donloeb.com

good (not great) little piece on the state of tv news…

for the past few weeks, i’ve been monkeying around wtih how to post my links from myweb, google, delicious, etc. i finally decided that once-a-day summaries from delicious made sense.

at first i used the daily blog posting feature. it’s great, but i don’t blog enough. as a result, my blog became “too delicious.” :) so, i decided to go back to having only real blog posts on my site, but splicing in a daily summary using feedburner’s link splicer. then, those links are only in the feed. of course, i also implemented a sidebar widget (using feedburner’s buzzboost offering) that has my delicious links. so, i think i’ve got everything covered.

the only downside is that my feed now has double postings of my delicious links. it’s temporary..i.,e until i start posting new things, but the posts are there and it’s annoying. so, sorry for mucking up your rss reader.

btw, does anyone have suggestions about how best to do this? i think i’ve found the right solution in that my blog has a set of modules - flickr photos, my delicious and google links, and my blog posts…but my feed has everything. i.e., i’ve spliced stuff together to create a “feed of me” for folks consuming my content via a feed reader.

what does everyone think?

we’re happy to announce that american city business journals has joined the feedburner ad network. so, not only are we managing all of their feeds, but we’re now helping them monetize their content in distribution. also, they are using feedflare to allow their users to email, save, and share content…ahhh, the overused, but important…social media optimization :)

btw, you may not know american city business journals or bizjournals.com, but i’m sure you’ve seen their local business publications…i.,e print pubs. and, you’ve probably read their content somewhere on the web via yahoo, msn, etc. they are the source for local business news across the country. so, go ahead, subscribe to their feeds…

rob just gave a fantastic presentation at the uc berkeley graduate school of journalism. i’ve been following rob for a number of years, but hadn’t heard him speak before…he’s incredibly passionate, smart, and actually pretty funny…right now i’m headed to bed, but i’ll update the post when the webcast goes live. all newspaper employees should watch the webcast…

update (3/30/07) - here’s the webcast

btw, for some context…every year, paul grabowicz from cal holds a week-long session for mid-career journalists designed to help them navigate the new media world. the speaking roster this year was pretty extraordinary…i went to lisa stone’s (blogher) presentation yesterday and rob’s (WPNI) tonight - both were excellent…

this is why i love living in a university town…

ps - check out rob’s latest project at the washingtonpost.com - onbeing is a set of video interviews with regular people…great video technology (on-the-fly resizable video) and nice errol morris interview style…addicting and simply brilliant. i just wish i could embed the video on my blog and consume the video directly in google reader. btw, the kid’s interview is hilarious…

fred wrote a post today on viacom, youtube, and expiring videos. i wrote something similar about a month ago and obviously completely agree with him…and, in fact, if you go to my post from february (”the daily show, youtube and expiring videos“), you’ll see that the video i embedded is no longer available…just as advertised….ughhh!

what a lousy experience for the publisher and the user…and, ultimately for viacom. i know that rights issues make this problematic, but figure it out…

obivously, this is just one example of the types of things that the new nbc/news corp, etc. company needs to get right if it hopes to compete with youtube. the content is important, but the experience and community drive adoption and engagement…

btw, expiring videos reminds me of expiring newspaper links…i.,e links that are valid today, but after 15 or 30 days go behind an archive wall and force users to pay to read a story that someone linked to. well, the nytimes got it right years ago - dave winer convinced them to leave the door open for users coming from special rss links…forever. that means that when someone references a nytimes story using the url in the rss feed, users get to view that content w/o registration or payment. of course, it’s just that one page and if a user goes anywhere else, they need to register and perhaps pay. simply brilliant -> as a result, bloggers started to use them more and more as the media company of record when they linked to stories…sort of like amazon for videos and cds…

file under “how to engage the blogosphere/web” and “how to be distributed” :)

what a boring, but semi-productive weekend…

i spent 5 hours on saturday dealing with applecare and the folks at the genius bar (see my earlier post). at least my data is backed up now. plus, i’m fully “online” and set to work on any available computer….thanks to gmail, gcalendar, greader, meebo, xdrive, gdocs, salesforce, delicious, flickr, feedburner, and my blog…

besides spending half the wknd on my mac, i worked, started our taxes, and mowed the lawn, etc. wow…exciting….

