Category: General

PodcastMN.com pulls 70+ podcasts in to a single page using a single script.

Is it a network? I hope not.

But it does many of the same functions as a media network (ABC, BBC, NBC, etc); aggregate and present a collection of voices with some common collection of attributes.

While other functions – distribution, production, bandwidth – are handled by the individual podcasters themselves. Is that what makes a network?

To paraphrase – we are all network programmers of each other.

I call this collection of focused, attribute-based re-syndication a lazy networks

“Two podcasters can’t stand next to each other without it being a network” – Dan Klass

1. Telephones
2. Car Alarms
3. Home Alarms
4. Email and Calendar Applications
5. Websites

“The National Association of Realtors report on existing home sales showed that the median home price in August was $225,000, down 1.7 percent from a year earlier.”

“It was the first year-over-year decline in median prices since April 1995, when that measure slipped only 0.1 percent. And it was the biggest year-over-year drop since the record 2.1 percent decline recorded in November 1990, when the nation was in recession.”

“her name is claire and she is totally awesome” – Dave.

Totally.

Congrats.

“That means that, if Digg were actually based on the Wisdom of Crowds principle, you’d never see how many people had dugg an article before you choose to digg it yourself. Additionally, you’d only ever vote on a random selection of articles.” – J Wynia

I think the transparency allowed by internet technologies make true Wisdom of Crowds projects impossible. Google is the closest I think we can get. Now, if Google dropped their search results page and only had the ‘I feel lucky’ button, we’d be there.

If you’re using my TagMaker script with MarsEdit, shaners 0 matic 8000 posted a patch for better Technorati placement: Reworked tagmaker script.

Stephanie Quilao explains RSS in 3-panels.

Now, I can cross that off my Things To Do list. Thanks Stephanie.

An open apology to our 13-year old babysitter this evening,

We’re a Mac OS X household with Safari as our primary browser. As you noticed, AIMExpress is not supported within Safari.

I’m sorry.

Though it may not be obvious, Firefox is also available on all the computers in the house.

We’ll have it loaded up next time.

Again, we’re sorry for any inconvenience.

“Odeo will work fine for new subscribers, but as soon as you’ve been subscribed for a few months, it’s impossible to use.” – Michael Mahemoff

Michael’s got an excellent point there.

If you’ve following my writing, you know I have a similar problem with the 300+ subscriptions in my NetNewsWire (up from 250, up from 200, etc). This overload problem isn’t unique to either of these applications, it’s feedreaders across the board, hell, it’s inboxes across the board. Unable to make intelligent decisions about importance – they give us everything…except what the world has declared spam.

Pretty rudimentary.

We’ve developed great aggregation tools, now the filtering tools need some work.

With Feedseeder, I’m more interested in making the 143rd use pleasant than the first. Not that it’s easy to do, but eating my own dog food helps.

2 From the ‘So What?’ Department:

1. LonelyGirl15 isn’t a ‘real’ person, just an entertaining video project
2. James Frey’s A Million Little Pieces not a ‘real’ memoir, get your money back

To me, both of these are non-stories and stories with illiterate audiences. There’s no reason for readers or viewers to feel cheated if they were entertained. That doesn’t change if the character can give a DNA sample.

We might as well go after all fiction, every movie, book, and television program with non-real people (characters).

Think I can get a refund for my Hitchhikers collection for expecting an actual Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, instead getting a highly entertaining science fiction story?

UPDATE: On a related note:
“…we believe that developing critical thinking and media literacy skills is crucial for students in today’s society in order to participate fully in our democracy…” – Dick Robinson, Chairman, President and CEO of Scholastic.

(Thanks for the pointer Chris).