Subscribe to Sidenotes

I now offer seperate RSS feeds for the main blog and the sidenotes. Pretty exciting.

Those subscribed to the NoahBrier.com RSS feed please read this.

For those that have been to the refreshed page (and if you haven't go right now), you've noticed that I've split up my sidenotes and main entries, I did this for a bunch of reasons, many of which I already outlined. One of the reasons, though, was that I wanted to easily offer up an RSS feed just for my sidenotes (which includes both links and now "quickies" entries). So, without any further ado, I offer up:

NoahBrier.com's Sidenotes RSS feed.

But I've also got a question for all you RSS readers out there. Now that I've got a separate feed for my links, would you rather I stopped including a daily link roundup in my feed? A while back I asked the same question, but I didn't have the feed going. Some people have mentioned to me in the past that they'd rather not wade through my links every day. So tell me what you think. Please. Pretty please with sugar on top.

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Thank You Rojo

Not only did Rojo add my requested feature, they emailed me to let me know they did.

I've mentioned in the past that I think by default when you read something in your RSS reader it should mark it as read. You shouldn't have to click a stupid little button that does it for you. This is a huge reason why I've stuck with Bloglines all this time. With the number of feeds I read, sometimes the nicest thing is the ability to just click a feed and have all the entries just disappear. Viola, clean slate.

Well, after writing that last entry, I contact Rojo and asked them about the feature, mentioning that it was a huge barrier for me. I got a very nice response telling me that they've heard that feedback before and that it should be coming relatively soon. Since then, I've been thinking about it more and more as Bloglines has been especially terrible lately. It seems that any time I stay on for an extended period eventually I'll start clicking on feeds that say there are new entries and the entries will disappear when I click them, never to return. I think it probably has to do with the ability to navigate with the keyboard, which Bloglines added, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, I was incredibly pleasantly surprised to find this email today:

Hi Noah,

I just wanted to follow up that we've completed your request. Mark as Read can happen on an intermediate feed level without a click. You need to go to My Account Settings, under Display, and check the box next to "Automatically mark feeds read.". Now the 'How frequently Read', 'Unread Story Count', and 'Name' views will automatically mark feeds read as you move down your list.
Thank you very much for giving this new feature your support. As you know, we appreciate our user's feedback so if you have any more great suggestions, please don't hesitate to send them in to Feedback or post them on the user forums!

Sincerely,
Barbara Stephenson
Customer Support
Rojo Networks, Inc.

So not only did they add the feature I requested, but they were nice enough to write me an email and let me know about it. Wow. So the first thing I did was head on over to Rojo and sure enough, it works just as advertised. That means, I'm moving everything over and giving it Rojo a shot, if it's as good as everyone says it is, I'm sure I'll love it. I've got to admit, they're already looking pretty good in my book.

A special thanks to Barbara Stephenson who took the time to write the email and allowed me to post it here, I appreciate it very much.

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The Feedback of RSS

The real value of RSS may be in it's ability to make web links bi-directional.

Just when you think it's safe to come out, I've got some new thoughts on RSS. Really it's only one new thought:

RSS completes the loop.

In other words, the real power of RSS could be in the fact that it provides real time feedback on links. It completes the loop. It finally allows us to track inbound links just as easily as we create outbound ones.

But why does this matter?

Well, I started thinking about it today as I was reading Steven Johnson's Emergence (I know, I know, I should be done with it by now). In a chapter called The Pattern Match, Johnson talks about just why he feels the web is so disorganized, specifically pointing to the uni-directional nature of links as the culprit. "All emergent systems are built out of [the] kind of feedback [where you influence your neighbors, and your neighbors influence you]," he explains. "The two-way connections that foster higher-level learning."

We all know that up to this point the web has primarily been a one-way outlet. The shift were seeing (often referred to as the read/write web) is fostering two-way interactions by way of things like blogs. But my big point here is that read/write is much bigger than just comments and trackbacks. Read/write or feedback is about changing the very structure of how the internet works. (Man, the more I write this, the more I feel like someone's gonna send me a link to something Richard McManus or Joshua Porter wrote two years ago that says the exact same thing.)

Anyway, Johnson goes onto explain in detail just what the effects of this one-way linking system are:

You can point to ten other sites from your home page, but there's no way for those pages to know that you're pointing to them, short of you taking the time to fire off an e-mail to their respective webmasters. Every page on the Web contains precise information about the other addresses it points to, and yet, by definition, no page on the web knows who's point back. It's a limitation that would be unimaginable in any of the other systems that we've looked at [ant colonies, cities, etc.].

Up to now, the best way for us to find out if people had linked to a site was to check the referral logs (dependant on people actually clicking through on a link) or conduct frequent and exhaustive searches (far from a perfect solution). RSS on the other hand, allows us to monitor the activity going on around us. I, for instance, have RSS search feeds on "noah brier" and "noahbrier.com" informing me anytime someone mentions my name or links to me. When a mention or link comes through the feed I check it. (What can I say? I like to read what other people have to say about me.) But I think this is much bigger than ego, I think it's a possible beginning to a smarter web.

