Wed - October 19, 2005

Cleaning up RSS feeds with Shrook 


I continue playing around with Shrook as a possible replacement for Bloglines. This morning, I noticed that I could sort my entire library of feeds in the Shrook desktop reader application by the date that each was last updated. This turned out to be a useful exercise as buried amidst the worthy but infrequent posters like scifi author William Gibson and techno-weenie Dan Bricklin were feeds that had moved and/or died. I deleted the losers and reconnected with the movers as best I could (Wil Wheaton seems to have accidentally torched his normal blog and the temporary blog has no RSS feed I could discovery).

I'm still awaiting some promised enhancements to Shrook's online side. As of now, it's still a long and not terribly organized list of feeds with none of Bloglines niceties.

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Posted at 06:52 AM    

Thu - September 22, 2005

Is Shrook the great, hoped-for answer to reading RSS feeds? 


(Updated 9/23)

I've been pretty happy keeping up with Blog RSS feeds using the online Bloglines service. It works from within any browser, updates feeds pretty frequently, lets me publish my subscription list on the web and allows easy export of my list for backup or to pull into another reader. The interface is excellent, allowing feeds to be filed into folders, clearily indicating when unread posts have arrived and so forth. But, you have to be connected to the Internet to read your feeds and that's a drag when you'd like to be able to catch up off-line. So RSS reader Nirvana would be an application that combined an online service with a typical computer application and that automatically synchronized between the two.

Thanks to an article at the excellent tech news site Ars Technica, however, I'm one step closer to the perfect reader. In a review of eight different reader apps, the article mentioned that Shrook combines both a stand-alone reader and a web site with auto-synchronization between the two. I immediately downloaded it. After a few hours of usage, I love the concept but the interface, especially on the web, needs a lot of work. I'm still getting the hang of it, though. More to come...

Update: Developer Graham Parks emailed me to say that the web interface will include folders to match the stand-alone app in a future update. That would be a big improvement. Right now, the web version just lists all of your feeds, noting which have new and unread posts. That's one long list.

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Posted at 07:30 AM    

Wed - July 27, 2005

Feedster too 



Posted at 05:20 PM    

Thu - March 10, 2005

Walt Mossberg is overboard on Google's autolink 


The Wall Street Journal's influential tech columnist Walter Mossberg weighed in against the Google toolbar's autolink feature today. It's a pretty weak entry in the pantheon of complaints.

"You might wonder what gives any third party the right to edit or alter your Web page without your knowledge or permission. Yet that's exactly what Google, the powerful search-engine company, is doing," he writes.

Of course, no web page is altered by the toolbar. Only the local copy that your web browser downloaded onto your computer for your reading and "fair use" pleasure is affected. As has been noted a million times, such as in this excellent entry by Jason Kottke, many programs alter and edit your experience of a web page by blocking popup ads, adding comments that can be seen by other users and so on.

Now when Microsoft tried to force its "smart tags" on the world, which added links to every web page you visited without ever asking, that was one thing. But autolink is available only if you choose to download the Google toolbar and then has to be invoked each and every time you want it to create a link. Walt says it is "strongly reminiscent" of smart tags. Not. That's like saying don't buy a Ford Focus because it's strongly reminiscent of a Ford Pinto.

I sent Walt a quick email chiding him for leaving out the fact that autolink doesn't replace or overwrite any existing links. If a site has links, I never click on the autolink button because the site is giving me the info I want. If the site has no links, autolink simply saves me from copying and pasting stuff into another web page to find an address or buy a book. Wonder what he'll say.

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Posted at 07:51 AM    

Thu - March 3, 2005

Walker's right on Google autolink over-hyped controversy  


A few weeks ago, Google added a feature to its downloadable toolbar (Windows only) called autolink. By clicking a button on the toolbar, Google's software will generate links to certain kinds of information found on a web page, such as linking an address to a map, a book's ISBN to an Amazon.com book listing, or a package tracking number to a FedEx or UPS delivery tracking page.

The links appear on the actual web page connected to the number or address UNLESS the web page already has links off of the number or address. In other words, at the user's behest, the toolbar adds a few kinds of links to pages that don't have them already. I've actually installed and played around with the toolbar on my Windows box (unlike some of the people who seem to be mischaracterizing the feature).

A bunch of folk, led by Dave Winer, are complaining that autolink violates the rights of web page authors. He's worried users won't know that the links didn't come from the authors. That seems pretty silly since the users have to click on the toolbar button every time on every page to generate the links.

Most of Winer's other arguments boil down to a bunch of "what if they did this..." or "what of they did that..." speculation. This does little to promote constructive discussion. It's really an old debater's trick. Expand and stretch and speculate until you can connect your opponent's position to something really, really bad (i.e. George Bush's claim that Democrats want to let social security go bankrupt because they oppose his privatization plans).

Winer and others also point back to the controversy over Microsoft's somewhat similar (and now abandoned) feature called "smart tags" that also added links to web pages. There are so many differences though that the analogy doesn't hold.

