It has been 5.5 months since OSAlert is online in this form and we have grown incredibly. The scary part (bandwidth-wise) is that we are continuing to grow incredibly fast. For example, when we started back in mid-August 2001, we were merely receiving 600 page views per day, while January 2002 has awarded us with 23,500 page views per day on average (~740,000 page views per month). I would like to thank you all for participating in this growth and encouraging us continue… news hunting. I would also like to inform you that the site layout of OSAlert will change soon slightly and also I would like to prompt everyone who would like to have up to the minute access to OS News and other well known sites (Slashdot, CNet, FreshMeat and 90 more sites) from his/her Windows desktop, to download KlipFolio and the needed OSAlert klip file (to get it, browse their Directory page after the necessary registration). Screenshot available.
OSAlert Web Site News
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSAlert.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
Follow me on Twitter @EugeniaLoli
Has anyone here ever used this KlipFolio thing? And does it contain any spyware ?
I did not detect any “spyware”. The application is a lean 125 KB one and it works well – even for a beta (except of a known bug that sometimes some computers cannot fetch data – other than that seems fine).
So this is a windows only thing isn’t it? Bah! [rest was removed by Forum Moderator]
If you feel the app limits you in usage or is available under Win only, use some scripting lang. Rebol, Python, Perl, whatever … We used very short Rebol script (as Rebol IS the king of web data mining) for Czech Amiga News. It checked for changes on some sites and generated unified website with sorted links …
-pekr-
This is a new company and their app is still beta. They have already announced that during 2002 are going to announce ports of their app to other platforms. So, the language you used was innapropriate, unfair and childish. Also, if you do not want to use KlipFolio under Windows, you can always visit http://www.LinuxHomepage.com“>www.LinuxHomepage.com “Contact Us” page to find alternative ways to feed your browser with OSAlert feeding. But such language you used is not acceptable (not even by my standards for I am known to have a big mouth) and I will not tolerate it. I am sure you won’t like banning.
Keep it up, Eugenia! I check this site every morning. Great.
Re Klip thing – I prefer to check the news myself. The reason is simple – I am on hourly dialup. It might be interesting for people w/ permanent connection though.
After installing and running http://www.klipfarm.com/beta/betadl.php?file=KlipFolio0_81_5646.exe… AdAware5.62,” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.lavasoft.de/aaw/binary/aaw.exe”>AdAware5.62… with signature file <a href=”http://www.lsfileserv.com/aaw/binary/refupdate.exe“>updated</… to 005-16.01.2002, did not find any spyware components.
I think I like it, childish or not I’m overgrown and of addictive nature, and a news addict.
Althought I’ve http://www.klipfarm.com/beta/download.php?kid=101&/osnews.klip“>… OsNews” rel=”nofollow”>http://www.klipfarm.com/beta/download.php?kid=101&/osnews.klip”>… klip.
You have to download the osnews klip which can be found on their directory page (after you login, there is a button called ‘Directory’). After you download the OSAlert-specific klip (1 KB) from that page, double click it and it will appear on your KlipFolio application that you downloaded earlier (125 KB).
Thank you for the tip Eugenia, that was easier than installing FreeBSD,
It’s nice, 5.084K of memory usage, though it would be nicer if I could just dock it on one side of the screen (it gets in my way having it infront) or being able to minimize it to the taskbar completely (I don’t know why does it go to the taskbar if it stays up with the rest of running apps). Anyway I’m using it.
My congratulations to OsNews for the 700.000 ninjas a month. Yes, watch out that bandwidth, wasn’t that the problem that took the <a href=”http://www.beunited.org/“>BeUnited server down a few weeks ago?
But.. it does has a minimize button which minimizes it to the right side of the taskbar with the rest of the TSR programs.
Also, if you check its preferences, you can set the scrolling off, so it does not mess with your eyes.
Slashbox?
Go on… please?
