It’s about Finding New Links, Part IV – The RSS Blog
More link wrangling with Randy Charles Morin
Browsing archives for September, 2005
Web 2.0 is Many Things, But I Doubt it’s a $2,800 Conference
It's 3am and I should be asleep, so I'll just link to Ted's Internet37.0 unrant.
Oakley Thermonuclear Protection
Remember those ubiquitous Oakley "Thermonuclear Protection" stickers from way back in the mid-late 80's (early 90's maybe)?
Anyway, I saw one this morning, proudly adorning the back window of some nondescript SUV, and it bought back a flood of memories...Oakley Frogskins anyone?
And do you remember before Oakley made sunglasses they were most notable for their wicked cool moulded handle bar grips for MX and BMX?! I so wanted some of those.
I did a Google image search for Oakley Thermonuclear Protection and came up empty (all 35 pages of results)...amazing, until you think that the internet wasn't in the public domain back then.
I did however find this interesting story about the history of Oakley. A good read.
Classic Oakley Frogskins...
 SAMVETTE POLARIZED BLACK ONYX LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS  US $24.95
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 used oakley frogskins trevor trouble andrew glow in the dark US $600.00
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED SILVER LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED GOLD DUST LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED DEEP BLUE LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 OAKLEY Mens Frogskin Sunglasses 100 Authentic US $99.00
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED OCEAN BLUE LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED P GREEN LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED REVO BLUE LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 Oakley Frogskins Polished Clear Violet Originals US $120.00
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 Oakley Frogskins Polarized US $90.00
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 Oakley Frogskins Brand New In Box Blue US $71.00
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 SAMVETTE POLARIZED SKY BLUE LENS FOR OAKLEY FROGSKINS US $24.95
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 Oakley frogskins sunglasses clear frame US $39.00
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 New Walleva Polarized Titanium Lenses For Oakley Frogskins US $23.68
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Advertising and Feedreaders (again!)
NOTE: This post has been sitting unpublished for awhile now...so I decided to go ahead ready or not...
Alex King and co. are developing a new web based feedreader, Feedlounge, which looks really promising.
But they will have a challenge when it comes to making money out of it if they need to use advertising to support the free version. Alex has posted his thoughts on the subject here.
The problem is this legal gray area around placing advertising around feed content. I have been through this myself and ended up closing down Rollup.org, because I didn't want to get off side with publishers and it seemed to me there is a fundemental problem with putting advertising around feeds, regardless of whether the advertising is contextual or not.
Alex points out some examples of using ads around content to support the provision of a service, but I don't think that these examples, services like gmail or forums, are relevant. Sure, gmail places contextual ads next to your content, ie. content you own the copyright to. But this was explicit from the start...you signed up to use the service knowing that this was part of the deal. Likewise any content you create and contribute to a forum or via a free (ad supported) blogging service. In these kinds of examples you knew that ads were part of the equation.
However, if you run a blog and provide a feed, you have the right to provide that feed for non commercial puposes only. Even if that feed is not full text you have the right to insist that it is only used for non commercial puposes. In this scenario it is not cool for someone to syndicate your RSS feed onto their own "aggregator blog" around which they place ads. And I think it is similarly not cool for a web based RSS aggregator to put ads around your feed content aswell...that the aggregator is trying to monetise the service (and not the content) is irrelevant...you provided your feed for non commerical purposes.
For me the test is to ask yourself if you would be happy for your feed content to be aggregated on another web site, along with a few other feeds, and surrounded by Google Adsense? Arguably the site is providing a service by aggregating the related content into one place, but I don't think that justifies the use of Adsense to make money off others' content.
The Opera example is an interesting one because they ran the ad supported model for a long time, but the recent announcement makes this irrelevant now. I wonder if they felt themselves butting up aginst the same issue, highlited perhaps by the increasing number of web based feed readers raising awareness (?).
