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Radio UserLand, RSS, Weblog Tools and Design
Wednesday, March 31, 2004Steve's script to force upstreaming
Re: Prefs/Upstreaming/Seconds?. When such things happen to me, I use a script to force upstreaming right then. I don't know if you use the Radio App's UI, but here's the script:
local { file; relpath; pc = file.getPathChar ()}; file.getFileDialog ("Which jpeg pix?", @file, "JPEG"); relpath = string.mid (file, sizeOf (user.radio.prefs.wwwFolder) + 1, infinity); relpath = string.replaceAll (relpath, pc, "/"); new (tabletype, @user.radio.settings.files.[file]); new (tabletype, @user.radio.settings.files.[file].upstream); user.radio.settings.files.[file].modified = clock.now (); user.radio.settings.files.[file].relativePath = relpath; system.verbs.builtins.radio.upstream.builtinDrivers.ftp.upstream (@user.radio.settings.files.[file], @system.temp.radio.upstreamSpecCache.["C:\\Program Files\\Radio UserLand\\www\\#upstream.xml"])
You'll need to re-write that last file address for OS.
Steve Hooker
http://www.cybersaps.org/ [Radio UserLand Messages]
Monday, March 29, 2004Radio UserLand, BitTorrent, and Free Culture
Thanks to Andrew!
When I logged in this morning there was a BitTorrent window open and a copy of Free Culture on my hard drive. Simon put this Creatively Licensed work on LegalTorrents, and the Radio plugin did the rest. What a pleasant surprise! I seriously doubt I'll have the patience or motivation to read the whole thing sitting at the computer, but the chances that I'll go out and buy a dead trees copy just went up significantly.
[Andrew Grumet's Weblog]
RSS: Not Just for Bloggers Anymore
From Pamela Parker at ClickZ
RSS: Not Just for Bloggers AnymoreThe other day, I told someone I'd just met I worked for the publishing division of Jupitermedia. His reaction made me feel I'd stepped back in time. He was bemused a company that operates Web sites and e-mail newsletters would call itself a "publisher." I didn't know anyone thought that way anymore -- and this was a guy at a tech-related trade show.
Well, I hate to break it to this fellow, but it's time to expand the definition of publishing still further. If stories in USA Today and The Wall Street Journal are any indication, RSS -- the XML-based syndication format -- is going mainstream.
Already, the New York Times offers 19 different news feeds, the BBC offers at least 46 (one's entirely dedicated to Harry Potter news), and, of course, ClickZ has feeds for its News and Stats sections (more to come!). Your friendly neighborhood blogger likely has an RSS feed, too. The blogging community has largely driven the renaissance of this nearly decade-old format.
The proliferation of news search sites, such as Google News, Yahoo! News, and MSN's Newsbot, are also driving RSS's popularity. Want your site's headlines indexed on these popular aggregators? RSS is the way to accomplish that. ...
[ClickZ]
Sunday, March 28, 2004Web Analytics and RSS
Traffic Stats and RSS. An interesting thing happened recently. I was playing around with Andrew Grumet's tool based on the information in Share Your OPML and discovered that a number of people still subscribe to old feeds. This has direct impact on what stats can look like. [TNL.net weblog]
Weekend Blogger
weekend mode....
[jenett.radio] How To Improve Your Weblog Traffic
Dave Pollard rides again. Great tips.
HOW TO INCREASE YOUR READERSHIP.
My Blogging Table of Contents has six articles to help you assess and improve the quality of your blog, and attune it to the interests of your target audience. The "What the Blogosphere Wants More Of" list way down at the bottom of my right sidebar has some more ideas. This article distils it all down to the ten things you can do that are most likely to increase your readership, and keep it growing. Marketing 101 for Blogs.
THE TOP FIVE WAYS TO IMPROVE YOUR BLOG...
Marketing is useless if you don't have a good 'product'. Here are five ways to ensure you do.
