Disqus - Latest Comments for TDavid

Re: Blog Rollin' pt 2

TDavid — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:34:54 -0000

Thanks for the subscription :)

Doesn't it all depend on who the 25 are that are subscribing? Respectfully, I think getting caught up in how many readers you have or don't have is a bit counterproductive. Focus on what you are passionate about, what you really care about, and the readers will be attracted to that energy.

Blogging is just a format, after all. What limits do you speak of? Creativity has few limits. One can blog about a variety of things or focus on only a small few. Not sure I'm following what you mean.

Re: Blog Rollin' pt 2

TDavid — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 10:02:20 -0000

25, you sure about that? I've been subscribed through GReader for awhile. Not sure I've ever left a comment here before, but I see and read your posts. If the number is 25, then hey, it feels good to be part of an exclusive group :)

There are multiple ways to look at smaller numbers. I prefer the cup half full perspective.

Re: My new mission (Scripting News)

TDavid — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 13:04:47 -0000

Suggestion, Dave: don't make your campaign "relentless."

I think this character trait, Dave -- being relentless -- is all too often your achille's heel. It might work on a project being aggressive and having a never say die attitude, but with interpersonal relationships it can be a negative.

For those of us who have spent some time talking to you in a face to face setting, we understand better what you are about than, respectfully, too often portrayed in your rapid-fire, in-your-face online writings. I don't believe you are a mean-spirited guy, but you can come across very rough, unpolished and anti-social in your dealings with others online -- and in the case of some conferences and other public events where you've spoken up and out about something you felt was wrong, offline sometimes too.

So instead of making this a "relentless" campaign, how about making it a more quiet, personal campaign? Perhaps taking more of your conflicts out of the online spotlight (and this blog) and (re)approaching them more direct, one on one as you cited above?

It is possible more than a few bridges for you might be burned, but if you truly want to rehabilitate what type of person you are online, it would start by changing how you handle conflict online. Not all conflict, large and small, needs a to be broadcast to the world at large. You have a stage here that many others would love to have. So perhaps try to use that stage for more positive means going forward and avoid (as much) personal commentary on others?

BTW, I don't feel like you and I have ever had any conflict and hopefully these comments will come across, as intended, in a constructive manner. "Hated" as others have already stated is a strong word. I don't think you have many people online who "hate" you, but think a considerable number of people have been turned off by the way and wording you've used in conflict situations particularly (especially when they involve RSS).

Re: The First Church of Scoble (Scripting News)

TDavid — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 19:25:14 -0000

Scoble -- or any other niche web celebrity -- isn't too difficult to get rid of and it starts by reducing and/or not writing about him, Dave, like what wasn't done above. If people stopped mentioning him then the annoyance factor of his web celebrity would begin to correct itself. It's the CatchScoble 22.

The thing is Scoble talks to interesting people doing interesting things and that's always been the draw. I wonder how many others are attracted to the same thing?

When I say to myself: I'm not going to get sucked into Scoble's latest whatever, his good writing skills usually bring me into the fold. That and Scoble is one of the all around nice guys on the web. He is more human and real than a lot of other phony niche web celebs seem to be, so I don't get that "annoyed" when I see him getting lots of attention, rather I think to myself: hey, at least a nice guy is getting some.

Re: $249 to burn (Scripting News)

TDavid — Mon, 29 Dec 2008 19:51:51 -0000

Dave - I seem to recall you are a movie buff of sorts. Get yourself a VUDU. They are running a $99 special right now I believe or get them at your local Best Buy for $299 (I know that's a bit over the limit) with the $200 movie credit. VUDU has more HD quality movies on demand than anybody else and the prices aren't too bad. You can rent or buy movies as well as check out their Vudu Labs project (watch YouTube, use Flickr to show your pictures, etc).

Oh, and you'll also like that they are gearing up in the first part of 2009 to allow developers to build applications on the device sort of TIVO-style. If any of this sounds of interest, you can learn more here: https://my.vudu.com/buynow/

Re: Netflix is dix (Scripting News)

TDavid — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 15:57:43 -0000

Also when you go to cancel a Netflix subscription they don't honor your subscription period, they cancel it then and there, regardless if you have 3 weeks left in the month that you already paid for. Not exactly the most honorable way of canceling an account.

