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0 comments
Added on April 24, 2009 by
Kris |
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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.
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.
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2 comments
Added on January 30, 2008 by
Kris |
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Sorry guys, we were going to record this morning but something came up with Betsy's sister and she needed to help out.
She should be back shortly and we'll get on it!
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9 comments
Added on January 29, 2008 by
Kris |
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Am I crazy? Nope. It's show time for Linux.
Some of the the Linux flavors have matured enough to be great solutions for keeping family members safe from viruses and giving them the tools, graphically, that they need. So much so that Dell is now offering computers with it as an alternative to Windows.
However, it's not just family members that benefit, it saves the "son-in-law tech support company" a ton of time and headaches.
And now there is a great tool available called Automatix that is a great asset for installing new apps quickly. Sure, I am comfortable with command line work but if there is a gui available that can make installing software simpler than finding a package, decompressing, cd to directory and then running . . . well, I am all for it.
You can see from the photo above that I chose Xubuntu for the install, a smaller footprint of Ubuntu. It's designed to run on low RAM machines.
It's perfect for a mother-in-law prone to installing software from every popup ad that she encounters. Which is the reason that her Toshiba laptop has a desktop that looks like this:
So far so good.
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2 comments
Added on January 29, 2008 by
Kris |
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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.
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0 comments
Added on January 28, 2008 by
Kris |
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but the purchases this month made from our ebay affiliate links say something different.
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4 comments
Added on January 27, 2008 by
Kris |
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This mess, or call it a sign not to use this restroom, was waiting for us when we entered. Being me and having a child who's 'got to go' required entry and usage of the facilities.
Fastest I have ever used a restroom, ever. Ddn't let Elliot touch a thing or wash his hands. It seemed right given the state of affairs.
Keeping Purell in Betsy's purse was never a better idea.
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1 comments
Added on January 27, 2008 by
Kris |
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Elliot got cracked on his head by falling snow and ice from a pavillion that he was walking under.
More embarrassed than any other emotion he laughed it off. If only we could have predicted Maggie's face plant a bit later from this falling snow omen ;-).
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0 comments
Added on January 27, 2008 by
Kris |
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I have no clue why I am giving the Apple Affiliate Program another shot. When you look at the numbers you will think I am crazy for trying again. I just can't get passed the fact that they sell a ton of iPods, MacBooks and now the MacBook Air and that we could possibly make a couple bucks from it.
Last year we were paid $0.00 by Apple after running a pretty aggressive campaign on Croncast and Resale Queen and in our RSS feeds. There is no way that in hades that not one single individual didn't buy the item they clicked on from the online Apple store in the 3 month span we ran the ads. It is illogical to look at the numbers (first table) and think that not one items was purchased from the online store within the cookie expiration period.
| Advertiser |
Commissions |
S_Amount |
Items |
Sales |
Leads |
Clicks |
Imps |
CTR |
eBay |
$ XX |
$ XX |
47 |
598 |
84 |
351,500 |
59,514 |
590.61 |
Apple Store US & Apple Store Canada |
$ 0.00 |
$ 0.00 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
218 |
31,192 |
0.69 |
Here's where we are in the last 4 days since I started running a couple ads in Betsy's Resale Queen feeds: blog posts and her podcast feed. The ads are for iLife '08 and the new MacBook Air. They are placed after the post item content and before the post tags.
| Advertiser |
Commissions |
S_Amount |
Items |
Sales |
Leads |
Clicks |
Imps |
CTR |
eBay |
$ XX |
$ XX |
3 |
105 |
6 |
26,354 |
4,949 |
532.51 |
Apple Store US & Apple Store Canada |
$ 0.00 |
$ 0.00 |
0 |
0 |
0 |
57 |
82 |
69.51 |
The clicks and impressions both are higher than I would have expected but maybe I did better targeting of the audience this time around. I doubt it. I think I was dead on during October, November and December to run iPod ads for shuffle, nano and video iPods. I did contact the Apple Affiliate program through CJ during the second month to ask what the issue might be and never received a response.
For some reason I feel a need to go through with this again and hope that we can get our payout on a purchase from a lead that we created. I'll let you know how this goes.
Anyone else have experience with the Apple Affiliate Program?
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51 comments
Added on January 27, 2008 by
Kris |
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Ever wanted to make an interesting Twitter background? Here's how I did it.
Side note: This post comes to you straight from an email reply to fellow long-time podcaster Michael Geoghegan in regards to my Twitter background.
Also of note, this layout works best on higher res monitor settings. I imagine that most active Twitter users that are going to be viewing the site as opposed to sms or mobile versions are on high res settings. That said, let's roll.
Creating your background
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File Dimensions: 2048 px by 1707 px (no clue why i used these dimensions but I am sure I knew what I was doing at the time)
Branding Dimensions: 80 px by 587 px
Coordinates: X=20, Y=14
Horizontal position: 20 px from the left (give yourself some padding)
Vertical position: 14 px from the top (will line up your graphic with the top of the twitter logo. our eyes like symmetry)
File size and type according to Twitter: "Images must be smaller than 800k. GIF, JPG, PNG."
Aesthetics
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Color palette: Pick colors that match that with default Twitter stylesheet colors. If they contrast too much follow the Change Background directions above and change the colors for Text, Name, Link, Sidebar fill and Sidebar border as needed.
Recommendation: Choose colors that work with the default and save yourself the headache of matching the CSS to your image. Follow Twitter's lead.
Uploading your background
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Change Default Background: Login and click 'Settings' >> click 'Design' >> Select 'Use my custom style below' radio button >> Upload your image
It took me quite a bit of time to get a background image that I was happy with. There was a lot of editing and uploading again, and again until I got it right. I would suspect if you're like me your experience will be much the same. So have patience when getting it just right. And remember that you are working within someone else's website and can't control all the features. Update: This is the background that I based this tutorial on - Croncast background all by itself if you want to use it as a guide. Here's my current background at work (note: it is now free-form) - http://twitter.com/croncast.
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