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...by the inmates...for the inmates...
Tuesday, August 31, 2004Web Traffic Analytics and User Experience
Found this post by Eric Peterson, Jupiter Research analyst:
Here's a pretty good write-up on analytics I found in my RSS feeds.Eric references a post by Fran Diamond at boxesandarrows.
By Eric Peterson. [webanalytics at Yahoo! Groups]
Late Night, Half-Day Work, Beach House Afternoon
Stayed up until 11:30PM last night adding web analytics data for our office in Japan. Got up early this morning to work from home 6:00AM to 11:00AM.
Lunch and afternoon with former director Mark at his beach house. The gathering included our former administrative assistant and all spouses. Last time we did this was several years ago. Hard to believe it has been 4 years since Mark retired. The guy is having waaaaay too much fun.
Gmail Playground
Received a Gmail invitation from the heartland. Thanks, Dean! Another Google beta UI to examine.
Sunday, August 29, 2004A Better eBay RSS Engine
A Better eBay RSS Engine
And I’m not just saying that because I helped put it together. Seriously, you’ve got a lot more options with this sucker - and we’re planning on adding more (including support for different syndication formats and JavaScript output for easier personal auction lists for your blog). (1) Complete the form to your satisfaction; (2) Press the ‘Search’ button or tap your Enter key; (3) Subscribe to or syndicate the resulting RSS URL! Yes, it’s really… By chris@pirillo.com (Chris Pirillo). [Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips]
RSS Usability Guide
RSS Usability Guide
Here is some good advice on how to improve the usability of your RSS newsfeeds. Common feed publishing errors are a frequent encounter and if you consider adding a RSS feed to your Web site/blog you might want to use this very list as an initial reference RSS usability guide. Here some initial key items to look out for:… By Robin.Good@masternewmedia.org (Robin Good). [Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips]
Sunday Afternoon Big Band
Bocci's Cellar in Santa Cruz to hear The Robin Anderson 17-piece Big Band. Three hours. Chicken salad and pasta "music meals", $5.00 each. Long Island Iced Tea for me and Rusty Nails for Maria; not $5.00 each. Veeeery relaxing. I really need to invite the other managers from work.
Thursday, August 26, 2004Amy Gahran Kicks Ass and Takes Names of the RSS Clueless Feedless
Feedless Hall of Shame: Most of the Fortune 100. Here's an update for my Feedless Hall of Shame – this blog's personal pit of ignominy for those organizations or online venues which really, really should offer at least some kind of minimal webfeed-based information services. In fact, they have no good excuse not to be doing so already!
I figured that the best business rationale for offering webfeeds – at the very least for press releases and investor information – would be major companies. I mean, these organizations live and breathe in tune with the gyrations of the fast-moving stock market and media. What better way to reach out to investors and the press than to offer webfeeds for those online audiences? Serve them up-to-the-minute information in a highly organized format, friendly to updating and syndication. Bingo!
With that in mind, I used Feedster's Feedfinder tool to scan for webfeeds on the internet domains of the Fortune 100 (the 100 largest US companies, based on 2003 revenue, ranked by Fortune Magazine).
The results, in a word, were dismal. Currently only four Fortune 100 companies offer any sort of publicly-accessible webfeed under their primary domain – and only one (IBM) is making serious use of this valuable new communication channel.
As Homer Simpson would say: D'oh!
So which Fortune 100 companies are using webfeeds, which aren't, and how could they all leverage this medium?...
(Read the list...) [Contentious Weblog]
The (MyFreePress) Buck Stops Here
Email from Buck at MyFreePress confirms that I actually have two readers, not just one. Will wonders never cease? He didn't mention if he visits the site or monitors via RSS. Maybe just a lucky flip of the Jenett Radio Randomizer? Either way, if Buck visits the Asylum, he must have too much time on his hands. Too much sunlight in Canada this time of year? <grin> Thanks for stopping by.
Wednesday, August 25, 2004Web Analytics Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)
Eric Peterson of Jupiter Research on web analytics key performance indicators (KPIs)
Follow-up to my presentation on Key Performance Indicators. Since it seems that there is quite an interest in Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) based on the number of JupiterResearch... [Eric Peterson]
Doc Searls on bRoadcaStingS
Sweeeet. Just another RSS enclosure?
The idea of syndicating broadcasts on the Web with RSS is catching on.
Yesterday Dave Pentecost put up a pile of links. Among them is Joi's BitTorrent public tracker needed. Read the comments. Dave adds,
[The Doc Searls Weblog]What's needed: a plugin for MT that gives MT users what Radio users already enjoy - the ability to embed RSS enclosures in their posts, and have them coded into the RSS feeds.
The Practical Enslavement of Lower Mammals
Hmmmm. Can I scale this up to work with a Chihuahua?
