Month: December 2005

Grateful Dead Reconsiders

gratefuldead

The other day I talked about the Grateful Dead’s decision to remove downloadable recordings of their live shows from the internet and the outcry that resulted. I predicted that the band would reconsider and a compromise would be reached. In fact, I suggested that audience recordings and soundboard recordings should be treated differently.

Well, that seems to be exactly what happened. The band has decided to allow the audience recordings to be reposted and to be freely downloadable. The soundboard recordings will be availble as a stream (meaning they can be heard but not downloaded).

This is a fair solution.

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ScobleFeeds A-Z: The B’s

This is part two of my A-Z review of Scoble’s feeds. The rules and criteria are here.

First, some housekeeping. I have decided that Bloglines is worthless. Most of the posts in the feeds I imported there appear to be months old- even though most of the blogs have many newer posts. For some reason, Bloglines is not picking up all the posts in a feed. So I dumped Bloglines and imported Scoble’s OPML file into FeedDemon. Hopefully this will work better- it can’t be any worse. I’d prefer a web based reader for this task, but if Bloglines is representative of how those work, I’ll pass.

Now, for my favorite feed from the B’s:

Bernie DeKoven’s FunLog (RSS Feed)

Bernie DeKoven’s FunLog is a blog about fun. It’s that simple. With a world full of blogs about technology, politics, music, Web 2.0 (whatever the hell that is) and other “important stuff” it’s refreshing to find a blog about origami, croquet, cubicle bowling and other “fun” stuff.

Honorable Mention:

Blog Maverick (RSS Feed)

BoingBoing (RSS Feed) (ineligible because I, like everyone else, already read it)

Blog Consulting & Professional Blogging a View from the Isle ( RSS Feed) (Might have warranted a tie, but got a much deserved too long name penalty)

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Why Doesn't Drudge Blog?

As I have mentioned before, blogging software represents an evolutionary leap in web site content management. The right software and the right template make adding, editing, archiving and removing content a whole lot easier than it used to be. It also makes for a visually appealing and well organized web site.

So, given all of that, why does the Drudge Report still look like this? I used to start there first for breaking news, but good blog layouts have spoiled me and now I find his page to be very hard to read. A good blog makeover would do wonders for that page.

I would actually prefer a current RSS feed, but even if that’s not going to happen, a new layout would suffice.

Drudge, you’re still the man, but you need to fix your page in a big way. Set up a blog format, with sidebars and archives. Heck, do a podcast if you’re so inclined. You’ve got good content, but it’s just too hard to access and read.

Blog and blog now.

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