- Provide something unique: There are so many blogs out there, even if you're writing brilliantly, you won't attract an audience if someone who's already more widely-read is writing on the same subjects. First-hand accounts or data, original research, surveys, original ideas, original graphics or photos or artwork, all help establish your uniqueness. World O'Crap, one of the newest and yet most popular Salon blogs, is written by a liberal who almost exclusively frequents right-wing conservative blogs and news sites, catches them in lies and exaggerations and inconsistencies, and then writes biting, hilarious satire about them. Unique, brilliant, and very funny.
- Provide something valuable: Give readers a high 'return on their investment' in reading your blog by (a) entertaining them, (b) teaching or helping them to do something (lessons learned etc.), (c) informing them about something they need to know about, (d) giving them a 'take-away' (checklist, great quote, useful tool, etc. -- something that will cause them to immediately bookmark or blogroll or write about your site and revisit it often), (e) saving them time (distilling something down, analyzing it, researching it), or (f) providing deep insight about what something means (great graphics can help do this).
- Be first: The first person to write about a particular topic will probably get a large share of traffic about it. Even if a more popular blog picks up on it, they're likely to link to you and send even more readers your way. First-hand accounts, on-the-spot photos, comments from people who were at the scene of breaking news all make fascinating reading. Even the first reviews and synopses of new movies and books usually attract a lot of attention.
- Do your research: Invest time to learn as much as possible about what you're going to write about. Spend much more time reading and researching than you do writing. Check your facts. Learn to use search engines powerfully, so no time is wasted looking for just the right information. Don't neglect primary research -- stuff you get from offline sources like real people, in-depth television reports, people you can call or survey to get information that isn't available on the Web. Always cite and if possible link to your sources. Dig for great finds, stuff that isn't on the first page of the Google results, information that you need to go through multiple links to find, information embedded in the many databases that are online but aren't Googled at all. And never lie or exaggerate.
- Learn to write very well: Master the art of story-telling. Learn to be brief without being too dense. Write in a conversational, accessible, friendly style. Eschew obscure and intimidating words, like 'eschew' (it means 'avoid' ;-) Ask people you trust to comment on your writing style. Use point form, examples, restatements for clarity. Be natural. Learn the 39 steps for story-writing; most of them apply to non-fiction, too. Have fun, be loose, show your emotion. Try to avoid clichés.
... AND THE TOP FIVE WAYS TO ATTRACT MORE ATTENTION TO IT
Once you've got a world class 'product', here's how to get people to look at it.
And finally: Be patient -- Viral marketing is very effective but takes time to work. Stick with what you're doing, especially if people are complimenting you -- word will spread, and the audience will come. And be yourself. If you try to affect a style that isn't 'you' it will come off as forced or dishonest.
- Use other media to pull people to your blog: Don't just write great stuff and wait to be discovered. Use e-mails (sparingly, selectively) to tell people you think might be interested in reading your blog about a particular article you've written. Make comments on others' blogs and include your blog URL when you do. Try to find an A-lister or two who might be interested in one of your articles, and e-mail them (just be aware many others are also looking for A-listers' attention, so do so sparingly and be patient). Or just comment, early and frequently, on A-listers' posts (first commenter on any new A-lister post often draws a lot of traffic). Join and participate in discussion groups, always leaving your blog URL at the end of every message. Contribute to e-magazines, either online versions of hard-copy periodicals like Ms., or specialized online journals like Virtual Occoquan. Use outgoing links on your blog and blogroll to articles and blogs written by people you'd like to have as readers: Chances are, they'll note you when they look at their inbound links list and come over to see what you said about them. And when people write to you, always answer, always acknowledge that they took the time, and always include your URL in your response. But don't feed the trolls (i.e. don't reply to readers who write hurtful, malicious or baiting comments or e-mails) or you'll have readers you don't want.
- Write, at least sometimes, about 'hot' topics: You don't have to be a Googleslut to occasionally get some special buzz on a topic everyone is talking about. Being very focused on narrow, deep topics will get you a faithful readership, but not a particularly large one. Writing about something popular from time to time, especially if you do so before everyone else is writing about it, and say something unique or insightful, will broaden your audience, and bring in what Malcolm Gladwell calls connectors, people who can bring their entire, large networks of potential new readers to see your blog.
