I’ve been trying to find a good news aggregator similar to Newsgator, but without the Outlook integration, and efficient much like the online feed service Bloglines. I have found what I was looking for in Nick Bradbury’s FeedDemon, a news aggregator that offers a wealth of great features including several pre-installed RSS feeds, automatic feed updates and a clean streamlined interface.

For those who are new to RSS, the acronym stands for Rich Site Summary or Really Simple Syndication. More information can be found at Lockergnome’s RSS Quickstart Guide. In theory, RSS is an XML format used to syndicate content from web sites (like kartooner.com) such as news articles, headlines and announcements without having to actually visit the site itself.

It allows you as the user to use a news aggregator application or service to ‘read’ the news feeds like a digital newspaper delivering interesting news feeds only limited to the imagination. It’s a medium that is beginning to catch on and reminds me of early adaptations of HTML or email for that matter.

With Tapestry’s RSS feeds I can read some of my favorite comics including B.C., Garfield, Peanuts and PvP. A noteworthy addition is the excellent Ripley’s Believe it or Not feed which includes the infamous Ripley record of wacky information, whether you believe it or not.

RSS has become so popular for information delivery and syndication that sites like Amazon (courtesy of Chris Pirillo) and CNN have created news feeds for their syndicated content.

FeedDemon Rating:

Bottom Line: If you’re looking for a feature-rich and excellent news aggregator; Get FeedDemon now!

For reasons unknown, the infamous Geocities removed one of my old (and quite stale) sites housed on their servers. Well, it had only been stored on there statically since 1997. Does that give them just cause to remove it? Yeah, alright, in this rare occasion it’s justified.

However, much to my dismay this meant that I no longer had this historical aspect of my web development past, until of course I remembered that the Wayback Machine (courtesy of Archive.org) had the capability to ressurect old pages. The real purpose of the Wayback Machine is to view the historical changes (aesthetically and contextually) for sites like Microsoft and Amazon.

I used it of course to find the original Geocities address that EMWare Productions, my old freeware software development company, was stored at. Sure enough the results were satisfying and I eventually preserved the old site here on the kartooner.com servers.

Curiously enough, a few years back (2000 to be precise) I was contacted via Federal Express by a company called EMWare based in Orem, Utah. They instructed me to “Cease and Desist” the name ‘EMWare’ due to copyright infringements and trademark provisions. To make a long story short, I had a fun time explaining to them the supposed company of which I ran was created by a 17-year-old and a 13-year old.

Life is funny so I keep laughing at it, not with it.

You can view the original un-touched design (circa 1997) of the EMWare Productions site (all of its text-only glory) here:

http://www.kartooner.com/emware

When I graduated high school 5 or 6 years ago I immediately registered for college and began my course work not more than a few weeks later. The transition from ‘doe-eyed’ high school student to full-fledged college student happened in what seemed like a blink of the eye.

I noticed, after just a few days of being a college student, that the atmosphere and general workflow was different. The interaction with fellow students was easy, I’m not too shy to spark a conversation, and most of the people I conversed with noted my passive attitude and quirky personality.

In a nutshell I have a knack for what I call “sharp comedy”, an indirect and compact version of what you would find at a comedy club. I’m not sarcastic, per say, but I do on occasion make witty remarks on current events, observations, and other things to do with life. I also breath in the details of my surroundings, which I believe is the result of my artistic background.

An artist will tell you that “it’s all in the details”, and for me what transpires is my innate ability to recognize what might otherwise be deemed supernumerary, or the “smaller stuff”. For instance, when I’m scanning a college campus I make mental notes of where the trees are located, the area where students might gather the most and the general feng shui of the environment. In fact, that’s the best way to describe it, “feng shui” which according to the Chinese is the spirit influences and flow attributed to the natural features of a landscape.

I also notice the details in people, which might be due to my talent for portrait artwork. When I look at a face I’ll notice the creases and crowfeet around the eyes, how one’s face might scrunch up when their focused or smooth out when they’re relaxed.

You might be thinking, “Of course, this is all obvious”, but for me I literally take into account each individual feature of a person and let it influence my artwork. I’ll even make mental notes of how the person laughs; be it a hearty belly laugh or a “hyena” type laugh, every detail matters in painting an accurate portrait of the individual.

Not too long ago my brother and I owned a copy of the fantastic game creation software Klik and Play by Maxis (creators of the Sim series including the ever-popular The Sims). When we first installed it on our 486 we were blown away by the features. Namely a built-in graphics and animation editor, a drag and drop interface and (for the time anyways) an innovative programming backend that was easy for beginners to learn and advanced progammers to take advantage of.

Since that time the Klik and Play series was sold (or purchased) by another company called Clickteam and they eventually updated the code and added features to create other generations of the game creation series.

While these programs were innovative for their time the various components would be outdated and cumbersome by today’s standards . Which brings me to an excellent piece of software written by Mark Overmars called Game Maker.

Game Maker is essentially “a program that allows you to make exciting computer games without the need to write a single line of code. Using easy to learn drag-and-drop actions you can make professional looking games in little time. Games with backgrounds, animated graphics, music and sound effects. And once you get more experienced there is a built-in programming language that gives you full flexibility.”

For anyone interested in creating their own 2D computer games or if you’re not satisfied with the tried and true cookie cutter games of today, Game Maker is the perfect outlet to create excellent 2D games with or without the means of knowing how to program.

Also, for inspiration purposes please check out seiklus by cylsm, a adventure slash exploration game created entirely in Game Maker.