Microsoft has a near-impregnable monopoly on operating systems and also on browsers -- a court even said so -- while Google is just the market leader in a pretty fluid space. A user has to seek out and install the Google toolbar to even get the feature. Microsoft tried to force everyone to use smart tags by including them in its browser and operating system. Also, smart tag links automatically appeared on every web site without warning or user input (unless the user turned them completely off in a less-than-obvious settings choice. That's not the way autolink works.

Leslie Walker at the Washington Post has a fine column up today that compares autolinks to copying a number or address from one web site and pasting it into another web site to get additional info. I have to do that all the time when an online retailer shows me the tracking number of something I've ordered without adding a link to the delivery company or when a restaurant review site shows an address without a map link. If the sites included their own links, I'D NEVER NEED TO CLICK ON GOOGLE'S AUTOLINK.

Walker writes:
"Google faces tricky challenges in deciding when, what and how to auto-link. Yet I believe this feature brings badly needed innovation to the Web browser, innovation that has been sorely lacking from Microsoft. To be fair, Microsoft's monopoly position in Web browsers has made such innovation tough for the software giant. With Internet Explorer installed on more than 90 percent of personal computers, any browser-tweaking Microsoft does that steers users toward commercial content could raise antitrust concerns."

And she concludes:
"Hyperlinking their own content is the best way publishers can prevent Google from adding links to their pages, Mayer said, because Google's technology will not override existing links. She declined to comment on whether Barnes & Noble or other booksellers had complained. To my mind, the Web is still an evolving public space, and rigid limits should not be placed on hyperlinks. While I would not favor third parties arbitrarily adding hyperlinks to pages I'm viewing, I feel differently when I am the one adding the links and they save me time. If new layers of utility can be added on top of the existing Web -- especially giving users, not advertisers, greater control, and speeding up the process of finding maps, book summaries, product descriptions and the like -- what's wrong with that?"

I couldn't agree more.

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Posted at 10:14 AM    

Thu - February 17, 2005

Snopes has a blog! 


I've often turned to the urban legend-busting reference site Snopes.com to debunk the latest scary email warning or fake charitable cause sent to my mom. The site is exhaustive, searchable and a true labor of love for creators Barbara and David Mikkelson. Today, I discovered that they've created a quasi-blog page where they list all the latest new entries in their pantheon of flimflams. They have an RSS feed too. Also don't miss the 25 most widely circulating urban legends (fake Tsunami photos, bogus drug recalls and made-up car theft tactics head the list today).

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Posted at 04:50 PM    

Mon - February 14, 2005

Doesn't anyone remember the Times and the Internet? 


There's been a lot of consternation of late in blogger circles about some truly awful stories published in the New York Times about blogging, including this bizarro world entry today about the resignation of CNN's Easton Jordan. It seems that the Times is hostile towards blogging and its coverage displays an ugly mix of paranoia, fear, misunderstanding and condescension. Rings a bell.

Left out of the recent criticism is the history of the paper's horrific attitude towards the Internet in general. For much of the 1990s, the only way to read about the Internet in the pages of the NYT was in articles about child porn, hackers, identity theft and the like. Just a quick perusal of the paper's archives for December 1996 turns up excerpts from five over-hyped, context-free gems:

"Once the obsession of a dedicated but tiny band, conspiracy theories now seem to have captured a wider audience." (12/31/96)
"A Connecticut man who investigators say propositioned a 13-year-old girl for sex over the Internet was arrested..." (12/25/96)
"Remember the coach potato? Now the computer industry is eager to create the mouse potato." (12/9/96)
"Arrest at Columbia shows risks in online dating" (12/8/96)
"Online investing is growing by leaps and bounds; with that growth has come a corresponding rise in scams, including manipulation of small stocks with few shares outstanding." (12/5/96)

So bring on some history and keep the heat up!

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Posted at 03:12 PM    

Thu - February 10, 2005

There's a new button on the right-hand margin: Bloglines 


Well, call me late to the party but thanks to some random coverage that Ask Jeeves was buying a blog subscription service called Bloglines, I decided to check out Bloglines. This is one handy site. In the old days, aka two days ago, I had to check and recheck blogs I want to follow dozens of times a day to keep up. Lots of clicking. With Bloglines, I set up an account on their web site and listed all the blogs I was interested in (the blogs had to have something called an RSS feed, which virtually all blogs do now).

This list, essentially a bookmarks list of blogs I want to follow, is called "My Feeds." Once I have "subscribed," Bloglines checks each blog hourly and downloads any new entries. Whenever I check in with bloglines, the "My Feeds" list shows in bold which blogs have new entries (and how many). I click on the blog name and I can read the new entries from that author. All of this happens in my web browser, not some special software residing on my computer. That makes the service even more useful since I can log on to Bloglines from any web-connected computer and check "My Feeds." One downside is that you do need to be live and online -- no catching up on blogs offline the way some competing products that sit on your hard drive allow.

