example | Croncast - From Cool to Cul De Sac

Rant: Strategic blog commenting? Strategic tweeting?

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:23:42 -0500

Listen up Mr. and Mrs. internet marketer, your actions are sour, insincere and totally transparent as to your desire to dupe someone into clicking your link in an attempt to make a buck. You are full of shit and we know it. And, your students suck even worse at it.

Here is one example of "strategic blog commenting" by an idiot following the advice to get Google alerts for keywords related to his/her own site:

"Thank you for providing such useful info about dogs. The picture at this page is beautiful and love to eat one, look delicious." - Internet Marketing Douche Bag (real name hidden to protect the innocent)

The user email was admin@ourdataentry.com and the user URL linked back to a site about dog care. I'd say contextually there is something amiss here since the photo, other comments and title all indicated that the post was about hot dogs.

In this group I am not talking solely about the automated comment spammers that originally made our lives miserable but this new wave of get rich quick, "My internet marketing coach told me to do this" and internet marketing coaches, themselves.

As you and your people strive for authenticity, I believe that is one or your credos, maybe that term is no longer used, but you are about as authentic as a Gucci purse at a swap meet.

The entire reason for this post is because the comment above showed up next to a message from twitter that I was now being followed by 'helpmycashgrow'. Are you kidding me? You people make my head hurt. He also dropped this gem - "At work right now, at least i'm "supposed" to be working". Sir, you give me the confidence to let you help me grow my cash.

So now that people are strategic tweeting as a piece of their better mouse trap I would also like to call out the ass kissers on twitter, those trying to make an impression with someone that they don't know by disparaging another twitter user who comments directly with the person you are trying to kiss up to. Just don't do it. Might turn out that the disparaged and the ass kissee are good friends and the ass kissees other friends read that you are disparaging their friend.

Again we can see you for what you are but when you stoop to a troll level it is even more apparent that you have nothing to add except a desire to, as you perceive it, move up the food chain.

My hope is that you will all go back to infomercials and ripping off the elderly with home improvement scams. But I am guessing your type is here to stay and I just need to get better at filtering you out.

Tags: Internet Marketing Coaches Suck Teach Yourself and Save Your Money

Make the Flickr PHP API not so ugly and easier to use

Tue, 29 Jan 2008 10:11:15 -0600

For months I have been bypassing the Flickr API and using RSS 2.0 feeds instead. The reason? They come with all the photo stream data that you need in a nice little package. Things like title, description, tags, date taken, date uploaded, image dimensions, etc.

What is missing from the RSS feed the ability to load comments with a photo and choose how many items are returned in the feed. The API, however, will let you load hundreds of images and load comments for each photo.

There is a catch though. The API is broken up into about a 75 different calls. Not one single call to the server can match the data that is returned in the RSS feed. To get the same data I need to make approximately 8 different calls to Flickr. Not good.

What use is the API?

It gives me the ability to create a historical back up of my photos in their most basic form with urls, date, descriptions (with html stripped) and tags. It also gives someone building an application a rich data source to do some of the things that Flickr isn't already doing - the purpose of an API.

After working with it for a few hours I became frustrated. PHP is my poison of choice and the PHP examples that Flickr uses all return serialized data. Which is great and easy to work with if you already know what the XML namespaces are but without them it is hard to access the data. And in some cases impossible without printing out the serialized array and looking at it because the returned serialized array's keys don't match the XML namespaces. Not to mention children are buried in deeper arrays that aren't as easy to access as say $title = $item->photo['title'].

Here's how I cleaned up the mess. If you are PHP guru then I am sure you could get this down to one script.

An 'include' script, sort of. View this script by URL on your server to see all name spaces:

1) Create a new PHP file declaring xml as file type - header("Content-Type: text/xml")
2) Use the url that Flickr supplies to return content in REST format
3) Comment out the line for serialization
4) Use PHP's file_get_contents() function
5) echo the returned XML

A loader script:

1) Create a loader script
2) Call the include script - $resp = simplexml_load_file("YOUR INCLUDE SCRIPT URL");
3) Get the data out by name space, the same ones that Flickr documents

To view the name spaces that you will want to access simply open up the include script by url in your browser.

