I just uploaded the latest edition of our RanchoCast podcast.
No particular theme tonight, just some good alternative country and Americana songs. I play songs by Whiskeytown, Uncle Tupelo, Steve Pride, Robert Bobby, Neko Case, Mark Barker and others.
I also talk in some detail about the forthcoming new versions of Gmail, Windows Live Mail and Yahoo Mail, which I discussed in an earlier post.
Best of all, Cassidy joins me and introduces her first ever podcast song selection.
Guy Kawasaki has a great post today about email etiquette. I agree with pretty much all of his rules, but there is one that should have a series of treatises written about it:
Use plain text. I hate HTML email. I tried it for a while, but it’s not worth the trouble of sending or receiving it. All those pretty colors and fancy type faces and styles make me want to puke. Cut to the chase: say what you have to say in as brief and plain manner as possible. If you can’t say it in plain text, you don’t have anything worth saying.
Amen. I could write 10,000 words and not begin to tell you how much I dislike html emails. I don’t get many html emails at home, since most of the people who email me at home fall on either end of the html email spectrum: they either don’t know how to send an html email or they know better.
But at the office- that’s a horse of another color. Typically a pastel color, with little cats or bears or yodas or something on them that is intended as stationary but ends up as rage inducing fluff. I would guess that around half the emails I get at the office are html email. The colorful text is bad enough, but the fancy, funky, indecipherable fonts on top of the wild colors and dancing yodas turn communication into frustration.
Outlook lets you force emails to display as plain text, and I use that feature some. But elaborate emails that contain something I need to read can get all jumbled up when transformed from foolishness to function.
I really, really, really don’t like html email.
Mike Arrington (who will one day link to Newsome.Org, even if he doesn’t know it yet) has a post today about the various real-time news aggregators who are racing to be the next Memeorandum. Some of them I knew about, some of them I didn’t. I’m going to take a real-time look at each and see what I think.
Do I Love It: Madly. I’ve talked a ton about Memeorandum, so there’s not much more I can say. It is the New York Times of the blogosphere and the first site I read every morning.
Does It Love Me: Most of the time. Many of my posts show up there. There have been periods in the past where they don’t for a while. But I have defended it as one of the most equal opportunity sites in the blogosphere and I will continue to do so.
Conclusion: The undisputed king of the hill.
Do I Love It: We just met, but so far I’m pretty infatuated. I like the interface a lot, even though it is not as eloquent at Memeorandum’s. I’ve found a lot of good stuff here. One of my daily reads.
Does It Love Me: So far. Many of my posts show up there.
Conclusion: Definitely has legs and will be a major player in the aggregation and content mining game.
Do I Love It: Pretty much, though it is a work in progress. I mentioned it the other day. It seems to have a broader focus (but not too broad), which gives me links to stories I don’t always see elsewhere. I like the Flickr Wall.
Does It Love Me: So far. Some, but not all, of my applicable posts show up there.
Conclusion: A work in progress, but very promising.
Do I Love It: Well, as a self-proclaimed customer evangelist for Technorati, I better say yes. The truth is that I like it OK, but I don’t use it nearly as much as I do some of the others. Plus, it seems a little heavy on the A-Listers, which may mean that it’s solely link driven.
Does It Love Me: I don’t know. I’ve never seen one of my posts there, but I haven’t looked all that much.
Conclusion: I like it, but I don’t love it.
Do I Love It: I’m starting to have feelings for it. I like its straight forward interface, more than Chuquet’s but a little less than Megite’s. I read it every day, so it must be doing something right.
Does It Love Me: At first it hated me, now it’s starting to like me a little. Some, but not nearly all, my posts show up there. Hopefully, we’re going to start going steady soon.
Conclusion: Part of the Big Three princes in Memeorandum’s kingdom, along with Megite and Chuquet.
Do I Love It: I don’t know. It seems extremely weighted toward the “Top 100” blogs. I didn’t see any links there I haven’t seen elsewhere already today. Maybe this is designed as a way for new blog readers to find the most popular blogs. I do like the page design a lot. I just don’t know how inclusive it is.
Does It Love Me: I don’t know. I can’t see any way to view the archives or to search the site. My hunch is that it doesn’t love me.
Conclusion: Seems like it might be a closed system to me, but I can’t be sure. Requires further study.
Do I Love It: Sort of, but it’s more of a straight news site and I get that sort of news elsewhere. I can see the attraction for someone more news-interested, though. The sub-pages are too busy.
Does It Love Me: Almost certainly not.
