Blog

I’ve been slow getting through my current book. It’s not a great book, as I’ll explain when I finish it. But the real delay is that I started getting the Wall Street Journal in print form. Why? I traded in some airline miles on an airline I never fly anymore, so no cash cost for the introductory subscription. Early impressions:

1. Two newspapers, even skimming, is too much. (We also get the Chronicle.)
2. Since I’m reading the Journal for the writing, not for the market minutaie, I’d prefer to not receive the Money section each day.
3. The Journal is physically bigger, to a surprising degree. I had imagined that all broadsheet newspapers were using the same size paper. Wrong. The Journal is a few inches larger than the Chronicle in both dimensions.
4. While I enjoy reading text on paper, and the disposability of that paper (well, recyclability), I find it annoying to flip through all the material I don’t want to read.
5. The “jump” drives me batty. Reading the beginning of an article on one page and then physically moving through the newspaper to the conclusion is maddening. I’m a “pick it up and read it straight through” type of person. I start magazines at the front and go all the way through to the back. I don’t skip straight to the article I know I’ll like. With the “jump” I have to hold several stories in my head at once, since I read/skim the entire front page before flipping through to the details. In computer terms, I guess I’m not a ‘multiple clipboard’ kind of guy.
6. I really only care about reading 1-4 articles/day in the Journal. Maybe it’s time to stick with online-only for that reason.

I just signed up for my eighth consecutive Bay to Breakers (the 12K race across San Fancisco). By entering with a qualifying time, you get to start at the front of the pack, which means you can run the race, instead of weaving through tens of thousands of people. I prefer racing every time. But this year I ate humble pie, acknowledging that I would not have a qualifying time.

It turns out that was a very good decision. Why? In reading the entry form, I see that the sub-seeded qualifying time for men dropped from a 40:00 10K last year to a 37:30 10K this year. Ouch! The standard was too low before, but now it’s out of reach, perhaps forever. I slipped under 38:00 for 10K once, but that was pre-parenthood. I’m not going to enter the costume contest just yet, but let’s just say I may have “entered a different phase” a bit earlier than anticipated.

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.

I know lots of folks with one of the new Treos… I’ll see if they want to try Mobile Feed Reader from Feedburner. Good luck, Dick, Eric, Steve, and Matt.