September 28, 2005 – 8:48 am
(UPDATE OCT. 3: OK, the SEJ conference is now over, and I’m back home in Boulder. I’ve just updated this page of notes and links to reflect more accurately what actually happened in this standing-room-only session. Also, complete audio of this session is now available.)
On Saturday, Oct. 1, I’m delivering a talk at the annual conference of the Society of Environmental Journalists (SEJ), in Austin, TX.
I’ll be explaining to a bunch of journalists and other attendees what they most need to know about weblogs, feeds, wikis, and podcasts – just the basics. I’ll focus mainly on the “so what” of it all.
This will be a pretty informal presentation, since I know the SEJ crowd pretty well. Here are the links I’ll be using in that session…
August 19, 2005 – 10:36 am
One story making the rounds in today’s tech news headlines is that Microsoft apparently has decided that the word “RSS” is not palatable to a consumer audience. In the current beta of the upcoming release of its popular browser, Internet Explorer (which includes feed functionality), Microsoft is referring to “webfeeds,” not “RSS.” Hmmmm…. “webfeeds.” Sound familiar? …Longtime Contentious readers may recall that last year I held a contest to find a less geeky, more descriptive and user-friendly nickname for the communication channel made possible by the RSS and Atom standards. The winning nickname (announced in April 2004) was – you guessed it – webfeeds. Since then, I’ve noticed that the term webfeed has been steadily gaining traction. I guess someone at Microsoft noticed, too…
I’m gratified that many people, including Jay Rosen are intrigued by my recent decision to start tracking and sharing all the various comments I make around the blogosphere. I’ve just taken a moment to implement the more elegant approach which Koan Bremner suggested for tracking my numerous and varied comments around the web. If you look over in the right-hand column right now (“My Most Recent Comments”), and you’ll see the result. Here’s what I did…
I’ll admit… thanks to my chronic state of learning overload, I haven’t yet gotten around to fully exploring and implementing a much-touted tool called Technorati tags. I know, I know, I should have been all over this one months ago… but life and paying work intervened.
Anyway, today I was gratified to learn that in a recent Social Customer Manifestoblog posting and podcast entitled “The newvoices Tag: Throwing On The Floodlights,” PR/communications guru Christopher Carfi highlighted and graciously complimented my weblog CONTENTIOUS. (Thanks, Chris!) I think this “newvoices” tag strategy is intriguing and worth a shot. So I’ll bite the bullet, learn more about Technorati tags, and give it a try. However, I have a couple of reservations and questions about Technorati tags in general…
Lately there’s been a fair amount of discussion in the blogosphere on this perennial issue: Is it better for online publishers to offer their complete content (full text) via feed, or just headlines and summaries. Personally, I strongly prefer summary feeds. But that’s just me. In my humble opinion, this dispute largely boils down to a matter of taste from the audience’s perspective. That is, whether it’s better for you to subscribe to full-text or summary feeds in your feed reader is entirely up to you! Choose whichever suits your feed-reading habits, tools, and tastes — and don’t let anyone bully you. If you’re not sure which you prefer (if either), then experiment. You’re not required to make an across-the-board commitment. That said… From the feed publisher’s perspective, I think it’s best to offer both full-text and summary versions of your feed. However, if you must choose only one content format for your feed, I suggest that for now, it’s more important to offer a summary feed. Here’s why I say that, plus a conversation which demonstrates why some folks disagree with my advice…
People have an irrepressible desire to label eras: the Bronze Age, Stone Age, Space Age, Information Age… These clumsy labels are always inappropriate and inaccurate to some extent, yet somehow they help us grapple with our complex history and evolution. As I gather my thoughts for an informal talk I’m giving in Denver tomorrow, it occurs to me that we seem to have slipped into a new era in the past few years, mainly since the dot-com meltdown. The Information Age has started evolving into what I call the Connection Age…
For a few months now I’ve featured in the right-hand column of this blog links to lists of all the site, blog, and podcast feeds I subscribe to. When I first announced these lists, a lot of people downloaded them. However, my feed lists are perpetual works in progress. So if you haven’t checked out my lists for awhile, you might want to check out these updates. I’ve found many, many new gems. Here are a few highlights…
The issue of whether ads are OK in feeds has flared once again — this time between Dave Winer and Jason Calcanis. Frankly, I think both of those guys are being needlessly pigheaded and adversarial. They’re not moving this important conversation forward. Yet another example of the profound limits of “argument culture.” Blech. Personally, I don’t have a problem with ads in feeds, as long as they’re handled in a way that complements the real content and suits the target audience. Here are my suggested guidelines for putting ads in feeds…
March 24, 2005 – 12:01 pm
I’ve done a little reorganizing in my sprawling list of feed subscriptions. If you’ve checked out my complete feed list (always noted in the right column, Feeds Amy Reads), you’ll see I subscribe to over 400 feeds sorted into about 30 categories. Obviously, there’s no way I read all of that stuff all the time. So I’ve finally gotten around to creating a short list of feeds that I check daily…
According to the Democratic site and weblog One America Committee, next week former US Senator and VP candidate John Edwards will launch his very own podcast next week. I’m happy about this development. I think podcasting could definitely benefit political discourse at all levels, complementing traditional media and political journalism/commentary. And I’m glad they realized that, in order to podcast, you need a feed…
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