T-60: Thoughts on the Browser-based Feedreader

Chrono Cracker wrote up his wishes for a browser-based feed reader, and since I’m working on one, I thought I’d respond with my own 25 cents.

  1. Automatic Feed Finding
    Yea, I agree – typing in fewer characters rules. Still seems like needing to type a URL in the first place is a workaround.
  2. Rate the Post
    I’ve talked about this before. As time goes on, I see less and less value from it. Single-dimensional ratings don’t actually provide any meaningful data on relevance (simply because we don’t all rate on relevance). There’s an interesting idea in there though, I think only del.icio.us is has even made a first step in this useful direction.
  3. Tagging/Inline Search & Link & Site Genre
    Every attribute is a tag. Read, Time read, keywords, number of keywords, author, source, publication date, number of vowels in the title. Everything. By that logic, a collection of posts matching a specific tag is more important than their source.
  4. Smartness – Artificial Intelligence
    In a pool of 200+ feeds, no reader has yet solved the problem of ‘What should I pay attention to right now’. This is a problem far larger than a lowly feed reader. Many of the points we’ve already talked about start to solve this problem
  5. Design
    Agreed. All the browser-based readers I took a look at are dang ugly. Though, it could be that I’m such a fan of NetNewsWire my judgement maybe cloudy.
  6. AJAX
    Studies have shown that Duck tape is actually really bad at fixing ducts, and really good at removing warts.
  7. Server-side
    Seems to me this is where the action is in browser-based feed readers
  8. Order
    Some ordering presentations are far more useful than others. We’ve yet to find the one that really works.
  9. Direct Comments/In-line Comments/Trackbacks
    Agreed. Commenting and feedback not posted to the source isn’t useful in most circumstances. There are a rare few where it is.
  10. Blog/Email
    Yes, and this interaction is so often executed so poorly.
  11. Top and Related
    This goes back to the bits about attributes, tagging, and sorting and yes, why aren’t subscriptions easier to share? Darn good question.
  12. Mark all Read/Backup Copy
    This is only a useful solution if the opposite was a problem. What if it wasn’t?
  13. Keyboard Shortcut
    Fersure. Bloglines does this very well.
  14. Alerted
    I thought that’s how RSS worked best?
  15. Bookmarklet
    Now we’re solving the problem we talked about up in ‘Automatic Feed Finding’
  16. Translation
    I’ve read Douglas Adams auf Deutsche, he wasn’t as funny.
  17. Email
    Seems like a temp-fix for newletters that aren’t yet RSS. Just checking.

Tivo Time Travel to Late 80’s Videoblogs

Some how, early last month, Tivo found a Saturday Night Live from 1989 and obediently recorded it.

Dana Carvey, Dennis Miller (does the map behind him remind you of Rocketboom?), Al Franken’s one-man mobile uplink (early video-blogger?). This is the SNL I caught on satellite TV working late as a farmhand.

Low budget effects, talent cracking themselves up, it all felt very videobloggy. Coincidence?

Doubtful.

Lots of jokes about George Bush (Senior) – the jokes are still funny. In sad, cynical, ‘things have gotten worse’ kinda way.

As and added bonus, 10,000 Maniacs – for Jen, I preferred Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians.

Forced Outage

My 6+ year-old DSL modem is not longer serving faithfully. Yesterday, round dinner time, it stopped. Everything. The kind folks at Speakeasy.net are sending over a replacement, but until then…..I’m bouncing around local coffee shops for access.

Ok – DSL is back, looks like it was something wrong with the line itself…but it’s hard to test that without a different modem. 🙂

Why I’m Rarely Sad When Coffee Shops Close

On my daily walk this evening, I noticed a coffee shop here in St. Anthony Village was no longer. Based on the emptiness on the other side of the windows, it’s been a while since they left. While it’s always sad to see small, local, non-franchise, non-chain, coffee shops close – it’s also sad to see places with bad coffee and uncomfortable vibes stay open.

I remember a small local shop back in Evanston that always felt uncomfortable, had bad coffee, and finally used a Starbucks opening a couple blocks away as their excuse for closing. When in fact, any competition would have overtaken them.

On a related note, Marysburg Books and Coffee, in Minneapolis’ Warehouse District, where I recorded many of the First Crack Podcasts is also no longer. It appears they’ve succumbed to the new Dunn Bros across the street and the fantastically renovated Moose and Sadie’s.

Mostly unrelated, I received a brand new shipment of Indian Monsooned from Sweet Marias last week (can’t believe it’s been a week already). Just the smell of the raw, green beans, has powered me through this week. Can’t wait till I get a chance to roast them. It’s been so hot these past few days, I fear if I take them outside, they’ll roast on their own.

Lastly, the Giz Wiz Biz featured the Capresso CofeeTEAM Therm a couple days back (behold, the power of podcasting) which you can thank for inspiring this post.

Here’s the write-up from last December WCCO did on the issue. As much as I dislike Caribou’s coffee, I can’t see them setting out to kill “the dream”.

Storm Relief

I’m a big fan of storms. Everything falls away with a severe storm, summer or winter. Storms simplify.

Since I haven’t directly experienced anything more severe than a mild tornado, maybe I’m talking about midwestern storms here – crazy lightening, heavy rainfall, flash flooding, a couple feet of snow, nasty winds, things safely enjoyed in basements or hallways.

Storms where the only damage is washing away the banality of the day.

Like Jeremy Messersmith’s Snow Day.

Nielsen Analytics’ Economics of Podcasting

Earlier this year, Nielsen Analytics surveyed a bunch of people in Las Vegas and found 102 people that described themselves as ‘regular podcast listeners’.

Thankfully, those 102 (77 men / 35 women) represented.

Some interesting bits

  • 61 people (50 men / 11 women) said they “always fast forward” advertisements
  • The survey found that the average length of the podcasts being listened to was 44 minutes. (Dave, isn’t that how long your walk is?)
  • The cumulative total of all monthly downloads for a given podcast series can hit 2 million. (No mention of how many were failed or actually listened to.)
  • Training, education, and other business-to-business oriented podcasts make more sense than entertainment podcasts.

Nielsen’s entire report is $1200 (I’d like to link it, but I can’t find a url that works). Now that’s how to make money podcasting.

Even Free Registration Has a Cost

Yesterday, I did a good amount of thinking about the registration model of the T-minus aggregator project. At this point, I’m confident that a good portion of the service will be free and without registration.

This was confirmed when I went to check out the Technorati redesign this morning and neither the site nor my browser remembered my name/pass combo. Looking in Keychain Access – I had 3 records for the site. Huh, which one works?

There are a few bits in the T-minus project where some having some identification or authentication makes more sense than not – but as a whole, requiring a name/password combo doesn’t make any sense.

Update: Steven from Panic agrees registration isn’t always a necessity to communicate value.