Desirable Roasted Coffee is not G rated...

While it doesn't exactly explain a month's hiatus from the Noble Blogosphere, I will say I've been put off blogging ever since -- that is, since 4:04 PM today -- I found out my blog is G-rated. G-rated? Only one thing to do. Jump back into the fray and get that rating to R -- at the very least -- by Christmas.

Hopkins is crowing that he's G-rated, but he would be what with that rock wallaby case coming up. Kami Huyse is G-rated, too. Hat tip to both.

    Technorati : Kami Huyse, Lee Hopkins, Mingle2, blog ratings

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 07:17pm in Blog Management, Gadgets & Toys, Humor | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3)

Updated blogroll and the headaches of organizing feeds

I've been of a mixed mind about blogrolls -- (for those new to blogging, that's the list of other blogs you sometimes see in the left or right column of a blog).

It adds a lot of clutter to a page. You can pare it down, of course, but that's a lose-lose route. How do you choose who to keep and who to prune? The bloggers I "cut" might be the ones you find the most useful and, anyway, cutting anyone runs against my ideal of the Internet. Should I stay strictly professional? Or include blogs that reflect what I'm interested in?

Well, I am not going to worry about it anymore. Here it is -- all the blogs I read. It's not pretty (on Bloglines, how could it be?), but at least it isn't in the left column. And I can keep it updated without too much work. It's 400+ blogs, including some of the best communicators on the planet. But it also includes some stuff that's just me -- The Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society, for example, or the incomparable Map Room, or the Phnomenon: food of Cambodia blog.

But I wonder... how do the rest of you organize blogs? How do you organize your daily reading? I once had a system of "must reads, should reads and can reads," but that quickly went south. Then I thought I would rely on my most trusted colleagues to filter stuff for me, but they are not always fast enough. And, of course, they don't read the Map Room.

At a recent Copenhagen geekish gathering, several of us discussed what a joy it would be to have a feedreader -- it would probably have to be online -- that could somehow track and measure the content you seem to be most interested in, then toss posts into likely buckets. Say I go away on vacation and, while I am away, some ruckus develops about IABC, a subject I would take great interest in. My intelligent feedreader, knowing this, would have the relevant posts in a folder for me upon my return. Yes, I know I can "sort of" do this with Technorati, but that's not the same.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 06:29pm in Blog Management | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (8)

How to use blogs

Elizabeth Albrycht brings us a coolio slide by Ansgar Zerfass. My first sense is that it needs tweaking -- crisis blogs might help solve some conflicts, but not complex ones -- but I like the idea of mapping this.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 12:45am in Blog Management, Communication Skills, Corporate Communication, Knowledge Management, Online Media | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1)

Steve Rubel lashes out at the Blogging for Benjamins crowd... about time, I’d say

If Steve Rubel isn't the most cautious person in the communication blogosphere, he's surely in the running. Over the last 18 months, 99% of whatever edginess was in Micropersuasion has ebbed away, leaving little but neutral thoughts and (invariably useful) links.

So it was with great pleasure that I read Steve's swipe at Copyblogger, a blog that purports to teach us poor slobs "how to sell with blogs and RSS."

Steve writes in part (and he's dead on target):

"Arrrgggh! Copyblogger is propagating the whole school of thought that blogging is just about getting more traffic. They have even published a how-to guide. Well, I am here to tell you, it's not."

Cheekily, he invites Copyblogger to pack up and go home:

"My suggestion is that if you're blogging solely for building Web traffic and Google Juice, go build a Web site and advertise it on Google instead. Blogs are about being part of a community. Join it, add value to it, but don't focus on the traffic."

I will give Copyblogger credit for not being as crass as that crowd at Performancing, where search engine manipulation and splogging is the order of the day. But that's the extent of my credit.

Hit 'em again, Steve!

Technorati: copyblogger, steve rubel, micropersuasion

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 01:21pm in Blog Management, Blogging for Benjamins, Communication | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (6)

Feedburner Launches PingShot

FeedBurner, the RSS-feed manager used by many blogs, including this one, has added a pinging service: PingShot. That's a nice feature, because now I don't have to trot over to Ping-o-Matic to ping everyone.

