DISQUS

I have found the worst offenders for what I referr to lovingly as shit garbage feeds are the MSM one's like CNN and Reuters (which is only slightly better than CNN). Even Ars Technica and Mary Jo have resorted to partial feeds.

Like you I really dislike partial feeds and while I realize that they are being provided free I still feel like I am being connec or ripped off. What is even worse though regardless of full or partial feeds are those bloggers who post one line posts and the ads take up more space than the useless tidbit we are bing tossed. They might just as well say "We're posting something useless just so we can get the ad traffic"

Yup .. time to go through and do some cleaning .. but unfortunately with the revamp of Braincell Soup almost done I'll probably be adding as many as I get rid of LOL

I've always looked forward to your posts Jason regardless of the quantity as the quality is what lives on past a meme's expiry date :)

Myself I have always tried to have at least 3 posts a day - only because as a cranky old fart I have the time - but even that is hard to maintain sometimes given the repetitiveness of the daily news. This is one reason why I branched out to start including software reviews and lucky enough that one of the WinExtra forums members was willing to help out.

You just kept to a posting schedule that you are comfortable with and we'll keep on reading :)

Thanks a lot Mathew … that is not the image I needed to see first thing in the morning over coffee …. now excuse me while I go and get my brain scrubbed …

Vista - a subtle disappointment? .. try a massive letdown ... a WOW withdrawal ... anything but something to look forward to using on a daily basis.

Microsoft dropped the ball on this and while I might seriously be considering backsliding to XP I wouldn't get overly excited and count this as a permanent mark against Microsoft. I have a sneaky suspicion about Windows 7 which for now I am keeping to myself but it might be what Vista should have been.

> Disclosure: I own a tiny amount of Apple stock

Which must be doing much better today :)

I agree with you Jason that the tech blogosphere isn't broken overall but I do think that it does have its weak spots in the mid to lower tiers as you point out. I also think that discussions like these can be good as long as they don't degrade into name calling and the such. Our readers - while they might not think so initially - benefit when they read these "reflective" posts because it help them see where our ethical boundaries are and if it suits them.

I can understand the need for the 3col design but for some reason this design feels scrunched up with the extra's (sidebars) taking up more space than the content

ooppss .. first line .. was = wasn't .. sorry

I really hope that the comment about a long blog vacation was meant seriously.

For the past little while I have been feeling that blogging is reaching a bit of a crossroads. With the dipsy-doodle A-Listers constantly flitting between every new shiney thing that comes along and proclaiming what ever the hot item of the mement as the next best thing it is going to leave a lot of open territory for those of us bloggers who take what we are doing seriously

The A-list bunch kind of remind me of the paparattzi [sp?] always on the hunt for the hottest pic and the coolest people to be seen with but very rarely do they stick around to do the serious work,

so Jason .. regardless of the crap that is being spewed by supposed big boys of the blogging world in order to try and hang on to their positions at the top ... don't let it get you down or doubt what you and other hard working bloggers are doing. We just have to keep slugging away because our time will come - after all there are always new shiny things around the corner to distract the big fish in the pond.

p.s. .. the notify by email option isn't working

I remember the Amero case well Karoli and as an aside it was well covered by the security related blogs like Threat Level, Freedom to Tinker and Sunbelt Blog which is the home blog for Sunbelt Software (Kerio Firewall etc) of which Alex the CEO of Sunbelt was one of the first to come to her rescue. He also testified free of charge as an expert witness for her defense.

But the large point you are trying to make I do agree with - the tech blogosphere in general - and the more popular they are - glosses of social issues with very little involvement past a single line in a post or such. Instead they will bitch at the drop of a hat if their iPod has a scratch or they will discauss ad naseum the merits of social networks over social graphs.

kind of sad in a way.

As a fellow opinionated contrarian (read - cranky old fart) blogger I think I share much of your feelings about this obsession with "the next shiny new thing". You make mention of of what is happening in Burma which I truly displays a real lack of social conscience in this so era of Web 2.0 "do no evil".

