BloggerCon IV is over. I really wish I was there. Tomorrow, I'm going to be listening, talking, reading and Flickring BloggerCon. Thanks Dave! Thanks to everybody who was involved in both the conference and the streaming (including Kosso, who's Second Life setup saved me from having to use Windows Media nonsense). The next one's gotta be in London. 
Doc Searls is OPMLing! Cool stuff, Dave, let's propagate the OPML to the BloggerCon intelligent masses!
Kevin Marks is getting shit from Apple's .Mac service. They're holding his data hostage.
I know what Steve Gillmor has been smoking. Hookah!
I'm putting on a podcast chat using Skypecast tomorrow at 5pm BST (10am PDT). Here are the details. It's for people who are either at BloggerCon or have been listening to the streams or podcasts or following the blogs and Flickr.
I'm sitting in IRC and Second Life, listening to BloggerCon and talking with people about it. I'm 6,000 miles away. Cool or what?
I've just set up an RSS feed for BloggerCon IV podcasts. Stick it in your iTunes and you'll get the BloggerCon files almost as soon as they are released. If you want to listen live, log in to Second Life and search for "rss platform". A certain Koz Farina will do the honours.
Wired News has an article on technology among the homeless - including stories of homeless bloggers and how email is giving a level of permanence to an existence blighted by impermanence.
If you use Google IG to read your RSS, you might want to use Mihai Parparita's OPML Export gadget to pull your feeds out of IG.
Grazr and Google IG Part II: The Cow Contraption 
With the instructions below, you can put a Grazr on your Google Homepage. But with my latest little chunk of code, the OPML Cow Contraption, it lets you easily make a link that lets you put your own OPML and setup on to other people's Google homepage.
The Cow Contraption needs three pieces of information to work.
First of all, it needs an OPML file (defaults to my directory).
Secondly, it needs the height in pixels for the Grazr (defaults to 400).
Thirdly, it needs the title for the gadget (defaults to "Grazr").
If you have those, you can proceed and build yourself a link.
You can use this to fine-tune your own Grazr gadget or use it to promote your own outlines (people can always change the outline and title though).
Grazr on Google IG
I've just built something cool. It's a way to get a Grazr on your Google 'IG' Personalised Homepage. Want to try it out? Click the button, then.
If you click edit, you'll be able to set the URL for your OPML file, as well as the size and face for the type.
The default OPML file is my web directory, so you'll probably want to change it. I'll also be making IG, erm, gadgets that do other things with OPML.
A few days off
I've had a few days with very minimal blogging, partly because my laptop isn't in the best of states. It's now a "tied down" laptop because of some problems with the power supply. I'm probably going to have to shift my OPML blog back to Windows for a few weeks while Apple fix or replace my machine.
I've also been having bandwidth issues - something to do with ACKs and QoS and other geeky TLAs. I fiddled around with my modem a bit, and it all seems to be fixed. I've got to send my Linksys router back because it's the wrong sort, and I'm not paying £50 for phony advertised, non-open-source junkola that doesn't do anything that my current pile of shite doesn't already do.
Just got to back up my hard drive to some DVDs and I'll be able to give Apple the "big call".