- Make a great first impression: The average reader who links to your site looks at 1.5 pages and stays 90 seconds. Google hits command a small fraction of even that attention span. That's how long you have to make an impression that will bring them back. A memorable look, a powerful theme, easy navigation, legibility, making sure your links work and that you've spellchecked, using clear headings, clever, attractive graphics, summarizing your long posts, making sure your page doesn't take too long to load -- all these things help create a great first impression, and give your blog what's called 'stickiness'. The longer they stay, the more they'll remember and the more likely they'll come back.
- Learn by studying who's reading what, and what works: I look at the end of each day who's been reading How to Save the World (most blogs have a 'referrer log' tool that lists your visitors; services like SiteMeter also provide this information). If I don't recognize a reader by their URL, I'll go to their site to see who they are and what brought them to my site (and often say 'thanks for visiting' while I'm there). And I track total popularity three ways (see chart above): Average hits/day per the Salon Rankings list, Number of Inbound Blogs per Technorati Cosmos (I also visit any new additions to my Inbound Blogs list), and Number of people subscribed to my RSS feed per Dave Winer's Who Subscribes List. I know that when I write about certain subjects like blogging or business innovation, I'll get a spike in hits. But I also know my posts on other subjects, like the environment, economics, and social networking, have different and loyal audiences, who I'd lose if I narrowed the focus of this blog. And some things, like poetry and short stories, I post despite knowing they have a very small audience, because the few comments I do get are essential to improving my writing skills. And because I love writing them.
- Get outside more: Real Live Preacher, consistently one of the three most popular Salon Blogs, deliberately seeks out (looking at the Recent Updates List for unfamiliar blog names) and welcomes and helps new bloggers -- a tremendous way to get grateful new readers for his smartly written, well-laid-out blog. By using blog directories like EatonWeb or lists like Technorati's Current Events (or just typing a topic of interest in Technorati's search bar) you can find other bloggers interested in the same things you are, and connect with them. Or explore the blogrolls of blogs you like. When you find a 'like mind', link to them, e-mail them, comment on their weblog, or otherwise let them know you exist and where to find you. But don't be pushy and overtly ask them to link to you -- just let them know where you are, and they'll come around.
[How to Save the World]
Scobleizing a Senior Vice President
The Senior Vice President of a 22,000 employee organization within Microsoft reads your blog. Nothing like riding the razor's edge. No stress. To borrow a turn of phrase from Chandler Bing: "This would so not happen at my company." I do not mean to imply that senior people at my company don't "get it". Only that they don't "get it" as much as Eric Rudder. Miracles do happen. I'm hoping that the RSS light will click on this year at work.
Eric Rudder visits my comments.
Wow, I think this is a first. I don't remember a Senior Vice President here at Microsoft leaving a comment in my blog before today (heck, I don't think anyone above a general manager position has commented before). Eric Rudder posted this in my comments...
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
Wednesday, March 24, 2004A Tutorial Weblog: Great Approach!
I'm not switching from Radio UserLand to Movable Type just yet, but the day will surely come. Radio UserLand is a nice CMS, but lacks some basic features (such as post to past or future, spell checking, etc.) and has stability problems. The company is focused on Manila now, which they should, given the price people paid for that package. However, other packages are starting to eat their lunch at the low end.
A Tutorial Weblog: Great Approach!. Never underestimate the value of a good tutorial.
In the last couple of weeks, I've started getting much more comment spam on this weblog than ever before. When it was only one or two comment spams per day, that was no big deal for me to delete manually. But lately it's been more like 20-40 comment spams daily. I finally had to implement some prevention measures.
One reason I've held off on this task is that I use Movable Type weblog software. While I like its functionality, from the beginning I've disliked the extreme geekiness (from my perspective) of Movable Type. Its documentation is minimal, hunting for answers in the support forum is confusing and time-consuming, and fixing anything requires messing with arcane code. A non-programmer like me can easily do a lot of damage trying to make a simple tweak to my weblog. (Which is why the design of CONTENTIOUS is so basic.)