Sure it minimizes, that’s what I just said, it minimizes with the rest of the TSR programs and yet it stays up, you ALT+TAB and there you have it, I dont need “TSR” for that.
The scrolling is no problems, looks fine to me, told you I’m news addict, I love to see News scrolling all the time. Thanks again for the tips.
While I’m here, I should say congratulate the people of OSAlert for their great site. While a 100% GNU/Linux user, I enjoy reading about other OSs in an unbiased way (even WinDOS…). Here is what I think OSAlert should have to be an even better site:
1. User accounts and page customisation options for members (a la PHP Nuke).
2. Threaded comments for articles.
There are probably others but I can’t think of them right now. Keep up the good work!
Thank you for your comments.
>1. User accounts
I will be forced to add user accounts and passwords if we pick up too many trolls on the way. But normally, if we all behave, user accounts are not really needed so far.
> and page customisation options for members (a la PHP Nuke).
I do not think that this is needed. OSAlert is already very lean and goes straight to the point in every aspect (design-wise and news reporting). I do not understand what someone could customize on the current design.
>2. Threaded comments for articles.
This is planned for March.
It would be kewl to jump to 25-50 (or any next) page of comments from main page. Clicking comments, and than chosing page is to slow ;]
Are there any web portals or simple GNU/Linux apps out there that can be customised to read from multiple standard PHP scripts or RDF files on the Web? http://my.netscape.com“>My used to do this, and for a while it was my main site because I could customise it with all the RDF news feeds I wanted. Today, I use Alan Cox’s http://www.linux.org.uk/cgi-bin/portaloo“>Linux , but it isn’t as customisable as I would like. Nautilus has a good RDF viewer, but I find Nautilus to be too bulky for my liking (is there any way to embed this as a Bonobo component in Galeon)? Knewsticker is too simplistic (I don’t want to read everything on one line), and I don’t use KDE (I’m a GNOME user).
Does anyone have any ideas?
That would require a drop down menu with a “go” button (pure links with numbers, will make the front page “unreadable” and very tiring for the eyes to figure out what are all these numbers displaying there especially when a page has 270+ comments, like <A HREF=”comment.php?news_id=509″>this one). The problem is that drop down menus are also ugly in a front page and will require 15 different forms for the 15 different news items, which is a bad thing for text-based browsers and for the memory needed to be allocated by the browser. (sorry, I am a bit of an optimization freak and I am trying to make OSAlert to render satisfactory under any browser under the sun, even the cellphone ones
<BR>
I suggest you click on the comments page and after the first three tables have been loaded, click “stop” on your browser to stop loading the rest of the page and then pick the page you want.
http://www.dailyrotation.com“>Daily and <A HREF=”http://www.linuxhomepage.com“>LinuxHomePage both support OSAlert and many other sites. My.Yahoo.com can do the trick too.
Threaded comments will be cool. Oddly enough I was thinking of it myself only a few days ago. Anyway, as long as I can continue to read OSAlert with ABrowse I’ll be a happy man.
Eugenia, will you be increasing your bandwidth?
SimBad
I can’t see if there is a Windows version of the tool and I am not signing up for something if I can’t use it…
What? there are more sites with news?
Can any one pleaaaase tell me!!! where to find them!
This site is the best in the world! I luv you Eugenia!!!
Keep up the gr8 work!!
Rgds,
OSAlert is the best site for OS related news I could find ever since I’ve discovered the web, and by far. I think the bandwidth usage is growing by the simple fact other people are discovering that too. ok.. maybe I shouldn’t come to this site 10+ times a day.. but .. I’m addicted, thx Eugenia
Keep up the good work, and congratulation
Congrats to Eugenia and the rest of the OS News crew! Great job!
KlipFolio sounds good… I wish you didn’t have to register before downloading.
