Month: April 2004

Mark Glaser has some kudos, historical and current, in OJR. CNET’s Expansion May Signal a Turnaround in Tech Journalism

I’m not sure what I ‘kicked’ this morning that finally did the trick, but now the home page and my RSS feed are updating again. I’ve had “Radio silence” for over 10 days due to some still-undetermined glitch in my Radio Userland set-up. Back on the air, broadcasting to my six (seven?) readers.

I didn’t hear this live on All Things Considered, so thanks to Dennis for the pointer: Post Office Calls for Portable ‘Vanity’ Zip Codes

Mark Pilgrim boils syndication (RSS + aggregation etc.) down to ten words.

Smart bookmarks that tell you when your favorite sites change.

Nicely done.

At work, I replied to the half-dozen readers who wrote in to complain about a large advertisement on our site. (Turns out that our use of cookies to limit its frequency meant that the audience most likely to be annoyed was also the audience most likely to see the ad more than intended. But that’s not the point.)

The most interesting part of the dialogue is how amazed and pleased the readers are to get a real reply, from a real human being. Makes me think that reaching a human at most websites goes beyond difficult to unbelievably rare… otherwise, why the surge of gratefulness?

I love ‘talking’ to customers. Support doesn’t pay as well, so I’ll continue only to dabble, but it’s always interesting. In a medium where you can’t ‘see’ your customer, those times when they reach out to tell you something — even something you don’t want to hear — grab you. I also believe that these small gestures in response make all the difference in the world in reinforcing a promise: we’re here, we’re not going away, and someone is accountable. Living up to even those basic standards isn’t always easy, but with overall standards seemingly scraping bottom, you can really stand out with small actions.

…there is hope. Lawrence Lee is helping out, and everything except the home page the RSS feed (which is all anyone reads, honestly) is up to date. So I’m close. I also realize that I don’t have the time/energy to switch this blog to a new CMS anytime soon. I’ll try and update the template, etc., at some point, but… focus, focus, focus.

OK, GMail is for real, not a joke. 1GB. Google realized email has much higher switching costs, so they are going to disrupt Hotmail and Yahoo… or at least force their costs up.