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Added on August 30, 2007 by
Kris |
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Scott appears to be correct.
He sent me an email yesterday to say that he and Pete had a conversation about something. Which evidently happens on occasion. From the email and attached screen shot I deduced that the discussion was about Google indexing RSS feeds and linking directly to them and how that sucks. 'Cause it does.
Don't get me wrong I love Google for indexing feeds. Seriously, it rocks. They are leading in this area.
Let me show you what's going on:
1. Scott searches at Google for an awesome party in Chicago called "The Deaf Chicago Party" (remind me to ask him about this) and the first result is Croncast.
The first thing to pay attention to in this image to pay attention to is the green URL - http://www.croncast.com/keyrss/Chicago party.rss. Yep, it's a RSS feed and not a web page. To which I say, "right on." However, 99.9 times out of 100 when when someone clicks through and RSS link in Google they get a face full of XML or an ugly feed. Click the link above to see.
2. Scott clicked on my link to the RSS from Google and and something magical happened. See the screen shot that he sent me:
He ended up at my site not looking at a bunch of XML or having his browser ask him if he wants to subscribe to my feed. He was taken directly to a page within my site that has relevant posts from our podcast and blog for the topic he was looking for . . . maybe, probably not really since I don't know what 'The Deaf Chicago Party' is. And, apparently, Google doesn't either. Let's just call it serendipity.
The summary to my detective work can be boiled down to what I figured out a few months ago:
1. Google loves RSS feeds filled with new stuff
2. I love RSS feeds filled with my new and old stuff
3. People like information on topics of interest
4. I created RSS feeds by post tag but also allow them to be created by readers/listeners dynamically (see #3)
5. I did some quick SEO on these feeds to make their titles and descriptions relevant to topic
6. Finally, I coded the feeds to check if user was coming from Google or other search engines
7. Google sends bot and indexes said feeds
8. Someone searches at Google for a topic like "tijuana vasectomy" - just got a hit for it yesterday
9. That someone clicks the link and ends up at site with the exact same items in it that were in the RSS feed without all the feed related hassle
It's not a perfect system but one that I think is way more acceptable to a user than clicking a link in a search engine and getting put into a feed. In many cases being dumped into a feed isn't going to get you to the content you wanted anyway because it has been pushed out by newer items. When I put someone into my site from a feed result in a search engine they then have the ability to find their topic right there. If not, they an internal site search that will find what they are after. The coolest part to me about it is that once they have made it to the site I then offer them the feed for their topic, just in case this is truly what they were after.
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2 comments
Added on August 28, 2007 by
Kris |
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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.
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0 comments
Added on August 25, 2007 by
Kris |
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Speaking of Mr. Klau, you can purchase his former abode here in Naperville. With this purchase you can not only have beautiful home with a sweet basement bar but you can hang with some of Naperville's finest nerds.
If you buy it, yes you reading this post, you'll get a dinner for two with Betsy and I to give you the dirt on your new town. Rick, Robin, this will sell your house!
This I lifted this from Rick's post about the house (if you are a Democrat check out the last line of this post):And maybe most significantly, we loved how close we were to some of Naperville’s gems: Ribfest (walking distance to that most gluttonous of charitable events!), Last Fling (seeing They Might Be Giants a couple years ago was a highlight), and the Riverwalk. We spent a ton of time walking around downtown - between the library (#1 in the country!), the restaurants, Andersen’s bookshop, events like Oktoberfest, there were plenty of opportunities - which was just a mile away.
We added a bit of history to the house, hosting Barack Obama for a fundraiser during his 2004 Senate run.
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0 comments
Added on August 25, 2007 by
Kris |
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I just got a heads up message from Rick, thanks Rick, that some more of you besides the Bloglines people might be having constant post update issues for posts that you have already read. Things like they show up as new entries.
If you experiencing this problem (which has probably been for the last two months, yikes) with your reader let me know. Send me a message with the reader name and the URL of the feed(s) you are subscribed to and I will look into it.
I did test these dynamic ads with Google Reader, NewsGator, FeedDemon, Rojo, IE 7, Thunderbird and tons of podcast aggregators. Obviously, not enough testing.
I am still of the mindset that reader makers need to fix the problem of multiple updates being displayed as new items. I can understand marking the item unread if it is read or notating the item has been updated, but am lost at adding it as a new unread entry every time they ping the feed.
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0 comments
Added on August 25, 2007 by
Kris |
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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.
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4 comments
Added on August 25, 2007 by
Kris |
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I didn't realize how absurd this smartphone crap was until the day before yesterday. We have a potential client using Blackberries as podcast players. Which was no big deal since I worked on a solution a few years ago at my day job but I needed to get the same version as the client. Hence a new radiation hot spot for my palm.
Now in the house:
1 Treo 700 (mine, Verizon)
1 xv6700 (Betsy, Verizon)
1 iPhone (work, AT&T)
1 Blackberry 8703e (work, Sprint)
Two of them are for work, like I marked them above, but it is ridiculous. They all do like one thing better than the others, one carrier's plan is better priced or the network makes all the difference. What do I mean?
Best sounding as a phone:
1. Treo
2. iPhone
3. Blackberry
4. xv6700 (horrible)
Ease of use as a phone:
1. iPhone (my mother-in-law could use it)
2. Treo
3. Blackberry
4. xv6700 (need 3 hands to make a call)
Ease of use overall:
1. iPhone
2. Blackberry
3. Treo
4. xv6700
Best OS:
1. xv6700 (windows mobile 5.0, too bad everything else about it sucks)
2. iPhone
3. Treo
4. Blackberry
Best media playback:
1. iPhone (wonder why?)
2. xv6700
3. Treo
4. Blackberry
Best keypad:
1. Blackberry (update: thanks Garrick for pointing out I misspelled it the first time -LOL)
2. Treo
3. xv6700
4. iPhone (it's pretty . . . hard to use quickly)
Best sms device:
1. Treo
2. Blackberry
3. xv6700
4. iPhone
Best email device:
1. Blackberry
2. Treo (would be third if AT&T edge were faster)
3. iPhone (on wifi this is second)
4. xv6700
Best web device (network):
1. Treo (doubles as EV-DO modem, love it)
2. xv6700 (doubles as EV-DO modem, never used it)
3. iPhone
4. Blackberry (locked into a special start page, blah and doubles as EVDO modem but Sprint rates are insane)
Best web device (wifi):
1. iPhone (experience much like real browsing
2. xv6700 (fast but reformats pages)
The other two are AWOL with no wifi capability
Best camera:
1. iPhone
2. Treo
3. xv6700
Blackberry is without
Best network:
1. Verizon
2. Sprint
3. AT&T
Best overall:
1. iPhone
2. Treo
3. Blackberry
4. xv6700
Taking all of this into consideration and my experience with all four operating systems and form factors, I have decided that my ultimate phone and carrier combo would look something like this:
An iPhone on Verizon's network, use as EV-DO modem, with an add on keypad and GPS onboard. That would get an 'ooh la la' and an amen.
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