For now I will stick with the RSS 2.0 feeds for blog submissions but once I have some free time I will be using the API code above to create a cached archive for my own safe keeping.

Tags: photo frame digital Flickr API PHP simple simplexml_load_file

Make better RSS feeds by not making them

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:00:20 -0600

Did you pick the content of the RSS feeds that you are syndicating from your site right now? Or did you let your readers pick?

Within reason my guess would be that most of you answered, yes then no. I know on my sites, even this site, I would have answered the same.

The solution isn't to create more feeds. The best solution is for publishers to create no feeds at all. Let your readers make their own.

Here are a couple examples why this is a better method for content syndication than relying on your own editorial skills.

Example 1: How not to do it make good RSS.

Don't get me wrong on this, CNET is offering nearly all of its content up for syndication. This is an excellent strategy to create value from older content. However, do readers really need the option of subscribing to 100 plus predefined RSS feeds? Simply, no.

Finding feeds for the topics you are interested in is difficult. The worst of it is that you can only access them individually, i.e.; you want 10 of feeds, copy and paste them one by one into your feed reader. Sounds like a party to me. If you have more skills you might use a service that rolls all of them up into one feed for you. I would guess that about three people have done this.

Why overwhelm your readers like this? And besides, it is pretty intimidating for someone new to the RSS game. Shouldn't they be able to access your content in a way that makes it relevant to them?

Example 2: How to do RSS right.

What you see above is one of two flavors of how to let your readers pick what they receive in RSS feeds. It's a simple and easy to use text input that allows readers to enter keywords and phrases that they want in their feed. There's nothing fancy, easy access to old content in the straight-forward way that RSS is delivered; updates of the newest items first and set number items in the feed, usually twenty-five.

What the second screen shot shows is the magic of thinking differently about RSS feeds. This image demonstrates what happens when someone clicks on the 'advanced' link. The reader is then given control over every aspect of the RSS feed. They choose the content, when it is delivered, how much content, in what order (none of this newest stuff first mumbo jumbo - great use for episodic content) and how many updates to get at a time.

Who is better to choose than the person doing the consuming? RSS needs to be like Burger King where a customer can have it their way.

When this concept is applied to large volumes of content the value of it increases with each new article or podcast. Imagine if you could have this type of access at the NY Times or with your local paper. Even the obits from 30 years ago are now of value again. Value to the reader and value to the publisher with ad inventory.

The future of content syndication isn't in prescriptive channels created by publishers. The future is in the subjective choices of the consumer. They neither need or want every product that you have to offer.

We need to be smarter about our syndicated content via RSS and take into consideration how to make that user experience more satisfying. Whether it is by allowing users to pick topics or order of updates, something needs to change. Why? Because it is all about attention; the premium of which is measured in subscribers, influence and the influence of those subscribers.

Tags: RSS CNET readers consumers interaction

New photo feed

Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:50:30 -0600

Well, it really is an old feed that I used for another project but thought I could spice it up a bit. It's a photo feed from flickr but I've rewritten it load the middle size image as opposed to the thumbnail and changed the enclosure from the middle size photo to the large size for a hefty payload.

Said feed - http://www.croncast.com/flickr.rss

The posts in this feed are only the title and photo, no description text at all.

Example photo size in feed

Example of original photo size in enclosure - You'll have to click this to see it.

Tags: flickr feed thumbnail size original size croncast photos

Live photo blogging, immediacy and click-throughs

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 15:33:15 -0600

Right now I am really hung up on live photo blogging. Something is changing in the way that we interact online. The dynamic it is a changing.

My previous post is a perfect example of this but I think it has legs for where we are online with real-time micro blogging and subscription media. It is less intrusive for the audience as they have decided to participate by subscribing or friending you in an application. Say, something like Twitter.

I guess what makes this so poignant for me, using Twitter as an example are the links that I create for the tweets are done with the source code for turo.us, a url shortening site that Mike Marusin developed, that allows me to count click-throughs. From what I can tell from these counts and photo views at flickr, they are disproportionally higher than the number that I would normally receive from the same links in my sites.

