Category: Uncategorized

There seem to be some issues this morning with the Bloglines aggregator. Upon logging in, all my subscribed feeds were missing. This is not a good thing.

However, clicking My Feeds > Edit brought the list back. (Note: Clicking My Feeds > Edit and scrolling down gives an option to export subscriptions to an OPML file for backup. Highly recommended.)

Now, it appears that although the feed names are visible, they are not being updated. This is also not a good thing.

Others trying to determine what is going on can be found here:

Technorati – Bloglines
Peter Fleck
Life Hacker
The RSS Blog

Update: It looks like Bloglines is now adding new posts again, but anything that was unread (but not flagged) has been marked as read and is now in the vault of history. C’est la vie…I suppose if a post that’s been missed is important, it’ll show up again in the river of news at some point…

Tag: Bloglines

How are the folks at Yahoo! dealing with people who take up multiple spaces in their overcrowded parking lot? Public shame via the YCantPark photostream on Flickr. Heh.

(hat tip: Jeremy Zawodny)

Junxion is definitely cool.

Stop the presses…this just in…Verizon is still clueless. (hat tip: chris)

Who is the customer with respect to iTunes and podcasts?

Some thoughts on customer service.

Doc Searls and Rick Segal talk about DIY conferences, but here is the best example of the “DIY conference” (more here, and disclosure: i’m utterly and completely biased).

Ed Brenegar’s thoughts on emotional connections with customers.

Kudos to the San Jose Mercury News for their new online section called Interactive. Currently focused on the arts/entertainment beat, the Merc has set up nearly 20 weblogs for reader feedback…comments, critiques, reviews, etc. In addition to the central location for pulling everything together, they’ve wisely set up “channels” (i.e. dedicated blogs) for:

• Concerts
• Fashion & Style
• Gaming
• Hot Lists
• Movies & DVDs
• Music
• Radio
• TV
• Teen Views
• Your Reviews

Similarly, a half-dozen or so of the Merc’s reporters in the section have been given blogs of their own from which to build a following, such as Marian Liu.

Even just limiting this experiment to the typically “softer” arts/entertainment section of the paper, there are some interesting implications. The Merc gets the opportunity to act as host for a number of very active and passionate customer communities. And, if they’re smart, the various providers of music, movies, gaming, and other areas have another venue in which to get unfiltered feedback from their customers. Nice.

Focused Podcast Search: It’s Here (The Vision Thing)
(ed. holy crap this is cool. try “chopper” or, i dunno, “social customer” in podscope. it utterly works.)

How marketers can monitor what 10 million bloggers are up to (Blogspotting)

Dunbar, Altruistic Punishment, and Meta-Moderation (Life With Alacrity)

I’m going (BlogHer)

Collaboration Requires Contribution (Blogging Planet)

After not being able to make it down for SXSW this year, am heading down to Austin, TX for a few days; first trip to a city I’ve heard a lot of fantastic things about. Got some great suggestions for things to do there from Peter Merholz. A few things from the list:

• East Side Cafe
• Las Manitas
• Blackmail
• Toyjoy
• Hotel San Jose

…and a mess of other rec’s. Any other suggestions, including music venues and the like? Thanks!

Good stuff here, on how having a conversation with a customer can get to the heart of the matter, quickly. (And, as a bonus, take a competitor out of the game.) Nice.

Feedback in the Market

Talking to a customer over the week, someone who had decided to go with SAP for a big project, starting internationally.

“We looked at Peoplesoft for some of this stuff…”

“Hmm, I would say that they are probably SAP’s most competent competitor in ERP.” I replied. (Never be dismissive of the competition, it just makes you look small-minded.)

“Not since Oracle. We think it is suicide. We’re actually a bit annoyed, because we would have taken them for some elements of the roll-out otherwise.”

Now, this is someone telling me that they will no longer do business with a respected competitor because of an acquisition, and it was not me leading them into saying it. Interesting reaction.

From here.

Random geek stuff…just found a sweet little device. It sits between the phone (regular or even cordless) and the computer. It hooks up to your regular phone via the normal phone jack (RJ-11), and hooks up to the computer with a USB port.

So what?

So now I can use the same cordless phone I’ve been using for 3 years to make and recieve Skype calls. Free to other Skype folks, and a couple of pennies a minute to call out to landlines and mobiles.

Just trying it out, but it seems to work great, at least on the outbound side. Sweet.

(click on pic to enlarge)

Breakeven period on the cost? About a week.

Heh. Here’s the whole thing.

A few excerpts:

Question: What is the mission of the combined company?
Answer: “Adobe’s mission remains the same — to help people and businesses communicate better. With the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe strengthens its mission through the combination of leading-edge development, authoring and collaboration tools — and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash.”

Translated Answer: “Where by ‘complementary’ we mean ‘the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.’ Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ — in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.”

Question: How many employees does Macromedia have?
Answer: “Macromedia has approximately 1,450 employees worldwide.”

Translated answer: “Please note use of present tense.”

Question: How many employees does Adobe have?
Answer: “Adobe has approximately 4,000 employees worldwide.”

Translated answer: “Ditto regarding use of present tense. Please also note that PDF is an excellent format for sending out résumés.”

Read the whole thing. (hat tip: john)

Wow. Here’s a local map.