Category: General

Inspired by Rex’s unused domain list, here’s my list of yet-to-be-released projects:

• BlockByBlog.com
• CoffeeHacks.com
• Dashcaster.com
• ExpiredPotential.com
• Limble.com
• LunchForBrains.com
• Nusability.com
• Unlistened.com
• PodcastCalling.com
• RedBallThankYou.com
• SLAReporter.com

Update June 3, 2008.
A few more I’ve picked up since we last talked:

• DroidWarehouse.com
• Kernest.com (Launched July 17, 2009)
• MSGCTRL.com
• NeuPost.com

Update October 21, 2008.
Just added:

• BroadcastCulture.com

Update February 8, 2009.
Just added:

• Crumbl.es
• Crumbl.us

Update March 4, 2009.
Just added:

• Unbrkn.com

Update June 13 2009
Recent Acquisition:

• KidStoryReviews.com
• PressOnRails.com

Update Sept 16 2009
Recent Acquisition:

• Smirkless.com
• Fontue.com
• Woffly.com
• AdOrNews.com

Update Sept 30 2009
Recent Acquisition:

• WallTales.org

Looking at the list and remembering the projects behind them, I’m pleasantly surprised;

• how much these ideas still interest me
• how some of these ideas are far easier to execute today then when I purchased them,
• how diverse these ideas are.

All good things.

“In essence, they are replacing the professional filter – reading The Washington Post, clicking on CNN.com – with a social one.” – Brian Stelter

We read through each other anyway. I’ve long read major news outlets through the people I trust and often know personally. Blogs and Twitter are great for that. Sure, I run the risk of missing things, but again

“if it’s important, it will find me.”

It’s great to see that ‘news’ is finally thought of in the same way a urban legends. Passed along when they capture the imagination of the social group, independent of timeliness. Unless the event is happening….NOW…any account of it is ‘olds’ anyway.

Importance is persistent and rises to the top.

“not really blogging or podcasting for two weeks can hurt your page rank something fierce” – Kristopher Smith

Since I haven’t been writing here much this month, here’s an update for those of you that just read this feed.

1. GarrickVanBuren.com got a facelift this past weekend. Primarily so I could explore all the shared feeds Cullect.com generates (check the sidebar for ‘Recommended Reading’), but also as a larger effort to bring more visibility to the work I do (more on that later).
2. Big, exciting new client projects, that have really got my gears whirring.
3. I’ve published 2 new First Crack Podcasts so far this month, with a 3rd on the way. W00T!
4. I’ve been trying to wrap my head around RubyCocoa, more specifically the relationship between RubyCocoa and Interface Builder
5. It’s March. Historically, I get a SAD funk in March. 😉

I’m on the local police department’s email announcement list.

Earlier today, a ‘suspicious activity’ alert went out possible attempted burglary.

Just now, I received the clarifying email:

“…we have determined that the attempted burglary was, in fact, an individual who went to the wrong address.”

This message says so many good things about the police department, the neighborhood, and the accuracy of GPSs.

In last night’s talk with MN ISPI on wikis, blogs, etc – the issue of citing Wikipedia as a source came up.

Like citing the 1911 version of Brittanica is the same as citing the current version.

A strawman argument.

One based on false assumptions. Assumptions that established organizations don’t have biases, aren’t infallible, and that knowledge doesn’t change.

As you know, all three are false.

Should a publishing organization be a trusted source simply because they’ve published for a century? The National Enquirer is almost there.

I’ve written before about my issues with newspaper organizations before, and it comes down to trust.

I don’t trust newspaper organizations to regularly publish information relevant to me, while there are great number of websites I do trust.

Part of this comes down to frequency of publication. There are blogs¹ that publish when there’s nothing (or nothing more) to say and I have the same issue with them.

The other part is find-ability, share-ability. Both of which are tough in online or hardcopy versions of papers (also in a number of blogs as well).

All of this factors into trusti-ness of a source, not just age.

Perhaps this is me growing weary of ‘journalism‘ framed as Something Special People Do rather than something we all do (or at least can do).

Frankly, in a world of instant publishing, I trust a mass of crazy people working for free much more than organization with a well designed masthead.

Elsewhere:

“I can now get through the paper in about 5 minutes–that is how little usable content there is in it.” – Sheldon Mains

Sheldon’s entire list is spot on.

1. Techcrunch, ReadWriteWeb, TechDirt immediately come to mind.

If you’ve ever wondered what New York would be like if it remained a Dutch colony until the late 1700s?

I’m thankful we finally have an answer.

“New Netherland achieved independence in 1798, after the ‘old’ Netherlands were overrun by the French. Philip Schuyler, the last Director-General of the colony, became the first Prime Minister of the independent Republic. Influential successors were PMs Maarten van Buren (1820-1856)…”

via strangemaps

Mark and Ed pulled me into a web advertising and truncated vs. full feeds conversation.

Neither Mark nor I can find any writing/ranting I did on truncated feeds (these days I’m ambivalent – unsubbing is easy enough). If this rings a bell for you, can you put a pointer in the comments. Thanks.

Bex asked me for 8 things;

1. I took the left-brain/right-brain dominance test Bex referenced and it said I, “you focus on details until they manifest themselves in a unique pattern and only then work with the ‘larger whole'” and recommended I be a design consultant. 🙂
2. Climatically, I’m the most comfortable between 42°N and 52°N. I don’t know about S.
3. I long for a day when the Beatles won’t be overexposed.
4. The smell of sage reminds me of The 24 Hour Christmas Flu.
5. Reading to my son reminds me of high school forensics
6. My first reaction to not finding something quickly: eliminate all the clutter
7. I only recently came to terms with the number of books I own that I’ve never read.
8. My comfort in leaving things unread extend to feeds. But you already knew that. 🙂

I’ve yet to hear of success stories of sustaining a podcast with outside advertising (in contrast to using an internally produced podcast as marketing).

It doesn’t surprise me – in fact, it’d surprise me if ad-supported podcasts were repeatable. The economics just don’t make sense to me (but neither do the economics of discount retail).

I’ve got some ideas for re-energizing my podcast. These ideas were inspired by a commercial entity, but there’s no contract or CPM behind it, and I’ll be mentioning their name when I hit record.

Is it an ad?

“But let’s be clear blogging and podcasting exist independent of a professional’s ability to eek out a living using the tools of blogging and podcasting. ” – Dave Winer

While catching up on my feeds between diaper changes, I caught the news that NewsGator dropping the price of their client apps to $0.

According to the announcement, it’s a ubiquity play. Be everywhere, while focusing revenue-generation efforts on the server side by incorporating (and selling?) “attention” or activity data¹. Congrats to them to be able to make that move.

NetNewsWire was my primary feed reader for years, but about a year ago, we stopped getting along. I wanted more than straight feed aggregation and reading.

Aggregation, like water, is everywhere – it’s easy to do. Ping a handful of feeds and present them together. Cheap, easy. It only gets interesting and valuable when there’s something more happening. Filtering, sorting, discovery, integration, sharing are just a few of the places where there’s work to be done.

And money to be made.

Again, think about all the places in your home that dispense water and the corresponding price tag.

1. Personally, I’ve yet to be sold on the usefulness of attention data in general and APML specifically. I’m looking for compelling examples of it though – if you have some, please share. Thanks.