Filed under: Internet, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Note to anyone developing an RSS reader: If you don’t support OPML, we’re not interested. While adding feeds for your favorite web sites one at a time might have sound like fun, once you’ve got more than 10 feeds, the charm of entering them by hand kind of wears off. And over the last few years, we’ve accumulated just a few more feeds than that. So when we first heard about new kid on the RSS reader block Shyftr a few months ago, we pretty much ignored the site. But now that Shyftr has added OPML support, we decided to upload our 465 feeds and take it for a spin.

What sets Shyftr apart from RSS readers like Google Reader or Bloglines is the service’s social aspects. Users can leave comments on items they read, and those comments can be seen by any other Shyftr users who subscribe to the same feed. Shyftr got a bit of bad press last month when the company tried to add comments from the original article page to Shyftr, and eventually decided to remove this feature. The issue might not have been as controversial if comments left on Shyftr were automatically added to the original page, thus alleviating allegations that Shyftr was trying to move the discussion away from the blog itself and into the Shyftr community. But there are some technical challenges associated with doing that, not the least of which is that there are a number of different protocols that blogs use for posting comments.

Like any good social network, Shyftr lets you become “friends” with other users, view their profiles and activity, and invite friends who haven’t already signed up for the free service.

One thing to note is that while Shyftr now has an OPML import feature, it’s slow. It only takes a few moments to import a few hundred feeds. But it takes much, much longer to “process” those feeds. And if they don’t process correctly they won’t show up in your feed reader. So if you’ve got more than a few hundred feeds, you might want to hit the import button right before heading out for your lunch break. Maybe it’ll be done by the time you get back. But if you leave the page during the process, you’ll have to start all over again.

[via Louis Gray]

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Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Social Software, web 2.0

Note to anyone developing an RSS reader: If you don’t support OPML, we’re not interested. While adding feeds for your favorite web sites one at a time might have sound like fun, once you’ve got more than 10 feeds, the charm of entering them by hand kind of wears off. And over the last few years, we’ve accumulated just a few more feeds than that. So when we first heard about new kid on the RSS reader block Shyftr a few months ago, we pretty much ignored the site. But now that Shyftr has added OPML support, we decided to upload our 465 feeds and take it for a spin.

What sets Shyftr apart from RSS readers like Google Reader or Bloglines is the service’s social aspects. Users can leave comments on items they read, and those comments can be seen by any other Shyftr users who subscribe to the same feed. Shyftr got a bit of bad press last month when the company tried to add comments from the original article page to Shyftr, and eventually decided to remove this feature. The issue might not have been as controversial if comments left on Shyftr were automatically added to the original page, thus alleviating allegations that Shyftr was trying to move the discussion away from the blog itself and into the Shyftr community. But there are some technical challenges associated with doing that, not the least of which is that there are a number of different protocols that blogs use for posting comments.

Like any good social network, Shyftr lets you become “friends” with other users, view their profiles and activity, and invite friends who haven’t already signed up for the free service.

One thing to note is that while Shyftr now has an OPML import feature, it’s slow. It only takes a few moments to import a few hundred feeds. But it takes much, much longer to “process” those feeds. And if they don’t process correctly they won’t show up in your feed reader. So if you’ve got more than a few hundred feeds, you might want to hit the import button right before heading out for your lunch break. Maybe it’ll be done by the time you get back. But if you leave the page during the process, you’ll have to begin all over again.

[via Louis Gray]

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Filed under: World wide web, Social Software

Because it wasn’t hard enough trying to decide which Adobe AIR-based desktop Twitter/FriendFeed client to use, MySocial 24×7 had to go and complicate things by releasing their own desktop client. MySocial 24×7 started out as a Firefox sidebar add-on, but if you value your screen real estate, standalone applications are the way to go.

The desktop client lets you track and engage in Twitter and FriendFeed conversations without a web browser. One thing that sets MySocial 24×7 apart from other desktop clients like Twhirl and Alert Thingy is the integrated browser that lets you view photos and videos without launching a web browser.

The interface is clean and simple to use. But it’s not very customizable. If you want to see detailed user information, or send direct Twitter messages, MySocial 24×7 might not be the desktop client for you. We also had a hard time getting the client to connect to our Twitter and FriendFeed accounts, but it did a great job of tracking public timelines.

[via TechCrunch]

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Filed under: Debt, Mortgage Confidential

Mortgage expert David Reed invites Walletpop readers to ask him questions about real estate financing. leave your questions in the comment section of this post.

Okay, I admit. There are those who will vehemently disagree with the premise of not paying down debt, I’m among them, but there are times when not paying down debt makes perfect sense when considering buying real estate and obtaining a mortgage. On the other side of that very same coin, it also makes sense to pay down debt for the very same reason: to help qualify for a home loan. What’s up with that?

