Many, many thanks to those who have wondered where I've been and if I'm OK.  The comments, blog posts and emails are very much appreciated.  It really demonstrates the depth and importance of the friendships and community we build in the blogosphere.

I'm fine.  Just pre-occupied with life's responsibilities.

I've been really busy at work the past few weeks.  Add to that the fact that I started a new job on Monday, and you end up with two or three chaotic and stressful weeks.  Things will settle down shortly and as soon as they do, I'll eagerly resume normal blogging activity.

In the meantime, thanks again for checking on me.

Happy Pi Approximation Day.

Only in the blogosphere: a guy who impersonates someone else complains about invasion of privacy.

I am going to use all of these in future blog posts.  Here's the first one.  Comic Book Guy: "Last night's 'Itchy and Scratchy Show' was, without a doubt, the worst episode ever.  Rest assured, I was on the Internet within minutes, registering my disgust throughout the world."

I knew there was a reason I rarely blog about my job.  Mario Sundar has more.  Those who promote blogging for one thing or another always pretend that corporate non-tech America has or is about to embrace blogging, when the reality is that other than email, corporate non-tech America hasn't even embraced the internet.

When I was a kid I would walk about 2 miles each way to Brown's Gift Shop in my hometown to buy a Matchbox Car every time I could scrape together the $1.25 or so they cost.  Spiders to steamrollers to 12,000 models.  What a great story.

I simply cannot describe how excited I am that Bebo is going to follow Facebook and launch a developer platform.  We're about a month away from every web site being designated a social network.  Give it 9 months and every web site will also have a developer platform.  It reminds me of when the anchovies pile out of their buses to eat at the Krusty Krab.  Part of the problem, of course, is that even social networking sites you didn't know existed get $20M.

I'm glad I dumped Norton Antivirus.  So far, I am really happy with Kaspersky.

People have been blogging blindly for years.  It's no wonder so many people Twitter the same way.

Twangville on the new Gourds record.

Scoble does a much needed Sam Donaldson on a post by Dave Winer about Feedburner.  I expressed my concern when Google bought Feedburner.  I think it's interesting that a lot of the people worried about Feedburner and Google taking over all the information in the universe still run their feed links through Feedburner, all in the name of some needless stat tracking.  You can't have it both ways.

Until today, I have unsuccessfully waged my own private war against tiny text size on the internet.  Some sites use a default text size that renders microscopically on larger monitors at higher resolutions.  Changing the default text size at the browser level isn't a solution, because then the text size on many sites is way too big.  It has been extremely frustrating.

Occasionally I google around in search of a solution.  Today I found one.  And based on 30 minutes of surfing around and actually being able to read the words on pages, I proclaim it the greatest Firefox extension ever.

NoSquint is the long awaited answer to the text size problem.

It allows you to set a default zoom level for all pages within Firefox (the suggested 120% works well for me).  The best part is that you can also set individual zoom levels on a per site basis.  This allows me to automatically increase the absurdly small Netvibes text to 140% and the almost as absurdly small My Yahoo text to 130%.

This may be the most significant advance in my internet experience since broadband.

I am very happy, though I can't resist firing one last shot across the bow of the young and eagle-eyed developers who ignore text size issues: why does it take an extension to do what the sites themselves should already offer via the personalization settings?

Steve Rubel and company have come up with a new way to measure influence.  I agree that Technorati's George Jetson on the link treadmill approach is flawed.  I sort of agree that activity behind the walls of the social networks needs to be considered.  The problem is that no matter how you pretty it up, the bottom line is that you are measuring popularity much more than authority.  The same factors that keep the blogstars at the top of the links list will keep them at the top of this new list too.  I don't think there's anything particularly wrong with that, and even if there is, sometimes the best mousetrap is the one we have.

Dwight on becoming a zombie ninja on Facebook and his Comcast experience so far.  Like Dwight, my internet access has been down intermittently since Comcast took over, whereas it was solid for years before.  Maybe it's a coincidence, or maybe not.  Time will tell.  I just got 6370 down and 355 up.

Frank has an interesting post on a different kind of Gatekeeper.

The Groundhog Post was back in my reader as a new post again today (see prior discussion).

Richard MacManus asks the question of the moment.  I think Facebook is the evolved AOL, but I think that content creators will ultimately gravitate away from walls placed between them and their desired audience.

Scott Adams on when the bull wins.  Funny, and hard to argue with.

InstaBloke has 10 ways to improve your blog.  I think all of them are spot on, but let me give a special shout out to way number 9.

