...by the inmates...for the inmates...
Monday, March 29, 2004Radio UserLand, BitTorrent, and Free Culture
Thanks to Andrew!
When I logged in this morning there was a BitTorrent window open and a copy of Free Culture on my hard drive. Simon put this Creatively Licensed work on LegalTorrents, and the Radio plugin did the rest. What a pleasant surprise! I seriously doubt I'll have the patience or motivation to read the whole thing sitting at the computer, but the chances that I'll go out and buy a dead trees copy just went up significantly.
[Andrew Grumet's Weblog]
RSS: Not Just for Bloggers Anymore
From Pamela Parker at ClickZ
RSS: Not Just for Bloggers AnymoreThe other day, I told someone I'd just met I worked for the publishing division of Jupitermedia. His reaction made me feel I'd stepped back in time. He was bemused a company that operates Web sites and e-mail newsletters would call itself a "publisher." I didn't know anyone thought that way anymore -- and this was a guy at a tech-related trade show.
Well, I hate to break it to this fellow, but it's time to expand the definition of publishing still further. If stories in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are any indication, RSS -- the XML-based syndication format -- is going mainstream.
Already, the New York Times offers 19 different news feeds, the BBC offers at least 46 (one's entirely dedicated to Harry Potter news), and, of course, ClickZ has feeds for its News and Stats sections (more to come!). Your friendly neighborhood blogger likely has an RSS feed, too. The blogging community has largely driven the renaissance of this nearly decade-old format.
The proliferation of news search sites, such as Google News, Yahoo! News, and MSN's Newsbot, are also driving RSS's popularity. Want your site's headlines indexed on these popular aggregators? RSS is the way to accomplish that. ...
[ClickZ]
End the One-Page Site Visit
From Bryan Eisenberg at ClickZ and FutureNow.
End the One-Page Site Visit
... According to WebSideStory's StatMarket data published this week:
- 74 percent of visitors reach sites by direct navigation (type the URL) or bookmarks.
- 16 percent of visitors reach sites via links from other sites.
- 11 percent of visitors reach sites via search engines.
WebSideStory's CMO, Rand Schulman, observes, "The days of Web users randomly 'surfing' to sites is ending. Now more than ever, people know exactly where they want to go on the Web. This does not mean search sites or other Web links are now less important, because users still have to initially find a site before they can bookmark it. However, having a site worth returning to is becoming increasingly important to businesses."
If thousands, even millions of unique visitors think of your site as the one that could meet their needs or solve their problems, why do most leave after the first page or two? Why do conversions continue at an anemic 2-5 percent? Do you offer a solution or product that could meet the needs of more than 5 percent of your market? Can visitors find that solution on your Web site? Do they understand your offer's value? Was it made at the right time? Are you sure they're coming back?
Finally and most important, if you had the opportunity to engage one on one with each of your visitors and each honestly expressed her needs or wants, what percentage would you be able to satisfy? ...
[ClickZ]
DRM Customers Take It In The Shorts Again
Customers prevented, once again, from using products for which they paid. And, thanks to our clueless Hollywood-owned legislators and their ill-advised DMCA, it is (probably) illegal to bypass the copy protection to help these screwed customers. Don't know the details of how DMCA applies to protecting IP of vendors who no longer exist. Based on the law of unintended consequences, it is unlikely that DMCA handles this scenario well, if at all.
When DRM vendors fail, users get screwed. The headline in the Montreal Gazette tells the story well: Versaware a casualty of Internet crash. Company went out of business in 2001, so software is no longer available to download on the Web. A Gazette reader complains of no longer being able to read the e-books he downloaded from an outfit called Xoom, which in turn relied on coding from Versaware. Both companies are apparently kaput after hard times or at least are very hard to find. By kevin_christley@hotmail.com (Kevin Christley). [Lockergnome’s Technology News]
