Scripting News

Fri, 06 May 2005 02:10:12 GMT

Apparently Google's new web accelerator is doing something evil. But I had the same thing happen with the toolbar, and the same evil behavior persisted after I uninstalled the toolbar. I even wrote about it here on this weblog. I'm still getting taken to Google every time I get a server failure.

Fri, 06 May 2005 02:15:02 GMT

Mr Warren can block Google's irritating ads in NetNewsWire with CSS.

Thu, 05 May 2005 21:04:30 GMT

I missed Dan Gillmor's comments on my 50th. Very nice. Thanks Dan!!

Thu, 05 May 2005 21:01:03 GMT

I'm getting a bunch of good feedback on this line: "Basically it's bad economics to spoil a good thing for a couple of incremental bucks today, for zero total bucks later."

Thu, 05 May 2005 20:45:04 GMT

Progress report on the offer for sponsorship of my trip to the Syndicate conference on May 17. So far I've only got a few partial offers. I'm still hoping some company goes for the whole trip. Should cost about $1500 when all is said and done. The conference organizers were a little surprised, but I think that's my job, to be surprising. I have to get people to see me more as a whore and less as utopian. And I want to jar them with an ad or two in a place they're not happy about having an ad, so they can empathize with their readers and users a little more than they might otherwise. RSS isn't going to be business as usual, but it certainly can be about business. So if your company wants to participate in a bit of social theater and help out the emerging RSS industry, consider sponsoring my trip to NYC. Thanks.

Thu, 05 May 2005 20:37:15 GMT

Om Malik points out that today is 05-05-05. Glad I didn't miss that!

Thu, 05 May 2005 16:45:45 GMT

Reminder to self: I still have to write the session description for Saturday's discussion at BlogNashville. I finally figured it out at dinner the other night. We need to find a way to discuss our disagreements without burning the bridges. It's not just a red-state blue-state thing, it happens in technology too. It's why some people aren't welcome at some conferences. Is it racism, sexism, or greed that causes some people to want to exclude others? But first I'm going to treat myself to a rainy day movie. The big debate is whether it should be the Interpreter or the Hitchhiker. Nice problem to have of course. (Postscript: Went to see the Interpreter. I really liked it. I think Nicole Kidman is hot.)

Thu, 05 May 2005 16:34:01 GMT

An example of an ad in a feed.

Thu, 05 May 2005 14:31:32 GMT

Notes on my talk later this month at the Syndicate conference, with a special limited time offer. Act now!

Thu, 05 May 2005 14:00:37 GMT

To Michael Gartenberg's point, his feed and those of his colleagues at Jupiter Research are also ads, even though they include the full content of the posts in the feeds. Having a blog is a smart move for a consultancy like Jupiter. The blog itself is an ad that says "Here we are, we are Jupiter, and this is how we think." Implicit is "Maybe you'd like to buy our services?" It's an ad the same way Scripting News is an ad, for anything I happen to be selling at the moment, whether it's the software I've been developing, or will develop, or some format or protocol I'd like to see gain adoption. The other day I was asked how I make money from my blog, for the 18 millionth time. I turned it around and asked "How do you make money from your office?" You have an office, of course, as part of your livelihood, but how it makes money depends on what you do. I explained that my weblog is my place of business. If you want to find out what I'm selling, on any given day, the place to look is scripting.com.

Thu, 05 May 2005 10:07:44 GMT

Here's some food for thought for "marketers" who say they need to put ads in RSS feeds to make them pay. By some calculations, in three years, 27 percent of the NY Times hits will originate from their RSS feeds. The BBC is aiming for 10 percent by the end of the year. Neither company puts ads in their feeds because: The feeds themselves are ads for the stories they link to, which are revenue-generators. Anything that keeps people from clicking, that confuses them, takes them off course, is going to drop the click-through rate. And it's a good deal for the users, because they get the headlines and summaries for articles they only have a superficial interest in, and can easily access the full stories for articles that they want more information on. The rare win-win. Of course for the marketers win-win isn't good enough, they aren't happy until everyone but them loses. I speak as a fan of the Times and BBC approach, which happens to be the approach of CSM, WSJ, MSNBC, AP, Reuters, and every other mainstream media supporter of RSS, by the way. I am making an issue of this because I don't want to see them swept up in this lunatic frenzy to spoil a really good thing by a few people who have no idea what they would be spoiling. Basically it's bad economics to spoil a good thing for a couple of incremental bucks today, for zero total bucks later. I get branded a "utopian" for this, which is the way it goes.

Thu, 05 May 2005 04:07:24 GMT

Brian Russell needs $2695 to make PodcasterCon happen.

Thu, 05 May 2005 04:14:27 GMT

I just heard about a wireless digital cities conference that took place this week in Philadelphia. It was a meeting for cities that are planning wifi infrastructure. There were some Scripting News readers at the conf.