They do warn you that things will be this way but how difficult would it be to honor already paid for subscription time?

Re: Should Michael Arrington Be Invited Back At LeWeb Next Year?

TDavid — Sat, 13 Dec 2008 19:56:06 -0000

The current dustup aside, let me be the first to call BS on TC/Arrington not being at Le Web 2009. This will be ancient history a year from now.

Re: When Social Media Doesn’t Matter

TDavid — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 21:16:04 -0000

Sorry to hear of this. Condolences all around :(

Re: Poll: Do You Want Moar Content?

TDavid — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 12:02:11 -0000

"I’m asking because I think many/some people don’t like blogs that push out periodic link posts in the absence of real content"

Once in a great while link posts with comments are fine, but I prefer posts with meat on them. The word "periodic" suggest to me regularly which is case of frequency I'd frown upon from any blog I'm subscribed and reading. Hey, you asked :)

Re: Do link blogs suck? | Broadcasting Brain

TDavid — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 11:30:10 -0000

I don't subscribe to or read any *all* linkdump blogs. Some of the blogs I follow run out lists of unreleated links with a few comments here and there, using that delicious plugin most commonly.

I prefer reading -- and writing -- blog posts with some meat to them. A list of completely unrelated links in a blog post, even with small amount of context added, is usually not very meaty. For readers, the context provided is often too short to be useful. Now a list of related links around a topic is a whole different thing and could be quite useful.

From the author side though, from time to time providing linkdump posts can break up things and provide variety overall to the blog. So these posts are ok here and there. They suck though for SE. How does the SE determine what is relevant on the page in a linkblog post with very little text?

Blogs completely dedicated to linking? I guess maybe if it was something the author wanted for their own use but I don't see many people subscribing. FriendFeed, delicious, et al probably best places these days for that type of regular activity.

Re: Broken Link Checker plugin for WordPress

TDavid — Thu, 04 Dec 2008 07:51:59 -0000

Have you ever visited a page from years ago that had updates and thought this was kind of cool?

"In any case since the broken links refer to pages that have no replacement, the only option would be to remove the links completely and I’m not convinced the improvement would be worth the effort."

Actually, there is another option. Add a footnote and change the original link to a cache source link like archive.org or Google. This way new readers of your older post (reader benefit!) that come from a search engine won't be lost. And if you check your stats a majority of traffic visiting archived posts are from the search engines.

Furthermore, an update to an older page like I described will make your page fresh again. So consider the SE benefit of doing this at the least. You are running ads and most likely the biggest clickers of your ads are from, guess where, search engines. If you want to make a few more $$, there is the other benefit from keeping your archives from being deadwood like the majority of blogs out there.

Re: How To Use Links And Linking Effectively

TDavid — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 13:01:09 -0000

Jason -

I trackbacked in with a detailed response to this post, too long for this space, but in short would like to point out that the Zemanta links are very related and useful while the Sphere: Related Content links are the exact opposite (very bad, check yourself).

Re: Lost Message

TDavid — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:31:40 -0000

lol, another one without a link. I give up.

Re: FriendFeed and Politics

TDavid — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 08:28:48 -0000

Duncan - bummer that you didn't link to Alex Scoble's "dumb stuff" comments and he didn't link here in his follow-up rant. Weakens both your opinions about what you think the other person said (or meant) when readers aren't provided a source link.

To help other readers, here is Alex's FriendFeed comment (at least I think it is): http://friendfeed.com/e/748...

Re: Blog commenting: I guess I’m wired differently

TDavid — Thu, 02 Oct 2008 10:11:18 -0000

Duncan - just curious here: do you have a regular plan of backup for the third party hosted comments "just in case" Disqus/FF melts down? So many third party sites come and go, just check the Google 2001 database. This is the primary reason to stay away from these third party hosted systems. I know the comments left 5+ years ago at my blog are still in tact and still searchable. Do you envision that will be the case for Disqus and FF?