The community or network effects aspects of Bloglines are also cool. You can see how many people are subscribing to any blog. You can then click through and see the login names of the subscribers and click through to see what other blogs they subscribe to, which may be of interest and you can add them to your feeds with a quick click or two. The public sharing of subscription lists is NOT mandatory. You can designate some or all of your subscriptions private as well. Click here to see my subscription list.

So, I've added a handy button on the right-hand side margin to automatically add Gravitational Pull to your list of subscribed feeds at Bloglines. If you don't already have an account, it prompts you to create one first.

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Posted at 10:19 AM    

Mon - February 7, 2005

Dave Winer can't be this dense, can he? 


Earlier today, a columnist wrote an article about how a troubled company's nifty pr over an acquisition was spoiled by a blogger who uncovered and reported the deal ahead of the official announcement. The story's focus is on how the world of PR is getting shaken up by bloggers. Here's the key paragraph:

If and when Ask Jeeves does say it has acquired the free Weblog and directory service, and its database, investors, and the media may be difficult to excite. Secret's out of the bag - thanks to blogs.

The story has a dumb headline, however: Blogger won't keep a secret.

This has confused Dave Winer, champion of bloggers and demonizer of journalists everywhere, who seems to think the column is dissing the secret revealer. Later, he got even more wacky, calling this "yet another example of a professional journalist taking a swipe at all bloggers when they're really criticizing one blogger." Huh?

What is he talking about? Can Dave really be this quick to jump to mistaken conclusions? Is his skin really this thin? No slight is intended towards the blogger who spoiled the pr opportunity. It's just a reporter (who is also a blogger, by the way) giving one more example of how blogging is supposedly shaking things up, decentralizing journalism and making the world a better place. It's all a cliche and I don't think it's a very insightful or significant example, but whatever. It's certainly not a slight against any bloggers. Cool your jets, Davey boy.

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Posted at 09:45 PM    

Wed - February 2, 2005

Dave Winer is a little wacky today 


Software developer and blogger extraordinaire Dave Winer frequently has good insights into what's happening in the blogosphere but his rants about journalism are starting to take on the quality of a crusade. Today he has a long list of chained assumptions that ends with: "In the end we'll all be bloggers, because the idea of a media company will seem as silly as the idea of a telephone company will be in a few years, or an airline is today." Perhaps he means this tongue-in-cheek but I don't think his shots against professional reporters hit the mark and there's going to be plenty of need and desire for media companies in the future no matter how great blogs are.

He starts with some small-scale assertions that don't pan out. First, he claims reporters won't criticize their employers, aka big media companies, which he defines as writing negative stories. This ignores the legions of reporters who criticize their employers in other ways, such as during contract talks or when participating in panel discussions. The New York Times did a huge self-critique over the Jayson Blair affair and a smaller one about its horrid Wen Ho Lee coverage (which doesn't seem to live online, so I link to Salon's coverage ). USA Today and CBS News have done similar pieces over Jack Kelley's work and the Bush Texas National Guard memo story. (And please don't object that these assessments aren't good enough -- Winer says they don't exist and he's wrong).

The reason reporters don't write negative stories about their own employers is that it's the wrong move -- it's a conflict of interest. Winer's belief that "Any reporter who won't criticize his employer, also won't criticize his employer's competitors, because they could be his next employer" is just as silly. Do reporters write negative stories about media companies and media company leaders outside of their own companies? Of course. There have been a billion negative stories about Disney (owner of ABC News) and its CEO Mike Eisner of late. Did he read Business Week's story about the Times or all the articles raining down accusations against Fox News?

But even if all this were true why does that lead to Winer's conclusion that the role of reporters is "shrinking all the time." How much of professional journalism is about media companies? Less than 1% I'd say. Employment in the information industry (which excludes software but includes publishing, broadcasting and Internet services) rose 17% over the past 10 years. Newspapers are shrinking but all kinds of other outlets are expanding. There's going to be plenty to write about pretty much forever. What is he talking about? Maybe he could spell it out better in another post.

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Posted at 01:11 PM    

Tue - January 25, 2005

Past writings 


My past writings for various publishers and employers can be found at aaronpressman.com, but I'm still getting the hang of adding things to the side bar along the right side of this page. 

Posted at 12:39 PM    

Thu - January 13, 2005

Vanity search ratings 


My old boss, John Battelle, who among other projects writes SearchBlog, has a tongue-in-cheek method of evaluating new search engines. Discussing beta search site exalead, he checks how it performs on the vanity search, aka your name in quotes. I like this idea (although my wife says this post should be called "it's all about me").

Google bores me with the top links in my vanity search almost all connecting to very recent stuff I've written in my day job. Microsoft provides slightly more interesting results.

On exalead, I get some cooler stuff complete with thumb-nails of each site, including a funny picture that CNET reporter Declan McCullagh took of me back when I had long hair and, up high, a link to my vanity site, aaronpressman.com. I guess if you're looking for timely stuff, the mainstreams are the way to go but for more obscure links, check out exalead. Then again, it could be worse -- my name could be John Smith. 

Posted at 05:51 PM    

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