Chris Brogan on 3 things LinkedIn does better than Facebook.  I have a 4th: create an experience designed for businesspeople as opposed to college kids looking to hook up.  I understand that Facebook has many more community-building tools, and for that reason I use it.  But I still feel a little embarrassed when I log in.  Just a terminology rewrite (poking someone, for crying out loud?) would be a good start.

In the Year 2525: Jeremiah Owyang on the future of corporate websites.  Good list, but I don't see how item 9 (which I believe in strongly) and item 5 are consistent.  My biggest problem with all the social networks is that they appropriate content created by users for the betterment of the social network's brand.  I also don't think mainstream corporate America is going to embrace anything remotely resembling social networking- the same sites many of them currently block completely.

I agree with Joe Wickert.  The only hope for newspapers is to go hyper-local.  I haven't subscribed to a "big city" newspaper in a decade, but I still subscribe to the weekly paper from my hometown- where I haven't lived since 1978.

I noticed when I searched for the above link that one of my old buddies, Bernard Stubbs ("De Duk Mon"), passed away this month.  He was a fine man.  I have many of his carved decoys, which are among the finest wood carvings I have ever seen.  He was the coroner in our county for years, which was the reason I referred to him in my song Ghosts in the Graveyard (mp3):

The duck man saw it from a mile away
The duck man saw it from a mile away
He knows first hand
The price you pay
When the need for love leads you astray
The duck man saw it from a mile away

I'll miss De Duk Mon.  He was one of a kind and loved by all.

iMacros for Firefox looks like a very useful application.  I'm going to give it a try.

Here's a neat trick to get your pigs back inside the fence.  I challenge every one of you to randomly tell this to an elevator full of strangers tomorrow and then blog about the response.

Will Truman is rapidly becoming one of my favorite bloggers.  Here's the latest on Kyle, who is also Quen and Quenton.  I still think about this post at least once a day.  Highly recommended.

PC World (and getting moreso every minute, but I digress) has 10 fast fixes for nagging PC problems.  None of them are as nagging as this one was, which is thankfully fixed.

Funny: The Great Web Crash of 2007.  (via JD Lasica)

Steve Spalding has done a lot of work and put a lot of thought into a very good read on defining Web 3.0.  My take: the problem with the evolution of the webs is the same as the evolution of everything else.  There is a developmental tension between those looking to create something for the greater good and those looking to create something to generate personal wealth.  My view (utopian as it may be) of Web 3.0 (or perhaps 4.0 or later) is that it exists outside of walls and the people who create the content receive the benefit of that content.  Currently, the people who host (nice word) or cage (another word) the content get the benefit.  Eventually, the content creators will realize this imbalance and the content will migrate to the vast open plains.  This will benefit the greater population, but will be bad for the prospectors who have staked their claims in social networking, etc.  Which is why it hasn't happened yet.

I will be so happy when people stop trying to stuff corporate America into Second Life.  Russell Shaw nails it.  Which is not to say that Second Life isn't cool or fun.  But someone decided that cool and fun wasn't enough.  That was where things got screwed up.   

Looks like Deadwood may not come back to HBO at all.  Previously, there was a plan to finish the story via a couple of 2 hour movies.  Let me say it again: I will no longer watch ANY new network or cable shows that are designed to last longer than a season.  I will simply time shift by a season or two via Netflix.

Warner Crocker on the various sharing applications that compete for our attention and, as Warner points out, money.  I agree that Facebook might just implode under the weight of application bloat.  But I have also found that a lot of the people I converse with or want to converse with in the blogosphere are active on Facebook.  I get a friend invitation every couple of days, generally from someone I know via the blogopshere.  If people go where their "friends" are, it is hard to deny that Facebook has traction.  I just wish they'd change their interface and terminology to something more "grown up" so I could go there and not have to forget that I'm 46 years old.  I use both Twitter and Pownce a little.  I like the Pownce interface better at the moment, but there's a lot more activity on Twitter.

On a related note, Doc sums up in a few words the way I and many others feel about all these so-called social networks:  "Social groups to which I belong in the physical world do not compete. They do not carry advertising. They do not have business models. They are not gathered so somebody else can make money. Except maybe at work. Maybe."  We needed Compuserve, Prodigy and AOL back in the day to lead us to the gold we were seeking, be it money, information or fun.  The wilderness has been conquered now and the only network we need is the internetwork.

Chip Camden is now writing for TechRepublic.  Here's his first post.

Dwight has a must read for those who have hastily installed wireless routers.

