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 it’s time to build the better reader.” – Aaron Mentele

There’s lots of definitions of ‘better’.

Any one will do, I’ve picked mine. 🙂

Something’s Still Burning

The more work I do parsing and aggregating feeds, the more annoyed I am with Google’s Feedburner published feeds (part 1).

As you know, I don’t see the need for Feedburner and believe their useful services (metrics, being smart about enclosures and tags, etc) is more effectively done within the weblog/publishing software1 for 99% of the feeds they serve.

Looking at iTunes, Feedburner, and Twitter feeds, you’d think it was called RHS, not RSS.

Chances are, if you’re reading this, your weblog could publish the same feed Feedburner does with far less complexity and provide you with the same value.

For a more strategic view: Google’s Feedburner is Trouble – Dave Winer

Later:
In the comments, Luke posits another point of value. But, I don’t have to pay for people reading my Amazon book reviews either.

1. Or a stats program that understands both pageviews and file downloads. These numbers aren’t big enough to have useful value anyway. Just not enough 0s to pitch to advertisers.

iPollution

As soon as I got my new phone, I turned the ringer off. I’m alerted of new messages and calls via BluePhoneElite – not disturbing anyone else in earshot.

It’s quiet in the house during the day, no constant tv or radio. Interupptions of all kinds are reduced to a minimum.

Elsewhere, TVs are blaring, satellite radio jabbering, phones are ringing, car alarms are going off, all while civilized people are trying to have civilized conversations at a civilized volume.

So, no we can’t complain about ADD and be excited about a new way to buy ringtones.

First Invite Out, 20 To Go

Over lunch today, I sent out the first invitation to the FeedSeeder project.

This is the first real test of the system and I’m anxious. Despite the edges being very rough, the functionality is in there. Finally.

Enough to: 1) talk about 2) start polishing.

Since I’ve been working on this project about 10 of you have asked for early access. Your invites will trickle out over the next couple of weeks.

I’ve got room for 10 more people in this super early stage. Drop me an email to get on the list.

If your email doesn’t make the cut… 🙂

Oh yeah, and Greg from Perfect Porridge just reminded me: if you like Google Reader or Bloglines, then this probably isn’t for you.

What’s He Building in There?

Doing some testing today and I felt bad for not posting anything in nearly a week.

I’ve been building. Steady. Til midnight or 2am for the past week.

And it’s coming together real nicely, so I’m trying to keep up the momentum up through this coming week.

Until I get back to a more frequent posting schedule…

Here’s the raw audio from an hour-long phone conversation I had with a Stanford Grad student. She’s conducting a study on how people use things like Twitter, Flickr, and the like.

Garrick-on-Twitter-2007.mp3 [59 minutes]

I’m sure Ingrid’s tracking this conversation, so give her a hand and leave a comment on how you use those apps in your daily life.

Elsewhere:

“Twitter-mates are the same as workmates everywhere.” – Gary Burge