Basically, it's a pretty safe bet that if someone linked to something I've written we share some similar interests (unless they're bashing me, I guess . . . although even then, if they care enough to bash me we probably have some things in common). Once I read what they've written, I'll often decide to read more. Often, if it's a blog, I'll end up subscribing and frequently reading their content. In time, I'll end up linking back and a relationship will begin to form.

Now look at what happened there, the ability to track feedback eventually led to a relationship. Put a bunch of these relationships together and you've got a community: based around similar interests, all conversing separately, tracking feedback with the help of RSS. Rather than the traditional hub-and-spoke formation you would see when you visualize internet links, a balanced network appears, with links bouncing back and forth and all around.

It's like lots of satellites conversing independently and it wouldn't be possible without RSS.

(Just as a note, I got so excited that I didn't finish the chapter. So if all this gets said in the next four pages of the book I'll let you know.)

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Make Delete Default

RSS aggregators should automatically deal with read articles by clearing them away.

I've been thinking about trying a new RSS aggregator lately. It's not that I have any problem with Bloglines, in fact I like it quite a bit, but they haven't really upgraded the service at all in a while and I'm always down for some innovation. I've been hearing some good things about Rojo so I popped over and imported my subscribed feeds. The first thing I checked was to see what the default behavior was when you clicked a feed. You see, the feature that I like best about Bloglines is that after I click off a feed those new articles are automatically deleted. In other words, the default behavior is to delete everything after you read it with the option to save if you'd like.

Every other aggregator I've checked out works the opposite way. Most give you the option to "mark all entries as read." However, for someone like me, who has 300-and-some-odd feeds, I want things deleted automatically, if I need to find something again I can always search for it. This seems like it should be the default and I'm always surprised when it's not. I've also checked out Newsgator Online, which works the exact same way.

Now I'm not sure about everyone else, but this to me is a killer feature for Bloglines. With the amount of information out there, and the possibility of information overload constantly lurking in the shadows, why would people want to have an aggregator automatically save everything they've already read from visit to visit? The fact that you can't just click on a feed and make all the new articles/entries go away is one of my favorite things. If I ever feel overwhelmed by the amount of reading I have on my plate, I can just clear everything way and start over.

So, there it is. Rojo et. al can create the most kick-ass aggregator in the world, but if it doesn't automatically clear my read entries (or at least give me the option to make that the default behavior), then I'm not interested. I expect there are some others out there who feel the same.

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All My Feeds are Gone

Bloglines appears to have lost all my feeds and I am angry.

I just signed into Bloglines only to see 0 feeds. Not sure what's going on, hope it's just a temporary problem. This would be a huge deal to me if they lost all my feeds. I trusted them and never thought to back up my OPML file (maybe my own fault), but if they're gone I'm going to be royally pissed.

Pissed to the point that it might be time to get off the Bloglines bandwagon and find a new web-based reader.

I'm stewing . . . anyone have any suggestions? Has this happened to anyone else?

Update (7/19/05): Phew, all my feeds are back. Looks like the lesson here is back up your OPML file just in case.

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RSS is NOT TiVo

I'm sick of hearing how RSS is like TiVo for the web.

It's normal to want, often need, to find an analogy to describe something reasonably new (or complex). This is the case with RSS. I first encountered this issue when I was writing my This Way App article for American Demographics. When I pitched the idea of a story about RSS my editor refused to let me do it unless I could come up with an analogy there and then.

Of course I had considered it before, the thing is that the most popular way to describe it (as a kind of Vivo for the web) wasn't doing it for me. The problem with describing it that way is that TiVo lets you choose specific programs from a stream to watch, you need to know what you want and choose accordingly. That's not what RSS does.

RSS is far more like On Demand.

Here's how I ended up explaining it in the article:

Many people describe RSS as TiVo for the Web. Part of what makes TiVo so appealing is the ability to pick and choose from across the network spectrum and record those shows you're interested in. RSS, however, records an entire opt-in spectrum of feeds, rather than one show at a time. It's like being able to choose your cable package with On Demand channels only. That way, when you get home from work, rather than watching what's on at that time, you are provided with a list of every show that has appeared on your chosen channel lineup since the last time you watched. This way, if you only watch ESPN, HBO and NBC, you only need to subscribe to those 3 stations. And for those who watch 100 different channels, RSS can handle that too by spidering across all the sites you've chosen and posting update signs and signals for each of them.

You're not getting feeds of single entries, but rather entire channels. Would you say that subscribing to the New York Times homepage is equivalent setting to the TiVo to record each week's episode of The OC? (I hope not.)

I happen to believe the act of searching for an analogy is very often problematic, however, if you've gotta do it, how about doing it right?

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NeedsAFeed

In the comments to my entry about Barack Obama's blog, Scott Rafer of Feedster fame, made this comment:

Noah, how do we use del.icio.us for this? either you set one up user name at del.icio.us/needsafeed so that you can moderate or just use http://del.icio.us/tag/needsafeed and let people chime in completely democratically (but open to craphounds).