The Groundhog Post was back in my reader tonight, as a new post.  Twice.  Then I noticed the URL for the first time.  Surely people are not going to start blasting out the same advertisement post feed over and over and over and over again?  Jake, please tell me this is a technical problem.

Twangville on the new Richard Shindell record, South of Delia.  Note that they mention Are You Happy Now, my vote for the best folk/rock song ever written, near the end of the post.  Told ya.

We just got home from a weekend at the Hill Country Hyatt in San Antonio.  I spoke at a conference there yesterday, so we went up Friday and made a weekend out of it.

It's one of our favorite nearby vacation spots.  Highly recommended for families.

While there, I heard a great Loudon Wainwright III song for the first time, which quickly became our vacation theme song.

Delaney and Cassidy by the pool

Behind the pool is a large, circular river, called appropriately the lazy river, where you can tube in a circle for hours on end.  We did.  It's impossible to overstate how cool and fun the lazy river is.

Delaney in the hot tub

Hanging out by the pool

I have a new batch of Pownce invites.  Post requests here via comment (with your email address if I don't already have it).  Same rules apply as last time (invitees must agree to come back to the comments here and invite anyone left in the queue).

281 channels and nothing to read.  Boring day in the blogosphere today.

I didn't know there were 10 Twitter applications, but here are the top 10 according to Read/WriteWeb.

TVSquad found out what would have happened had Drive not been canned like every other new network TV show.

Chris Kasten on the challenges of the no nofollow movement.  I delete spam every morning from my comments, and I have a captcha and a nofollow tag.  It just amazes me how many things assholes in search of an easy buck screw up for the rest of us: comments, telephones, email, fax machines.  The list goes on and on.

I need at least 3 more segments to make an Evening Reading post, so the next three posts that pop up in my reader and aren't about cats will get linked.  Bloggers start your keyboards.

10 minutes later, nothing.  I think everyone fell asleep in front of their computers.  I'm feeling a bit drowsy...need a diversion.

I visited Facebook.  Here's what's going on there.  Steve and Liz are my newest friends.  If they were really my friends, they'd publish a post so I can finish this one.  Liz says you should never finish a blog post, maybe this is nature's way of telling me in a blog (anyone remember Spirit?).  Ayelet and I are going to fight global warming.  I'm pretty sure if Ayelet told me to fight Evander Holyfield I'd do it.  Mario has a very interesting read about the blogging process.  It's available outside of Facebook on his blog.  I had not seen that Wikipedia excerpt.  I find this part very descriptive and compelling: "Some people describe feeling driven to keep a diary, often as a way to put their existence into perspective."

Need 3 more things to write about.  Back to my reader, and Eureka! 

1) Chris Kasten gets a two-fer, with a very good read on Omnidrive and Box.net.  I still want one of those online storage services to do a Pownce interface so I can save the songs Brian and others share to my online storage account right from Pownce.

2) Marek Uliasz on water photography.

3) Will Truman on Picture Day.  I almost wrote above about his earlier post today on The Middle Sister, which is some fantastic writing, but I felt like I might be tuning in halfway through the story.  If this doesn't make you dive for the link to go read that post, I don't know what will: "She's an avowed communist, crusading environmental lawyer, sometimes more proud of her Russian citizenship than her American citizenship and currently living in the Philippines."  Man, I want a 300, no 600 page novel about life on the Corrigan compound.

I did pretty darn good just picking the next 3 posts to show up.

I'm not sure what that says about all the effort I generally spend selecting posts the old fashioned way.

The first edition of Steve Gillmor's new videocast, Bad Sinatra, is online.  I just watched it, and here are my thoughts.

First a mild criticism: I had no earthly idea who some of those people are.  If (and I recognize this is an if) Steve is doing this for a wider audience than the deeply tech-connected, he ought to put the names of the people at the bottom of the screen, or at least say their names occasionally.

He also ought to turn off his phone, but since he didn't edit it out, the phone calls must be part of the vibe he's after.

Steve and Dan Farber debated iPods and iPhones in the lobby of The Palace Hotel in San Francisco, where I met Steve last year.  Their conversation was very interesting, and captured some of the magic of the good Gillmor Gang episodes.  Steve saying he loved Macs because they "suck a lot less" than PCs was funny.  Dan nailed it when he said iPhones are not corporate phones because they don't do corporate email...yet.