Here’s a good step-by-step on how to enslave lower mammals in to producing power for a night light. Rodent power (specifically power from Skippy the hamster) isn’t the easiest thing to take advantage of, but the article does a good job explaining the components and what’s needed to get the pet juice (err…you know what we mean). This might make up for all the power that was wasted on that hamster dance back when everyone first discovered the Web.
[Engadget]
Keep Your Lawyers In Your Pants
I love Cory's closing line: "If they'd just kept their lawyers in their pants, they'd still be sitting pretty."
Similar advice applies to the RIAA, MPAA, et al. If you'd just put your lawyers back in your pants, and work with your customers, you could make much more money. The longer you treat your customers as criminals, the longer it will take to ramp up your revenue stream. Nowadays, the first reaction of too many companies to a new business environment seems to be... unzip!
I know a company that understands this "zip it up" philosophy. Several years ago they, along with their largest competitor, agreed to drop some long-standing lawsuits. Both companies decided their time and $$ might be better spent conducting business. They both tucked their lawyers back into their pants and zipped up. Unique concept... serving your customers and shareholders instead of waving your things at each other. Duh!
This Land is Your Land is actually in the public domain. Cory Doctorow: JibJab's hilarious election-year parody of Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land" has been spared from death-by-litigation...It turns out that Woody Guthrie's initial publication of This Land is eleven years earlier than previously thought, which means that the copyright renewal filed by Ludlow, the carpetbaggers who bought his estate's publishing rights, was eleven years too late...
The most delicious aspect of this is that Ludlow could have gone on treating Guthrie's song as a copyrighted work, collecting licensing fees from anyone who was not making a fair use of the song ... had they not decided to pull a Lord Vader on JibJab, the poor, abused parodists. Reminds me of when Sony sued an Aussie dictionary for defining "walkman" as a generic personal stereo, which resulted in the court finding that the dictionary was correct, Sony was wrong, and walkman is generic. If they'd just kept their lawyers in their pants, they'd still be sitting pretty. Link (Thanks, Donna and Chris!) [Boing Boing]
You Can't Have Too Many RSS Readers
Just when you thought there was an application safe from RSS...
Nothing to install, nothing to tweak, nothing to do with spreadsheets - but you can read your RSS feeds in Microsoft Excel! I guess we’ll soon see more accountants grokking the concept of desktop syndication. I just can’t wait for someone to develop a plugin for Notepad - now that would be the ultimate aggregator, wouldn’t it? Or what about Microsoft Paint for moblogs? I’m telling you, the possibilities are endless - and I think… By chris@pirillo.com (Chris Pirillo). [Lockergnome's RSS & Atom Tips]
Small Penis? Buy More Cameras!
For all the boys without enough toys...
Olympic gadget lust. Xeni Jardin:Snapshots of all of the different sorts of crazy cool digital SLR gear used by photographers during one event at the Athens Olympics. Link (Thanks, Rob Galbraith) [Boing Boing]
Tuesday, August 24, 2004Onfolio Upgrade
Upgraded to Onfolio 1.02. No time to check out new features, if any.
Omniture Kicks Ass, Takes Names
Job openings for web analytics support at Omniture.
Omniture Wins AOL's Worldwide Business for Web Analytics. In case you had not already seen this, Omniture has announced that they beat out WebSideStory, Coremetrics and WebTrends for... [Eric Peterson]
Monday, August 23, 2004Web Analytics Using RSS at FeedBurner
The CTO at InfoWorld tests FeedBurner's value-added RSS service.
Trying out FeedBurner / Flickr.
I decided to redirect my RSS feed over to FeedBurner. Subscribers shouldn't notice anything -- I inserted a temporary redirect into our Apache config while I'm trying this out:
Redirect temp /dickerson/rss.xml http://feeds.feedburner.com/infoworld/dickersonAfter an hour using FeedBurner, I'm already really pleased with the stats reporting on my RSS feed: click-throughs on individual items and the number of subscribers (something I could easily get for Bloglines, but not as easily for the general universe). So far, so good for something that is pre-alpha.
[Chad Dickerson]
Sunday, August 22, 2004How Secure Are Your Syndication Feeds?
How secure are your syndication feeds?.
If you are using syndication software to generate feeds from your site, then you are probably benefiting from the increased convenience to your visitors. RSS feeds are everywhere these days and are certainly saving a lot of mouse-clicking for folks like myself. But have you ever stopped to consider the security implications of your feeds?… By rollie@rolliehawk.com (Rollie Hawk). [Lockergnome's Web Developers]
Saturday, August 21, 2004RSS Made Clear by Dan Bricklin
RSS made clear. Halley points us to a piece by Dan Bricklin wrote a while ago that explains RSS so clearly that you could varnish your furniture with it. Nice writing.... [Joho the Blog]