I'm not sure why this is but I can guess that the immediacy of the interaction in Twitter and the fact that people made the effort to subscribe to me has something to do with it. Friends and even strangers subscribe to me, just like they would as part of any social network to be updated with anything that I share. They trust me. A trust not provided by an RSS feed but a more personal connection

In this context of immediacy and real-time interaction I think that trust matters most to raising the number of click-throughs. These links are more successful because they aren't passive links buried in a blog post. They are right up front and time sensitive. Maybe these links act as a call to action?

Set me straight if you think I am crazy.

Tags: Mike Marusin turo.us twitter links immediacy click-throughs live photo blogging

Think differently about RSS and its uses

Mon, 26 Nov 2007 10:39:03 -0600

Over the weekend, as some of you may of you noticed, I live photo blogged my Saturday afternoon date with Betsy and our trip to Goodwill. For me it was a time to watch Betsy as she navigated her adopted habitat and to see her operate in a way that is far from the norm in our everyday lives.

I knew this was going to be an interesting experience. Why not share it in as many ways as possible (distribution to: Flickr, Twitter, blog and RSS) with as many people as possible? One input with multiple outputs across the various Croncast audiences.

Making it happen is a lot easier than you think with email and RSS.

First. it is the camera phone that takes decent photos. Second, is the phones ability to send email with photo attachments. Third, is a place to email the photos that has an RSS feed or other API connectivity to other applications. Tons of sites like Flickr, Seesmic and Tumblr offer these and can even do some of the distribution for you. Get these three things in place and sharing your experiences in near real-time has never been easier.

Currently, it does take a little more skill to distribute the photos to Twitter. However, if you get creative you can breathe life into photos that wouldn't normally have existed after it was consumed/viewed in a photo sharing site or through an RSS reader. It is worth the effort to figure this out, it's the next stage of content distribution online.

How do I know? Google Reader shared feeds are the perfect example. Typically once someone reads a post in their reader it has reached the end of the line. But if someone shares it with Google Reader it then gets added to the individual users shared RSS feed and resyndicated. A new life for that content. The same goes for photos that end up in Flickr or a Flickr RSS feed.

In my case, live photo blogging and my ability to cast a wider net wouldn't be possible if it wasn't for the Flickr RSS feed from my account. It is the magic API that feeds (pun intended) the river of resyndication that allows me to give that new life to our content.

Here's how it goes down:

1. Upload photo from phone to Flickr with subject line used as image title
2. In the body under the photo begin with an asterisk (*) if I want the photo, title and description to be a blog post also
3. In the body under the photo begin with a carat (^) if I want the title and a link to be a tweet
4. Add both asterisk and carat (*^) for blog and twitter
5. A PHP script grabs the Flickr RSS feed and reads it for asterisks and carats every two minutes and sends the photo, title and description where it needs to go
6. If it goes to the blog the title and description will be run through a keyword generations script
7. If it goes to Twitter only the title is sent and a shortened url is created to link to the photo

What all of this does is allow me to create multiple channels of distribution that can reach the different audiences that follow us. There is a bit of overlap with multiple audience members subscribed to the same services but quite a few are not. We have the Twitter audience, the blog audience, the flickr audience and the RSS audience. We also have our podcast audience but they are not really a part of this type of delivery

Summary: Look for ways to utilize sites like Flickr as a content management portal, if even from your mobile phone, to cast a wider net across your network. Work to find that one point of contact that has the lowest threshold for allowing you to get your media and thoughts online with the ability to resyndicate your content without having to lift a finger. Well, too many fingers. And make sure that it has an RSS feed!

Tags: live photo blogging RSS as API flickr twitter seesmic tumblr

Making use of my Google Reader shared feed

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 15:37:04 -0500

The 'kris is reading' section of the site is now fully functional. Go and check it out. I'll be here when you get back.

Glad to have you back.

So what the hell was that, right?

I have finished up, for now (some touching up to do), what I think is a pretty cool way to use a shared Google Reader feed. I think I stumbled upon an interesting concept that enhances sharing information online and makes it more personable.