Steve was apparently mad at Dan for doing a podcast with Jason Calacanis.  It wasn't entirely clear why, maybe because it's too close to a Gillmor Gang reunion.  Again, maybe the insiders understand all the background, but lots of people will be left wondering.  I liked it that Dan tried to debunk the idea that Office is dead.  Given that corporate America, where the most profitable software is sold, is NEVER going to migrate to Google Docs, how can Office be dead?  Microsoft Works may be dead at the hands of Google Docs, but not Office.

Mike Arrington didn't seem all that happy to be on camera, and added nothing of substance other than his involvement.

I was happy to see Doc Searls participating.  He talked about VRM and conferences and some snack bar Steve had.  Smart and funny guy.  To paraphrase Christopher Walken, "more Doc Searls!"

I'm not much of a videocast watcher, so it's hard for me to make comparisons to other shows.  I found some of the stuff pretty inaccessible, as if I was eavesdropping on a conversation between some people I don't know (even though I know some of them).  It seemed sort of random and chaotic.

On the other hand, the whole of the videocast is somehow greater than the sum of the parts.  I can see how, with a little practice (and editing), Steve could capture some classic moments on film.

Bottom line: I'm not sold on it yet, but I'll watch the next episode and see if it grows on me.

It's been six months, hasn't it?
In some circles that is half a year.
The Countess - Even Cowgirls Get the Blues

The topic cycle in the blogosphere has spun back around to comments, and whether you ought to have them, not have them, moderate them yourselves, let users self-moderate, splice a blog and a message board together, or hire Scoble as your personal Vanna White.

The process begins when one egghead or another either gets too much comment spam or intellectual pushback (depending on the egghead's frame of mind) and declares that comments are either a pain in the ass or unnecessary.  Then some other eggheads (me in this case) mount a nerdy defense of comments.  After a day or so a third group of eggheads start saying some other ridiculous stuff and the nerd herd moves on.

Nerdily, I say unto thee...

Anyone who knows the first thing about blogging knows that to be successful a blog needs to create and nurture a sense of community.  Comments are by far the best way to do that.  Even those who naively view their blogs as a path to riches need comments because advertisers covet stickiness- the ability to keep readers onsite. Again, interactivity is the best way to achieve that.

This is why even newspapers have comments.

Recently when David Ritcheson tragically leapt to his death from a cruise ship, it was a commenter who first identified him (the victim of an earlier horrific attack that had been in the news), at the bottom of an early report that a then unidentified person had jumped or fallen off a cruise ship.  Take a look at the online edition of your newspaper, I bet you'll see an effort to develop a community of commenters.  Newspapers know how to sell ads, and they know the goal is to have a crowd of people interacting at your site.  Why do some bloggers ignore the need for interactivity by either not having or not nurturing comments?

I can think of four reasons, only the first of which is makes any sense.

First, if your blog is largely a vehicle used to market some larger product.  In my opinion, Seth Godin is an example of this.  Seth is, among other things, an author, speaker and a marketing guy.  His blog is a way to showcase his expertise in a way that gives the reader value while marketing his books and speaking services.  Seth believes that having comments changes his blog (and more importantly his writing) in a way that detracts from his vision and purpose for his blog.  I don't really agree with his approach, but it works for him.  Not coincidentially, Seth has a very high profile both in and out of the blogosphere.  Don't get me wrong, Seth seems like a cool guy and the fact that I, who am all about conversation, read his blog every day tells you all you need to know about my opinion of his value and writing skills.  But what works for Seth won't work for most bloggers.

Second, if you're not willing to spend the time to manage, nurture and moderate your comments.  Comments are mini-message boards and having developed a number of very popular message board sites, I can tell you that unchecked interaction performed in a remote and semi-anonymous way will descend into chaos 100% of the time.  Comments have a shorter half-life than message board threads, so the chaos takes longer to develop.  But between the spammers and the disrupters, chaos will eventually reign in comments left unchecked.  There are lots of ways to address the comment problem: pre-approval of commenters (too restrictive for me), holding comments for approval (not real time enough for me), using a captcha (my current approach), manually deleting spam and disruptive comments (my original approach, abandoned long ago in the midst of a spam flood), etc.  It takes a little work, but if you're trying to grow a blog without comments, you are making your job much harder than it has to be.  For 95% of the bloggers out there, I would say if you aren't willing to have comments, why are you blogging?  It would be much better to write 50% less posts and devote half your blogging time to moderating and participating in your comments threads.  Don't forget the participating part.  Lots of bloggers do.