at least i watched a little madness (go hoyas!) and saw casino royale - daniel craig is going to be a great bond…

yesterday i was in LA, speaking at iHollywood…and, my mac has been in the shop all day today. so, email, IM, and blogging have been “light” :)

re my mac - they “zeroed” the hard drive and reinstalled the os. and, now that i have it back, i’m doing a hard drive test, reinstalling my 3rd party apps and slowly moving my data over to see if that triggers the problem again….ughhh…

at least my data is all there! and, i’m now the proud owner of a cute little 100GB ext. drive…

update: i just ran the apple hardware extended test and the RAM is shot. the guy at the apple store was really helpful, but he said that might be it. so, my question is…since you suspected that earlier, why did you work on my computer for 8 hours without doing the 15 min hardware test first? i know, it could have been anything, but ughh…anyways, it’s back to the apple store in the AM…

so, it’s ironic - i complained about gmail a week or so ago. and, this time, it saved me…having a searchable copy of your email in the cloud is a wonderful thing…especially when your mac goes belly up…

anyways, i want to write a quick post on my mac troubles…both to see if anyone has any ideas and to talk about apple customer service…

so, here’s the deal - it hasn’t booted properly since friday night…ever since i did an OS X upgrade. after hours of fooling with it, i was able to bring it back with a “tiger archive and install.” but, everytime i then try to upgrade to the latest version, it dies…and, now i can’t get it back. ughhh….

this all started because i went to the apple store to buy the new iphoto (see my other post) and the guy at the counter chided me for being three versions behind on tiger.

when i went home and did the OS X upgrade, all hell broke loose. while i still haven’t figured it out, here’s the good and the bad of apple customer service. the folks on the phone are the best - professional, patient, and just darn good. how about the folks at the store? ok, but very much “by the book” - not good when your main work computer is toast.

after working with the applecare person on the phone for a while saturday morning, we determined i had to do an archive and install. but, there was just one problem…i couldn’t find the original tiger disks for my PowerBook G4…so, i had to go to the store. when i got there, the genius bar was booked and they wouldn’t just let me borrow the disk - even for in-store use. before i went ballistic, the woman got me an appointment in walnut creek. if we hadn’t needed to go out that way anyways, i would have escalated…but jeez, can’t they just let someone borrow a disk?

anyways, i made my way over to walnut creek where i was told that there would be an $80 fee since this was something i could do on my own. i explained that i didn’t have the disks and couldn’t wait the 3-4 days for applecare to send them to me…that i had just driven 40 minutes to his store…that this was about work, not my grandmother’s photos, etc. :)…but, he didn’t seem to care. before i got too hot under my collar, he decided to just do the upgrade and it worked…that was a smart move on his part…very smart…

so, that’s the story…unfortunately, i don’t have a happy ending. i can sort of use my computer, but things keep crashing, i can’t upgrade to the latest OS X, and i can’t install the new iphoto. frankly…i’m not sure how to resolve this…any ideas?

i can’t believe we knocked off ucla tonight…makes up for rest of the season!

i know everyone’s already written about this, but i’m allowed as i used to work on “my” :)

the new my yahoo has finally been released…i won’t comment on all of the changes right now (some i agree with and others i don’t), but i will say this…it’s quite a product. very beautiful, easy, and most importantly for rss fans…it’s full-text!

it’s going to be interesting to see how consumer behavior changes as this gets rolled out to the tens of MMs of my yahoo users. will they like the new full-text rss reader or will they turn it off and keep the dashboard experience?

btw, this is actually a nice hybrid product that allows users to put headline style content on a dashboard (cnn, bbc, nyt, etc.) while also allowing users to efficiently read full-text blogs. this approach isn’t new (google IG does this with the reader module), but it’s the first real mainstream implementation as it just “works.” this should dramatically impact time spent on my yahoo…

anyways, congrats to david, tapan, james, joseph, shanan, and everyone in eng and design…