The history of how I got to this point is at the end of this post. I'm going to try to describe what you just saw the best way I can. Here goes nothing:

1. I parse my Google Reader shared feed and cache it in a database. This is done with a script that runs on a cron every two minutes to get new items - post title, description and timestamp
2. I stamp the item with the current time that I most likely read the item
3. This is cool - I run a script to generate keywords (subjects) from the shared item. The script needs to mature a bit but it is pretty effective.
4. I then pull the cached posts up in to the 'kris is reading' section of the site and order them by the time that I read them. Really the only way to organize them coherently since the post timestamps vary based on the author's time zone
5. I display the keywords below each post. Each keyword is a link that will search all of my other shared items for related posts. Each keyword has a link to technorati. Each keyword is an entry into RSS feed for that keyword subject.
6. I have added a 'Search my read items' function so that you can search my shared items for whatever you like. If you want to find items that I have read about about ceratin topic like, Facebook, you can.

What's happening is that I am giving you, the reader of my shared feed the ability to use me as a content filter. And the best part is that you didn't have to ask me to read up on a given topic that you are interested in. I didn't have to add it to a to-do list, I was already doing it. And now I'm able to give you access to it in a few ways:

1. Here's everything that I have read and shared from Google Reader
2. Here's everything that I have read - now search it by subject
3. Here's everything that I have read - now subscribe via RSS to a subject (keyword) and get updates every time I read an item about your subject without ever having to come back to my site

The other really cool part is that the source publishers benefit from my sharing adding the drill down with search, keywords and keyword feeds.

In this scenario I have become a 'social filter', so to speak. Then my readers get to step up to the plate and filter even further. A 'hyper-social filter', so to speak. I am able to share an item from a publisher that my current readers might have never found. Possibly (and possibly in the same sense that someone might find your content in search engine or directory) my readers will visit the publisher's site and subscribe to the source feed.

In a strange way it gives an individual like myself the chance to create a low threshold directory with the ability to be distributed simply by marking items that I like. It takes Google Reader to a new place beyond a feed reader and makes it a platform for syndication. Google Reader becomes a powerful tool to create new channels of distribution for content that usually meets its end on a subscribers computer. Now it has legs.

How can I see other people using this? Tons of ways.

1. The same way that I am using it to create a history of my own reading with the ability to share right down to the topic level.
2. By individuals respected as gate keepers like librarians. Example - whether the source feeds were running on their library content or the internet they could mark items from those feeds and then give the feed based on a topic to a patron, i.e. happy computer savvy student who doesn't need to come back and ask for help again.
3. Could be used to share information behind a firewall from corporate blogs. Great way to fatten up a corporate knowledge base by picking and choosing from your qualified authors.
4. You could create micro-repositories based on topics
5. A million other ways that I haven't thought of yet. Not even quite sure I could come up with a million.

How I got here:

A few months ago, before Rick split to California, the full Naperville nerd posse was together one last time. I was busting out a story about how I was parsing out my Google Reader shared feed and displaying it for site visitors on my 'kris is reading' page. I was way stoked about it. But like many times in the past, it came to light that Rick and beaten me to this with the 'links' section of his blog. He was taking his shared feed, burning it and displaying it on its own page and in his blog navigation. Brilliant!

My consolation, instead of being first (important in nerd circles), was that I had learned how to do this with my own code . . . a valuable prize I am finding out.

So about a month ago I changed up the code to cache my shared feed items. Which was good for two reasons:

1. I could display more than the 25 items in the feed
2. I would have a historical record of what I was reading in my own blog.

And, again, I was not first again. Damn it! This step was inspired by the Tumblr link blog of Josh Bancroft. Seeing the posts cached and the ability to navigate them 20 or so items at a time was brilliant. I could see a ton of stuff that Josh was reading but also see what was motivating him enough to write posts from.

Should I know better than to try be first in doing something? Yes, but my nerd side does get the best of me sometimes.

