing BlogBridge, I get a question about “Desktop Integration” - what is that?
• I ran BlogBridge once, but now I can’t find the icon to run it again?

Here’s a little treatise on BlogBridge’s use of OPML and the Dave Winer’s OPML validator, which is welcome news! Nick Bradbury of FeedDemon also writes about their experiences with the validator.

Technorati Tags: OPML

Just in recent days we got two very nice comments that I wanted to share.

Scott Kovatch (a Taurus) has a blog “Cupertino, Ohio”. In the post “Java-based RSS Newsreader“, he says:

“[...] This is by far the best looking Java application I’ve seen in some time, and the guys behind it are also clearly Mac OS X fans, because it looks really good on Tiger with our latest update of Java 1.4.2.[...] ”

he goes on to say:

“It’s more than good looking, too. I really like the full-article view that puts all recent posts in one big scrolling view, which you can then space through (though I now see NetNewsWire has that too).

The latest weekly builds also have a mini-calendar view that lets you know when the latest posts were made. They also have a nice feature that suggests some blogs to start you off, and it’s easy to create groups of related blogs (which they call Guides.) It also has the unique feature of being able to display Flickr feeds.”

Thanks Scott!

Also, David Coldrick (a technical specialist at Sun) has a creatively named Blog “David Coldrick’s Blog”. In the post: “Moving to Ubuntu - BlogBridge RSS Reader“ he says:

“Open source, free, pure Java, web-startable, and - miracle of miracles - it imports OPML files. [...] Wow. I’m impressed.”

Thanks David!

We love hearing stuff like that, of course, but please contact me directly also with any questions, suggestions, complaints or any comment at all.

Technorati Tags: blogbridge

I want to say a little more about John Patrick’s article about BlogOn 2005. As I mentioned in the previous post, he goes well beyond talking about BlogOn 2005, to framing some of the issues and technologies that come in to play within the world of RSS, Blogs, and so on.

John muses about other uses of RSS above and beyond Blogs:

“How about warranty expiration notices, product recalls, press releases, weather updates, shipment notices, doctor appointment reminders, auction completions, and wine harvests? Blogging is not limited to traditional documents or notices.” 

Indeed, from my point of view, RSS is the new universal format for time-stamped notices, alerts, measurements, information and, yes, blog posts.

So let’s take John’s idea one step further and see where it leads.  Think of RSS as the key lever - and remain flexible about exactly how the posts are displayed. If you think about it this broadly, you realize that there’s no reason why aggregators should display their results as a time-ordered series of posts! 

Recently BlogBridge introduced “Photo Feeds”, where we display the results of an RSS feed not as posts but as a photo album - which you can do if you know that the feed in fact is a collection of photos.

This is just the first step.

If you knew or could tell, for example, that the posts in an RSS feed actually corresponds to the vital signs of a patient taken every 15 minutes, then your aggregator would best display that as a graph or chart. See how that’s a logical extension of photo feeds?

This is something we are working on in BlogBridge.

Technorati Tags: aggregators, blogbridge, blogon2005, nv06, RSS

Jared Bernstein of EContent has a nice summary report about BlogOn 2005, “Blogging Hits the Conference Circuit at BlogOn” This is from my interview with him:

“Everyone’s trying to figure out how to make money,” according to Pito Salas, project leader and programmer of BlogBridge, a blogging company and consultancy. “Right now blogging as a business is still embryonic.”

Technorati Tags: blogon2005

About a week an a half ago we released BlogBridge 2.5 weekly build and today we do another weekly release mainly targeted on the bugs fixing and polishing the product. So what has changed since the last time?

• Fixed articles list horizontal resizing bug!
• Fixed a problem with dragging feeds to lower guides
• Several photo display layout and navigation fixes
• Fixed a weird images shrinking problem
• Removed lockup from installation wizard
• Fixed the feeds list focus being stolen when selecting feeds
• Added support for the in-article Technorati micro-format tags fetching
• Fixed newly added feeds disappearing because of rating filter
• Removed selecting newly added feed when adding it from an article using link from its text
• Splash screen is always on top (Java 1.5.0+ only)
• Fixed problems with adding discovered feeds (title and other fields were not populated immediately)
• Fixed several synchronization glitches in unusual situations
• Added sorting of feeds list by title (see context menu or Guides menu)
• Removed icons from all menus

You can start this weekly build directly.

• Fixed articles list resizing bug
• Improved photo display layout
• Added support for in-article Technorati tags
• Added feeds sorting by titles
• Lots of bug fixes

Instead of my writing my own report, here’s a nice bit written by John Patrick about the BlogOn 2005 conference. It both describes what there was to see and learn at BlogOn as well as a good bit of analysis and insight about the meaning of it all as well as a good high level survey of many of the technology and business issues.

John includes a nice section about BlogBridge which he saw for the first time at this conference:

“BlogBridge is a tool for “info-junkies”, enabling professionals such as analysts, journalists, sales people, researchers, writers, public relations specialists, etc. to organize, sort through, skim and discover content in a dozen or even hundreds of blog feeds. I found it to be very easy to use — and it works on the Mac, Linux, or Windows.” (from PatrickWeb)

You should read the whole report, it’s an excellent overview.

Technorati Tags: aggregators, blogbridge, blogon2005

I don’t know why everyone is so surprised that most people don’ t know really what RSS is.

At BlogOn, among the many interesting discussions almost everyone would nod knowingly when in the course of the discussion they were asked “You know about RSS, right?”

At the end of a long conversation one gentleman tipped his head conspiratorially and said to me: “so, what is RSS really? What’s a feed anyway?”

Not at all surprising. Of course it should be totally unnecessary for someone using BlogBridge or any other software to know the answer to those questions, nor, the other favorite survey question: “do you use RSS?”. To which the pundits offer a bemused “they don’t even KNOW they are using RSS! and yet a third of them ARE!”

Come on! People who use computers also use XML and RSA and all kinds of other strange things without knowing or caring. My car may or may not have a MacPherson strut, I have no clue. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. I wouldn’t know one if you hit me over the head with it.

From an interesting article, “If RSS=Really Simple Syndication, Why Is It So Hard?”:

“Fortunately, some companies realize this, and are working to remedy the problem. Google’s Web-based RSS reader doesn’t mention XML, Atom, nor even RSS–it simply is about subscribing to “feeds.” (from “If RSS=Really Simple Syndication, Why Is It So Hard?“, free subscription required.)

Amen!

Technorati Tags: blogbridge, RSS