Third, you start believing your own BS and forget that it takes luck and timing in addition to brains and hard work to be hugely successful- regardless of how success is measured.  These folks aren't interested in community building because to them they are the community.  And, of course, in our celebrity-driven culture, a number of tourists will eagerly line up at the door, hoping for a glimpse.  The tourists may get a souvenir or two, but that's a by-product of the greater purpose: for the celebrity-cum-blogger to remain in the anaconda-like grip of the self-congratulatory hug.  Some of these folks actually have comments, but they are generally intended for tributes as opposed to conversation and discussion.  I don't put any of the participants I have read in this latest discussion in that group, but there are a lot of them out there.

Fourth, of course, is to generate a response and get people talking.  Sort of like I'm doing now, which reminds me of a quote from Spaceballs (that under-appreciated classic).

"The Ring! I can't believe you fell for the oldest trick in the book! What a fool, what's with you man, c'mon?" 

In addition to the predictability of the blogosphere, there are a couple of other points to be made here.

As Mathew Ingram points out, there are a few people who read blogs who, um, don't have a blog (I think the number is small, but existent).  And then there's the fact that the very large majority of the people who think they don't need comments would rather drive an American made car than respond to cross-blog conversation from some blogger outside their circle.

Comments are integral to the blogging experience.  Sure, they take some work.

But for almost all of us, they are worth it.

Paging all RSS gurus.

I have a question.  In these media driven days, why do RSS feeds only have a single enclosure?  I'm sure there are plenty of good and/or bad reasons for this, and I suspect the topic has been beat to death by those more learned in RSS than me.  But I couldn't find a satisfactory answer when I googled it the other day.  It just seems odd that I can do a music post that looks like this on my blog, but only has a single enclosure in the feed.

It's sort of a disincentive for further music related posts.

What is the reason for this?  Will it ever change?

Can any of my RSS gurus (or anyone else knowledgeable) explain this to me?

Blender has 100 days that changed music.  Like all of these lists, it's very biased towards the present, but it's an interesting read.  I can't believe Justin and Britney splitting is number 12.  Are you kidding me?

Now you can post to Twitter and Pownce at the same time.  I'm not sure why I'd ever want to do that, but I'll sleep better tonight knowing it's possible.  If someone wants to do something useful, figure out a way to associate a Box.net account with a Pownce account, so you can automatically save files sent to you via Pownce.

Dave Wallace has the best post I've ever read on technology access, with emphasis on access by people with disabilities.

Micahville has a list of 69 tech sites that don't suck.  Many thanks for including Newsome.Org on that list.  It is an honor to be included. even if I am number 12, just like Justin and Britney.  Also, many thanks to Steve Spalding for including me on this list.

Tris Hussey on moving beyond blogging to community: "So if you're wondering why no one is reading your blog, or linking, or commenting... step out, find other blogs in your niche.  Read them, leave a comment or three, start a conversation, link to them, send an e-mail, just start that friendship building process and the rest will follow."  Good advice.  Here's some more good conversation advice from Penelope Trunk.

Someone please (really) explain to me how Ning is worth $214M.  If you follow the money in Web 2.0, where does it go?  In other words, who is pushing all the product that is actually getting sold as a result of all the ads that are served by all these web sites?  Or are we just moving money around like furniture...

Tom Morris has moved his blog to Tommorris.org.

I outsmarted them this time- I never watched a second of Traveler.

Chris Brogan explains that Twitter is the Matrix.

Groundhog Feed: this post from Jake Ludington has appeared in my reader as a new post almost every day since he wrote it.  I don't think he's tweaking it like a manuscript, so there must be some higher force at work.  There are several other feeds gone wild in my reader doing more or less the same thing.  Is this just a Bloglines problem?

Paul Lester has written the blogosphere equivalent of Free Bird.  I'm dead serious- that is one beautiful post.

Paging William Meloney.  I want to subscribe to your feed, but auto-discovery doesn't work and the feed link at the bottom returns only some old posts.  What is your feed URL?  And why isn't it at the top of your excellent blog?

I'm not one of those complicated, mixed-up cats.
I'm not looking for the secret to life...
I just go on from day to day, taking what comes.
- Frank Sinatra

Steve Gillmor writes that he is about to launch a new show (which I interpret as a podcast) called Bad Sinatra.  It looks like this is the web site.  I wonder if the name was in any way inspired by the hilarious, and completely kid-unfriendly, movie Bad Santa?

Steve (hopefully with Doc Searls) doing a podcast is very good news and I look forward to hearing Steve and his guests talk about whatever they choose to talk about.  It got a little weird near the end, but discovering the Gillmor Gang podcast was the online equivalent of a before and after experience.  Some of the conversation on that show was as witty, intelligent and entertaining as a podcast can be.  I realize, as someone who created and then abandoned a podcast, that the reach of a podcast is an open question, but suffice it to say that when it was good, the Gillmor Gang set a podcast standard that hasn't been matched since.  And I continue to wonder why no one else has tried a similar format in Texas or other locales.

