Disqus - Latest Comments for toddmck

Re: Could You Help Me With a Project

toddmck — Wed, 28 Oct 2009 07:56:53 -0000

I have just watched the poetry reading. Very well done, and entertaining. I particularly liked the ending :)

Re: Should a writer put content behind the RSS wall? | Broadcasting Brain

toddmck — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 09:39:00 -0000

Yes, I just did my part to foil this little scheme by subscribing as well. At this rate he's bound to fail.

It seems like a couple of things are happening here. The blog is about creativity, and exploring different ways of making something remarkable. Anybody can create a blog that has a html page, but how many people have one that's just RSS? Kind of along the lines of "some people won't like it if you're doing it right", but some people will. Also, the goal seems to be engagement, not numbers. By excluding the unwashed masses he's specifically creating an exclusive club limited to those who understand how to use a feed reader.

I think where this breaks down is there isn't any way I can figure out to comment on a post besides linking to it. That really raises the bar for participation, because now you're limited to just bloggers that use feed readers. If I was more interested in digging into this, I guess I'd go see if he's got many backlinks. There could be a healthy discussion going on other blogs already.

It looks like the blog was a normal one for quite a while, since he's been at it since January and just recently closed down the web interface. It should be quite discoverable via google, since the archive page is a massive bunch of excerpts from stuff that was previously published. I'm guessing that the permalink structure was left intact.

I doubt the goal is to prevent scraping, since it's easier to republish from a full text rss feed than to scrape the page.

Bottom line for me, it seems to be a unique idea. It probably won't lead to much growth, but it could very well lead to a more exclusive feeling source. The lack of interactivity seems like a very bad side effect, since there's no way to make it feel like a community. Of course, if the blogger uses friendfeed, or something like it, maybe the community can just live there...

Re: louisgray.com: Hey Bloggers, We're Discussing Your Posts At Social Median!

toddmck — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 22:54:56 -0000

They gave me George Clooney. Regretting the change ever since.

Re: Friends Outweighing Hatred On The Web

toddmck — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 09:14:52 -0000

Very well put. It has been pretty clear to me for a while now that you are a class act. This post is further proof.

Re: louisgray.com: TweetDeck: New Twitter AIR App With Summize Integration, Groups

toddmck — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 16:56:43 -0000

I really like getting something that's delightful in some way when it first turns on. For me, "Twitter Status: Pretty much ok" seems like a nice human touch and made me smile.

Re: Identi.ca Apps & Why It Could Blow Twitter Away

toddmck — Fri, 04 Jul 2008 15:42:00 -0000

On the verb, how about playing off the .ca domain AND the bird theme. Tweet -> Caw (you know, like the sound a crow makes)

Re: Sponsorships and Blogger Hypocrisy

toddmck — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 10:58:37 -0000

Steven, As I was reading your poll questions, I found that there wasn't one that exactly summarized my feelings. Something like "I think it's fine, but every time you write about the sponsor or their industry segment I have a new filter to think through" or something like that. In Scoble's case it works for me and I don't think too much about it. That's because he's not writing about Seagate every other post, or even the storage industry. For example, if FriendFeed sponsored Scoble's blog (or Twitter last year), I'd consider most of his writing questionable. Since he's not sponsored by FF, and Seagate has no obvious connection to them, I trust that it's all just pure Scoble enthusiasm. Bottom line for me, it complicates things, but it's not unworkable.

Re: louisgray.com: The Gray Family Doubles Overnight. Welcome Matthew and Sarah!

toddmck — Sun, 22 Jun 2008 08:53:46 -0000

That's terrific news - congratulations Louis!

Re: I really want my readers opinion on this

toddmck — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 23:41:15 -0000

I strongly agree with Daniel as well. I wonder if that would make for an interesting way to design a poll - along the lines of "agree", "strongly agree", etc. It could be that the (current) minority who prefer control feel somewhat passionate about it.

Re: The Adolescence of the Blogosphere

toddmck — Sat, 12 Apr 2008 09:04:03 -0000

Steven, if that's one of the two feature posts you were wondering about "is it worth it?" then I can't wait to read the other one. This is a really good look at what's going on, but more importantly it points us forward. I also agree with the thesis that there's a significant "niche" to fill by people who think before they write something. This post really resonated with me and I'm glad you took the time to write it. Totally worth it :)

Re: Would you quit pickpocketing my wallet

toddmck — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 22:48:27 -0000

It's probably extra relevant in this market segment. Spyware and antivirus software requires great trust in the vendor. There are a lot of shady operators that will sell out that trust in schemes to turn a quick buck. So, it's a market mostly driven by fear, and one in which extreme credibility needs to be established. And, it's one of the few things that can reasonably require a subscription. A natural subscription model can be a gold mine. Take a close look at Intuit - the tax operations dwarf everything else. Not because it's more interesting or useful than quicken, but because it drives more revenue. Consistently, year after year.

All this just begs for rational pricing, and doing what's right for the customer. Especially from a player that doesn't have the instant credibility of CA or Symantec or Microsoft.

