Disqus - Latest Comments for nbradbury

Re: An important lesson in business success: Use your product

nbradbury — Sun, 25 Oct 2009 12:19:34 -0000

Agree completely, Rex. In the software world, I'd go a step further and say that you should only build something *you* need (which is something I've blogged about - see http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/indie_tip_... ).

Re: Google Wave crashes on beach of overhype

nbradbury — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 00:44:03 -0000

It's a shame to see so much dismissing of Wave based on the frontend, when the backend is the interesting part. The frontend isn't trying to be an upgrade to email or Twitter, but perhaps the backend is trying to be an upgrade to HTTP?

Re: Serious conversations? Not on Twitter

nbradbury — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 19:45:40 -0000

Yeah, that's the same reason I just can't do tech support on Twitter. Not enough room to really figure things out.

Re: All the angst over Atom (Scripting News)

nbradbury — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:48:04 -0000

Start here: http://www.simpsoncrazy.com/content/pictures/ho... :)

Re: All the angst over Atom (Scripting News)

nbradbury — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 21:40:14 -0000

Well, it's fair to say I have similar concerns. I don't want someone not to try FeedDemon because they heard RSS isn't "cool" anymore (and let's face it, most geeks desperately want to be cool, whether they admit it or not). But if presented with the opportunity to talk with these people, just ask where they heard that RSS isn't cool, and nine times out of 10 they'll say they read it in the feeds they're subscribed to in their RSS reader. In which case, just give them a blank stare until they realize the error of their ways :)

Re: All the angst over Atom (Scripting News)

nbradbury — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:56:41 -0000

Honestly, I find that most of these tech battles can be avoided by simply asking yourself, "do people using my software really give a damn?" More often than not, they don't. Which, for the record, is why I'm staying out of the whole "RSS is dead" thing.

Re: All the angst over Atom (Scripting News)

nbradbury — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 19:08:33 -0000

Exactly. I remember all the feed format battles, and wondering if any of those involved in them had ever written an aggregator that supported more than one format. Adding Atom support to FeedDemon way back when was no big deal - I've spent more time trying to design a toolbutton icon than I did adding Atom support.

Re: Programming wisdom (Scripting News)

nbradbury — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 16:18:06 -0000

I'm re-learning your first bit of wisdom at this very moment, as I'm forced to completely rewrite some code (Google Reader sync) that I made far too complicated the first time around.

Re: Yooouuutuuube Puts YouTube on LSD

nbradbury — Sun, 10 May 2009 16:47:09 -0000

Adds a whole new dimension to Beaker doing "Ode to Joy"

http://www.yooouuutuuube.com/v/?rows=20&cols=20...

Re: URL Shorteners: Please Resolve

nbradbury — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 21:51:36 -0000

In most case, you can resolve a short URL by doing a HEAD request and then checking the redirect header for the long URL. This is what FeedDemon does to resolve short URLs, as described at http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2008/12/coming-in-...

Re: Enough bitching – Feedburner housecleaning time

nbradbury — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 19:06:48 -0000

When our RSS readers encounter the 301 redirect that FeedBurner issues, we do change the XmlUrl for the feed. But I'm not aware of how to do that once the 30 days are up, since FeedBurner issues a 404 after that time.

Re: Enough bitching – Feedburner housecleaning time

nbradbury — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 07:40:28 -0000

Keep in mind that after you delete it, your Feedburner feed will redirect to your blog feed for 30 days (if you choose that option upon deletion). So, this change shouldn't have a huge impact on your readership.

Re: Is Your Feed Reader Becoming Boring?

nbradbury — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 21:59:03 -0000

Thanks for the nice mention of FeedDemon, Corvida!

Re: I hate winter

nbradbury — Fri, 19 Dec 2008 22:05:41 -0000

You can count me as a winter hater, too. If it showed on Christmas but stayed warm the rest of the year, I'd be happy.

BTW, it was 70 degrees here in Nashville today. I can live with that :)

Re: With RSS ads is it right to form communities around feeds

nbradbury — Sat, 31 May 2008 00:15:30 -0000

I actually didn't find this post because it mentioned FeedDemon -- I've been subscribed to WinExtra for a while, and it remains one of my favorite reads. But then again, I did find this blog in the first place because Steven posted something about FeedDemon... :)

Re: With RSS ads is it right to form communities around feeds

nbradbury — Fri, 30 May 2008 23:07:00 -0000

I'm glad you raised this issue, Steve - it's one that's concerned me for quite a while (although when I first wrote about this, my concern was how RSS search engines would deal with ads - see http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2005/04/rss_ads_no... ).

I have no problem with services that build communities around full-text feeds, provided that the content is attributed and any ads are retained. IMO, when you publish an RSS feed, you do so with the knowledge that your words of wisdom could potentially be repurposed elsewhere. Items from your feed may show up in search results, appear in link blogs, be reformatted for display in an aggregator, etc. If you rely on revenue from ads in your feed, you have no guarantee that those ads will still appear when your feed is repurposed.

FeedDemon (like Shyftr) will do the right thing and retain the ads, but it's a safe bet that ad-stripping will be available in some other aggregators, and I wouldn't be surprised to see services which remove ads and insert their own. It's up to the community to call these services out - as I'm sure you will :)

PS: Jason Kottke interviewed several aggregator developers about this topic back in 2004 - see http://www.kottke.org/04/12/blocking-rss-advert...

Re: Are bloggers becoming your new news anchors?

nbradbury — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 12:27:37 -0000

Great post, Steven. I touched upon a similar idea at http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2007/07/conserving...

Re: Making FeedDemon the killer blogger app

nbradbury — Wed, 23 Apr 2008 17:19:01 -0000

I wouldn't say I'm running screaming into the sunset - more like a slow jog :)

I've actually considered doing exactly what you describe, but my desire to keep FeedDemon focused on a specific task (ie: reading feeds) makes me shy away from it. That's the same reason why I never added NNTP, even though some competitors offer it.

That said, I still like the idea of making FeedDemon more "sociable," kind of like Flock with an RSS focus.

Re: LinkRiver - going against the current

nbradbury — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 14:49:54 -0000

For me it's the opposite - I find LinkRiver more useful. It brings new stories to my attention while still respecting my time (ie: it doesn't overwhelm me with too much information).

Re: Aggregator Overload

nbradbury — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 22:46:16 -0000

You can sort of do this already - just right-click on the post title in the newspaper, then choose "Open in New Window" to open it in the external browser.

I always have my external browser on my second monitor, so this works well for me.

Re: Aggregator Overload

nbradbury — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 18:00:53 -0000

Sure, feel free to email me.

BTW, while I do like link blog aggregators, I consider them less of a destination than I do as a way to find stuff that you might've missed (see http://nick.typepad.com/blog/2007/08/link-blogs... ).

I wouldn't want to try to keep up with an endless stream from a link blog aggregator, but I might want to know when a few of my friends have paid attention to an article I haven't seen yet. LinkRiver appears to be starting to tackle this problem - will be interesting to see how that service evolves over the next few months.