Amy Gahran's news and musings on how we communicate in the online age.


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My New Recommended Reading Lists

Mar14
2005 Written by Amy Gahran

The more I use the social bookmarking tool del.icio.us, the more I’m getting to like it – especially when it saves me work.

One task I’m particularly compulsive about is sharing with CONTENTIOUS readers links to interesting sites, articles, tools, and books. For awhile I’d been presenting these as my “grab bag” articles, but that process was too labor-intensive for me to maintain.

So now I’ve figured out how to use del.icio.us to keep you up to date on all the cool content I’m encouraging you to explore…

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Posted in Amy's Adventures, Amy's Grab Bag (quick notes), Labels and Metadata, Resources

Webfeed Grab Bag

Jan24
2005 Written by Amy Gahran

Here are some items related to webfeeds that have caught my interest lately…

TOP OF THIS LIST: E-mail v RSS, let us move on… by Alex Barnett (Online Customer Experience Manager with Microsoft UK), May 22. Useful matrix, with links, which demonstrates why the now-perennial debate over whether e-mail publishing is dead should be laid to rest. Bottom line: E-mail and webfeeds are complementary.

Read the rest of this list…

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Posted in Amy's Grab Bag (quick notes)

2004 Wrap-up: The Most Popular CONTENTIOUS Articles

Jan03
2005 Written by Amy Gahran

Now that we’re into the year 2005, I thought it might be interesting context to look back at which CONTENTIOUS articles were most popular in 2004. I find this annual exercise especially instructive.

The most powerful lessons here for for bloggers and other online publishers: Never underestimate the value of your archives. Fresh daily publishing is definitely not everything in this medium.

Also, if you want to attract ongoing traffic, publish occasional basic backgrounders and primers intended for a general audience. And of course, controversy doesn’t hurt – at least not from a traffic perspective.

According to my site statistics, the top 25 most-requested articles from Jan. 1–Dec. 31, 2004 were…

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Posted in Amy's Adventures, Content Style & Business

Alert: I\’ve Upgraded My Webfeed

Jan02
2005 Written by Amy Gahran

If you subscribe to the CONTENTIOUS webfeed and want to be able to receive episodes my occasional audio show (podcast) via that feed, here’s an important update: You’ll need to switch your subscription to my new feed.

The address for my new feed is: http://blog.contentious.com/feed/rss2

Here is a brief explanation, and instructions on what to do…

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Posted in Amy's Adventures

Sage for Firefox: My New Favorite Feed Reader

Dec11
2004 Written by Amy Gahran

Since I got my new iBook, I’ve been loading it up with all sorts of cool software, mostly open source. I’m using Firefox as my default web browser, so I decided to give the popular Firefox feed reader extension Sage another try. (I tried Sage with Firefox on my old Windows laptop, but the browser got irreparably screwy after that so I didn’t use it.)

Anyway, Sage with Firefox on the Mac works great. I love it, and it’s now officially my main feed reader. I’m now using it instead of Bloglines for most of my feed reading.

Here’s why…

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Posted in Amy's Adventures

Webfeed Grab Bag, Dec. 5

Dec05
2004 Written by Amy Gahran

Here are a few items related to webfeeds that caught my attention over the past month…

TOP OF THIS LIST: Bad Syndication, CMS Webmaster, Oct. 11. Excellent advice on which kinds of content do and don’t work well in a webfeed, and why.

Read the rest of this list…

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Posted in Amy's Grab Bag (quick notes)

Why Stephen Downes Hates \”Webfeed\”

Dec03
2004 Written by Amy Gahran

I’d thought the furor over the “webfeed” nickname had finally died down. Then, a couple of days ago, one of my favorite bloggers, Stephen Downes, posted a vociferous denunciation not just of “webfeed,” but of the very idea of offering another terminology option in this area.

Since Downes posted his thoughts as a comment to a CONTENTIOUS item on another topic, I’m reposting that discussion so far here . It’s a good discussion (albeit one I’ve already had many times), and worth its own blog item….

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Webfeeds Grab Bag, Oct. 31

Oct31
2004 Written by Amy Gahran

Here’s a collection of items related to webfeeds that have caught my attention lately.

TOP OF THIS LIST: A culture of feeds: syndication and youth culture, Apophenia, Oct. 10. Danah Boyd cuts through some of the webfeed hype. Excerpt: “Sitting in at Web2.0 for 20 seconds, I was intrigued by the ongoing hype of RSS. …For this audience, I think that it is certainly true. But I’m wondering if that’s really true beyond the info-nerds.”

Read the rest of this list…

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Posted in Amy's Grab Bag (quick notes)

Webfeeds for Intranets: My latest CMSwatch Article

Oct06
2004 Written by Amy Gahran

Just a quick heads-up: Yesterday, CMSwatch (a leading online magazine that covers content management systems) published an article I wrote about how webfeeds can be applied to intranets.

See: Headline Syndication for Intranets

One thing I forgot to mention in this article…

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Posted in Amy's Adventures

\”Webfeed\” Proliferation

Oct03
2004 Written by Amy Gahran

It’s been a while since I checked in on the spread of “webfeed,” the winning non-techie nickname for RSS- and Atom-format feeds, as decided by a contest I held several month ago via this weblog. I’m amazed at how widely this term is being adopted. It’s not yet as popular as RSS feed, but it appears to have gained considerable ground in the court of common usage…

*** UPDATE OCT. 4: This is pretty cool. Neil McIntosh, assistant editor of the UK’s Guardian Unlimited, made this terminology comment today: “…I’m also happy that someone’s noticed GU’s grand new webfeeds, and the fact we’re not calling them XML, or RSS, or anything similarly geeky. Maybe we should license out the shiny new webfeeds icon?”

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