Ferrit is now online at last. Initial rumors (at least the ones I heard) were that it will be an alternative to TradeMe. But it doesnt look anything like TradeMe yet. It looks more like a supersized online shop to me - not a bad idea either - perhaps with more products available for sale it could kick off well.
Only think I dont like from my first impressions is that they site display is a bit too busy.
Update: ok, I've just registered an account with Ferrit to check what benefits members get, well the main thing is that you can create a list of items you like and then get redirected to the store whom the product belongs to so that you can buy it. The list is also handy if you want to share it with friends and family (perhaps the reason for this is for people to find Christmas gifts ...etc for others) again not a bad idea.
What I find interesting is that you cannot checkout items into a shopping cart and pay for them and get them shipped to you, so it seems ferrit is more like half an online shop. I expect another benefit of the registration is being spammed by the retailers participating in Ferrit (hopefully this wont happen!)
Update 2: Just refering to that last paragraph above, Ferrit will be introducing sales and more in later phases of Ferrit. Tim posted about this before here
Microsoft is now developing RSS into making it a two way street. I firstly read about this on Ray Ozzie's (MS CTO) blog here and now just found an article about this on PCWorld.
"Microsoft is extending the popular RSS 2.0 Web syndication format to make it "multidirectional," allowing it to be used for synchronizing information such as contacts and calendar entries across different applications, the company says.
Web sites that support Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds. When content on a site is updated, the RSS feed informs the subscriber, often with a summary of the updated content and a link to it."
See the full article here
Today while I was looking at some books in Whitcoulls, I came accross the following book and surely it got my attention!
I guess it should be an interesting read but I don't think I would buy it, maybe will look for it in the library. Anyone read it? Does it tell much that tech aware people wouldnt know?
More info about it can be found here if you are interested.
I just read that Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's CTO has started blogging. It's nice to see senior people at large corps like MS blogging.
I'm sure his blog will be an interesting read. See it here and here is a little bio of Ray.