Feedreaders potentially reduce the content owners ability to monetize traffic. I might produce a feed with intro's only and I don't want to include ads in my feed because the summary items are ads in themselves for my content (which you have to visit the site to see). Or I might produce full content feeds and provide these for non commerical purposes, ie. it is not cool for anyone else to use the feed to make $$. The only feasible model for feed readers then is to charge for them...or get acquired by some larger web concern where they can become a portal feature rather than a profit center in their own right ;)
FeedCommerce
Here's a little idea...turn your Yahoo! stores XML feed into an RSS feed.
Why?...maybe to make it easy to syndicate your product catalogue on other sites using services like FeedrollPro. Or maybe just to make your catalogue searchable by all the new RSS search engines.
This is just an idea, and a half baked one at that...To be really useful you need to be able to output all sorts of different feeds from your Yahoo! store (by category, top sellers etc), and the ability to support affiliates with your feeds.
Anyway, I am increasingly pondering this 'feed commerce' stuff so would love to know what you think.
Classic…50 Reasons Why We Can’t Change
Courtesy of A Penny For...
50 Reasons Why We Can't Change:
We've never done it before.
Nobody else has ever done it.
It has never been tried before.
We tried it before.
Another company/person tried it before.
We've been doing it this way for 25 years.
It won't work in a small company.
It won't work in a large company.
It won't work in our company.
Why change--it's working OK.
The boss will never buy it.
It needs further investigation.
Our competitors are not doing it.
It's too much trouble to change.
Our company is different.
The ad department says it can't be done.
Sales department says it can't be done.
The service department won't like it.
The janitor says it can't be done.
It can't be done.
We don't have the money.
We don't have the personnel.
We don't have the equipment.
The union will scream.
It's too visionary.
You can't teach an old dog new tricks.
It's too radical a change.
It's beyond my responsibility.
It's not my job.
We don't have the time.
It will obsolete other procedures.
Customers won't buy it.
It's contrary to policy.
It will increase overhead.
The employees will never buy it.
It's not our problem.
I don't like it.
You're right, but...
We're not ready for it.
It needs more thought.
Management won't accept it.
We can't take the chance.
We'd lose money on it.
It takes too long to pay out.
We're doing all right as is.
It needs committee study.
Competition won't like it.
It needs sleeping on.
It won't work in this department.
It's impossible.
E.F. Borish,
Product Manager,
Milwaukee Gear Company,
Product Engineering Magazine
July 20, 1959
[This was published in the November 1993 prototype version of Fast Company].
It’s not the size that counts
Mena Trott and the 37 Signals folks have had a bit of back and forth on the relative advantages/disadvatanges of small and large teams in business. Interesting, but the real question is what works for you? There's lots of 'big' companies that do OK, and lots of small companies that do well also.
If a big company isn't managing their business well they'll lose business to smaller nimbler players...or maybe they'll organize themselves a bit better, around smaller teams, focussed on smaller problems. In my experience it is the tendancy of large organisations to try and boil the ocean that causes the kind of tension and inefficiency that people normally use to characterize big biz. But it doesn't have to be that way. I don't know for sure, but my impression of a (largish) company like Google is that they are good at deploying smaller focussed teams on specific problems and nailing them very efficiently.
Oh, and by the way I'd still call 6A a small company.
Oblique Info…you can say that again
WTF is this?
Just trying out the new Google Blog Search (ego searching) and I found this entry, entitled "Cory Doctorow" at some blog called Oblique Info. That's just plain weird.
UPDATE: OK OK, that explains it...looked a bit closer and it seems this site is some sort of blogging bot...so now it goes from category "comedy" to category "tech".
Draper Fisher Jurvetson in the Ukraine
I missed this announcement back in July about DFJ starting a new VC fund in the Ukraine...interesting stuff. Based on my own experience with developers based there I am a real fan...smart, dedicated, and they've got initiative. I expect great things as long as they can keep the politics in check and the government continues the drive toward a free and open economy.
Indi, if they can do it in Estonia...!!!
Summoning the Lazy Web…
I want a microformat plugin for WordPress. I could mess around with additional fields and posting templates, but it would be way cooler if this was a super simple plugin.
Specifically I want to post hReview formatted reviews, but while we're at it why not something which can handle hCalendar aswell for posting event info.
I had a hunt around and was surprised not to find anything, so please tell me if this already exists.