I decided to take Scott's advice (the latter), and tag Barack Obama's blog with "needsafeed." You can see the "needsafeed" tag page here.

And here's a display of all the latest del.icio.us items posted with the tag "needsafeed" so you don't even need to go anywhere:

Anyhow, if enough of us start using the tag maybe some of these websites will take notice (at least that's the hope). So get tagging.

Big thanks to Scott for the idea, it's a good one.

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Bloglines Advertising Commentary

There's been a lot of rumbling lately about this Bloglines sale to Ask Jeeves. Most recently, people have been talking about whether Bloglines planned to start selling advertising against blogs. Yesterday, Jason Calcanis, co-foun der of Weblogs, Inc., weighed in on this issue, saying:

I—and the other blog publishers out there—would never let him sell ads against our full-feeds, let alone target our users.

If Bloglines started selling ads against our full-feeds (not the headlines of course… anyone can run the headlines and link back to us like My Yahoo’s reader does, that’s a non-issue because it bring us traffic) I would do two things:

1. We would sue them for breaking our terms of service which say you can’t use our feeds for commercial purposes.
2. I would replace the full-feeds that Bloglines loads and replace them with a special feed that shows users the headline and in the body of the blog post says “Weblogs, Inc. feeds do not support Bloglines, for a full-featured blog reader that allows you to read the full-feed of INSERT BLOG NAME HERE please consider using Newsgator, My Yahoo, and Google Feedreader.

Then today, Richard McManus (who's site I enjoy quite a bit), added this:

With the benefit of hindsight, I'm wondering now if Mark was 'testing the market' with his announcement that Bloglines would be doing contextual advertising in 2005? He certainly got some swift (and passionate) responses from users - and the outlook wasn't good. Martin Schwimmer, a trademark lawyer, demanded that Bloglines remove his RSS feed from their service and Bloglines quickly complied. The upshot of that case was that although Schwimmer was mostly condemned in the blogosphere for his stance, the fact remained he had highlighted a legal grey area - and Bloglines had backed down.

Now I personally have no problem with Bloglines selling contextual advertising against any feed, including my own. My opinion is that if Bloglines gives me a very good product (which I believe it does), I can deal with some advertising so that it remains free as long as it's in good taste and not overwhelming. I left a comment to this effect on Richard's site, it read:

I don't think I have any problem with Bloglines selling ads against my feeds, either. I don't think I understand the issue with it. In my opinion, Bloglines makes the best RSS reader out there and as long as they're not charging me, why should they not make money? Google does it with GMail and everyone still loves it. I might be completely missing something here, but it seems to me that if we're getting a great product it's got to cost something. If that cost were some contextual advertising, I wouldn't have a real problem with it. I don't think. Any thoughts Richard?

Now, after giving it some more thought, I realize the problem is not from a consumer side, but from people who are trying to profit off their RSS feed. However, I wonder who's the more powerful party here? If consumers demand feeds and will put up with ads, what would happen if publishers pulled those feeds because of disputes about rights? Who becomes the bad guy there? Is it Calcanis for believing no one but himself should profit off his feed? Or is it Bloglines for believing that they have a right to profit off others information with advertising?

I'm really not sure what the answer to this is, but I think it's an interesting question. I also think it's fascinating to consider the change in the relationship between consumers and companies in today's digital age. For me, I don't have a problem with a company profiting off me as long as they provide a superior product. Take GMail for example. I see no problem with the contextual advertising as long as Google keeps giving me the features I want and more.

I wonder how this one will turn out. Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Pete over at pc4media nails it and has an interesting conversation with Jason Calcanis in the comments.

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Gone FeedBurnin'

I've finally decided to make the move to FeedBurner (the new feed address is: http://feeds.feedburner.com/Noahbriercom). I can't stand not knowing my RSS stats. Since I use a Windows server I won't be able to move everything over, so if you're using an old feed it would be great if you wouldn't mind switching over to the new one (though it isn't required, I'll still be publishing in the old formats). Anyhow, here's some quick subscribe links for the new feed. (For anyone who cares, I've also gotten rid of the quicksub menu on the feeds on the main page.)

XML

Also, for anyone interested, you can get an RSS feed for my bookmarks (the things you see on the right side of the screen). Here are some links for that:

Bookmarks XML

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Request for My RSS Readers

For those of you that read my web page via RSS and actually, anyone who knows what RSS is, I have two questions.

1. Would you mind if I switched my feed to Feedburner? Would it bug you to have to change the feed address in your aggregator? Would you stay subscribed? I would still post on the regular feeds as well, it's just I'm really curious about just how many RSS subscribers I have (all I know is that there are eight on Bloglines).

2. What do people think of the pulldown menu on the RSS feed button on the right side of the page? Is it worthwhile? Has anyone actually used it? I'm thinking of getting rid of it, but can't decide. A little feedback would be great. If you could leave a comment or email me at nb@noahbrier.com, I'd appreciate.

Please at least one person leave a comment on this, I hate to beg, but this post will be pretty sad if it's left naked in the comments section. Thanks!

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