The PubSub Matchbox
"Making the Most of the Matching Engine"

The glitz and glamour of the Oscars were in rare form last night. Here at PubSub headquarters, we were busy counting up the mentions of the nominees over the past 3 weeks in the millions of weblogs, news resources, and press releases (I’ll call them the big three) that we monitor. While the numbers of posts to these media is not a good indicator of how a selective few will choose the “best” in either category, we thought that the numbers were intriguing. The Oscar winners are displayed in red and the highest mentions in blue (if they weren’t the winner).

Motion Picture

The Aviator: 1163
Finding Neverland: 575
Million Dollar Baby: 1437
Ray: 741
Sideways: 1077

Director

Martin Scorsese: 399
Clint Eastwood: 811
Taylor Hackford: 101
Alexander Payne: 127
Mike Leigh: 139

Actor - Leading Role

Don Cheadle: 271
Johnny Depp: 673
Leonardo DiCaprio: 382
Clint Eastwood: 811
Jamie Foxx: 665

Actor - Supporting Role

Alan Alda: 148
Thomas Haden Church: 149
Jamie Foxx: 665
Morgan Freeman: 388
Clive Owen: 257

Actress - Leading Role

Annette Bening: 117
Catalina Sandino Moreno: 100
Imelda Staunton: 167
Kate Winslet: 325
Hilary Swank: 412

Actress - Supporting Role

Cate Blanchett: 261
Laura Linney: 121
Virginia Madsen: 187
Sophie Okonedo: 97
Natalie Portman: 416

3 out of the 6 winners led in mentions in “The Big Three” over the past 3 weeks. Again, this is by no means a scientific endeavor, just a bit of fun unscientific collective intelligence testing.

An aside: Jamie Foxx probably had more mentions in best supporting actor category because we didn’t distinguish it from his portrayal as Ray, in which he won the Oscar for best actor (doing so would have skewed the results). That said, even though Foxx received that award, he didn’t beat out Clint Eastwood and Johnny Depp in mentions in “The Big Three” for that category. Go figure.

This week, the TOW involves the art of making an ego feed with the PubSub matching system.

For those who don’t know, an ego feed involves the creation of a subscription to match your name. Thus, whenever someone mentions you in a weblog post or in the news, you will be notified in real-time. That said, there is more to it than just putting in your name. Here are some pointers.

+ Do you use a middle initial in your name? If so, does everyone use that middle initial when they blog about you?

+ Are there different ways to spell your name? For example, Stephen versus Steve verus Steven. You will want to put in every possible spelling of your name.

+ Does you name often get misspelled? If so, you may want to use the most common misspellings of your name in your ego feed.

+ Sometimes bloggers may link to one of your weblog posts, but not use your name in their post. You may want to utilize the URI attribute, which will match any results that link to any part of the URL. For example, if someone linked to PubSub but didn’t write the word PubSub, then using URI:pusbub.com will still pick it up.

+ For those that have a common name, I also suggest using the URI attribute, but also suggest adding keywords to your ego feed. For example, if Bill Gates was as common as John Smith, it would be beneficial to add keywords such as ‘Microsoft’ or ‘windows’ to the feed, to decrease the number of irrelevant results.

Find out what people are saying about you. Set up an ego feed in PubSub today.

I’m going to try out new segment on the blog. Called “What’s Hot", I’ll link to hot new items in different media outlets (books, DVDs, etc) and create subscriptions around them. I’ll try to do this once every other week and see how it goes.

What’s Hot in DVDs

1) Friends - The Complete 9th Season.

2) The Incredibles

3) Napoleon Dynamite

4) Ray

5) Donnie Darko

6) Sex in the City - Season 6, Part 2

The big news on the Web today is that Paris Hilton’s sidekick (no, not Nicole Richie) was hacked. Follow the thread (some content may not be SFW).

Some other stories and people in the news today:

1) A 6.4 magnitude earthquake shook Iran last night.

2) An American citizen has been charge with conspiring to assassinate president Bush.

3) Supreme Court chief justice William H. Rehnquist will not be present during the initial proceedings at the court, leading to more speculation as to his possible retirement.

The big news in the blogosphere today was the death of Hunter S. Thompson (Subscription of the Day), who committed suicide last night.

