interesting

this sounds very interesting, please keep us posted on the paper. Thanks

Permalink Post Your Comment

it's not that bad

The point of an RSS feeder isn't to give you an excuse to throw your web browser away. Instead, it does the work of combing sites you care about and letting you know which ones have been updated. In fact, it goes a bit further by presenting titles and excerpts of the updated content to hook and reel you in. At that point, you click to launch in your browser and away you go.

The exception to this rule is the minority of people who provide their full content via RSS. I think they choose to do this as a convenience to their readers, making it as easy as possible for them. Those that want to view everything in context can still click through to browse the site, but the others have the freedom to skim and move to the next feed.

Watch out for binary thinking. It's not RSS *or* full-site-context-in-my-browser. You can have your cake and eat it too.

Permalink Post Your Comment

music at the pub

Tuesday night I got in my car and took a drive over to Venice to check out songwriters on tap, a monthly show put on by OlivoiL Records, which is really Cynthia from Saucy Monky. Lee Beth Kilgore was playing, so she spurred me into finally getting there. I had, to quote Lee Beth, "dos reasons" to be there, since I had told Cynthia a while back that I'd make it out sometime and just hadn't yet.

SoT is the last Tuesday of every month in a back room at O'Briens Pub. The room's great for the size of the event. I'd ballpark 30 people there, but I could be way off. Someone thought they saw Lawrence Fishburn, but I'm in a position to neither confirm nor disconfirm that rumor. The night works in a round format. Four acts up on stage, each plays one song per round, and I think there were five rounds total. Three of the four acts were great. Lisa Sanders' website has a cdbaby link that has some songs on it, so you can check her out there. I can't find a website for Anita Coats, but she reminded me a bit of Heather Nova at times. And I've talked about Lee Beth before, so just search for what I said then and pretend I said it again now.

And now I get to go hang out in class, pretend I'm listening, and probably just get work done online instead.

Permalink Post Your Comment

default APs

I would be willing to wager that a lot of the traffic through the APs with default settings is from users who don't have any clue what AP they're connecting to. I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that even people who have access points end up connecting to other APs in the building because they just let windows select whatever AP sounds nice.

Permalink Post Your Comment

why i'm old-fashioned

Sean Bonner recently wrote a blog post titled "Why aren't you using RSS yet?" In it he raves about what RSS -- and more accurately RSS readers -- has done for his experience of the web. I know a lot of people who would agree with him.

I don't.

I don't like viewing a site via an RSS reader. To me it seems that by taking the content out of the confines of the site, and presenting it in isolation, you cut out a large part of the experience. When I put together my site, I don't just think just of the content but also the presentation. I like the way my site looks. I intend that look to in some possibly imperceptible way to alter how you experience the information that I provide. Sure, if you pull my RSS feed into a reader you'll get the things I write. But they'll be orphaned, severed from the contextualization of the environment in which I have placed them.

Maybe this is all egotistical COMM major BS, but to me it means something. When I go to other people's blogs, I prefer to do it via a web browser. Their style colors my perception of their content. I just haven't seen any concessions to this need for context in an RSS reader.

Permalink Comments: 2