We seem to be more concerned with qualifying and quantifying social networks and social graphs rather than giving a damn about real social issues. If we did then survivors of Katrina wouldn't still be living in FEMA trailers, [middle class] poverty wouldn't be a growing dividing line between technological class separation.

Thank you for an excellent post and I've added your blog to my RSS feeds.

Speaking of the dollar when are you guys down there gonna get that greenback of yours back on track ... I miss those good old exchange rates :)

and no we don't all live in igloos up herer [snicker]

as much as I am inclined to agree with you about this idea being totally bats the fact is if anyone could pull off a true Start Trek like PDA it will be Apple and I think it would be really cool to boot.

I agree with you that Russell's response was more than a little over the top. I thought the points Scott raised were more than valid in light of the current mobile landscape of accessing the web.

Jason,

I have had Text-Link-Ads since pretty wel when they first came out - or at least on and off in 2 to 3 month periods. How much have I made from them ... $0.00

I believe that for smaller blogs - growing or not - Text-Link-Ads are generally a waste of time with the only one's benefiting from them is Text-Link-Ads.

the list for the referrer plugin is one you create after installing the plugin .. the instructions are a little convoluted but basically once you have installed the plugin you have it create a base referrer.txt file that you can then add to. I add to mine contiually which is why offered a copy because it might give you a bit of a jump start.

Oh man Jason I can relate with those feeleings exactly but I have found that some judious use of a couple of admion tools for WP help dealing with spamming and referrer spam

I just added Spam Poison (http://english-107581561904.spampoison.com/) which I have found to be really good.

Angsuman's Referrer Bouncer (http://blog.taragana.com/index.php/archive/word...) with a maintain server side text file - which if you want I can shoot you a copy of mine

And finally FireStats as the stats plugin ... even though I still have a bit of a problem with how he presents the Daily visitor counts (he uses a rolling 24hr period) but it is in constant dev and more than willing to listen to suggestion and I know he has some good stuff coming up. But as part of the settings you can add to both the Bot list and IP's that show up as doiing nothing more than scanning for whatever reason.

As for the random visitor "this place sucks" feeling I feel that all the time but unfortunately there is no plugin to help with this.

As some-one who has an interest in so-called television for the web; rather than T.V. on the web, the idea that top quality production rich shows neeed the big bucks of something like NewsCorp isn't neccessarily so.

One just has to watch the show Sanctuary - http://www.sanctuaryforall.com to see a top quality plot rich webshow being done without any big names being touted through the press.

additionally now that I think of it if you were using a Windows machine I could whip you up a little app that would grab the album cover art from Amazon in about 30 minutes .. but then yer not but let me know if you want something like that.

last.fm might be a good place to upgrade some of that album art

I renamed mine to Conversation tags rather than Technorati Tags; but then I believe in the tags concept just not their current implementation.

In my post on this I suggested that YouTube has just become another one of the many marketing department patsies and in the process YouTube is quickly losing that "cool" factor that came from being able to discover the next great unknown.

RapLeaf was one of the companies that I hightlighted in my post about the downside of this whole lifestream idea being put forth by the big boys of the blogosphere.

It - along with others like Spock show how easy it is to keep track of just about anyone on the net with having just an email address to start with. I might have a contrary view to the typical cotton candy pie in the sky held by most of Web 2.0 but companies like RapLeaf and Trustfuse only seem to prove me right ... http://www.winextra.com/2007/09/01/who-needs-ca...

I find it humorous ... the fact this this has happened doesn't surprise me one bit. The prices being asked for were unsubstainable but as anyone who has been around the tech world for even a short period of time can tell you - early adopters are the one's who pay for the R&D .. and the executive's new jets :)

Tagging is a "language" that I think holds some interesting possiblities and given your interest you might like another post I wrote on the idea(streaming) http://www.winextra.com/2007/08/26/ideastreamin...>