Conclusion: Good execution, but less interesting to me than many of the others.
Do I Love It: Not really. It’s simple interface would be good for mobile users.
Does It Love Me: Sadly, no. There are posts that link to me in the list, but none of mine.
Conclusion: I’m impressed that someone could create this, but I get most of this content already elsewhere.
Do I Love It: Not really. It’s a part of a larger content aggregation page and it has blogs on all topics in a single category. Too broad for me.
Does It Love Me: I don’t know. Probably not.
Conclusion: Not a true blog aggregator by my definition.
On Deck
Newroo and Tinfinger (launching soon). I’ll write about them once I have the chance to check them out. Beta invites welcome.
Months after I got invited to beta test Gmail and Windows Live Mail (the upcoming successor to Hotmail), I finally got my invitation to beta test the new version of Yahoo Mail the other day. Now that I’ve used all three, here are three things I like and three I don’t about each.
Was the wait for Yahoo Mail worth it? Maybe- it’s pretty cool. Let’s take a quick look at all three applications:
Gmail
I Like:
1) The ads are unobtrusive. This is a huge advantage at the moment.
2) The Compose Mail window is the best of show. Lots of features, clean, uncluttered layout.
3) The Gmail Manager extension for Firefox makes it very easy to manage multiple Gmail accounts. A big advantage if you use multiple email addresses.
I Don’t Like:
1) No folders: I am still a folder guy when it comes to email storage.
2) If you’re used to Outlook, it’s a little hard to navigate.
3) Web Clips should be in addition to, not in lieu of, full RSS features.
Windows Live Mail
I Like:
1) If you use IE, the layout, look and feel are very similar to Outlook.
2) The multiple sort options in you inbox (by date, from, subject and size).
3) Great integration of email, calendar and contacts.
I Don’t Like:
1) Many features don’t work with Firefox. The Live Mail team is working on this and I suspect it will be a temporary problem.
2) I couldn’t figure out how to import calendar and contacts from Outlook. Hopefully this is coming. If I could synch between my home and office computers using Live Mail, that would be a huge advantage.
3) Needs RSS features.
Yahoo Mail
I Like:
1) It seems very well designed in general. The slight leader over Live Mail at the moment.
2) The calendar view and features are great.
3) RSS implementation is well done. I’ll never read the majority of my feeds in an email application (for these reasons), but some RSS feeds (like newspaper headlines, etc.) are perfect for reading in an email application.
I Don’t Like:
1) It crashes sometimes when I access it with Firefox.
2) Bad ad implementation- a great big ad at the top right. Again, use unobtrusive text ads.
3) I don’t like the contacts view nearly as much as I like the view in Outlook. Give us some display options here.
Conclusions
I have moved my RSS feed reading almost exclusively online. But because my primary email address is not a Gmail, Live Mail or Yahoo address, I still read most of my mail offline, via Outlook. Yahoo lets you retrieve your other email, which is handy if you want to access your email via someone else’s computer. But if you have your computer, it’s always going to be easier just to access your other email directly, via Outlook, etc.
All three applications have great features working in their favor. All three are still in beta, so the story isn’t over. But as of today, if I had to pick one to use as my primary email application, it would probably be Yahoo, because of the RSS implementation and the ability to access my primary email if I need to. If Live Mail gets Firefox friendly and adds RSS capability and POP mail retrieval, its Outlook-like features will give it the edge.
My prediction: Yahoo is ahead at the moment, but Live Mail will catch up. Gmail will be everyone’s “second” email address for a while until Google capitulates and makes a more traditional inbox structure an option.
Long term, all three will have significant market share, which is a win for the consumer.
At least according to this article in the Times of London (which presumably is read by the Werewolves of London).
I don’t even know where to start, so let’s take this story paragraph by paragraph.
Google is working on a project to create its own global internet protocol (IP) network…
I was thinking just the other day that I wanted another internet. If one is good, two or three would be better. I was going to call my old jogging buddy Al Gore and ask him to invent another one. Now I don’t have to, because Google already did it.
Last month, Google placed job advertisements in America and the British national press for “Strategic Negotiator candidates…
Strategic Negotiator must be a negotiator who uses more strategy. I bet the frugal ones drive Pre-Owned Cars. I don’t know what dark fibre is (the re must mean that it’s not a thread), but this all sounds too James Bond to be real. I think Google is messing with us.