How about using stylesheets on OSAlert’ pages, Eugenia ? And W3C compliant XHTML too… That would be great, especially when you’re using the “User Style Sheet” option of Opera, like myself…
Anyways, thank you for this great source of information, Eugenia ! Say hi to JBQ from a BeOS lover
Wouldn’t just a Comments 1 2 3 4 5… be fairly clean, where the 1…n represent each page of comments. (Page 1 being comments 1-25 and 2, 26-50… etc… sorry if this is patronising.) Also, I would really like to see this happen in the forums – the threads being broken into pages – as some of the threads get quite long and take a while for me to load on my poor old modem.
Will we still be able to access OSAlert as we have done previously, by going to osnews.com?
I mean, what is changing, if anything?
I may sound like a sad geek, but reading OSAlert is the highlight of my day. I check it very morning and hate it when there are no new stories. Or really interesting stories. If OSAlert stopped I am not sure what use the internet would be any more.
I remember the glory news filled days of BeNews.com when I would check the site every few hours and something new would be there and the forums were busier than a Greyhound station on Thanksgiving weekend. That is the feeling I now get from OSAlert.com
Great site, just wish I could write so I could take part too.
Eugenia:
My fiance and I are thinking of setting up a site similar to OSAlert to discuss miniature collectible shoes. I like the “no BS” design of OSAlert. I’ve found what appears to be a decent hosting company and plan offering. What amount of storage would you think is appropriate? No more than a few hundred unique people would be using the site. We plan on recouping costs by offering email aliases with our yet-to-be-thought-of domain name for a couple dollars a year.
Ohhhh….. I think I get it. The point of this KlipFolio thing is to decrease all the daily page hits, right? That way, Windows users can get just the news headlines (right when they get published) without going to osnews.com multiple times / day and downloading the whole page each time.
Eugenia, your introductory paragraph made it sound to me (a bit of a newbe) sort of like a random ad for KlipFolio.
Thank you all for your very kind comments!
>Eugenia, will you be increasing your bandwidth?
Not really. Not sure. It is not up to me really, but to the person who handles the server. OSAlert is not hosted in a big hosting/collocation place, but in a more “private” manner. OSAlert currently has about 24,000 pageviews per day. Our current bandwidth allowance should scale up to 100,000+ pageviews/day, easily. So, -*for now*, we are ok.
<P>
>How about using stylesheets on OSAlert’ pages, Eugenia ? And W3C compliant XHTML too…
This is a no go for now. I have to make sure that OSAlert renders in a satisfactory manner from old Amiga browsers to cellphones, PDAs, iCab, text-based browsers etc. Exactly because we are reporting on all OSes, embedded or not, we have to make sure that people using “weird” OSes, can read OSAlert without problems.
>Wouldn’t just a Comments 1 2 3 4 5… be fairly clean, where the 1…n represent each page of comments. (Page 1 being comments 1-25 and 2, 26-50… etc… sorry if this is patronising.)
It will still make our front page look kinda ungly, and you will be surprising to know that only 40% of our readers actually care of read the comments section.
> Also, I would really like to see this happen in the forums – the threads being broken into pages – as some of the threads get quite long and take a while for me to load on my poor old modem.
I cannot change the Phorum engine, as it is a drop-in solution and I can’t really mess up with that source code. The rest of OSAlert though, it loads extremely fast even on 14.4 kbps modem.
>Will we still be able to access OSAlert as we have done previously, by going to osnews.com?
Yes, of course!
>I mean, what is changing, if anything?
We will add some nested tables and change the menu layout. This will make the rendering of OSAlert, obviously, slower. But we have to do it, because we need to find space to add 2 more menu items, 1 vertical ad and an expanded PriceGrabber table. We have to pay our bills you see. Getting more popular by the day comes with a price…
> I like the “no BS” design of OSAlert.
Thanks! That is exactly the point of the whole design and even the news reporting. We get straight to the point, easy to read, easy to find things out, easy to load and render on any browser. I will try to keep the simplistic design on the new design too, but it will be a bit harder.
