I'm glad I blew off some steam yesterday over rss. That's what a blog is for sometimes too. Anyway, today we did some heli-blogging, first to Breda, where a shooting had taken place. Nothing to spectacular, but fun to use the new lens. After a plea on my dutch blog I've got several people now sending me sms messages on my cellphone when something worthwhile happens. I can receive those in flight reliably.
This picture was taken on my nokia 3650 cellphone and posted to my weblog via Radio UserLand's mail interface. The phone sends it's data via GPRS
11:00:22 PM
There is a growing list of people shouting at me. I'm even accused of being paid by microsoft to make my statements about RSS.
Clearly the irony is lost on those who publicly say they are unsubscribing from my rss feed due to my stand on rss and (n)echo. Thanks to rss you have something to unsubscribe from!
This isn't about innovation, it's about control of a format and probably plenty of developer ego issues.
But I don't care about the technology of it all, I'm a marketing guy. I spent years promoting rss and see no benefit as a user to have to go through the entire process of validation again, nor do I look forward to 'fixing' all those rss and xml icons and links. This is destructive to the architecture already in place imho.
The inability to create a descriptive useful name already shows a lack of marketing savvy. Where are the doca explaining the big advantages to me as a user/writer/publisher/reader/subscriber? Isn't is just more of the same?
Don't worry developers, I realize I don't know what I'm talking about and everyone can run circles around me on the tech front. But I'm the guy willing to stick his neck out and use the technology. I AM YOUR CUSTOMER AND YOU ARE NOT LISTENING TO ME.
But this flack is nothing new to me. 10 years ago I was constantly flamed by the internet 'elite' and even blamed for the commercialization of the internet. Now again, noses are turned up at me for stating the obvious.
Since most of the (n)echo development seems to be centered in the states, I'd like to point out a few more 'formats' that have been developed in the US and their 'global' counterparts:
NTSC vs PAL
110 volts vs 200 volts
CDMA/TDMA vs GSM
As a user these incompatibilites are frustrating. It took years to jump these hurdles, and lots of money: they provide for great markets in converters, translators and expensive triband phones. Now we're doing the same to weblogs.
My $10k in support of RSS is just spit in the bucket compared to the millions microsoft and ibm pour into anything competitive that they can own. I presume this will happen with (n)echo and anything else they can get their hands on, like browsers.
At any rate, I'm glad we've been able to create enough infrastructure with weblogs and rss for my message to be heard.
12:20:48 PM