I doubt that I am first in working over a shared feed this way but it was fun to build and I am sure it will be useful in making something else. Hell, maybe it will inspire someone else to do something cool.

Tags: Google Reader shared feed kris is reading Josh Bancroft link blogs

Hey Blogliners, I fixed your feeds. I think.

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 16:25:56 -0500

My apologies as this turned into a mild nerd rant. Thanks to the Bloglines users who dropped me a line to let me know about this.

Dear Bloglines Users and Bloglines Employees,

I have now hacked all of my feeds to work properly in Bloglines. Bloglines users saw this problem begin about two months ago now, but I finally thought of a good way to make this happen with the minimal amount of work. That's not to say that it wasn't a pain to update all the feeds and create all new ones.

For those of you that still experience constant updates of the feeds even after you have read an item PLEASE SEND ME THE FEED URL and I will fix it ASAP. I know you got to get your Croncast! :-)

For the record, I want to state that this problem is not a Croncast feeds problem, but a Bloglines problem.

It started when I added dynamic ads to the feeds. Dynamic in this sense that odds are nearly 100 percent that the ad will be new every time the feed is loaded. This is way bad for Bloglines. They ignore the post's time stamp (part of the RSS spec to let aggregators know that an item is new or has been updated) in favor of updating user accounts when the post copy has been modified. Say for example a new ad in an old post. So every 30 minutes or so when Bloglines would come and get the feed content on behalf of a user and there was a new ad . . . poof, our subscribers would get an update that there was a new item in the feed. Uh, no. Same post new ad.

Why not just go with the time stamp? Got me. Not using the time stamp seems silly. Maybe they think they are doing publishers a favor by updating the content in a feed in case there is a spelling error that gets fixed or you fired up the thesaurus to come off like a smarty pants.

Whatever the reason is - they should stop doing it and simply notify their users when an item has a new time stamp like the rest of the feed readers on the planet. This way I could run ads in feeds that help me cover my server costs and not create special 'bloglines only' feeds.

Tags: Bloglines constant updates Bloglines/3.1 rss time stamp rss feed ads

using twitter for a campaign - via twitter

Thu, 24 May 2007 15:12:19 -0500

demoing example of how a client can use twitter for engagemant in a fun campaign

Tags: twitter campaign ad engagement

Hella code day

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 21:59:08 -0500

I spent the bulk of my free time today knocking out code on the site.

Things were just clicking today for some reason and I couldn't let it go. I think it is easier than ever to get to all the content in the site.

Maybe it's the Grinderman?

comments RSS feed and respective page
cleaned up all feeds and urls to make them more human readable - for example www.croncast.com/all.rss instead of www.croncast.com/feedbuffet/all/feed.php
setting feeds that are indexed by search engines to redirect to the internal Croncast search page if they are clicked from google, yahoo, aol and others (this is a big deal since many of the people clicking these links have no clue what rss is especially porno seekers. example page 3 of these google results search for "spice channel" resullt 21 is a keyword feed . . . copy the url and add it to your reader and it works no problem, click it and it will take you to the same results as the feed but only at the website, nice)
added the unique feed to the internal search results for those who have been referred by a search engine
added the unique feed to the internal search results for regular users button looks like this - example Kris Smith
created new includes for blog, podcast, news and all content archives so they can plug and play on any page
re-ordered the navigation
created a two new archive pages - one for navigation of all content with pseudo categories and the other as a master archive of shows by month
edited internal search results page to recognize when referrer is a search engine to display a message that explains what Croncast
added another adwords box to the search results after item 7 in the returned results
tons of other mundane stuff for tracking keyword feeds and referrers

Up for tomorrow

new rss page
moderated media rss (mmrss) creation tool, for listeners (it's going to be sick)
new contact page
new "people say" section for listeners to leave reviews
new db table to hold mobile browsers to redirect for rss

Tags: croncast mmRSS rss archives keyword rss feed rss seo rss redirect

Evan gets down with that legal mess

Fri, 02 Mar 2007 09:51:23 -0600

Friend and intellectual property attorney, Evan Brown, was interviewed today by Business POV about blogging and the Perez Hilton case, runtime is apprx. 5 minutes. And as usual he does a great job of distilling the facts of the case with other real world examples that a someone outside of the legal profession can understand.

