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Saturday, August 31, 2002
RSS and E-mail is not Either/Or
[...]First, Weblogs offer only one distribution model: People have to come read your blog at its Web address. Why can't people read each entry as it is posted, if they would like to, as they can with e-mailed newsletters? It is somehow strange that Dave Winer's Radio Userland Weblogging software doesn't allow its users to do what Dave does every day with Scripting News, which is post to his broadcast list and his Weblog. (You can syndicate Weblogs with Radio and use XML for other nifty features, but it's not a mailing list.)This weakness isn't that hard to fix. I've been an advisor to Pyra (the company behind Blogger) for some time, and Ev -- surviving considerable nagging from me -- has added a post-to-e-mail feature in Blogger Pro. Excellent.
In fact, I'm creating two lists for this one Weblog. The first list, Sociate, is a broadcast list for people who want to see new items quickly, but don't want the e-mail traffic of a discussion list; the second, Sociate-Talk, includes all the outbound posts of the first list, but is meant for people interested in the discussion. [...][Sociate]
He clearly knows about RSS, as he mentions weblog syndication, but he doesn't seem to understand RSS. (Yes, yes. For Pete's sake, I know I have no business telling Jerry Michalski what he does and doesn't understand.)
Jerry's right that Radio needs an e-mail list option. But he's got the reason wrong. I'd also like an e-mail option. Just because I prefer RSS doesn't lower the vast number of people who still use e-mail as their primary comm channel. There is no reason to force them into a new channel if they aren't ready. You don't get user adoption through force. Adding e-mail support is simply a matter of enabling as many readers as possible. This is especially important if weblogs are going to be widely used in corporate settings.
But Jerry really needs to get on the syndication bandwagon. Weblogs do not have a single distribution model. The syndication feature is one of the strongest attributes. I prefer to get my regular notices via RSS. I get them every hour, and that's close enough to as they happen for me. It's a different channel, but it fits perfectly within the mode of his "broadcast list". More importantly, by getting his posts in my Aggregator, I can scan them with other sources of info that are not limited to e-mail. That's what I want. RSS may not have reached the Tipping Point yet, but I'm sure I'm not alone.
So I've taken matters into my own hands. Jerry, here's your RSS feed. It's crude. I did it with Mark Paschal's Stapler, but I'm about as skilled as a three-year-old with a chainsaw -- and just about as dangerous. I could learn Swahili in less time than it would take me to learn regular expressions. But it's a start. You take it from here.
Update: Roland Tanglao writes:
Jerry Michalski' - There more to blogging than Radio and Blogger: Manila will send emails and bulletins!.-Radio gets all the press! People forget that Manila is very powerful. Manila wil post each entry as it is posted to an email list (or any email addresses you specify) and its bulletin feature allows you to send email to every member who wishes to receive the email once a day or as often as you wish. [...] [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
I should also mention Conversant, another Frontier-based product that supports numerous I/O options.
Weekend Copyright Humor From the Register
A little copyright shenanigans to start off the Labor Day weekend.
Prudes sue for right to edit rented flicks. Movie directors not amusedA couple of prudes in Denver are suing for the right to distribute rental flicks with all the good parts removed. Apparently, one of the plaintiffs has some gimmick involving a modified remote control whereby viewers can select between the original and bowdlerized editions, according to a Reuters report. [...] [The Register]
RSS Quick Summary
A table listing the different flavors of RSS 0.9x and their attributes. Courtesy of Sam Ruby. Found via Tanglao via Scripting News.Shared Briefing Books -- The Consultant's Secret Weapon
Such a cool thing Jerry Michalski has come up with -- community-run industry briefing books.This post from Doc points to Jerry's weblog, Sociate. One of Jerry's reviews many years ago turned me on to TheBrain. I still use TheBrain a little bit every day, but had unfortunately lost track of Jerry. He's a broad thinker and an accessible writer. His take on briefing books is just one more sample of his outstanding ideas.