Fortunately, I've just discovered a fabulous and well-written resource for people like me, which I'd like to recommend.
If you use Movable Type and you're not a programmer, check out the Learning Movable Type blog at Elise.com. This is the most coherent, practical, and readable basic resource on Movable Type that I've seen anywhere....
(Full story...) [Contentious Weblog]
Look Ma - No Tables!
A seemingly simple question asked a while back at MezzoBlue, one that I struggled with myself for a long time before giving up and using tables:
Is it possible to use floats to position a fixed-width sidebar on the right of a page, with a liquid content area, if the content comes before the sidebar in the markup?
Floating, and not absolute positioning is necessary for the sake of a clearing footer.
1) no changing the order of the code (although adding new divs would be fine), and 2) no using absolute positioning unless you can somehow make it work with the footer.
Ryan Brill came up with an ingenious solution using negative margins that seems to work in almost all browsers. I have re-done the templates on this site with a variant of that method posted by Janos Horvath, which allows a background color to extend the full height of the page regardless of whether the content or the sidebar is longer than the other.
Finally! Table-free! (Hat tip: Richard Eriksson)
[The Tweezer's Edge v3]
High praise for Rhye
Rhye wrote up a Newbie Tip for Liz on "How To Insert A Picture Into Your (Radio) Blog", based on the following remark in Liz's weblog:
"...and if I ever figure out how to upload pictures, you will see for yourselves. I know that I just need to go to Rhye's site and find the info, because she is the be-all, end-all Radio Goddess, but that didn't happen today."
Rhye thanked Liz for the encouraging words, but claims its not even half-true. If you only knew about all the macro code Rhye helped me write (wink!). I only aspired to be a "Rogue Radio Rat" (and not a "Radio Rug Rat"!).
Rhye really is doing a great job of helping out in the Radio forums, even though she seems to attract more than her fair share of Mac users with Salon.com weblogs and she has neither one.
P.S. Rhye should really know better than to tell me not to post things like this. :)
[The Tweezer's Edge v3]
Get Better Rankings on Google With Weblogs
Get better rankings on Google with weblogs.
Lee LeFever: Case Study: Using a Weblog to Achieve #1 Rankings in Google.
Most of this stuff matches my own experiences as well.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
Gallery RSS Generator
“Gallery RSS Generator is a script to generate an RSS (version 2.0) feed for an installation of Gallery. For more information on what RSS is, and why it’s nice, see Dave Winer’s RSS 2.0 specification. Even though you may not use an aggregator to keep up with your favorite websites, someone who visits your gallery might. Hence, it’s helpful for everyone.”By meryl@lockergnome.com (Meryl). [Lockergnome’s RSS Resource]
Alphabetically Sorting Articles in a Category
Re: Alphabetically Sorting Articles in a Category. Kingsley: I've written a script that displays a list of weblog posts ordered by date:
http://cadenhead.org/workbench/stories/2003/06/18/displayingAPostIndex.html
Changing the list from date order to alphabetic order ought to be reasonably simple once you start puttering around with UserTalk.
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench [Radio UserLand Messages]
Journey Inside a Tool
Welcome to the enhancedAggregator tool code tour. The visit will take you to all the components of a typical Usertalk tool for Radio Userland, and will provide you with scenic views of Radio's beautiful news aggregator and its unique driver architecture.
Over the past week, I've received several messages from would-be Radio tool developpers who apparently thought my guidelines for collaborating to the enhancedAggregator project were a little thin.
It reminded me of my own experience, about 2 years ago, when I first tried turning activeRenderer into a full blown tool and kept pestering Simone Bettini and Andre Radke with questions.
So I tried to deliver in Journey Inside a Tool the kind of information I would have liked to have readily available when I started studying Usertalk tool writing.
I hope it will help anyone planning to write a Radio/Frontier tool, whether it involves the News Aggregator or not.
For further discussion of the enhancedAggregator project, please follow the enhancedAggregator thread in the radio-dev support group.