When debt-to-income ratios are too high for a particular loan program, then getting rid of some of that debt to help qualify is in order. But which debt? Revolving balances on credit cards do very little unless you substantially pay down a credit card balance, from say $10,000 to $5,000, but simply paying $1,000 or so will do very little to reduce the minimum monthly payment on that revolving account. That means the debt to income ratio will barely be affected.

Not the case with installment loans, and in particular an automobile loan. An interesting underwriting guideline asks that if an car loan has less than 10 months remaining then the lender won’t count the car loan against the borrower’s debt even if the borrower is still making payments on the car. For instance, if a borrower’s monthly vehicle payment is $450 and has 12 months left, the borrower need only pay the note down to nine payments. That’s $1,350 to pay down the auto loan instead of paying off the auto loan completely, somewhere around $5,500. (this trick doesn’t work on a leased vehicle, the underwriter will assume that when the lease is over the borrower will have to buy/lease another car, keeping a similar debt load.)

A quirk regarding not paying off debt addresses credit scores. One of the biggest factors when calculating credit scores is the loan balance compared to available credit. The magic percentage seems to be somewhere around 33%, meaning a superior credit score will be calculated with $3,333 in loan balances with a $10,000 credit limit compared to a $10,000 credit limit with zero balances. I know it sounds counter-intuitive, but having a zero balance on a credit card can actually lower a credit score compared to a loan balance of about a third of the credit line.

Real estate finance expert David Reed is president of CD REED Mortgage Bankers in Austin, TX and author of Mortgage Confidential: What You Need to Know That Your Lender Won’t Tell You and Mortgages 101: Quick Answers to over 250 Critical Questions About Your Home Loan.

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Filed under: World wide web, Social Software

Like the idea of having a web browser with Twitter, Facebook, and instant messenger integration, but don’t want to install a whole new browser to get those features? Yoono is a browser plugin that makes Firefox behave a bit more like Flock, the social web browser built from the same Mozilla code. But instead of downloading and installing a whole new browser, all you need to do to begin using Yoono is install a 2MB Firefox add-on. An World wide web Explorer version is in the works.

So what exactly does Yoono do? It adds a sidebar to Firefox that gives you swift access to your instant messenger, Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, Piczo, and Friendfeed contacts. You can send messages, update your social feeds, or just see what all of your friends are up to from within Firefox. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. You can also leave notes about the internet sites you’re visiting, rate pages, and share your bookmarks.

You can also add several widgets to your sidebar that will let you view web sites or photos related to the page you’re currently viewing. There’s also a YouTube widget that’ll show you related videos, the day’s top rated videos, or videos from your contacts.

Yoono is in private beta, but we’ve got 200 invites to give away to Download Squad readers on a first come, first served basis. Please don’t leave comments asking us for invites, just follow the link after the jump.

Continue reading Yoono browser plugin makes Firefox more like Flock

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Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Microsoft, Social Software, web 2.0

Microsoft is expanding that successful I’m Initiative we heard about last year to include Hotmail. The company started the I’m Initiative in 2007’s March and has so far raised almost $1.5 million to give to charities.

The “service” makes using Microsoft’s services — specifically Hotmail and Messenger — beneficial to several causes. Microsoft shares a portion of its advertising revenue collected through its email and instant messaging apps, and even though this is “nice” on Microsoft’s part, there’s a clear business-minded motivation behind it.

Despite that, at least there’s some good coming out of the ridiculous amount of instant messaging and emailing we all do. Though we can’t praise Microsoft too much: $1.5 million out of the billions Microsoft makes each day is hardly significant. Then again, if more companies donated a tiny portion of the tremendous amount of money they make each day, the world could benefit significantly.

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Filed under: World wide web, Web services, Google, Social Software, web 2.0

Google Reader users have long had the option of sharing items from their feeds. Just click the share button and anyone who knows the URL of your shared item feed can subscribe or view your shared items in a blog-like format. A few months ago, Google even started showing your shared items to your Gmail contacts automatically. But if you wanted to share items or web pages from sites that you didn’t subscribe to, you were out of luck.

Now Google has launched several new tools that turn Google Reader into a bit more of a blogging/communication tool. There’s a new browser bookmarklet that you can use to share any item on the internet, whether the site has an RSS feed or not. Google has alsdo added a new Notes section to Google Reader that lets you enter text notes to share with your contacts. You can either enter a standalone note or click the “share with note” button on any article you’re looking at in Google Reader to add your thoughts to a shared item.

You can also choose one of four graphic headers for your shared items page. There’s the default Google Reader icon, ice cream, ninjas, or sea. No, we have no idea why these four, but we wouldn’t be surprised to see Google add to the list of graphics later.

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