I'm looking forward to Bad Sinatra.  Now if we can get Steve to blog a little more.

So we can read more of his thoughts on the whole social networking mess that we've been wrestling with.  Spot on thoughts like this:

[W]e all make contributions to the state of mind we call this social network of ours. You can call it attention, or intention, or VRM, or Twitter, or whatever.  But it still represents our hope to make some difference, to leave a footprint in the cement out in front of the theatre of our lives. We take it a lot more seriously than we let on, but like high school we pretend that it doesn't hurt when we're insulted, passed by, snickered at, or worst of all, not noticed.

And this:

The politics of personality swamp us with messages that need to be triaged much like we used to parse advertising.  Is this the program wrapped in signals or signals disguised as programming?  Yes.  It's an ugly space we're in, and nobody holds the high ground. We're all selling something, and of course it's ourselves.

Yep, I'm looking forward to Bad Sinatra.

As an aside, I found the iPhonomics and podosphere domain stuff Steve wrote about interesting.  I remember when Stowe Boyd auctioned off the Podosphere.com domain name on eBay last year.  He got a whopping $103 for it.  Not much has happened with it since. 

Richard MacManus on how to turn a blog into a career.  Kent Newsome on how to make a small fortune in the blogosphere: "Start with a large fortune."

I love me some Mashable, but Pete Cashmore seems to be calling for more serious articles about serious tech and less blogospats about who did what to whom.  Where's the fun in that?

Consumerist says it caught a Geek Squad technician stealing data from a customer's computer.

I can't even decipher what this means, but I'm pretty sure I don't agree with it.  I'm also pretty sure there's a finger pointing pot in there somewhere.

Pramit Singh has some good thoughts on citizen journalism.

Chip Camden gives us a preview of Web 9.0.  There are sites today, Zooomr being one of them, that I would love to use, but can't log in.  And Chip is right- it's only going to get worse.

D'Arcy Norman on owning your content.  Amen.

Dan Santow has some more good grammar tips.  I often get the titled/entitled thing wrong.

Get your Blogging Tips from Douglas Karr at The Marketing Technology Blog.  I'm getting mine (maybe) via his blog-tipping series.

I vote for lima beans, which we call butter beans.  Great blues song too.  Hey Frank, who is that?

I'm still not feeling the cats, but this made me laugh out loud (as opposed to cringe).

Psychology Today has a list of 10 Politically Incorrect Truths About Human Nature.

Earl Moore has 10 really good tips for connecting with others, both online and off.  This is a must read.

That sinking feeling: I currently have a RAID 0 configuration, but I'm not sure I'd do it again.  I'd probably use RAID 1 for my data and a separate, regular hard drive for my OS.

Couldn't do the Presidents?  How about the states?  I get hopelessly lost on the New England states. (via Rob Gale)

Time flies like an arrow and fruit flies like a banana (that's one of Townes Van Zandt's old jokes).  Here's how to get rid of them with a soda bottle trap.

Liz Strauss on compliments and apologies.  I spoke with Liz the other night as a part of her BAD blogger series.  She's a smart and thoughtful person and a very good writer.

Dwight says the first beta for Vista SP1 will be out next week.  If they'd just fix the jacked up way Vista deals with the importation and review of digital photos, I'd be happy.  I find Windows Photo Gallery to be virtually unusable, mainly because it seems to advance through photos by eights (from 12 to 20 to 28, etc.) and I have seen entire civilizations rise and fall in the time it takes to move a large set of photos from a flash card to my hard drive.

(by and via Hugh)

I think I see a lot of people I know in there, probably because I have been their neighbor at times.  I suspect there will be psychology text books written one day analyzing the evolution of the blogosphere as the greatest social experiment of this century.

And we're still in the hunter gatherer stage.

Scott Adams, who is a hypnotist in addition to being the creator of Dilbert and an all-around interesting dude, has a very interesting and informative post about hypnosis.  I learned more about hypnosis in the few minutes it took to read Scott's post than I had learned from all the other information I've come across in my prior 46 years.  Including the time I was hypnotized by the Amazing Kreskin.

It was around 1979-80, while I was in college.  Kreskin came to Wake Forest and did a show in Wait Chapel, where large assemblies and concerts were held at the time.

