Google Reader Wins
I have switched my online feed/news reader from Bloglines to Google Reader. Bloglines has always been my favorite, but I wanted to use GReader’s unique features – which you can read all about at the GReader blog.
The GReader’s newest feature allows you to add your reading list (or any label of your choosing) as a module to your Google Personalized Homepage. What’s more cool is that you can add more than one instance of the GReader module and tell them to display different labels, use different sorting orders, etc…
So, in addition to powering OraNA, GReader now powers my Google Personalized Homepage:
Speaking of feeds, if you want to share your OPML, or browse the subscription lists of other people, head to share.opml.org. I just uploaded my OPML from GReader, here it is.
Read more about share.opml.org.
2 Comments | Filed in Google, Personal | Tags: aggregator, GoogleSearch your Oracle E-Business Suite data using Google
Google recently announced the addition of OneBox functionality to their search appliance, which means that you can find just about anything through the familiar Google search box, including information stored in your corporate ERP system.
Google launched an initial set of OneBox modules with Oracle, Cognos, SAS and Salesforce.com.
According to Oracle, If you are an Oracle E-Business Suite customer, with Google OneBox for Enterprise, you are able to access key information from human resource (HR), enterprise resource planning (ERP), customer relationship management (CRM), and supply chain management (SCM) applications.
Before being able to search Oracle E-Business Suite, there is a sign-on process that guarantees user authorization and authentication prior to accessing secure enterprise data.
The search simultaneously spans multiple public, private, and enterprise information sources. For example, using the keyword ‘requisition’ provides multiple results from secure sources, including:
- Access to personal desktop documents
- Viewing personal E-Business Suite requisitions
- Focused navigation into enterprise applications
- Access to all corporate intranet site for policies
This looks really powerful.
Steven Chan, Director of Applications Technology Integration at Oracle reports that E-Business Suite search results are returned in XML format and merged into whatever other data Google finds from other sources.
It’ll be interesting to see if companies implement Google’s OneBox to search Oracle E-Business Suite, instead of, for example, using Oracle Portal, Collaboration Suite search functionality or even Oracle’s latest Secure Enterprise Search 10g product.
Updated May-01-2006:
Peter Heller, Senior Director, Oracle Applications Product Marketing, discusses with Cliff the new relationship between Oracle and Google, why companies want search in their enterprise applications and why this is so exciting for Oracle application customers. Listen.
1 Comment | Filed in Google, Oracle | Tags: EBS, Google, searchOraNA powered by Google and FeedBurner
In this post I will share with you how I transformed OraNA from an aggregator powered by WordPress to a powerful, robust and easy to manage feed aggregator powered by Google Reader and FeedBurner.
I will take you through the three easy steps that I followed to set up OraNA. You can follow the same steps to set up your own aggregator if you wish.
I will also share with you the features that make OraNA unique, like the ability for anyone to contribute feed items, the aggregation of feeds for websites that do not have feeds (like Jonathan Lewis’s web site), and the option to “plug-n-play” the aggregator on any website or blog, with just one line of code.
Here is how I (re)created OraNA:
1 – Set up the feeds in Google Reader:
Recently Google Reader introduced the ability to share labels. Using this feature, you can subscribe to many feeds, label them with a specific label, and then share that label. A shared label has one unique feed URL. subscribing to that one shared label feed is the same as subscribing to every feed with the same label.
So, I subscribed to all the feeds that I wanted to include in OraNA, labeled them “oracle” and then turned on sharing on that label.
2 – Created the OraNA feed in FeedBurner:
Next, using FeedBurner, I burned the feed produced in the first step above. The result was the final OraNA feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/orana. This feed, by itself and when viewed in a browser, looks and acts like a totally functional feed aggregator, however, I wanted to publish the feed’s content on its own customized HTML web page. No problem. FeedBurner has the “BuzzBoost” service that republishes your burned feed’s content as go-anywhere HTML. I activated BuzzBoost. The result was a snippet of JavaScript that I pasted into the OraNA web page.
3 – Added the sources to BlogRolling:
I wanted to display the feeds that OraNA aggregates. To do that, I exported the feeds in Google Reader to an OPML file, then imported the file into BlogRolling. In BlogRolling, I edited the links so that they pointed to the source website instead of the feed. Then I copied and pasted the BlogRolling JavaScript code into the OraNA web page.