FeedBurner seems to be doing little to promote the new service, though. So it's a good thing Josh Hallett at hyku spotted it and let the rest of the world know.

By the way... are you subscribed to Desirable Roasted Coffee? If not, here's my FeedBurner link.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:32am in Blog Management, Blogging, RSS | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (0)

On "Blogging for Benjamins"

Joseph Jaffe is confused about what Blogging for Benjamins is... Bubba, just ask: The Desirable Roasted Coffee Dictionary is an open book.

blog'ging for ben'jamins. The act of weblogging for the purpose of direct fee earning from visitors to the weblog, generally through advertising click-through or the sale of reports of dubious quality; often  characterized by excessive interest in search-engine optimization, Technorati rank, "professional" blogging and "monetizing the blog". [f. E weblogging + benjamins (US street slang for 100 dollar bill, f. image of Benjamin Franklin on bill)]

Regular readers of Desirable Roasted Coffee know exactly the type to which I refer.

Update:  Blogger for Benjamins Muffin Komando writes in today's McPaper about Blogging for Benjamins.  Hey, Steve! Sign her up for the Pro Bloggers Association. I am sure y'all could make her a licensed blogger. She doesn't blog, but her heart is in the right place.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 08:53am in Blog Management, Blogging for Benjamins, Intellectual Property | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (1)

Cover Your Ass: Who Owns Blog Comments?

Through Amy Gahran's OPML file, I ran across this gem by Charles M. Smith, an attorney and board member of Pheedo (and, no, I am not in any way endorsing Pheedo)..

"Who owns blog comments?

"The question of who owns comments has recently come up several times in conversation. This is a fairly straight-forward copyright issue.... Under copyright law, the blog comment author is the owner of the comment and his/her copyrights are triggered at the moment the comment is added to the blog."

Then, and you have to love Smith's understatement:

"The consequences of this simple analysis could be painful for blog operators."

"Why on Earth", I hear you all asking... Well, Smith lays it out (I've added snide emphasis):

"First, the author of a blog comment could request that his/her comment be removed from a blog. While it is an easy process to remove a comment, the harm to a blog could be substantial. Especially if the comment removed is central to the community discussion/dialogue around a given topic. This could severely impact the value of a blog and reduce its following/readership.

"Second, many blog operators make money by running contextual display ads on the same page as comments. The author of a comment could claim that a portion of the blog’s advertising dollars belongs to him because his comment is helping to generate the ad revenue.

"Third, in the course of performing maintenance on a blog or when a blog is moved to a new server - there is likely an additional copy of blog comments made in the transition. While this can be viewed as a trivial matter, it could technically constitute a copyright violation. This issue becomes the more problematic for companies with deep pockets. Keep in mind that authors may seek compensation from those who make unauthorized copies or reproductions of their works."

Not only do I find this instructive, I find it highly amusing. Now the Blogging for Benjamins crowd needs to worry about whether their revenue will be sucked off by some litigious commenter.

Unfortunately, (and isn't always just so?) Smith gives an out to the B4B folks by posting a Terms of Service clause for bloggers. And it's a piece of work. I can see all sorts of advantages, and I am considering its merits. Is it time for bloggers to Cover Your Ass?

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 11:59am in Blog Management, Blogging, Blogging for Benjamins, Law, RSS | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (3) | TrackBack (0)

PubSub LinkRanks looking Pretty Good!

A couple of weeks ago, I noted that PubSub's LinkRank (now called LinkCounts, apparently) feature was back up but buggy. Almost immediately, PubSub's Mark Wagner and Bob Wyman were Johnny-on-the-Spot with news of fixes and requests for feedback.

Today, Mark sent me this mail. And it's true, the site is looking and working as it should from where I sit.

"We have been continuing to work on our LinkCounts pages based, in part, on your previous feedback. We have "quietly" slipped out an update of the pages.  Several things that you had mentioned have been addressed. We have started tracking Shel's blog and we have fixed the "Site Converter" so that it now properly identifies Warren's blog.  The other main change that was inspired by your comments was that we hooked the "Look Up a Site" box to our Site Converter code.  Now you can enter a URL and we will "resolve" it to our entry for said URL. Thus you no longer have to guess what we may "call" the site.

