Lifehack: Put Empty Garbage Bags at the Bottom of the Garbage Can

It started with the Diaper Champ. After forgetting to replace the plastic garbage bag liner, dropping in a fresh, full diaper, and hearing a empty thud as it splats against the bottom of the bucket.

After the third or fourth time of kicking myself for not replacing the bag, I put a few empty garbage bags in the bottom of the Diaper Champ. Now, when I pull out a full bag – look, there at the bottom, another bag – ready to go.

I’ve done the same in the kitchen garbage can.

Sure makes collecting the trash go just a little bit faster.

Dan Kuykendall’s PodPress on Behind the Mic

A while back, Dan Kuykenall downloaded my WP-iPodCatter plugin, mixed in a Flash mp3 player, some other bits and released the PodPress plugin.

He and Mike Geoghegan talk about the PodPress project in a recent Behind the Mic conversation.

Dan’s plugin is full-featured. Capital F – Full. Though he’s nicely solved a couple small problems I’ve been pondering of addressing in WP-iPodCatter, I found it overwhelming. That said, my experience with Apple’s iTunes podcast directory has been so awful all around that I have a hard time getting excited about it.

Thanks Dan.

5th District Candidates: Consistent

Mr. Sponge’s More Debate post @ Minvolved is a good read. Looks like everyone’s at least consistent – for better or worse:

  • Ember: I’m a woman, I’m not going to talk about my positions on Social Security and charter schools and I think of the children
  • Paul: I’m ethical, I lean to the side, I have a lot of gel in my hair and my campaign ratted out the guy standing next to me
  • Keith: I’m progressive and grassroots
  • Mike: Here’s what I’m going to do and here’s how I’m going to pay for it

NYTimes on Redfin & The End of Real Estate Agents

“Some economists wonder why agents fight so hard to maintain this pricing system when it is making so few of them rich. In every housing boom, the number of new agents entering the market tracks the climb in home prices. As a result, the average agent sells far fewer homes and makes less money.”

“If agents don’t like [Redfin], then it must be better for consumers.” – Matt Bell

Demo FeedSeeder – Check


(image thanks to PFHyper)

The FeedSeeder demo went pretty well tonight at MinneDemo. I’m pleased. Thanks to everyone there for letting me share it with you. Thanks to Luke & Dan pulling us together.

If you weren’t able to catch it, I’ve added the most recent Quicktime screencast to Feedseeder.com (~60mb, ~7min).

If you’ve already seen it or want to see more, or talk about some of the concepts behind it, you know how to reach me.

I Don’t Care What Everyone Thinks

“…when it comes to choosing what I read and what is relevant to me, I’m only interested in opinions from people i know and trust.” – Shel Israel

A while back, I re-grouped all the feeds in my aggregator – notably the ‘Everyone’ group contains authors that said something interesting once…but that I neither know personally or consider consistently insightful. A clunky hack to be sure. All the other groups; my feeds, ‘Friends & Family’, ‘Minnesota Blogs’, and of course ‘Must Reads’, are all a higher priority than ‘Everyone’.

I’m in full agreement with Shel. The aggregation tools we have today make it easy to read what the entire world finds interesting. Still, there isn’t an easy way to glean the conversations, emerging and otherwise, within the comparatively small group of people I trust. It’s really a simple question:

What are the people I trust talking about?

This is one of the problems I’m hoping FeedSeeder will help with, at least for me.

Something’s in the air – Ross Mayfield calls it MeMeme.

I found Ross’ post just after saving my Intro presentation for tonight’s MinneDemo.

To Fox’s House Producers: Limp Not The Problem

The short write up on Fox’s House in the Fall TV Preview issue of Entertainment Weekly reports the producers are asking what happens if House doesn’t have his limp anymore.

That’s easy. There’s no show. Poof.

I said this a year ago on the subject:

“House is a great character because of the contrast of this most obvious weakness and his bitter, curt, authority.”

Without the limp, House is just an ass, and frankly the Cameron/House romance story line is already lame.

If House is going to be “fixed”, let me know which episode so I can cancel the Tivo’s Season Pass.

Thanks.

Update: 5 Sept. – Caught the season premier tonight. So, now that House’s leg is better, his staff and colleagues are crippling him. Uh. It was better the other way around. Before, his pain killer addiction was an on-going joke, a little something happening in the background. Now, if that’s his only flaw – it’s just sad. If this continues, it’ll be Gray’s Anatomy but for guys. Where the show’s namesake is the most boring, static character on camera. Ugh.

Don’t Look at The Ad

“My advice to the game companies, Web 2.0 startups and others pushing to garner eyeballs so as to monetize their offerings with advertising: be careful and make sure you don’t interfere or take away from your core value proposition.” – Steve Borsch

I suspect I’m not the only one that finds it ironic that calling undue attention to Google’s AdSense ad is a violation of their terms. Ironic, because ads that don’t call attention to themselves have an inherently lower click-through.

What a fine line.

“Pssst, hey, buddy, don’t click over there.”

I got a call the other day asking if I’d produce a podcast just for the ad dollars I could sell on top of it.

That’s doing two jobs (product development and ad sales) and getting paid for one (ad sales). Though Google and other have made advertising more efficient (how could they not), it’s still two jobs. A dollar spent on selling an ad is a dollar not spent on product development. Unless a startup just received millions in venture funding (one big advertiser) every dollar is precious.

Ads will detract, ads do detract, otherwise they wouldn’t work.

My advise to projects and companies aiming to skewer eyeballs with the sword of advertising: Either build something that doesn’t need advertising or something that is only advertising.

Related:

…we prefer to focus on execution, and specifically on locking product development to user demands.” – Antonio Rodriguez

More Hay Makes Better Needles

I’m starting to load my 320 feeds and various groupings into FeedSeeder, the development version. Even with a good chunk of that to go, I can see how it’s changing my reading habits for the better.

The interesting bits are unhiding themselves.

This, before it’s even ready for public release and just nearly in time for next week’s MinneDemo. Cool. I’m excited. About browser-based software. For those that have heard me rant about the uselessness of it before – I might just have to change my tune.

Still, probably won’t move my calendaring, email, or to-do lists – but there’s a better-than-decent chance I’ll move my feed reading.