Some buddies and I went to the show and, at some point, Kreskin asked for volunteers from the audience who would agree to be hypnotized.  After reading Scott's post, I suspect that taking volunteers is a way to increase the likelihood of success by obtaining a group of ready and willing subjects.  All I know is that I raised my hand and was picked, along with a few other people.  We went on stage and sat in some chairs that were placed in a semi-circle.

After giving us the pre-talk Scott writes about, he did a few inductions (I now know the proper lingo), and made us imagine that we were either really hot or really cold.  I don't remember too much about this part, but I must have responded, because he picked me to do a further, more detailed hypnosis.

First, he had me sit and talked me though the relaxation process, very much the way Scott describes.  I remember everything that happened.  I remember feeling very relaxed, but I also remember wondering during the early stages if it was "working."  As I soon found out, it was.

This was during the "who shot J.R." period of the then very popular Dallas TV series.  It was after J.R. was shot, but before we knew who did it.  I didn't watch the show, but like everyone else in America I knew who J.R. was and I knew the general story line.

At some point during the process Kreskin told me that when he brought me out of the trance (to borrow that misleading word), I would know who shot J.R.  I have some vague recollection of him telling me that, but I don't recall making any conclusions about who did it at that moment.

He then brought me back to normal consciousness and told me he had a question for me.  I said OK, and he said "do you know who shot J.R.?"  "Yes," I replied.  "Can you tell us?" he asked.  I immediately pointed at some lady I did not know in the audience and said "that lady right there did."  Everyone howled with laughter.  I remember thinking how weird it was to say that, but I don't remember anything about the decision process that led to me picking that particular lady.  I just somehow decided that she was the one, and for a moment or two it all made sense to me.

At no point was I unconscious or unaware of what was going on around me.  I just felt a little out of it, like I was sleepy or maybe in that state between reality and a dream- but closer to a sleepy reality.  It was weird.

But really fun.

As I've mentioned before, I've read a lot of blogs over the years.  During that time, I've developed some serious likes and dislikes.  My personal belief is that every reader is important, and unless you are at the very top of the Technorati 100, you should work hard to retain every reader.  Conversely, you should avoid things that may cause readers to unsubscribe from your blog.

I'll cover the likes in a series of posts when my swivel feeds experiment is over.  For now, in honor of 7-7-07, here are the seven quickest ways to get removed from my reading list.

1) Use partial feeds.  Unless you write like Cormac McCarthy, you are generally pissing up a rope by trying to force me to your web site in the name of ads, or whatever other illogical and self-defeating reason led you to use partial feeds.  This is especially true for newer and less known bloggers.  Darren Rowse may be able to get away with it, but you almost certainly can't.  If Scoble can push a full feed out the door, so can you.  When my swivel feeds list is complete and I start pruning my personal reading list, partial feeds will be the number one reason blogs get axed.  Not only will these blogs lose a reader, they will also lose the potential for links and cross-blog conversation.

2) Engage in excessive self/blog promotion.  When someone tells you how smart they are, they are almost always lying.  I don't want to read post after post about what a genius you are.  Let me make my own decision based on your writing.  I also don't want to read post after post about your latest give-away or whatever to get people to visit/link/subscribe to your blog.  Don't misunderstand, occasional give-aways, contests, etc. done the right way are both appropriate, fun and productive.  But if you're spending more time acting like a carnival barker than a writer, you are not going to stay on my reading list- or many others.

3) Don't reciprocate conversation/links.  While linking to me and/or commenting here is a very good way to get on my reading list, it's in no way a prerequisite.  It's simply a polite way to tell me about your blog (I subscribe immediately to the large majority of people who link and/or comment, and those who keep my attention get a permanent place in my feeds).  Once you get on my reading list, I will likely reach out to you conversationally.  But, over time, if you don't respond or, even worse, tend to link around me, I'll conclude that you aren't interested in conversing with me and I'll move on.

4) Add scads of junk or filler to your feeds.  One common example of this is posting a big series of photos on your otherwise non-photo blog as separate blog posts.  This results in the Engadget Effect, whereby I get overwhelmed by the sheer number of posts.  Get a Flickr account and post a link to a photo set instead.  You might think the photos of trees and buildings and whatnot from your recent trip to Peoria are fascinating.  I probably don't.  And even if I do, I can see them better via a Flickr set.

5) Bombard me with ads.  I understand about the need to make a little money.  Really, I do.  But just like TV, if the ads overwhelm the content, I will turn the channel.  I am willing to suffer through an unobtrusive ad or two - even in feeds - but I won't suffer through a bunch of ads for a bit of content.  And if you want to get deleted from my reading list immediately, combine partial feeds with banner ads in your feeds.  I dive for the unsubscribe button when that happens.

