Monthly Archive for December, 2008

RSS Pipes

Published on 28 December 2008 in mashup and web. 0 Comments

Yahoo! Pipes is something I gave a look to back when it was released to the wild. Like many others I assume, I gave up meddling when whatever it was I was angling to do required stupendously long regex statements. However Matt 2.0 recently came fighting back and produced this RSS pipe for the webpage of a curiously interesting macro economics commentator from India. Admittedly the regex component still took up most of my time but I really don’t see how that can change, other than to pray for nice consistent, tabular web pages. Some hope.

Anyways, here is the Pipe ‘source’:

4 parts to the above:

Fetch the page, indicating start & end points and delimiter for items.
Further chopping up of the results; data cleansing if you like.
RSS-ify items, i.e. specify title, link & description.
Pattern match the appropriate content into each field.

Was also going to point out how this can eleviate one of the big failings of the RSS protocol in my book, the inability to filter based on categories, but it seems there’s a recent blog (top google news result for ‘yahoo pipes’) which hits on the same point, and a few links to backgrounders & alternative methods too.

I’ve used dedicated web-scraper-cum-rss-generators in the past, which also include a version of pattern matching to structure data, but let’s be honest, as complex and seemingly unreasonable as regex is, it’s ability to interrogate even the most convoluted pages found on the web cannot be denied. And Pipes being a general platform to twist things (not just static page content) together, hopefully I’ll find greater uses for it in future.

The Web is Broken v.02

Published on 28 December 2008 in Facebook, Google and web. 0 Comments

‘Portals’ as they were have died: iGoogle & Facebook have placed faith in the tab. More than merely a user-experience metaphor, the tab allows apps to take back the browser from the platform, and in doing so affords the user a higher performance, leaving behind all those clunky multi-layered flash/js/iframe flashing lights, a la MySpace.

Except that Facebook’s performance seems to have gotten worse since it’s renovations. The umpteen ajax updaters located at various points around the page seem to wind the browser response down to a gradual, slow, painful death. Adding that to Gmail and Ebay in the list of pre-Alpha sites intent on destroying my browser window.

And I’m also adding a 2nd Adobe ‘platform’ to the blacklist of general technological cancers killing off the interwebs. Yes that’s right Acrobat Reader, global standard for electronic document stalling.

And Google now have the temerity to add a link to Gmail claiming to speed up the browser!

Browsers are getting faster and better at running web applications like Google Mail that use browser technology to its limits. In order to get the best experience possible and make Google Mail run an average of twice as fast, we suggest that you upgrade your browser to one of the fastest Google Mail supported browsers that work on Windows.

Automated Google PR Generator

A Precursor to Privatisation is Nationalisation…

Published on 22 December 2008 in delusion of crowds and Financial Markets. 0 Comments

UK, US, Irish Republic. More will follow…

Once the debt has been drawn down, which will happen, will the 10s become the new 80s? Much more recognised voices than mine can articulate the cycle that may produce it.

And is Brazil, largely seen as immune (insofaras an economy can be immune from a global recession) to events elsewhere, merely being set up as the last domino to fall?

no comment

Published on 18 December 2008 in Africa and no comment. 0 Comments

Our crew had been well trained and used water cannons, self made incendiary bombs, beer bottles and anything else that could be used to battle with them.
Thirty minutes later the pirates gestured for a ceasefire. Then a helicopter from the multinational fleet came to help us.

Peng Weiyuan, Captain, Zhenhua 4

Market Inefficiency

Published on 12 December 2008 in delusion of crowds, Financial Markets and short term plays. 0 Comments

The recent climb for the Dow to just under the 9k mark has been surprising to say the least. If markets like to climb a wall of worry then they had quite a high one to get over of late, economic data in the past two weeks coming in worse than already poor expectations.

But last night the penny dropped, albeit in the form of disappointment over the automakers bailout. That in itself may prove to be unsuccessful even if it passes the senate eventually. The Whitehouse is now looking to use some of the bailout loot reserved for the banks instead. Either way it’s messy and the outcome will be highly uncertain at best, a waste of money from the outside at worst.

The Dow came out of it’s benign hibernation to finish down 200pts. It’s also poised for a triple digit decline today, although just how bad may be tempered by the news that retail sales came in not as bad as expected. Barring a high profile pre-Xmas bankruptcy, I’m looking to find support around 8,200 or if a bankruptcy occurs, somewhere around the mid to upper 7,000 (ie no lower low for the time being).

Continue reading ‘Market Inefficiency’

Volatility Source

Published on 9 December 2008 in delusion of crowds and Financial Markets. 0 Comments

The problem, as I see it, is that unless the Treasury wants to back the entire credit market (likely reducing Treasuries to junk status – and no, I’m not kidding), we’re simply delaying the inevitable failures yet to come. When we’re losing 500,000 jobs per month, you can let these guys get our money at 3% – but it won’t be enough to stop the tide of foreclosures and defaults.In fact, a case could be made that once these programs run out — and once our Treasuries have become one gigantic SIV — the pain will eventually be felt.

Bennet Sedacca, Minyanville

World governments have received praise from numerous quarters regarding their interventionist strategies. Indeed this praise often seems to be circular-referencing itself has one government gives the thumbs up to the next. Meanwhile though, the markets gyrate wildly on the possibility of where the public fund bucket will pop up next. Let’s face it, what else would cause a 1500pt rally on the Dow amidst the economic crater of over half a million jobs lost in a month?

People say markets are not listening to the fundamentals. Neither are governments whose main weapon against bad debt has been to bail it out. Banks with remarkably positive market risk betas, subprime mortgage holders & illiquid automakers have benefitted. The dot com bust came when people realised there was no business case for pumping money into pipe dreams.

When will the ‘old’ [read 'The'] economy bust come?