In other news, Warner Brothers has updated the Looney Toons. Say hello to Loonatics. Also, the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy is coming out on the big screen.

In tech news, there is lots of talk about Tansmit 3, a new FTP client for OS X.

More news:

Despite many concerns, Chris Rock will indeed host the Oscars

John Negroponte was tapped by President Bush as the first U.S. Director of National Intelligence.

Doug Wead apparently recorded George W. Bush during conversations when Bush was Governor of Texas. The polibloggers are all over this one.

Did you know that you can order a pizza while playing Everquest 2? I’m talking about directly from the game. Remember how excited we were when Pong came out?

Have you been following all of the talk about Mspace? We have. Well, we watch everything.

The tip of the week focuses on one of the less-known tools that PubSub offers. That of SEC filings. You can be notified via RSS, the sidebar, or e-mail of any filings submitted to the SEC by any public company.

The following parameters can be used: company/subject, CIK code, and form type. You can also limit the results to include or exclude ownership forms (or choose to get only ownership forms).

Who could use this service?

+ Lawyers who want to keep up with forms submitted by potential clients.
+ Companies that want to keep up with filings by competitors or potential business partners.
+ Stockholders in public companies.
+ Stockbrokers who make trades based on SEC filings.

Stay ahead of the business world with SEC filing notificiations with PubSub.

Going to the movies this weekend? Here are a few that are making their debut on the big screen:

1) Because of Winn Dixie

2) Constantine

3) Son of the Mask

4) Downfall (Der Untergang)

5) Turtles Can Fly

Sports dominated the blog arena today, with the exception of a few big announcements from the technology sector.

1) Gary Bettman officially ended the 2004-05 hockey season. The good news? Pitchers and catchers are reporting this week for spring training.

2) The Daytona 500 will be held this Sunday. Catch up all of the action.

3) There are more twists and turns in the Jose Conseco/steroids fiasco that it’s hard to keep up. If only there was a good way to do that…

4) I know that I missed the pulse leading up to Westminster Dog Show, but there is still quite the chatter about the show and its winner, Carlee, a German shorthaired pointer.

5) Lance Armstrong has decided to race in the Tour de France…again.

6) Microsoft announced that they will be coming out with a new version of their popular browser this summer. This was the subscription of the day, changing daily and appearing on our front page.

7) Have you seen the new blogging and RSS tools coming out of the DEMO@15! conference? If npt, you’re missing out.

Here are some subscriptions based on happenings around the blog world and the news.

1) The Demo@15 conference is being held in Phoenix this week. Keep up with the new releases from each company with this subscription.

2) The Gates, a public art display in Central Park, was revealed this weekend.

3) Today is Valentine’s Day, although everyday should be, right?

4) In business, the big news of the day is that Verizon has acquired MCI.

5) Curt Shilling has donated his bloody sock to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

6) Two big retirement announcements in one week. First Karl Malone, then Reggie Miller.

This morning, we went live with a new event page for the Academy Awards.

We have created nomination subscriptions in many of the Oscar categories. There are graphs for data we call “Match Counts", which displays the number of daily results for a particular nomination as it relates to the other nominations in that category.

You will also notice the green “+” icon which will automatically add that subscription to your PubSub account.

I’m going to try something new. Every Friday, I will post a tip on how to best use the PubSub service. Today, I focus on the “URI” attribute.

If you wanted to the engine to match any weblog posts that have a link to an mp3 file in it, just put URI:mp3 in your query. In additon, you can limit the results by putting in some keywords. Thus a query for (podcast | podcasting | podcasted) AND URI:mp3 will match results that have the specific keywords AND have a link to an mp3 file.

If there are any PubSub tips that you would like to share, send us a note.

The news spreads around the blog world at a fast pace. Here are some of the topics which we picked up on today.

1) The Senate voted on a new bill that would limit class-action lawsuits in state courts.

2) Karl Malone is retiring from the NBA, without that coveted championship ring.

3) Arthur Miller died yesterday at the age of 89. Arthur Miller was the focus of our subscription of the day.

4) Jeff Gannon is really James D. Guckert.

5) The NHL season is (almost) officially cancelled.

6) Google seems to have offered to host some of the content from Wikimedia.

PubSub Concepts, Inc. (pubsub.com) needs a strong PHP/Javascript developer to maintain and expand our website. This is a technical position rather than a design position.

