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
Zodiac: Long, Unsatisfying
Much like the story Zodiac was retelling, it was long, drawn-out, and came to a less than satisfying end.
Though the 2 decade long serial killer story was condensed down to 157 minutes, much of it could have been cut (the pre-re-married Jake Gyllenhaal character with his son, all of the murder scenes, the scene at the theater owner’s house, Robert Downey Jr. on the house boat, etc) to put the focus on catching the murderer. There was plenty of interesting things going on at the papers, police stations, FBI, etc – all of it diffused by the character development stories.
Streamy.com: Kicking Off the Next Generation of Feed Aggregators
Looks like somebody else out there is building a next-gen feed aggregator: Streamy.com Beta.
Yeah! Gives me hope. In the I’m-not-the-only-crazy-one-here kinda way.
Podcast Advertising Not Working for Me
1. The (second) battery in my 3G iPod is dying and I want to buy a replacement. A while back, an iPod battery replacement company was running ads at Dave Slusher’s Evil Genius Chronicles. But that’s all I remember.
At the time the ads were running, I didn’t need an iPod battery. Now I do and can’t find the name of the vendor by searching Dave’s site. Am I going to arbitrarily re-listen to the archive of clambakes just for that one bit of info? No, I’ll probaby buy from whoever’s selling them on Amazon.
Extend this to dynamic-insertion technologies (not that Dave uses them) and even if I found the epsisode, and re-listened, the same ad may or may not be there. Unhelpful.
2. Limelight Networks has been a long-time supporter of ITConversations (or whatever they call themselves today). Yesterday, I received an unqualified, unwanted, and frankly spam message from Khoi Nguyen, Limelight’s Biz Dev Manager, it included phrases like:
“My main objective is to gain a better understanding of how you are currently delivering your content out to your end-users while discovering a solution that will help to improve delivery while reducing your cost.”
“So your users are happy and they will marvel at the speed of your media. Your videos will start in ‘real time’ so it is truly a media grade experience.”
I’m not the right person for this message, and if I was, I don’t want to be talked to like that. In fact, after reading Nugeyn’s message, if I have bandwidth issues, I’m more likely to call up Swarmcast than Limelight.
UPDATE:
Dave says it’s iPodJuice and the last clambake they sponsored was Mar 6, 2006 – 17 months ago.
There’s a interesting marketing strategy conversation in there. Feel free to explore it in the comments. Thanks.
UPDATE 26 Nov
Just placed the order for the new battery from ipodjuice.
Regrets: Not Getting a CS Degree
I’m continually bumping up against my ignorace of good programming practices that one would get in Comp. Sci. 101. Not that it stops me, just makes the time from idea to reality much longer than I’d prefer – especially for tiny things.
On the flip side, I’m suspect if I got a CS degree instead of a Graphic Design degree, I’d probably be fighting with my ignorance of visual composition, color theory, typography, and interface design.
Seem to me, taking a couple Comp Sci classes in college not only helps you “find out if you were, in fact, born a programmer”, it makes you less of a user.
More of a doer.
Elsewhere:
Phil Crissman talks about the differences between software development and Computer Science degrees
Finding Yourself on Myspace
That’s right, somewhere, out in the vastness of the MySpace network, is someone exactly like me.
I feel like I’ve lapped myself.