Something Keeps Burning

Lots of chatter about the usefulness and relevance of FeedBurner since the Google acquisition 1. Chris Baskind formalizes it by updating the reasons not to use Feedburner to cache your feeds.

“FeedBurner is showing its age. While Google has ignored its new baby, technology has been steaming ahead.” – Chris Baskind

Baskind’s analysis is more publisher-oriented than my reader-oriented and parser-oriented issues with the service; Part 1, Part 2.

On the flip side, I give FeedBurner kudos for their focus and going deep on single, specific, simple, offering.

1. Hopefully, conventional wisdom about being acquired by Google will soon/now be equated to completely shutting a service down. AppEngine, if anything, is a thin lifeline to a not-customers of acquired services.

Putting the ‘mium’ in ‘Freemium’

For the past year, Cullect has been live wrapped in a subscription model based this “freemium” model I drew up back in the middle of 2006.

For Cullect, the benefit of this model have been obvious: even with a small number of paying customers – the servers are being paid for from subscription payments. For such a highly niche service with nearly no marketing effort – I’m declaring it a success.

On the Cashboard project I mentioned yesterday, I’m building toward a subscription model even more true to the above diagram. It seems like the right, most interesting, most challenging, and most sustainable, direction.

All the things that I expect to see from the other web apps launching in 2009.

I started building up new project today, one of the 2 initial revenue generating

I started building up new project today, one of the 2 initial revenue generating projects on my 2009 list. While it’s a way from launching, much of the heavy lifting was completed today. Conceptually, I’ve been using a proof-of-concept of this project for a couple years now. Oh, and I spent waaaay to long looking for domain names for it. The Code Name thus far has been ‘Cashboard’ – but since it’s not available, it needs to be changed.

QSPress.rb – Quicksilver to WordPress in Ruby

Remember the Quicksilver to WordPress Applescript I wrote a while back?

Well, I’ve ported it to Ruby.

The QSPress.rb works the same as the Applescript version, with a couple of tweaks – you can now set categories, flag if a post should be a draft, and upload files – all from Quicksilver.

The full instructions are in the script itself. Enjoy.

Download QSPress.rb

Ad Bye

“…Consumers weren’t trying to generate media. They were trying to talk to somebody. So it just seems a bit arrogant. … We hijack their own conversations, their own thoughts and feelings, and try to monetize it.” – Ted McConnell, General Manager-Interactive Marketing and Innovation at Procter & Gamble Co.

Color me surprised that conventional wisdom suggested anything differently.

The services we’re currently using to talk to each other are one small moment from Bell’s experiments with the liquid transmitter.

Its as if when Bell declared, “Mr. Watson — Come here — I want to see you”, Watson was initially preceded by someone wearing fake mustache and promoting Doc Johnson’s Olde Tyme Elixir.

Just a wacky idea to start with.