So if you have ever asked about using someone else's work; photo, music, etc., this 5 minutes might help you answer that question.

You can catch Evan's podcast or read his blog at Internetcases.com.

Tags: Evan Brown DMCA safe harbor provisions fair use Business POV

Betsy and her husband Kris Feb 23, 2007

Fri, 23 Feb 2007 09:19:08 -0600

Croncast - 2007-02-23.mp3
Show: #341
Length: 28:24
Size: 19.5mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris February 23, 2007

A little late, a little under the weather
Do you need your inhaler?
I had that last winter not this
I'm surprised that you don't come home with an 8 inch needle
Wrong site surgery type issues
You can only put this behind his knee
I won't even let them plug him in
You would go in for an appendectomy and come out without nipples
You never heard Pink Floyd
The Wall was built up as such a classic but
The brain doesn't function the way is used too
It's all down hill from here
My pores are getting bigger
Double and triple hairs coming out of the same follicle
The cure for cancer has been put off a day
Betsy reads the email
No more Croncast while loading agarose gel
It does contribute!
Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

Betsy is going to take real estate classes!
I am so proud of you
So here's my LSAT story, Bears
Can I have that cross-stitched and hung on the wall
No being able to sell murder mcmansions is like being locked out of goodwill
I'm not like Donald Trump . . . I am keeping all of my hair
Early morning TV is quite possibly the prime example of our civilization's decline
Maggie counting with Sesame Street
Elliot has never been engaged by television
I was pack him a little hobo bag
"You can't hit your sister when she goes on on the potty!!!"
Don't forget that we are taking off the month of March
Send us an email . . . come up with some things that would make Croncast better for you
Nobody likes Dr. Phil and no one wants to be married to him

Tags: Murder McMansion LSAT testing appendectomy and come out without nipples agarose gel civilization's decline Pink Floyd

Betsy and her husband Kris Feb 21, 2007

Wed, 21 Feb 2007 06:56:10 -0600

Croncast - 2007-02-21.mp3
Show: #340
Length: 35:09
Size: 24.1mb
Format: mp3

Betsy and her husband Kris February 21, 2007

Audience Survey, please fill this out for us
Look for the graphic on "Audience Survey" on the main page

We don't trust you for vacations or cars
How creepy you are
Sitting at dinner and you'd bust out a stat on listener age
I don't want to change the show
I tries a demo plug
Who would advertise on our podcast?
Brand association
Dancing George Bushes
How do we add that to an audio podcast?
This show is brought to by a lot of people
Kris botches all the names
Sue B, I am sorry
So you have something for me that is disturbing and disgusting
For the last half hour you made me watch the NBC sex predator show
Sir is there anything that you want to say?
Sounds like vague entrapment
Get an attorney
That is when you end up with a female judge
They end up living in a trailer in the Mojave desert
Do sex predators end up working fast food?
Enlighten me to your idea
You finally got it out of here
Besides Spice Channel these were the winners of today's messed up searches
"my size barbie" modification s*x d*&^ (rather not have this get pulled up by search engines as real)
I told you that some pervert would do it
Oh, baby you are so wrong
It's too big and they are creepy
It's a 6 ft tall woman crammed into a 3 foot tall body
Of course creepy dudes are trying to bone them
"lactating for husband"
What do people think when they find us as a search result?
Oh, hey maybe I'll listen to this show instead of do Barbie
These contrived justice shows suck
It's all about what's wrong with America and how the Internet is destroying the world
Some people need their attorney before they go online
The setup television shows
The world doth go on, Kris, without you
Betsy's reality TV addiction
I Love New York
Real Housewives of Orange County
Rob and Amber
I wouldn't know what the internet looks like I can't use a computer in this house
Everyday in this house the UPS man rings the door bell and runs off like a gelding
When you are married ladies don't follow Betsy's example
So we're taking a month off

Tags: Dancing George Bushes Rob and Amber NBC predator show criminal entrapment vacations and cars