Dark fibre is the remnants of late 1990s internet boom where American web companies laid down fibre optic cables in preparation for high speed internet delivery…
OK, now I get it. Sort of like what 360Networks was going to do back in the nineties when I bought all that stock that later became worthless. Maybe Google can get into alchemy too while they’re trying all these old get rich quick schemes.
Late last year, Google purchased a 270,000 sq ft telecom interconnection facilities in New York. It is believed that from here, Google plans to link up and power the dark fibre system and turn it into a working internet network of its own.
This paragraph pretty much speaks for itself. Shoot, everyone should have their own internet. Maybe Google can mass produce internets at some of the abandoned automobile plants that Michael Moore likes to talk about. I think I see a movie possibility here.
It was also reported in November that Google was buying shipping containers and building data centres within them, possibly with the aim of using them at significant nodes within the worldwide cable network…
I actually know a guy who wants to buy cargo containers and turn them into housing for retirees. When he told us about it the other day on the way to Galveston, I laughed so hard I almost wrecked the car. I hope he doesn’t care that I’m talking about it on this internet, or that Google is going to corner the market on cargo containers the way the Hunt brothers did with silver back in the day.
Google has long been rumoured to be planning to launch a PC to retail for less than $100…
Well, that was sort of a left turn, but someone has to use all these new internets and what better way to ensure that happens than to give a bunch of really crappy computers to poor people and make them watch Google Ads over one of the Google Internets while using a Google Computer. I predict a line of cars will be the next step in Google world dominance. After they abandon the mass production of internets, they’ll have to find something to do with all those automobile/internet factories.
[[[I’m going to skip a few paragraphs because they aren’t ludicrous enough to warrant comment.]]]
However, industry insiders fear that the development of a network of Google Cubes powered over a Google-owned internet network will greatly increase the power that Google wields over online publishers and internet users.
Really? Ya think?
Should Google successfully launch an alternative network, it is theoretically possible for them to block out competitor websites and only allow users to access websites that have paid Google to be shown to their users.
Nobody will be upset about that, particularly after all the hell raising Google and others have done about the telecos trying to toll the pipes on the existing internet. Assuming this isn’t a joke (and I believe it is either a joke or a tragically funny misunderstanding), this is just Google thumbing its nose at the telecos. PR by satire.
However, the moves towards providing equipment for as little as £60 will prove popular with home users and even governments, who will welcome the spread of the internet to homes that could not previously afford the intital costs of purchasing PCs.
Well isn’t that heart warming. We’re going to build a bunch of internets and give you some near-computers so you can stare at our ads and use our internet(s) all day long. I’m surprised the Red Cross hasn’t already done this.
Contacted by Times Online today, a spokesperson for Google denied that it had any such plans…
Let’s hope not, because if it’s true, we’re all living in a Monty Python movie.
Don Dodge has a very interesting interview with Gabe Rivera, the creator of Memeorandum.
In the interview, Gabe talks about the creation of Memeorandum and addresses several of the issues I talked about the other day when defending Memeorandum from what I felt was undue criticism.
Memeorandum is not perfect, but it is the place to start if you want to know and read about the hottest tech topics of the day.
I’ve been vaguely following the release of the public beta of Internet Explorer 7. There have been some good reviews, some bug reports and a lot of hubbub in general.
In the past, I would have immediately downloaded the program, installed it and used it exclusively. But this time…I am profoundly uninterested. I am convinced that IE has fallen so far behind Firefox (mostly thanks to the multitude of add-ons and extensions) that the race is over. Some reviews cheer the addition of RSS and predict that IE 7 will spell the end of many feed readers. I think not.
For one thing, there are a lot of very good feed readers out there now, and anyone who is already using one is, by virtue of knowing what RSS is and how to read it, reasonably tech savvy and unlikely to abandon whatever reader he or she is currently using in favor of IE 7. Additionally, the killer news reader application will be an online, not offline, reader. The sole reason I use Bloglines is because, while not perfect, it provides synchronization of my feeds, regardless of whether I use my home computer, my office computer or my laptop. If I mark a feed as “read” at home, it’s still “read” when I check later from the office. No need to reread and remark old posts, the way I would have to with an offline reader.
I suggested weeks ago that Microsoft figure out some way to easily synchronize feeds over multiple computers, perhaps via Foldershare. Until that happens, RSS in IE is a nice feature, but it won’t reshape the RSS world.
The other stuff IE 7 adds is nice, but again, Firefox is so far ahead, I think Microsoft is playing for second- at least as far as the technorati goes. Granted, IE will always have a huge user base because it will be the browser of choice for the out of the box computer users. But I just can’t get fired up about it.