[s l a m]
Radio RSS publishing fixes
I've released a couple of fixes to the way Radio handles RSS publishing to the radio-dev support group this morning.
The first patch modifies radio.weblog.writeRssFile so that Radio shortcuts may be properly expanded in RSS feeds. For instance, a post containing my Lorem Ipsum glossary entry would properly expand in the rss.xml file:
<item>
<description>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua.</description>
...
The second patch includes 3 related parts and introduces options for formating the RSS feed's title for categories, to get rid of the current Author Name: Categorie Name format limitation.
Until the time Userland publishes fixes to the main Radio distribution, you may download and open with Radio the parts linked in the radio-dev message.
Surgeon General warning: Applying patches without having at least some knowledge of the working of the Radio application (as opposed to its desktop website operation) may seriously damage your installation. Be patient. Eventually, Userland will publish bug fixes in the main distribution.
caveat #1: These parts will get superceded once Userland fixes the main Radio distribution.
caveat #2: If you decide to instal the RSS category title fix, you need to open and replace all 3 related parts.
caveat #3: If you are running the k-collector client for Radio, the shortcuts fix to writeRSSfile won't work, since Matt has highjacked the whole RSS file driver to include ENT topics in the feed.
See also: categories | k-collector | Radio Userland | RSS 2.0
[s l a m]
Fix For Shortcuts Not Expanding in RSS Feeds
Steve Hooker and Marc Barrot both provide solutions.
Creating Text Date Links in Radio UserLand
Creating text date links in Radio. While redesigning Workbench, I learned that Radio UserLand macros can be used in customized images for permalinks and other icons.
Using this feature, I created text-only date links:
- Change the Day Level Permalink field to <%longDate%>
- In the Day Template, remove the <%longDate%> macro.
- Add an <%archiveLink%> macro to the template.
The macro will be replaced by the long version of the date, linked to a daily archive page. [Workbench]
Tuesday, March 23, 2004Different Number Of Messages Displayed For Each Category
Re: Number of Category Messages Displayed different for each category. It is possible to do this. The following is from this page: http://radio.userland.com/stories/storyReader$12501
How can I change the number of days displayed for a specific category?
In the category folder, open the #prefs.txt file and add the following line:
#setDaysToDisplay weblogData.prefs.ctDaysToDisplay = 10
Then in the top-level www folder, add the following line to the #prefs.txt which will set the default number of days to display on the rest of the site:
#setDaysToDisplay weblogData.prefs.ctDaysToDisplay = 7 [Radio UserLand Messages]
Community for Bloggers
Re: the Community. forum4bloggers is an up and coming, general blogging community - where you can find more information on the ways to publicize your weblog and other communities, as well.
RSS Feed of Latest Bit Torrents
RSS Feed of Latest Bit Torrents discovered by Blogdigger.
Subscribe to this feed to get the latest BitTorrent files found by Blogdigger. Supports Enclosures.
By robert@lockergnome.com (Robert). [Lockergnome’s RSS Resource]
Softpile
Keep up to date with new and popular freeware and shareware titles with Softpile’s RSS feeds! By robert@lockergnome.com (Robert). [Lockergnome’s RSS Resource]
Another web based RSS aggregator
Another web based RSS aggregator.
Andy at Absoblogginlutely points to another Web-based RSS aggregator: Rocketinfo.
I haven't tried it yet. Anyone compare this to Bloglines?
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
Monday, March 15, 2004EContent: Can RSS Relieve Information Overload?
EContent: Can RSS Relieve Information Overload?. UserLand's CEO, Scott Young, and Lead Developer, Jake Savin, discuss the potential and application of RSS news readers within business settings - allowing the convenient delivery of information to those who need it. [UserLand Product News]
Totally Offline Radio UserLand Weblog
http://radio.userland.com/userGuide/advanced/privateWeblog [Radio UserLand Messages]
Topix.net Launches
Still More RSS Feeds
TechRepublic and Builder.Com both have new RSS 2.0 feeds. [Scripting News]
Personal Web-based RSS News Reader
Personal Web-based RSS News Reader.