Pro-industrial rethinkingJerry has a good idea that perfectly brings blogs and wikis together: industrial briefing books. Think of them as open source aggregated knowledge around every business subject you can name. (For those who don't know, wikis are joint web publications by any number of interested authors.) [Doc Searls Weblog]
This is a great complement to the knowledge sharing facet of weblogs. So many industries could benefit from this. I can see starting one for my own industry (printing and publishing) and its many segments. So much basic industry knowledge is locked up in consulting reports and government statistics that it's of almost no use to the industry in general. This just got added to the upper section of my To-do list.
Among other things on his weblog, Jerry also talks about supplemental technologies for weblogs -- things like how to effectively link wikis (I never really got wikis, but the Briefing Book idea helps give helps.)
Note: Reposting a story from Doc's weblog is a pain. I don't know what he's doing, but all the tables, named links, and geegaws are for the birds.
nextPreviousDayLinkMacros
This feature has been needed for a while, like the default Next/Previous links in Trellix sites. I wonder if we can get something that creates those site maps the way Trellix did?
Radio UserLand : New macros: radio.macros.previousDayLink and nextDayLink. Don't know how i missed this one! It would be cool to have a theme that's kept up to date with all the latest cool Userland features. Then I could just switch to that theme![Roland Tanglao's Weblog]
Today we released two macros which make it easy to create links to navigate through your archives: radio.macros.previousDayLink links to the previous day's archive page, and radio.macros.nextDayLink links to the next day's archive page.
Chalked
This is my new blogchalk:United States, Georgia, Atlanta, Conyers, English, Terry, Male, 41-45. :)
Radio Wish List -- Publish a Category
I'd like an option to publish all the pages from a single Category in the Radio app. As I develop a more complicated web structure I've begun using Categories for mini-websites -- for clients, interest groups, etc. -- and I often want to change something in just that Category. Today I have to republish the entire site to get a change to replicate throughout a Category, and as my site has grown that's become increasingly time consuming. The ability to publish Categories separately would really enhance Radio's use as a Desktop website management tool.Later: Lawrence Lee pointed me to this script by Mark Paschal. It's not a great answer to the problem, but it is at least a way to get it done.
Highest Rates of Piracy Sweepstakes
This could be like sports, the leader seems to change with every press conference. Last week EMI said it was Germany with the highest rates of CD Piracy. This week they claim it's Greece. These guys are making more trips than the Harlem Globetrotters, spewing their skewed statistics to anyone who will listen. Maybe I should start keeping a running tally of who the current leader is in the RIAA's "Highest Rates of Piracy" sweepstakes.
Music piracy a major problem. eKathimerini.com Aug 30 2002 8:44PM ET[...] The president of recording company EMI International, Alain Levy, complained at a press conference in Athens yesterday that Greece has the highest rate of CD piracy in Western Europe. And singer Vassilis Papaconstantinou accused the Greek police of ignoring the problem. [...] [Moreover - IP and patents news]
Radio -- A Bandwidth Hog?
I already had the "download new and updated Themes each hour" option turned off, as I can't see that the themes change that often. You can use this page. It does say new and updated themes. I wonder why it grabs the whole lot?
I had YATT running to trace some SOAP stuff, and noticed a bunch of stuff Radio was pulling down, turns out it downloads all the themes every hour, that's 900k of themes every hour, ouch. You can turn it off, but the only options seem to be off or every hour. Given the ammount of HTTP stuff that Radio does, I really wish it used etags and last-modified where possible. [Simon Fell]
BTW, I've been using Simon's little MSWord macro and PocketSOAP to post directly from MSWord. There are a couple of little glitches -- related more to Word than anything SOAPish, but it's nice for longer stories and essays.
Update: Simon Fell reports Userland has already fixed this. Such service!
Klogging in Chicago
I'll be in Chicago for a conference in early October and I'm very interested in meeting knowledge-focused webloggers in the area. I'm thinking of something like David Gurteen's Knowledge Cafe, an informal meeting for food, a beer or two, and interesting conversations. We can pick a location later. If you're interested let me know.
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This Page was last updated: 11/28/2002; 6:10:14 PM
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