"If you have some time and would like to run through the pages we would welcome any additional feedback, suggestions, etc that you have. Please note that the "start" page has changed and can befound here:  http://www.pubsub.com/linkcounts.php"

Bob Wyman has more on LinkCounts.

I've worked with programmers for much of my career, and so understand well that it's hard to get it right the first time. What I like about these guys is that they respond to criticism and follow up when the problem is solved. That's just common business sense -- and all too uncommon these days.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 05:33am in Blog Management, Blogging, Gadgets & Toys, Taxonomy of Cyberspace | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (1) | TrackBack (0)

Pirillo and Ochman Declare Full-Text RSS Dead; Wake Me Up for the Funeral

Chris Pirillo of Lockergnome comes down hard on full-text RSS feeds, ostensibly because ... well, it's never apparent why he doesn't like them. Just that he's not going to have them anymore.

I'd bet, though, it's because he'd like to drive his site ad revenues up.

B. L Ochman comes down with four feet against full feeds. Why? It helps click-through on ads.

Maybe... maybe not. I'm skeptical of the "I need the AdSense revenue" people. At least one tech blogger claims 1 million hits a month, and he has AdSense, yet he's reduced to selling his burnt-out laptop. I don't believe for a minute that 99% of AdSense ad carriers are covering more than their hosting fees.

Here in Copenhagen, I decided to abandon all interest in AdSense and truncated feeds the minute I was asked to help set up a commercial blog. As Esther Dyson wrote in Wired in the mid-90s: consultants and advisors should give away 90% of their thinking for free, since the 10% they sell would have accounted for 90% of their revenues anyway. And since the giveaway is just advertising, the revenue snowballs.

Works for me.

Update: In what can charitably be described as a spleen-venting, Pirillo accepts reality and reinstates full feed: "I love how everybody whines when they don't get their way... . So, for all of you who unsubscribed from my RSS feed because it wasn't the way you wanted it (even though you're not the one providing it or paying for it), then you won't ever know [that I have reinstated full feeds]. ... Did you know that, or were you one who cut off his/her nose to spite your face? [sic];)

Tip of the firewarden's helmet to Shel Holtz for discovering that.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 10:14pm in Blog Management, RSS | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (7) | TrackBack (3)

Gahran Says Bag Blog Stereotypes; Hobson Tells How to Make the Most of RSS

Friend Shel Holtz often points out blogs are nothing but websites supported by an easy and lightweight CMS program that lets authors post easily and readers comment and trackback easily. I've been using that explanation with clients and, if they have a website or use the web often, they immediately understand. And we can go from there.

Going from there is made easier by Contentious Amy Gahran's article What's a Blog? Bag the Stereotypes:

"Over the past year weblogs have become a popular topic of conversation – both in private discussion and at conferences and other events. Understandably, a lot of people who are talking about blogs have little or no experience with weblogs. For a variety of reasons, these weblog neophytes often are the ones who start or lead high-profile discussions about blogging, especially within organizations and at conferences.

"While it’s good that weblog neophytes are considering and talking about blogs at all, they often fall prey to, and perpetuate, a fair amount of misinformation – especially stereotypes. Here are some clarifications on how to understand and discuss weblogs, in order to avoid those pitfalls…"

And in inimitable Amy style, she goes on to clarify what's a blog, what isn't a blog, and weblog myths to avoid.

One of the myths Amy advises to avoid is "There are too many blogs to follow." Friend Neville Hobson positively skewers that myth in his post Getting More From Your RSS Feed:

"Whether web-based or installed on your own computer, [RSS readers] enable you to receive information from many different websites and blogs all in one place.

"What this means is that it's increasingly likely that more people will read what you write via subscribing to your RSS feed than through visiting your blog. This is especially true if people like what you write on your blog and so want to read more of it, and read it regularly.

"Look at it this way. If you want to read what 20 different bloggers or websites write about, you could go and visit each of those blogs or websites. So that's 20 different places to visit. Or, you could sign up to get each of these RSS feeds and automatically receive what they write, every time they publish something, in your RSS reader."