Re: What are they hiding? (Scripting News)

TDavid — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 22:50:20 -0000

NItpicking here but Palin didn't really "lie" about putting the jet on eBay. She did list it there three times. She conveniently (intentionally?) left off the fact that it didn't sell there and needed to be sold to a private party in Alaska.

Re: Asking My Readers – A Poll

TDavid — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 12:32:41 -0000

I don't care what the results of the poll turn out to be (and no I wasn't one of the people who emailed), these link posts do not provide significant value on any blog, not just yours. I skip past them and/or filter them in some cases with third party tools. There are plenty of sites for sharing bookmarks for those interested, save your blog for saying something worthwhile and fresh that will live beyond a few nanoseconds.

And might want to fix this gremlin, FYI: "I don’t use GReader and have absolutely no intention of *every* using it."

Re: Techmeme fails the tech community again

TDavid — Sat, 02 Aug 2008 13:01:57 -0000

Left on your FriendFeed post as well. The story is on TechMeme now: http://www.techmeme.com/080...

Re: Comcast shut me down again (Scripting News)

TDavid — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 15:31:01 -0000

Dave - your second use of fcuk made me laugh. You need to get a domain with fcuk in it for some future project :)

Re: 14 Podcasts To Help You Through Your Commute

TDavid — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 12:10:31 -0000

Thanks for sharing this list. I like it when folks make lists like these! I checked the Zune Marketplace where I've been helping with podcast submissions and only two of these are not listed in the marketplace: The Web 2.0 Show and Things That You Can't Say About The Internet. I'll contact these podcasters.

Re: Off the Cuff: Who needs destinations

TDavid — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 09:34:22 -0000

Any separate podcast feed (with decent sized image) for Off The Cuff, Steven?

Re: Search isn’t about buying stuff

TDavid — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 08:42:42 -0000

Not saying the following statement is untrue, but it seems a bit far-fetched:

"I know myself I have never used any search engine in order to find something I wanted to purchase. "

Never? *Never*? How much shopping do you do online? You *never* have heard about a product or service from somewhere other than the internet and used a search engine to find out where to buy it?

We do a considerable amount of shopping online and while that 10% figure seems high even to our household, it's a long way from "never."

Re: From the Pipeline – 6.24.08

TDavid — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 10:26:40 -0000

Congratulations on your new Mashable gig, Steven.

Re: Bringing Yahoo back from the grave

TDavid — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:36:35 -0000

I understand your early adopter affection for FF, but it's still a long way from mainstream -- it's barely tech mainstream. Y! doesn't need more early adopter, whiz bang stuff, they need some serious leadership and focus. Yang is a terrible CEO. Buying FriendFeed or Twitter or anything like this at the present time would take them in yet another direction rather than enhance and strengthen their existing services.

Y! should consider *SELLING* some of their prized, but less financially viable assets and fortify their strategy for the future. I doubt as long as Yang is at the helm this will be possible, so let's hope that dream suggestion of yours for him to get the boot comes true.

Re: Bringing Yahoo back from the grave

TDavid — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 21:09:43 -0000

"3. Tell Carl Icahn to go sit in the corner and STFU"
Umm, you do realize Carl Icahn is a part OWNER of Yahoo, right? Sure you do. As a major shareholder -- like it or not -- Icahn does have a say in Y! operations, He paid for that right. When Yahoo! decided to go public the company lost the ability for the execs, both current and future, to go tell shareholders to go pound sand -- without severe consequences. Icahn is simply sticking up for the rights of himself and all other shareholders for Y! to be fiscally responsible. I'm a Y! shareholder and am disgusted with what's happening there lately. I don't want Icahn to STFU, I want him to make more noise.

The way Yang handled the Microsoft deal doesn't seem to be in the best interest of shareholders, at least from the heavily filtered information we see on the outside.

And putting the Friendfeed people in charge of Y! is one of the oddest suggestions I've seen yet. You can't be serious on that one, are you? If you are, let me laugh out loud. The owners of FF came from Google, remember, I don't think they want to become any part of the walking abortion Y! currently is operating as.