Re: LinkRiver Is My Personal Techmeme

toddmck — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:19:36 -0000

Yep, it came first thing this morning. I haven't had much time to check it out yet, just imported my Google Reader shared items and del.icio.us. Amazing how quickly expectations change. I had to hunt down the urls by hand and paste them in manually - felt pretty old school. The service, from what little I've played with it, is great though. Seems very straightforward.

Re: Did Anyone Miss Me?

toddmck — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:51:15 -0000

I meant to comment earlier, and just finally got back to it. I don't know if you've ever taken a look at timesnapper, but it's the first thing that came to mind when I read your post. I can't say I've never tried it - quite the opposite. It's kind of obscure, but I had a need for it some time back when I was trying to track billable hours. It just really impressed me as being a simple idea extremely well executed. Might be worth a look.

Re: LinkRiver Is My Personal Techmeme

toddmck — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 04:31:56 -0000

Thanks for pointing me to this - I'm now awaiting a login. Very helpful and informative post.

Re: FriendfeedWatch: Your One Stop FriendFeed Shop

toddmck — Thu, 03 Apr 2008 23:10:22 -0000

Yep, I'm sure I could pick a name out of there for general ridicule, but it wouldn't be polite for me to say. The badge is awesomesauce personified - great job!

Re: Your Stats Don’t Matter, But Your Conversations Do

toddmck — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 20:01:56 -0000

You're absolutely right. The conversation is where it's at - all the rest will sort itself out. It was kind of sad to hear what happened, but it's really cool how quickly the recovery went. Switching the feedburner source was terrific. I just got a big flurry of posts, and there you are, back in the game. Thanks for linking, by the way - you rock!

Re: Blogs and the “phone-in show” effect

toddmck — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 13:28:10 -0000

YOU ARE SO WRONG!

No, seriously - interesing post. Thanks for the break from all the self-appointed comedians.

Re: Why do customer satisfaction surveys ask such stupid questions

toddmck — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 15:50:34 -0000

Having lived inside a "metrics driven" organization for a while, I've kind of got a universal translator for these things. The survey your pointing out is all directed at the customer care person, and each of the items is a number that rolls into their performance review. Where it really gets fun is when the survey is cross-organization.

I read these as:
Ding person who created website - 3
Kudos guy I talked to on helpdesk - 9
Ding person who created survey -2
Ding CEO (if possible) - 1
Kudos people who keep infrastructure up - 8

Of course, in this case it's simply "thumbs up, thumbs down" on the person you talked to - all 10s, all 3s, whatever. Unless you have a specific gripe. Those form statistical anomalies. That's gold as far as management is concerned. It will be discussed in performance appraisal, if there are enough of the same.

All in all, though, you're right about the questions. Plain english beats manager speak any day.

toddmck missed point of my post and went off on tangent - 2
toddmck was generally pleasant and tried to add to conversation - 8
toddmck explained stuff I already knew - 1

Re: Having the Last Word & the 20 Second Attention Span

toddmck — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 13:12:56 -0000

That may be one of the really interesting stories to develop from the rapid adoption and growth of FriendFeed - disqus is now a really important part of the picture for me, and it was just a bit player before.

Re: Having the Last Word & the 20 Second Attention Span

toddmck — Sat, 29 Mar 2008 09:51:33 -0000

Funny, that struck a bit of a chord with me. Seems I've been a "conversation killer" on quite a few things. Of your theories, I prefer to latch on to the "conversation moved on" one in combination with the collective 20 second attention span. It can also be a function of the subscribing strategy of the people in the conversation. Initially, I was very hesitant to go beyond the 7 or 8 people that I was subscribed to. After a bit of encouragement that it wouldn't completely ruin the experience, I went on a subscription tear and added a bunch of people. All I can say is, it's different. If I was following 7 or 8 people and they said something, I'm almost certain to chime in just to feel connected. With stuff flying by at twitter velocity, it's a fast moving stream that just kinda gets surfed.

Re: Why SheGeeks Is So Awesomesauce

toddmck — Fri, 28 Mar 2008 00:03:53 -0000

I really wish I had some graphic design skills. You absolutely need a badge of some sort that says "awesomesauce approved" for people to put on their posts or utilities that you point out. Kinda like one of these, but cooler (um, sorry, I mean with more awesomesauce): http://blogs.zdnet.com/security/images/scanaler...

Re: An interview with Daniel Ha from Disqus

toddmck — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 01:27:47 -0000

It may be a better question for Automattic, but I'm really curious about whether there will be a way to put the disqus plugin on a wordpress.com hosted blog anytime soon. I'm sure there are reasons why this might be a "slow to never" kind of feature, but I'm hating the tradeoff at the moment. To be clear, the tradeoff I'm talking about is "get cool new stuff quick" vs. spending a bunch of time being webmaster for a self-hosted blog.

Re: Microsoft launches Office Live Workspaces

toddmck — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 01:29:04 -0000

I don't know how jazzed I am about the Office stuff, but the FriendFeed plugin is awesome!