Can anyone tell me why I should care about IE 7?
As I continue to sift through Scoble’s blogroll and call for good blogs to read, I read a lot of blogs. In fact, I have read hundreds of blogs in the past few months. I have found a lot of interesting blogs, and I have seen a lot of blogs fall into the death spiral of neglect. I have seen some great designs and some not so great designs. I have added quite a few blogs to my blogroll. Many have stayed on there, some have fallen off.
I’ve made it a point to note what it is about a blog that makes me start reading it regularly and ultimately add it to my blogroll. Here are five steps to good blogging. There are other things that help make a good blog, but to keep it simple, I have settled on the big five.
1) Know Your Topics and Add Original Content
By the time I find a blog, I’ve already seen links to the hot topics of the day. I want to read an original perspective from someone who has thought about the topic for more than the 30 seconds it takes to add a link to somebody else’s post. I want to know why conventional wisdom on a subject is right or why it’s wrong. Make me think about something in a new or different way.
There’s nothing wrong with a quick link to a particularly interesting post or a regular posting of interesting links- in fact equal opportunity linking is a requirement (see Step 4 below). Link posts are appreciated, but original thought is what gets a blog on my blogroll.
2) Don’t Be too Narrow or too Broad
I like blogs that contain posts on a fairly broad range of topics. My dream blog is some combination of tech, music, humor, movies, family life and current events. But any good mix that includes some stuff I care about will work. A broad selection of topics provides more opportunity for me to find something on a regular basis that really interests me, plus I get to learn about new things.
On the other hand, Step 1 requires that you know something about your primary areas of focus, so you can’t try to cover everything. If your coverage area is too broad, your blog looks like a mini-USA Today (which is fine, but there’s already a USA Today). If your coverage is too narrow, there’s not enough variety to keep my full attention. Stated another way, I will scan the headlines of a blog that’s very narrowly focused to see if there’s a post I want to read, but I am less likely to read or even skim every post.
Try to find the sweetspot, but if you have to err, err on the side of being broad.
3) Don’t Act Like a Rock Star, Because You Aren’t
Nobody likes people who are abundantly self-important in the real world, and the same rule applies in the blogosphere. Look, blogs are great- I am writing on one this very second. But at the end of the day, blogs are merely turbo-charged, online, public versions of the diary my daughter writes in and then goes to great lengths to hide from her siblings (if you are irritated at me after reading that, you may be a rock star in training).
So even if you’re the greatest blogger who ever lived, you’re still someone who writes a cyber-diary to share primarily with other cyber-diary writers. Most people I know (and most people you know) either have no idea what a blog is or think blogging is for nerds. If you start thinking you’re a big star just because a lot of other nerds read your online diary, you need to aim higher. Go outside.
There are lots of popular bloggers who fully get this. But there are also some who think they are celebrities and consider returning an email an autograph and acknowledging another blogger a great blessing.
4) Lead Me to Other Good Places; Be an Equal Opportunity Linker
I love blogs that do my work for me. Review a new product, or a book or movie. Tell me about new software I don’t know about. Be my online newspaper and lead me to good content. Memeorandum is the best at this. Tom Morris is great at it.
But don’t link exclusively to the sites I already know about. I read Om (509 days now without a link to Newsome.Org). I read Scoble. I read Steve Rubel (I am getting close to getting a link from Steve by earning my way up the hill). I’ve already read those blogs by the time I get to yours. So show me something I haven’t already seen.
Give me a link to someone I don’t read every day who has something interesting to say. Be an equal opportunity linker. There are a lot of other smart and funny people out there- help me find them.
5) Be a Person, Not a Website
While I read most of my content via Bloglines, I still think there is a place for web site content. Through sidebar photo feeds, music lists and other content, the blogger becomes a person to me, not just a website. Write sometimes about the movie you took your kids to see. Tell me about you- your background, your family, your triumphs and your challenges. Become real to me. That’s the essence of community building and it makes people feel connected by more than the occasional cross-link.
Those are the things that make a blog interesting to me.
What do you look for in a blog?
Laurence Timms sent me a comment the other day about his project, Chuquet, which looks like a great new resource in my never ending search for good blogs to read.
Memeorandum is the king of the content finders for me and the first site I read every day, but Chuquet’s straight forward design and its Flickr Wall has earned it a place on my daily reading list.
I am constantly looking for good blogs to read and write about here, so Chuquet is a welcome addition to my content finding tools.
Check it out. I bet you’ll bookmark it too.
Newsome.Org 