Month: February 2005

I’m no great shakes on a snowboard, but I enjoy the snow. I even feel, occasionally, the glimmer of why some people think it’s one of the best ways to pass the time. On Saturday morning, at Kirkwood, we enjoyed a sunny, windless day with few people on the slopes. The base is almost endless, though there was no fresh powder. Aside from that, I couldn’t ask for more.

The one jarring note of the day was watching a snowmobile scoot by pulling a sled at the base of the mountain, at 9:30 in the morning. The sled had three people in it, one person lying prone, and two ski patrol members tending to the prone person. By tending, I mean performing CPR. A short while later, riding up the chair, we watched a chopper come in fast. It wasn’t there for sightseeing. I did a cursory scan of news sites to see what I could learn, but I can’t find anything to satisfy my (morbid) curiousity. It was a beautiful day… was it the last for that person?

Obviously, the contrast is still with me, but I still had a great day on the mountain. Is that wrong?

So I had dinner with an RSS reader last night… a friend, not an application. Thanks for stopping by, Ryan.

I saw this Jon Stewart clip on bloggers on TV (not live, of course… TiVo). I’m glad someone took the, ahem, liberty of sharing it with the web.

On a separate note, always glad to see another interview with Neal Stephenson, this time with Reason magazine. No hints of what he’s working on now, though.

I’ve been reading lots of blog entries about Newsburst. Those I expect, good and bad. What’s mildly surprising, but welcome, is mentions in outlets like the Hindustan Times (positive comments, despite the mistaken use of the word “downloadable” — Newsburst is a web application) and Circulation Management, which I didn’t know existed. That second article, “RSS Offers Easy Content Aggregation,” is a summary of what RSS can do for you, and it’s helpful to be part of the trio of readers mentioned: Bloglines, My Yahoo, and Newsburst.

Watched Monster’s Ball on Friday night, and I don’t know why Halle Berry won an Oscar for her role in this movie. The movie tried really hard, with all its symbolism and deep issues, but I didn’t enjoy it all that much. The characters shift dramatically, and the transitions are jarring. Skip it.

Oh, and someone let the original movie website lapse, so monstersballthefilm.com is now just a link farm. Wouldn’t you keep paying the $10-20/year just to sell the DVDs?

So WordPress 1.5 is now available. Guess that means it’s time for me to figure out the up/sidegrade tactics for clock. Bets on whether I get that done this month?

About minute 31 of the 40:00 podcast, the Digital Experience podcast mentions Newsburst, and the host — Lance — likes it so far. Glad to hear that.

I received an entry to this year’s Escape from Alcatraz triathlon via the lottery. Sometimes, you have to be careful what you wish for. I’m excited about the race, which I’ve never done, but I have to commit myself over the next four months to a level of training I haven’t put in for a few years. Though the land course is very hilly, and the sand steps are notorious, I’m most focused on the 1.5 mile swim in the Bay. I don’t fall to the level of Dana Carvey as a synchronized swimmer in the old SNL skit (“I’m not a very strong swimmer.”), but my progress through the water is slow. My goal is just to get through the swim as smoothly as I can and then trust my legs for the rest of the race.

I’m not a journalist. I work with lots of them, though, and I feel at home in an environment that pulses with the rhythms of news. So, when I spoke to Gavin O’Malley of MediaPost on Thursday to answer his questions about Newsburst, I felt fairly comfortable.

Instead, I feel mildly frustrated by use of my words. I know most every person ever interviewed feels this way. In my case, a conversation that spanned more than 20 minutes resulted in two quotes, neither of which express what I meant. Did I say the words I’m reported to say? I didn’t record my answers, so who knows?

The article is Online News Sites Struggle With RSS Challenge in MediaPost, published this morning. In it, O’Malley uses the coincidence of the Bloglines sale, the Newsburst preview release, and the Consenda trial for the LA Times and Guardian newspapers to make a point: moves by news sites in the RSS space are defensive. Speaking only for Newsburst… he’s wrong. RSS is an incredible opportunity for CNET as a whole and News.com in particular. I’m going to avoid stepping over a line I shouldn’t, so I’ll stop there and just say (again) that RSS is an opportunity, not a threat, and there are numbers to prove it.

From the article, here’s my first quote:

CNET’s Newsburst reader, now available as a preview release, is not a typical RSS reader because it adds an “editorial touch,” said John Roberts, vice president of product development at CNET. The service is essentially an edited version of the Internet’s entire daily news offerings. “I expect all or most publishers to do this in order to try and hang on to readers and control the environment,” Roberts added.

I do expect more aggregators, from all sorts of companies, especially publishers. I don’t remember saying “hang on to readers and control the environment.” My point was that aggregation is a reader service, so anyone that cares about readers has to think about how to serve them. No one is “hanging on to readers” — they are in control, and can let go anytime. To bastardize Sting’s romantic phrasing on Valentine’s Day, if you love your readers, set them free. Newsburst offers some programming if you want it (Today Online), but you’re free to ignore that and use the application for anything and everything you care about.

In the second quote, I obviously wasn’t clear enough between RSS and Newsburst, which are not the same thing, despite the fact that Newsburst uses RSS.

CNET’s John Roberts said Newsburst did not yet have a viable business model. “I’ve spoken with a number of firms that serve ads over RSS feeds, and I haven’t found a compelling model just yet, but we’ll continue to listen and respond as the market matures.”

The quote is accurate; the lead-in is not. So far, as noted above, the traffic RSS brings to the website has been reward enough. I’ll leave it there.

Oh, and Happy Valentine’s Day.

Shadow Puppets, from Orson Scott Card, was the only Ender book I had left… and I’m finished. As much as I enjoyed the series, well, I don’t think there need to be eight books. But I guess I read them all, didn’t I? Everyone should read Ender’s Game… after that, maybe Ender’s Shadow and Speaker for the Dead. The rest are gravy.

Update: At the time I wrote this, only seven of the eight had been written. Whoops. Now I really have finished them all.