>I’ve found what appears to be a decent hosting company and plan offering. What amount of storage would you think is appropriate?
50 MB should do the trick. OSAlert db, images and php pages only occupy about 6 MB so far after optimizing to the maximum all our icons, logos and even PHP pages (not counting the screenshots for some articles).
It’s only news taken from more serious sites like cnet, zdnet etc.
What’s so hot about that?
>It’s only news taken from more serious sites like cnet, zdnet etc. What’s so hot about that?
Very good point. I will explain.
OSAlert has two ways of working. First is the “portal” kind of thing where we link bigger sites when they have relevant articles to our focus and the second way is the articles we are writting. Click on Editorials, Features and especially, Interviews in our menu. As you see, we had our share on writting “longer” articles and sometimes we had World’s first previews, like GP3, QNX etc. In fact, we had more articles Slashdotted since August than any other site.
The other interesting thing about OSAlert, is that we are reporting on ALL OSes (from embedded cellphone/PDA ones, up to Windows/Linux or even.. dead OSes like Multics), unbiased. People will come here to read news about all these OSes but we do comment sometimes on the news with harsh or sweet words (depend what the news is about). There will be times we will praise Windows and times we will burry it under the tomb. Same goes for Linux, Mac, BeOS etc. We are trying to have an open mind on what is going on. No zealotry for any OS whatsoever.
Another thing is that there are no web sites right now that report on ALL OSes and focus on OSes and not on other things like science,space etc (like Slashdot has). There used to be FreeOS and multios.com as our potential competitors, but they are both dead sites now.
Also, we are trying to be “close” to our readership. We are certainly not ‘snobbish’, like not answering emails or not actively participating in the forums.
Another thing is the simplistic and fast-loading design of this site, which attracts people for not being “too much”. Less is better.
All these things and others, have made OSAlert “hot”. I hope you enjoy your stay.
Eug, I havent read this all, im very tired, If your going to change OSAlert in certain ways (logins, phpnuke, blah blah blah). Please keep this interface availible, I like the simple UI. Slashbozes or whatever else just take away from the postings. my $ 0.02
Also, congrats and whatnot, I really like OSAlert, because of the ability to talk about alternative OSes and not see half the postings bitching about use linux, or beowulf clusters, or god knows what else.
oh and, would it be possible for you to make a OSAlert Opera Panel (also usable in netscape I think)?
http://www.ospinion.com
It’s only news taken from more serious sites like cnet, zdnet etc.
What’s so hot about that?
——-
What’s so great about it? Even people like yourself can post on this independent (I hope) site. Zdnet and all majors shit talk because they’re too closely tied to their advertisers. That’s what is so great about it. Oh and it renders really fast
http://www.osopinion.com
Os**Opinion** is mostly about publishing editorials and rant about everything, not reporting on news, or having interviews or longer review/feature articles. OsOpinion is not even remotely similar to what we do here.
Yama, I don’t know your background, but if you have access to a SQL Server on a machine running IIS (this can even be inside your firewall), you can get a customizable portal framework from Microsoft called the http://www.microsoft.com/digitaldashboard“>Digital . I was actually one of the developers of this technology, and would be glad to help you out by answering any questions you might have. The software is free, but unsupported. It is an ASP app which uses XML & WebDAV to transact with the SQL server that stores your portal configuration and data. The portal is fully customizable, starting you out with a blank page which you can build into an arbitrary set of rectangles containing HTML, XML, or any HTTP addressable content. You can even write arbitrary server side script code and have it run in the context of one of your Web Parts (squares of content).
Eugenia wrote:
“This is a no go for now. I have to make sure that OSAlert renders in a satisfactory manner from old Amiga browsers to cellphones, PDAs, iCab, text-based browsers etc. Exactly because we are reporting on all OSes, embedded or not, we have to make sure that people using “weird” OSes, can read OSAlert without problems.”
Me and my old Mono-NeXTstation would thank you.