September 2007 – Page 2 – Garrick van Buren

Hugh MacLeod Explains My Entire ‘Comic’ Category

“PPS. Being a Marketing 2.0 geek/blogger/entrepreneur is pretty cool, but being a cartoonist is WAY cooler.” – Hugh MacLeod

To Do Before I Die: Get 99 Other People to Speak My Made Up Language

While Toki Pona‘s minimalism feels too much like Newspeak for my taste, the notion of creating a new common-use language is an intriguing thought. Especially if the language’s biases were deliberate – and I agreed w/ them 😉 – from the beginning.

Initial thought: a highly technolibertarian version of Dutch.

Thanks to: Hobbies in everything- Tyler Cowen

RE: Rice Lake Cross Country Meet

Back in HS XC, the Rice Lake race was one of a handful of races I always looked forward to. Aside from being a very competitive race, the course had an interesting features – back then, it started out around the Community College’s baseball diamond, as people fought for position and got into their pace around the fencing it was inevitable that people would stumble and fall.

And the crowd would count the fallen runners – 1…..2…..3……4

Thanks to JimmerC for the memories.

Innovation in Feed Aggregation = Search?

“So what do I say when people want me to switch my reader away from Google Reader? I answer ‘it’s too late.'” – Robert Scoble

Anyway, in the comments, there’s a pointer to fav.or.it. Like streamy and aiderss it’s another attempt to make a new kind of aggregator. From the screencast, it seems more in the realm of techmeme (5000 channels and nothings on) rather than newgator/bloglines (just the channels I want).

The most interesting innovation in feed aggregation can’t be Google adding search. There’s got to be something else. Please let there be something else.

Then again, I’ve been building² and haven’t been paying super close attention.

1. On a personal note: This comment makes me smile. It’s a fine line between promoting the next hottest app and proclaiming lock-in.

2. I’m planning to go more public with it at this month’s ruby.mn meeting. So, shhhh if you’ve already seen it, thanks.

Dr. Who’s to Blame

If you’ve been watching the new Dr. Who series (even via Netflix like myself) then you you can be relieved to know that Torchwood is now it’s own series¹.

Laurel points to this review:

“If Torchwood has one real problem, it’s that it’s trying to be two series at once. One is a mostly smart, morally troubling series about a demon-haunted band of paranormal investigators; the other’s a fizzy, omnisexual soap opera where everyone is always just on the verge of making out with everyone else.” – Nathan Alderman, TeeVee.net

Feels like Torchwood belongs just below Dr. Who on the quality scale; mostly entertaining, occassionally excellent, extremely melodramatic and cheesy, something about scifi.

Sounds perfect to get from Netflix and have on in the background.

1. In retrospect, it feels like Russell T. Davies’ pretext for the new Dr. Who series was a set up for the spin off. Blah.

Re-Tweeting FeedSeeder

If you’ve been reading my twitterings over the past week or so, then you’re already read this stuff. I’m posting it here to include it in the FeedSeeder category archive fer later.

“…there are only very few instances where unsub’ing from a feed makes sense.”

“@swirlspice – exactly. the real issue is how always find the relevant/intersting things in feeds that don’t always have them.”

“no, ‘reading’ is not a gesture of any value, nor is ‘opening’. At best, it’s a comment on the effectiveness of the headline copy.”

“this new feed thingy is working out pretty well for me. While not perfect, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything nor do I feel overwhelmed.”

“…is thinking about what I as a publisher want from a feed reader. The more I think about today’s feed readers, the more I shake my head.”

Me: “I don’t like lengthy sign-up forms”
Them: “It’s 6 fields”
Me: “Too long.”

Unread Bug

“Unread counts now go to 1,000, so that you can know just how far behind you are when you come back from vacation.” – Google Reader

WTF? Telling me there are a 1,000 new things in the world is a feature? Hell, where’s the count of all the people I haven’t met, all the foods I haven’t eaten, all the places I haven’t gone, all the women I haven’t slept with.

None of those numbers are valuable, useful, or relevant.

Plus, as proven by the recent addition of search, if I’ve read something – there’s a far great chance that I’ll want to find it and read it again. So if anything, there should be a ‘read’ count.

Seems so much more optimistic and encouraging.

UPDATE Oct 5, 2007:
I’m now confident that ‘read’/’unread’ – whether in email or RSS readers – promotes poor inbox management. If you can visually identify new stuff, there’s no reason to eliminate the old stuff. Want to reach Inbox Zero? Turn off your read/unread.

ELSEWHERE:

“In, let;s just say, Gmail, do you need a statistical breakdown of how many people you have BCC’d in the last day? Week? Month?…In Google Calendar, do you need to know the average number of appointments you have had on Tuesday afternoons, over the last year?…No, because that would be freaking stupid.” – Gabriel Cheifetz

“I give up. Select all, mark as read.” – Lou Springer

“Been neglecting my Google Reader feeding list for days. Terrified to log in.” – nathantwright

Thanks, er, Mahalo

Kris pointed me to a ‘which tech-celeb are you quiz?‘:

“You are like Jason Calacanis in that you have a very important view of yourself. You have had success in the past and that success puts you in a place of importance that you are very, very aware of. You enjoy the finer things in life and make sure that your approach to business, blogging and life protects your pet pleasures.”

Aside from the layer of smarm and the spats with Dave Winer, I can dig that.

What’s Better?

In 10 minutes, everything will have an RSS reader built into it; email clients, browsers, audio/video/image players, phones, every single website. Each application parsing and presenting feeds in a way that’s contextually appropriate.

I hope.

If you want a ‘good enough’ general purpose feed reader, use Google Reader or Bloglines, or Newsgator, or or or or or or or or or or or or or or or.

Starbucks to Caribou Coffee to Dunn Bros all have good cups of coffee. An expected level of quality for the volume they serve. Better than Folgers, but not change your life.

“[Google Reader]’s a great app, easy to use. So much so that it actually kept us from launching our own reader over a year ago, even though we were about 80% complete….Maybe itâ€™s time to build the better reader.” – Aaron Mentele

There’s lots of definitions of ‘better’.

Any one will do, I’ve picked mine. 🙂