Neville goes on to quote Robert Scoble:

"If you don't have an RSS feed, your site is lame because you've told the connectors (er, superusers, er influentials) that they don't matter. When I see a site that doesn't have an RSS feed I see a site that says "Mr. Scoble you aren't welcome here and we don't ever want you to come back again."

I heartily agree. No RSS feed is the kiss of death if you want me to be a reader.

But truncated, or summary feeds (a post on feed that reads: "As I noted yesterday... (read on)") also send me around the bend. As Neville points out, bloggers issue truncated feeds in an attempt to force me to come to their blog (usually because of the Google ads, I believe).

I've simply dropped some blogs entirely because I cannot be bothered to figure out what the cryptic headlines and opening lines mean. Others, such as Amy Gahran and B.L. Ochman, get a look in from time to time because they know how to write an informative headline and lead.

Hobson goes on to explain how to make the most of FeedBurner.

Good reads from Amy Gahran and Neville Hobson; a tip of the boater to them both.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:16am in Blog Management, Blogging, Communication, Online Media, RSS | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

PubSub LinkRanks Back Online; Very Buggy (But They're Working on it!)

Update: Even before I managed to send a copy of this post to the PubSub people, Pubsub's Bob Wyman and Mark Wagner had both posted comments explaining why I got odd results. That sort of fast, useful feedback is a great way to make friends. Thanks, guys!

Original post: PubSub's LinkRanks service is back online, after being down some months. The new version does not, so far, have the old "ranking" feature that gratified my blego when I was feeling blue and lonely, but it does have some interesting factoids (updated daily):

Top 100 Sites By Inlinking Sites for May 9th, 2005

•         249,827 sites created         716,886 new blog entries       
• 1,170,798 outlinks were created to 149,717 other sites
• 94,076 (38% of those with new entries) created outlinks.
• 6,310 sites       (3% of those with new entries) had both inlinks and outlinks.
• 260,629 syndication feeds had new entries.
• 5% of the 5,390,292 recently active feeds monitored by PubSub had new entries.
• 3% of the 9,968,379 feeds monitored by PubSub had new entries.

You can type in the URL of any blog and see a 30-day day-by-day review of how many incoming and outgoing links the blog had. Here is Desirable Roasted Coffee's summary.

For the fun of it, I checked up on friends Shel Holtz, Neville Hobson, Eric Eggertson, and Warren Bickford. And noticed right away that the service is wildly buggy.

For example, Neville gets credit for an average of 18 outlinks a day, with an astounding 127 outgoing links to 99 sites on April 28. Nevon readers will instantly realize that the program notes from For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report play a role here: the HH Report program notes link to anyone mentioned during the podcast.

So you'd expect to see similar stats from Shel's blog. But no... he's credited with zero outgoing links the last 30 days.

Moreover, the URLs are a problem. PubSub doesn't recognize Warren Bickford's blog address http://blogs.iabc.com/chair/. Tweaked to look for http://blogs.iabc.com, PubSub finds the results.

So while it's nice to see PubSub's LinkStats back on line, it's still in need of major debugging to be useful. To their credit, they admit that, and ask for feedback. I'll be sending this along to them.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 09:55am in Blog Management, Blogging, Gadgets & Toys, Online Media, Taxonomy of Cyberspace | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)

Who's Clicking Your Links?

B. L. Ochman urges us to "link like crazy" to be widely read:

"One thing that distinguishes blog posts from dead-tree journalism is that bloggers link prodigiously.

"Link to any other blog or website you mention. link to articles, books, products, bios, explanatory materials on other sites that you mention in your blog.

"Always link to information that clarifies or gives background on information and opinions in your post."

But how do you track which outgoing links are most effective and useful? Thanks to MyBlogLog.Com, that's a question you can start answering. I've just installed the tool (one line of javascript) on Desirable Roasted Coffee, and am already seeing results. Good tool!

Tip of the hat to Steve Rubel.

Posted by Allan Jenkins at 04:50pm in Blog Management, Desirable Roasted Coffee | Permalink | Comments Welcome! (2) | TrackBack (0)