The PubSub website acts as an interface between users and our software back-end. The website does not perform the actual matching service, but does provide a means of interacting with it as far as creating and manging subscriptions. Much of this work is XML based, so you’ll need to do more than just interact with a database (although there’s plenty of that as well). Since PubSub is a service, there are also many opportunities to build applications that communicate with the website.

This is where Javascript comes into the picture. You should be familiar with making HTTP requests through Javascript, and with creating a rich user experience around them.

In other words, client-side programming skills are just as important as server-side programming skills. Please only send us a resume if you know and understand both and can provide samples of past work.

We’re looking for the following skills and abilities:

• Strong knowledge of HTML, including the ability to hand-code pages
• Strong knowledge of design and layout, both using advanced and traditional techniques
• Extensive PHP knowledge. You should be at a level where you can install and update PHP from sources
• Extensive Javascript knowledge.
• String general coding skills, including any non-php languages
• The ability to separate content from functionality and business logic
• Some database management ability - at least familiarity with creating and modifying tables

The following would also be helpful:

• Familiarity with or knowledge of Linux Knowledge of other scripting languages like perl, bash or python
• Knowledge of Flash

PubSub is located in lower Manhattan. This is a full time position. We cannot sponsor visas or relocation.

Please send your resume as text to jobs@pubsub.com.

What’s piquing your interest today? There is alot of news floating around the blogosphere today. These are just a few that we have seen:

1) North Korea has Nucleur Weapons
2) Mark Jen
3) Prince Charles and Camilla Parker Bowles

Of course, these are only some examples. You can create your own as well.

The blog world is talking about Carly Fiorina today (that’s the subscription of the day). Also in the news: Jose Conseco, Eason Jordan, and the bidding war for about.com.

The starting players for the 2005 NBA All Star Game were announced last week. Yesterday, the reserves were added to the list. Here they are, with links to their subscriptions.

East - Starters

LeBron James
Allen Iverson
Grant Hill
Vince Carter
Shaquille O’Neal

East - Reserves

Dwyane Wade
Gilbert Arenas
Paul Pierce
Antawn Jamison
Jermaine O’Neal
Ben Wallace
Zydrunas Ilgauskas

Coach: Stan Van Gundy

West - Starters

Kobe Bryant
Tracy McGrady
Kevin Garnett
Tim Duncan
Yao Ming

West - Reserves

Steve Nash
Ray Allen
Manu Ginobili
Dirk Nowitzki
Shawn Marion
Amare Stoudemire
Rashard Lewis

Coach: Gregg Popovich

There are lots of stories coming out of the news and blogosphere today. Here are a few of the stories that have been creating quite the discussion.

1) Israeli/Palestinian Peace Talks
2) 2006 Budget
3) Google Maps
4) Bloglines bought by Ask Jeeves
5) Game Developers Conference
6) Social Security Reform

Remember, you can create your own personalized subscriptions as well. Be the first to know.

We wish Pope John Paul II a speedy recovery. Keep up with the latest news on his health.

This morning, PubSub went live with our new feature: Earthquake notifications. From the press release:

“A simple new notification system launched today giving consumers and technology developers easier and more immediate access to time-critical data on global earthquake and tsunami activity.

“Seismological activity from the USGS is published in an archaic technical format that’s inaccessible both to the average person and to technology developers using modern programming tools. This older format has made it difficult to quickly distribute relevant USGS information through consumer- friendly mediums like the Web, email or wireless phones,” said Bob Wyman, chief technology officer of PubSub Concepts, Inc.

“We realized our Internet-scale matching and notification system was ideal for making this critical data more easily and quickly available to the average person. So we’ve developed a system to translate the USGS technical feed into XML – the standard language of the Web,” he said.”

Sunday is the big day. Super Bowl XXXIX takes place between the Philadelphia Eagles and the New England Patriots. Many questions will be answered. Which coach will prevail, Bill Belichek or Andy Reid? Will Terrell’s leg hold up? Will Donovan McNabb run through the tough defense of the Patriots, or will Tom Brady pass his way to another Super Bowl victory?

Stay tuned into all the buzz this weekend, from pre-game commentary to the post-game analysis. Direct to you, in real time, from the news and the blogosphere.