6) Use a lot of gratuitous profanity.  Anyone who knows me via my job knows that I have been known to curse like the proverbial sailor when provoked.  It's not one of my better qualities, but it demonstrates that I am far from a prude.  Nevertheless, when I'm reading a blog post or watching a video post and every other word is an F-Bomb, it really turns me off.  If you can't make your point without a bunch of gratuitous profanity, then either your point or your writing skills are lacking.

7) Ignore/dismiss the other side of the issue.  I can't stand most talk radio simply because the hosts can only see one side of the issue and either ignore or attack those who feel differently.  If there aren't two sides to an issue, then why write about it?  And if there is another side to the issue, then address it logically and rationally.  It's OK to feel strongly, but if you really feel that way (and are not merely regurgitating what someone spoon-fed you), you should be able to explain why.

Those are the fastest ways to get deleted from my reading list.

What are the fastest ways to get deleted from yours?

This is an update on my swivel feeds experiment, in which I ask bloggers I read to help me rebuild my reading list by adding 5 of their favorite blogs to the list.  I've had a very positive response so far, and my new reading list is coming together nicely, with a diverse and interesting mix of bloggers.  When the list is complete, I will share it and upload an OPML file for those who are interested.

Here's how it works.  Every few days I ask a group of 8 of my favorite bloggers to each recommend 5 blogs to add to the list.  I post the recommended blogs in a subsequent update, and add them to my swivel feeds list.  Each update has a list of the recent blog recommendations, followed by the next 8 bloggers I am asking to add blogs to the list. 

Here are the swivel feeds recommendations so far from the seventh group, plus any stragglers from prior groups.  Note that, when possible, I designate blogs by the name of the blogger, because I like to know who I'm talking to.

There has been some confusion about who is supposed to recommend what.  The single column list below are the new blogs that got added to the list by the last group of bloggers.  The new list of bloggers I am asking to add blogs to the list is near the bottom of this post.

RECENT ADDITIONS 

Blog Business Summit
Brian Oberkirch
Dogster Blog
FresHDV
Giovanni Rodriguez
Imagethief
Mike Manuel
One Degree
PaidContent
Paper Ghost
Shel Israel
Stuart Brown
TED Blog
Think

I have subscribed to all of the recommended blogs, and all but one are new additions to my reading list.

The blogs listed above join the following prior recommendations and participants in the sixth edition of my new reading list.  Links to inform others about our swivel feeds collaborative reading list experiment would be much appreciated, but are by no means a condition to inclusion.

SWIVEL FEEDS LIST TO DATE

From Group 7, I haven't received recommendations from John Dvorak, John Watson, Karl Martino, Kevin Briody, Kevin Hales, Kevin Maney or Larry Borsato.  From Group 6, I haven't received recommendations from JD Lasica, Jeneane Sessum, Jeremy Zawodny or Jimmy Huen.  My general policy is to assume non-participation after 2 weeks.

From Group 5, Guy Kawasaki, Henry Blodget and Hugh MacLeod did not make any recommendations.  All have been dropped from the swivel feeds list.  Hugh and Guy get a "sponsor's exemption" and will remain on my personal reading list.

Now for the next 8 bloggers each of whom I am asking to add 5 blogs to the list:

NEW LIST OF BLOGGERS TO ADD 5 BLOGS TO THE LIST

Louis Gray: We certainly don't always agree on everything, but I enjoy his blog- even when he is crapping all over me :)

Marc Canter: Marc is a long time read and the CEO of Broadband Mechanics, the company behind People Aggregator.

Mark Evans: Another long time read who writes about tech, telecom and other interesting issues.

Martin Gordon: One more long time read, who writes about tech, social networks and other interesting stuff.

Matt Moran: A relatively new blog in my feeds list, Matt is into family, tech and music- also my three favorite things.

Michael Parekh: Even though he's a Tarheel (Go Deacs), I've read his blog for a long time.  He writes about lots of tech-related topics.

Mike Seyfang: I met Mike through Dave Wallace, and enjoy both this blog and his podcast.

Niall Kennedy: I started reading Niall when he was at Technorati.  He's now a web technologist living in San Francisco. 

That's the eighth group of bloggers I'm asking to help rebuild my reading list.  If you're willing, please recommend 5 of your favorite blogs to add to the list.  Use your blog, the comments or email, whichever you prefer.