Rocketinfo.com is a free personal Web-based RSS news reader.
By meryl@lockergnome.com (Meryl). [Lockergnome’s RSS Resource]
SmartManila Beta 2 is Ready
SmartManila Beta 2 is ready. Read the release notes here for details about new features. This one really rocks. [Blogging Alone]
Upstreaming in Radio UserLand
Upstreaming in Radio UserLand. The most common source of confusion for new Radio UserLand users is upstreaming, the process that turns a bunch of text files in Radio's www folder into Web pages on UserLand's Web server.
If you can spare a couple minutes, I'll show you a simple exercise from Radio UserLand Kick Start that makes upstreaming easier to understand:
- Open Radio's www folder and create a new subfolder.
- Copy the file #template.txt from www into the new folder.
- In the new folder, create a text file called countdown.txt just like mine. Don't leave out the blank line after the #title line.
- Save the file, then check Radio's Events Log to see what you did.
Radio upstreams countdown.txt as countdown.html, using the file #template.txt as a template for the Web page.
You can use your new folder to experiment with page creation and template editing without messing up your weblog. Changes to the template and the text file will cause the page to be upstreamed again automatically. [Workbench]
RSS: Doing The Robot
More on RSS and web analytics from Chad Dickerson, CTO at InfoWorld
Via Feedster, I picked up Sean Gallagher's response ("The RSS ego bubble") to my recent post about InfoWorld's RSS request trends. While the robot-like activity of aggregators is certainly a factor in looking at the numbers (as I noted in my original post), I think some of the information in Sean's post was misleading and deserves further discussion.
I've been involved in hands-on analysis of web server logs at some extremely highly-trafficked web sites over the years, so I dutifully noted the robot-like behavior of news aggregators in my original post:
I realize that the characteristics of RSS aggregators' requests are different than those initiated by regular users browsing your site -- aggregators behave more like robots or spiders. But I still think this is significant.
Sean responded:
Sure, it's significant. But does Chad really understand the difference?
Yep -- I wouldn't have mentioned the request characteristics of news aggregators in my initial post otherwise, but it's certainly worth a deeper discussion with more useful and defensible data points.
In his post, Sean extrapolates the importance of InfoWorld's RSS request trend based on the 63 users he estimates visit his site daily (50 who use a browser and 13 who use news aggregators). InfoWorld's sample is a few orders of magnitude larger, and includes a broader mix of regular browsers, aggregators, search engine spiders, etc. so I think a closer look at our usage patterns might be more useful to the larger community.
As anyone who has analyzed lots of web server logs knows, the overall web measurement picture is a bit complicated by robots, spiders, proxies, etc., and RSS measurement is no different. (The issues in counting RSS subscribers were summarized quite well by Tim Bray back in May of last year, for those who are interested in digging deeper.)
However -- I think Sean's emphasis on the robotic behavior of news aggregators is a bit overblown and depends too heavily on a scenario where the average aggregator is updating every 15 minutes, an assumption that is not borne out in InfoWorld's server logs. In InfoWorld's case, the most popular news aggregator among our users is Radio Userland (check this out), and you can only configure it to fetch feeds once per hour. Considering that fact, the 100 potential requests per day that Sean suggests is off by a factor of at least 4 for our largest body of aggregator users.
The whole world doesn't use Radio Userland, so to be fair, I picked 5 random IPs of NetNewsWire users to get a rough estimation of how often they request our Top News feed (the subject of my original post) in a 24-hour period: 49, 48, 6, 48, and 48. I'm not a NetNewsWire user myself, so I downloaded and installed it only to discover that the only choices for update frequency are: 1) manually, 2) every 30 minutes, 3) every hour, and 4) every four hours. Sean's 100-requests-a-day scenario depends on a NetNewsWire client updating every 15 minutes. Hmmm. I guess you could manually update every fifteen minutes via the "News->Refresh All News" menu, but my random tests suggest that most users update every 30 minutes. 100 requests per day for a feed would seem to exaggerate NetNewsWire's behavior by at least a factor of two.
