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2006

  • 1 min read

Experiences creating new BlogBridge screencasts

Over on our new BlogBridge site, we've been working on a new set of Screencasts. We discovered various problems with what we had done before and thought, let's try to make things better (as they say at Philips.)

I thought I'd share my stream of consciousness notes from that experience.

  • Wow, those .mov files are really big. And they eat lots of bandwidth. How about hosting them on YouTube? Turns out this is fairly easy to do. Here is what they recommend you upload.

Picture 1-41

Preliminary conclusion: for now, we will try to host the screencasts directly on our own web site.

Technorati Tags: screencast

  • 1 min read

[SEMI GEEKY] Blogs That Matter: really interesting

From LifeHacker (one of my new favorite sites) comes a pointer to a site called FeedsThatMatter.

What it seems to do is to look at public subscriptions listed in BlogLines, do a tag analysis, and display a tag cloud. BlogLines is a huge web based aggregator service and so I'd guess that their subscriptions are relatively representative of the whole blogosphere.

Picture 1-40

In light of my recent musings on bridging the gap between all the great content out there in feed land and regular people, this algorithmic analysis of topics and interest levels is an interesting data point. You can see that the coverage is extremely spotty. I suppose you can draw different conclusions from this:

  1. The feedosphere doesn't come close to covering the breath of topics of interest that one might have

  2. BlogLines subscriptions are very caught up in the tech world because that's their user base.

  3. FeedsThatMatter confuses popularity with value. Perhaps the feeds are out there but , by the BlogLines statistics they don't matter.

I don't know (obviously) which it is…

Technorati Tags: feeds, rss

  • 1 min read

TSA has no clothes

Does creating something that demonstrates that a security scheme doesn't work make you a suspect yourself? Does pointing at it from your blog make you of questionable character? I suppose you might even wonder about clicking on the link below. Does that say you are a bad person?

I hope not. Check this out, it's pretty insterezsting and instructive! Chris's NWA Boarding Pass Generator

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[GEEKY] BostonPHP Meeting: Ajax Update

"Without a doubt, the concepts behind AJAX are providing the catalyst to move the web from its old clunky "send it all back the server for an update" into the thick client "desktop" feel the average computer user has come to expect."

Check out the next meeting of BostonPHP, October 25, 6:30pm, at IBM/Lotus in Cambridge. Get meeting details here.

Technorati Tags: PHP

  • 1 min read

Pop!Tech: Thanks for the memories

Well it's over and I am getting ready to head back to real life. Pop!Tech remains my favorite conference (and not just because I can drive here from my house.) It's hard to capture what it's like but if you are interested, here are some links that could give you a flavor. Thanks to all the diligent bloggers (most especially Ethan Zuckerman) who did all this writing so I didn't have to!

Technorati Tags: poptech

  • 1 min read

Pop!Tech: why do I feel inadequate?

Ok, Pop!Tech is a wonderful conference, already, and I am learning and stimulated and all that.

But why, oh why, is everyone an author, thinker, serial entrepreneur, extraordinary, world renowned, and inimitable? Inventor, artist, composer, musician, educator, philosopher.

And these are not the speakers, these are the people sitting next to me and in line with me in the bathroom. Yikes!

Technorati Tags: poptech

  • 1 min read

Interesting analysis of accuracy

Bloggers and others are notoriously obcessed with metrics: how many hits, what's my rank etc. As a result there are numerous services which try to analyze sites and blogs etc, to help measure this. Not insignificantly, a site's revenue potential is tied closely to this as well. Seomoz.org has put together a pretty interesting study doing a somehwhat empirical analysis of this question.

"This project's primary objective is to determine the relative levels of
accuracy for external metrics (from sites like Technorati, Alexa, Compete,
etc.) in comparison to actual visitor traffic data provided by analytics
programs." (from Seomoz.org)

You should read it. It turns out that they think that Technorati does the best of all of them, altothough tnone of them are especially accurate.

"Technorati is doing an admirable job of comparing link data and blog
popularity, given that it does not claim to measure traffic levels" (from Seomoz.org)

but then:

"The sad conclusion is that right now, no publicly available competitive
analysis tool we're aware of provides solid value. Let's hope the next few
years provide better data." ( fromSeomoz.org)

  • 1 min read

Arches National Park

North Panorama Arch

Originally uploaded by Pito.

Look at that picture. In the bottom right of the image, very small, you can see Pito and Chris. Yeah, Arches is amazing. I am not sure exactly how many arches they have but there are lots and lots, and some are really huge.

I can't go into the details here (even to the extent that I understand them, which I don't) about how the arches are formed, but perhaps wikipedia can shed some light?

Anyway, Arches is very near Canyonlands National Park and both are spectacular, but quite different. They are both near the town of Moab which has some interesting stories to tell too.

Definitely worth a visit!

Technorati Tags: arches