In Search of RSS Parsers

I have been looking for a Java RSS parser that can handle all variations of RSS without much luck.  Availability and quality of RSS parsers don't seem to match the current level of hype.  Most look like as if they were put together using glues and strings over a few hours.  Not much concerns over security either.  I wonder what percentage of RSS clients can be crashed just with bad RSS data?  Anyway, it looks as if I'll be writing a RSS library.

Extra Space Continued

Robert Scoble pointed me to One Versus Two Spaces After a Period, a report by John S. Rhodes.  The reported enumerated several issues and concluded with the advice that only one space should follow the period.  I disagree for following reasons.

Proportional versus monospace fonts – while proportional fonts allows the eye to more easily identify the beginning of a new sentence, width of a single space in proportional fonts are generally narrower than the uppercase character used to start the new sentence.

Compuert versus typewriter fonts – Period character for computer fonts are much smaller than period character for typewriter.  For small computer fonts, typically used to display news articles or blog posts, a period is just a single pixel.  Width of the period is also much narrower than on typewriter, making the period difficult to see.

River of blank spots – River of blank spots do not appear in left justified text typically used for news articles.

Large font means larger spaces – I do agree that double spaces should not be used for text displayed in large fonts.  Sometimes we have no control over the font size, but we can usually assume a reasonable range of font sizes users are expected to view the content in and take appropriate actions.

Ultimately, I just like double spaces better than a single because I find it less disorienting in a long paragraph.  I can also more easily locate a paragraph.

Extra Space Update

Apparently, its not the UserLand Radio's code that is preserving the extra space.  Its Microsoft's HTML editor control used by UserLand Radio.  Oops.  I still love it and think more web sites and tools should do the same.  It makes text so much more readable.  Unfortunately, not everyone agrees.  Practically every site I visit uses only one space to separate sentences.  I suspect this is one of the reasons why studies have showed that long paragraphs tend to make eyes wander after a sentence or two.

Web Needs Extra Space

Have you noticed that spaces between sentences are much narrower on the Web? Where there should be enough room for two spaces, there is only one space for majority of the web pages (I wouldn't be surprised if its 99%). This is due to a quirky rule in the HTML syntax that truncates contiguous whitespaces into a single space.

What amazes me is that most people don't notice or complain about it. If this happened in the real world, there would have been an uproar well before Evening Edition. My guess is that people are more willing to adapt in new environment.

By the way, UserLand Radio does put an extra space between sentences.  Above two paragraphs were handcoded in HTML to show how bad it would have been.  Great job, Dave!

XDocs

Microsoft's XDocs sounds very similar to the product I have been building, a bummer.  Mine has other features, but XDocs will likely be bundled with Office, a real bummer.

Maybe I'll release mine on the same day as XDocs to show how Microsoft Office monopoly kills competition.  Maybe I'll release mine as freeware to show how free software kills value.

Luckily, XDocs won't be released until 2003 which means I have some room for manuever.  So there is an upside to FUD after all.

HabitWare

HabitWare is a way to promote software adoption and sales without limiting trial duration nor features.

  1. A HabitWare can be used freely and without limitation until the user develops a habit, meaning it is used regularly.
  2. Once habitual usage pattern is detected, a HabitWare gradually degrade Quality of Service (QoS) over time, meaning that operations will fail more frequently.

Degrading QoS encourages the user to buy the software without forcing the user to break the habit.  If the user deviate too far from the habitual usage pattern (adjusted to account for drop in QoS), then QoS is increased gradually.

Disclaimer: This is a software adoption/sales scheme I came up with for my own yet-to-be-released product.  You are welcome to use the idea, but I have no evidence that the scheme works in reality, so use your own discretions.

Form-Fill and Sign-On Comments

For the past few days, I have been thinking about Doug Kaye's Consumer-Centric Form-Fill and Sign-on post.  There was really nothing new to Doug's proposal, but his post made me fall back into thinking about authentication, privacy, payment, and user experience; things I used to spend great deal of time thinking about while working for Arcot Systems.

Doug's solution centers around client-based form-filler like RoboForm and server-based storage of encrypted profile, meaning the user needs to download and install a form-filling software and somehow negotiate a remote storage.  The main problem with this approach is that people rarely take actions to overcome non-accumulative inconveniences. 

Forms are incidental, meaning one runs into them while trying to do something, and form related inconveniences are amply rewarded by completing the form (otherwise the user would not have completed the form in the first place).  Unless the task is as painful as filling out tax forms, people won't bother to install software especially if they have to pay for it.

Luckly, I expect Microsoft to add form-filling feature into Internet Explorer.  But I expect it to work only with Passport and MSN until people have gotten used to them.

Bill Me Later and 3D-Secure

Rising another 1000 feet and looking down on Bill Me Later and credit card-based online payment, I found little difference between the two from the customer's point of view.  A credit card is essentially an aggregated billing service.  Instead of receiving bills from all the merchants, the customer receive one bill from the card issuer.  One key difference is that  Bill Me Later doesn't use a shared secret (credit card number) as account ID.  With credit cards, you are forced to share that secret on every purchase with the merchant.

Technically, not much change is needed to adapt 3D-Secure to work with Bill Me Later.  With Bill Me Later, the ACS can handle payment on top of authentication and authorization, increasing throughput as well as making merchant side simpler.

Bill Me Later should take a serious look at 3D-Secure for several reasons:

  1. Look and Feel – 3D-Secure UI will be what users will be expecting to see when they make online purchases.  With both Visa and MasterCard making efforts to make this happen, alternative payment methods should adopt similar look and feel to avoid startling the customers.
  2. Merchant Adoption – Merchants have either installed 3D-Secure merchant plugin already or have plans to do so in the near future.  Slipping in Bill Me Later support into those merchant plugin will be simpler than asking merchants to install yet another software their servers.

Bill Me Later should work with 3D-Secure vendors such as Arcot Systems which currently has the largest 3D-Secure merchant installation base.

Bill Me Later

A News.com article provides further details on Bill Me Later, an alternative online payment service previously mentioned by "Scott" in conjunction with my Market-based Credit Card idea.

I finally get it.  Psychologically, deferred payment is a great gimick, almost as great as xx% off sale.

Two concerns raised by the News.com article were the potentially large cost and difficulty of managing authentication and transaction liability.  One possible way to address both concerns is to offer aggregated billing service with an eye toward lowering cost of billing for companies that have existing trust relationships with customers.

For example, I have been paying PG&E, my gas and electricity company, for ages.  Politics aside, there is no reason for PG&E not to use Bill Me Later to collect payment if the cost of billing is lower.  The key point here is that my PG&E acccount can be used as a basis of trust for my Bill Me Later account.  Compared to using an e-mail address as the primary basis of trust, which is what Passport does, my PG&E account is more trustworthy.