Requests from RSS clients certainly exaggerate requests to some debateable degree; however, there are some notable corrections in the other direction. In the case of web-based aggregators (Bloglines, Feedster), you have the opposite of robotic behavior -- the RSS aggregator acts as a proxy making a single request for a pool of users. If you don't have substantial numbers of subscribers using the web-based aggregator, this won't matter so much, but we do. As I investigated the effect of services like Bloglines on our Top News RSS feed numbers, I was able to determine our subscriber numbers from the User-Agent string available in requests from Bloglines' server:
Bloglines/2.0 (http://www.bloglines.com; 981 subscribers)I'll admit, I hadn't realized before that Bloglines included subscriber numbers in their User-Agent string (others already knew), but how cool is that? In any case, I also checked to see how often Bloglines' server requested our Tops News RSS feed last Monday -- 23 times. The ratio of subscribers to requests is about 43:1 right now, and the gap is widening every day.
(Another interesting technical aside -- as our RSS requests have grown quickly, we have noticed increased server loads at the top of the hour as aggregators "wake up" to pull feeds. Not a huge problem for us right now, but the surge has roughly the same characteristics as a distributed DoS attack and could eventually present trouble for really huge web sites unless aggregators become a bit smarter. I was working at CNN.com when IE4 and its Active Desktop with various CDF "channels" was released, and boy was it active. CNN.com and CNNSI.com were default channels in the new browser. All the newly-downloaded IE4 clients absolutely pounded our servers with requests for CDF files. It was a big pain, and I wish I could remember how we dealt with it.)
Finally, the discussions about print and online publishing business model disruptions created by RSS are nothing new to us at InfoWorld (see here, particularly comments from Matt McAlister, our online GM). We're experimenting with various business models around RSS like everyone else who needs to pay the bills, but ultimately we're focused on giving users valuable content in the format they want, and the growth in RSS requests is an indication that we're getting it at least partially right.
[Chad Dickerson]
New Radio Tool: Workbench.root
New Radio tool: Workbench.root. I have released the first beta version of Workbench.root, a Radio UserLand tool that contains scripts that extend the functionality of the software:
My goal is to offer simple macros that Radio UserLand users of all skill levels can put on their Web pages and Web site template files to offer content in new ways.
The first release offers two scripts:
- Workbench.viewCategoryLinks, a script that displays a list of links for all of your weblog's public categories.
- Workbench.viewPostIndexes, a script that displays a list of your weblog's entries in reverse chronological order, like the one I offer on Workbench.
Users of my old workspace.viewPostIndexes script will find that this version has been improved. It updates all of your post index pages each time you publish a new weblog entry instead of updating them once per day. [Workbench]
The Future of Blog Tools
Lisa Williams has been going through all the notes of ideas that people left on Dave Winer's blog about "the future of blog tools." She's written up this awesome summary. Thanks to Amy Wohl for pointing to this.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
A New, Cool Looking, RSS Aggregator
A new, cool looking, RSS Aggregator.
Ian Hanschen: "Presenting BlogNavigator. The ultimate in RSS experience." Very cool looking. Anyone try this yet? Ian's stuff always looks so cool.
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
Radio UserLand Static Sites Tool
Re: Directives. What is the Static Site Tool really intended for, if Radio can basically do all the things you say? It seems redundant in that case.
It is redundant -- Radio also can be used to publish Web sites that have nothing to do with weblogs.
To see what I mean, try this quick exercise:
http://www.cadenhead.org/workbench/2004/03/11.html#a1528
Your new folder is a Web site created with Radio that isn't a weblog.
The Static Sites tool is a tool for publishing Web sites using files and data stored in Radio's object database. Radio can publish Web sites using files stored outside of Radio's object database (in Radio's www folder and its subfolders).
The functionality now known as the Static Sites tool was the killer app of Frontier 5. You can find docs on how to use it here:
http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/tutorials/web/
http://www.scripting.com/frontier5/tutorials/scripting/ [Radio UserLand Messages]
Andrew Integrates RSS and BitTorrent In Radio UserLand
I've finished an initial version of a RSS+BitTorrent integration tool for Radio Userland's news aggregator. This is beta software, Windows only. If you've been following the buzz you might find this interesting. I'll be writing more about the idea over the next several days. Please leave your comments, bug reports and fixes here.
