Evening Reading: 9/17/07

By on September 18, 2007 in Tech

I have concluded that most bloggers post too often.  When I go through my blogroll, I see a lot of quantity and not so much quality.  And while I am still testing the pattern, I have a working theory that the bloggers I enjoy the most post less than the ones I enjoy less.  I suspect this is because many of the people who churn out scads of posts are doing so in an effort to serve ads.  I’ll post more on the marginal utility of blog posts later.

The traditional tech-centric blogosphere bores me to tears.  Is anyone reading this stuff?

If you have a bunch of cassette tapes lying around and would like to convert them to MP3s, here’s a $116 answer.

On a related note, I really want to hear Graham Parker’s version of Chain of Fools off of the very hard to find That’s When You Know CD.  Can anyone help me out?

I was quoted in an article in the Dallas Morning News today.

Here are some Jeopardy mishaps.  Number 7 (SNL) is worth a visit all by itself.

Chris Brogan has some good personal branding tips: “Remember that branding isn’t logos, software, and usernames. It’s about presenting yourself in such a way that people get an impression of you and your value.”  Add an “s” to the end of that sentence, and you’ve just summed up effective personal branding in one sentence.

On a related note, Steven Hodson has a good read on blog improvement.

Claus Valca on finding balance. 

Dwight Silverman on the timeless question of updating drivers.  As a general rule, I update my drivers pretty regularly, even if I’m not experiencing any issues.  I have, however, completely screwed my computer on occasion by doing so.  The most catastrophic example being a failed update of some RAID drivers.  I am SO HAPPY to be rid of RAID.

Neither John Walkenbach nor Jeff Balke dig SpiralFrog.

Why does Bloglines (and random other sites) never finish loading in my (Firefox) browser?  This is very annoying.

Pandora is still hands down the best place in the universe to discover great new music.  Here’s my station.

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About Kent

Reader, writer, arithmeticer. Proprietor of Newsome.Org, a tech, music and life blog.
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  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/07386028729238418141 TD

    I don’t think posting too much is always or even mostly a sign of pure ad motivation. Some choose to use their blogs more like linkdumps rather than put an appropriate amount of thought and effort into each post. If they were purely ad-motivated then they’d realize that more content on the page is typically more SE friendly and thus will have a better chance of drawing better ad traffic than less. Kent, it seems that you prefer (?) to read people who spend more time thinking about what they write (me too, BTW). These kinds of posts take more time to produce and thus it’s more time-consuming to produce in large quantities, so I think that outside of group blogs where there is strength in numbers, single author blogs with this structure are more likely not to firehose readers as often and appear often enough not to make readers feel like they are still active.

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/07386028729238418141 TD

    “appear often enough not to make readers feel like they are still active.”Er, the converse, rather :) Whew. Don’t comment at 5:45am!

  • http://www.blogger.com/profile/05268190745887737505 Kent

    Good point about SE traffic.I do find that I am gravitating towards people who spend more time on less posts. People like Paul Lester, Will Truman, Rory Blyth, etc.On the other hand, I don’t like excessively long posts either. I think it comes down to a true or unique voice, perspective, etc.The main thing forcing me away from the traditional tech-centric blogosphere is the repetitive nature of the posts and the absurd lengths people go to in the name of Web 2.0 cheerleading.I just don’t get much value from reading another post about how Facebook is going to change the universe, etc. Particularly when 90% of the people saying it are merely talking their position.