That’s it.
Now, when I want to add a new feed to OraNA, all what I need to do is to subscribe to the feed I want to add in Google Reader, label it “oracle” and add it to the blogroll in BlogRolling.
OraNA features:
OraNA aggregates the feed for http://del.icio.us/OracleNews. I created the OracleNews del.icio.us account specifically for OraNA. If you have a del.icio.us account, links that you tag for:oraclenews will appear in OraNA. I will have to approve the links first before publishing them to OraNA (i.e. save them to OracleNews).
OraNA has a Firefox extension, get it here.
OraNA aggregates ALL the blogs listed in blogs.oracle.com, including ALL Oracle executive blogs, ALL Oracle employee blogs and ALL Oracle non-employee blogs. I will make sure that new blogs added to blogs.oracle.com, will also be aggregated by OraNA.
OraNA aggregates ALL the feeds listed in http://www.oracle.com/rss/, except AskTom and the forums. Let me know if you want AskTom – New Questions feed added.
New feed content normally appears on OraNA within few minutes from publishing. Updated feed content will also reappear on OraNA.
OraNA includes Jonathan Lewis’ feeds for jlcomp.demon.co.uk/faq/ind_faq.html and jlcomp.demon.co.uk/ind_misc.html. I know, these pages do not have an RSS feed, but with the help of feed43.com or Ponyfish, everything is possible
. Here is the feed for the FAQ page, and here is the feed for the articles page.Moreover, it is very easy to put OraNA on your website or blog. See how it looks on my blog. All what you need is this JavaScript code:
And to list the sources, add this code:
Happy news reading
Important Note: If you are already subscribed to the OraNA feed, make sure you use http://feeds.feedburner.com/orana to continue receiving updates.
6 Comments | Filed in Google, Oracle | Tags: aggregator, blog, feed, Google, NewsGoogle Store in The Middle East
The Arabic writing on the left says: “The newest computer games”. The one on the right says: “Computer maintenance”.
(via)
1306313812 extra readers
If you have a blog on Google’s blogspot, rejoice, you may now have 1,306,313,812 extra people reading your blog.
Back when I was in China a few weeks ago, blogs hosted on Google’s blogspot were not accessible as they were blocked by the Chinese government. But, based on this InfoWorld article, China has now opened up access to Google’s Blogger.com service. Google is apparently expanding not only in the USA but also in China. (via)
If anyone in China is reading this, can you confirm that you can access a blogspot blog?
2 Comments | Filed in Interesting Stuff | Tags: blog, china, GoogleFind blogs using Google
In case you have not heard already, Google has just launched a blog search engine. From the Google FAQ:
Results include all blogs, not just those published through Blogger; our blog index is continually updated, so you’ll always get the most accurate and up-to-date results; and you can search not just for blogs written in English, but in French, Italian, German, Spanish, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Brazilian Portuguese and other languages as well. … Blog Search indexes blogs by their site feeds, which will be checked frequently for new content. This means that Blog Search results for a given blog will update with new content much faster than standard web searches. Also, because of the structured data within site feeds, it is possible to find precise posts and date ranges with much greater accuracy.
For example, I searched for my name:
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?q=Eddie+Awad
and almost all my posts appeard in the result. What’s also cool, is that I can check who references a particular post by clicking on the “References” link next to some posts.
Check it out at http://blogsearch.google.com/
Comments Off | Filed in Technology | Tags: blog, Google, searchGoogle Extensions for Firefox
Firefox users, rejoice. Google has introduced the following Firefox extensions:
Enjoy.
Comments Off | Filed in Firefox | Tags: extension, Firefox, GoogleFree Google Earth is here
From the Google Blog:
Last October Keyhole and Google joined forces to integrate satellite imagery with Google search technology in a single product. Now we’ve landed on Google Earth. You can fly from space right down to any place on the planet and take in spectacular 3D views, and for major US cities you can now see 3D city models. And more: where Google Local works today (the U.S., Canada, and the U.K.), you can search Google Local from within Earth for points of interest, businesses listings, driving directions, and lots more (like some of these excellent locations). True to Google form, there is now a free version. Ready to explore?
I downloaded Google Earth and started playing with it. My reaction: WAOH!
4 Comments | Filed in Technology | Tags: Google