[Andrew Grumet's Weblog]
RSS + BitTorrent = Next Big Thing
RSS + BitTorrent = Next Big Thing.
Andrew Grumet and Dave Winer team up to lead the way.
Wired News "Is there a way to publish videos, games and other enormous files online without breaking the bank on bandwidth fees or driving downloaders mad with delays? A demo publishing system launched Friday by a popular programmer and blogger merges two of this season's hottest tech fads -- RSS news syndication and BitTorrent file sharing -- to create a cheap publishing system for what its author calls "big media objects." The hybrid system is meant to eliminate both the publisher's need for fat bandwidth, and the consumer's need to wait through a grueling download.
Both technologies have considerable buzz. The New York Times reported last month that BitTorrent traffic accounted for roughly one-tenth of the packets on the Internet2 research network. Last week, editors at InfoWorld magazine said InfoWorld's RSS readership had surpassed its website in daily traffic. According to Grumet, an RSS feed of one's favorite bands, actors, shows, games or other "big media objects" could be kept up-to-date on a computer desktop for daily perusal, rather than forcing music and movie fans to suffer the "click and wait" delay associated with downloading huge files on demand."
[Scott Shuda: Scott's Radio Userland Weblog]
Saturday, March 13, 2004RSS Adoption Rate Is Opportunity, Not Problem
The RSS adoption rate is not a problem, but a classic opportunity. Similar to the digital divide hysteria of a few years ago, there is always a difference of opinion regarding adoption rate. After multiple attempts to interest work colleagues in RSS over the last 18 months, I recently decided to try again. Opportunity, Not Problem. Onward!
So, why is adoption so low? What are the barriers that this industry must solve. [Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger] Scoble points to deficiencies in RSS adoption. Answering the UserLand phone these days, I get a good feel for the issues users have and I can point to some significant awareness issues. One person had been using Radio as a blogging tool and simply didn't know it had a built in RSS aggregator. The idea of having the information flow to you as its published is a massive mental shift for most people as is the idea of being able to preselect (and deselect) those sources as you desire. It does take some getting acquainted as this level of control can be uncomfortable for some ;')
I generally hear three responses:
- aaaa-haaaa, WOW, I didn't know you could do THAT !!!
- Oh My God -- this is going to change the world -- it just kills email
- I need to rest, I am so overwhelmed
In my view, adoption has only just started and the tools still have a pretty crude feel. We have an ON-OFF switch for feeds, but its always at full volume. One thing I need is a volume control - I don't want to turn it off, I just want to turn it down a bit sometimes and then be able to turn it back up, depending on what's there. Simple stuff.
[Scott Young's Radio Weblog]
Why RSS Is Better Than Email
Internally at Microsoft I've been getting a ton of questions about RSS. I figure I'd just post my emails here too so you can see why I like RSS so much.
The first one is what is better about RSS than email.
1) RSS is easier to have search bots visit.
2) RSS is easier to link to (at least if it also spits out an HTML page, like all weblogging software does).
3) RSS won't get mixed in with other email (SPAM, other DL traffic, and other email types). I've been looking at Microsoft employees inboxes, and many people here don't setup rules to filter their email into separate buckets.
4) RSS is easier to subscribe and unsubscribe from.
5) RSS doesn't use up any of my Outlook rules spaces (some of my coworkers have so many rules that they can't add anymore).
6) RSS is usable not just in an email client (Bloglines, other weblogs, even other Sharepoint sites can subscribe and aggregate it).
[Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger]
Why RSS Is More Productive Than Web
Why RSS is more productive than Web.
I've written about this one before, but thought it might add something to the mix. It's my ideas on why RSS is better than reading in the Web browser.
My goal is to use IE (or any browser, really) as little as possible? Why? Because it is FAR LESS productive to read information in a browser