Category Archive » Weblogs and Blogging

TrackBack spamming.
[ February 01, 2005 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I just removed all trackback links and removed the trackback cgi because some jackass has been pinging each and every blog entry on my site (and that sends me an email, and I hate email, especially hundreds of them).

When this site comes back into some more regular development, all that comment and trackback stuff will be off due to spammers like today's gambling advertiser (who's a an idiot because they could have just pinged the Communiblog and gotten their one set of links on all pages in one single ping).

I hope rel="nofollow" puts you people out of business.


Back to basics.
[ September 07, 2004 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Over the last couple of months I have not been blogging (obviously) and have instead been spending time with my family, playing video games, and working. To bo honest, I haven't missed it at all, and perhaps it's because I have gotten bored with the whole thing, or my core interests have simply migrated. I'm not exactly sure what the deal is, but I do know that this site will continue on.

There are a couple of posts on this site that still prove to be useful to people (mostly the ones with javascript code ready to be stolen) and those will remain available, as will the entire archive. Hopefully I'll get back to adding to this site again, but it's likely going to be stuff more directly targeted to me (and probably more boring for you).

For a while, I was blogging items that I thought would be interesting to my (one or two) readers, and that really isn't what blogging should be about (imho). I named this site "In My Experience" for a reason, and that's the simply write about my experiences with things. I plan on getting back to that, but I really have no idea when.

Also, I'm disabling comments for the time being due to the constant comment spamming that has been going on.


Transition.
[ May 07, 2004 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Much time and effort on this over the last couple of years has migrated from working and video gaming to working, parenting, and video gaming. For now, this leaves no time for blogging, but I have plans to keep posting items that I want to remember for more than a day or two and other plans to build the site up as a résumé platform.

I don't think I'm going to lose my job soon (but who knows) and really just want to assemble most bits of work and related materials into one cohesive unit. In the near term my plans are to...

• migrate to Movable Type 3.0 (comment icons will be broken for a while)
• get the blog off the home page
• maintain the archives and comments as is
• retire the Communiblog
• redesign the main interface

and to not post very much for a while.

I have some usability of web forms interactions questions I want to post and some javascript that's worth posting. But that will wait until I have time, and with a first birthday coming up for my daughter, that's not the time.

Many thanks to the regular comment posters, and fuck you very much to the comment spammers.

See you soon/later.


Comment Spam.
[ November 05, 2003 | Permalink | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I was comment spammed last night by someone promoting Adipex which is part of the heart valve killer drug combo better known as Phen-fen. I tried to look up some "real" info on Adipex and only found places to buy it. The spamers are succeeding, but not with my help.


Testing AOL Journals.
[ July 17, 2003 | Permalink | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Internal beta testing of AOL Journals opened up yesterday, and I have dutifully started an AOL Journals blog and posted my suggestions and comments to the appropriate forums. It's no secret that AOL is doing this, but I didn't know any real details until yesterday. Also, I re-read the note about not leaking details, so this post is pretty restrained.

Here's a few tidbits that I think are not embargoed, but aren't really that juicy...

• The set up was stupid easy. I mean, my daughter could do it, and she's 9 weeks old.
• NetNewsWire can read my Journal's RSS file.
• The instant messaging conduit works pretty well, and I think IM blogging is a good thing.
• There's one thing about commenting that I like and hate at the same time. I'll rant and rave about this when the product goes public.

It's a good start, and it's not a "premium" service (as in, I don't have to pay extra dollars to have an AOL Journal) so I'm pretty hopeful that this thing will take off. The basics are there and it's pretty solid.

[Disclaimer: I do not work on the Journals product. It should be assumed that any product still under development will change, so don't expect anything I say here to be true when this thing goes live. Be sure to read around for a lot more info that I can provide.]


You've got blog.
[ July 07, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Apparently, AOL is doing a weblog product, and I'm guessing NDAs have been violated(?) I have only heard the rumors and know nothing more than what I read out there on the net. However, if any sort of internal beta testing is made available, you can bet I will check it out. In the meantime, some people already seem to have opinions...

Jeff Jarvis: AOL Blogs

Yesterday, I was one of a privileged council of blogging elders -- Meg Hourihan, Nick Denton, Anil Dash, Clay Shirky -- invited to see AOL's new blogging tools, which will be released later this year. They've done a good job.

Dave Winer: On AOL's entry into weblogs

Now their strategy is coming out, and there are some surprises. Today I'm going to discuss, briefly, just one, the Instant Messaging connection with weblog tools, and how it leads into the quagmire that the weblog world is caught up in (and a plea to swallow our respective prides and compromise now).

Kevin Lawver: Super Secret Agent Revealed!

The top secret meeting is now something I can talk about. I went to New York with the AOL Journals team to talk about the new AOL Journals product with some influential folks in the blogging world.

Purdy.
[ June 27, 2003 | Permalink | 8 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

This is easily one of the best looking blogs I have ever seen. What a great balance of simplicity and interest, and I just love the color scheme. Readers of IMX will likely enjoy the content at mezzoblue.


Corporate Blogging.
[ June 19, 2003 | Permalink | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I finally read this piece about what MSFT is doing about their employees doing the blog thing. One comment in particular is pretty chilling...

Noted Microsoft employee Scoble in his blog recently : "I think executives who weblog (particularly at Microsoft) are between a rock and a hard place. If they say anything interesting, they'll immediately get picked up in the press and their comments will probably be taken out of context.

"If they give away strategy or product plans, they will help out competitors. If they talk about competitors, they'll be welcoming lawsuits. If they give people insights into what the business is doing, they could be hit with shareholder lawsuits, or other governmental actions," Scoble acknowledges.

I tend to comment on my employer from time to time and have quoted email that are sent to employees (and the Washington Post always gets the email somehow, so do I even matteR?). The point above makes me think twice (especially when I have a baby to feed).


While I was changing diapers...
[ May 19, 2003 | Permalink | 10 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

While I was away on new baby duty (doody?) I noticed a few things about the traffic at this site, it didn't drop off dramatically. Instead, a slow decline in daily visits occurred with a somewhat steady pace of RSS feed hits (indicating subscriptions that people don't update frequently). That's a good thing I suppose, because I will be continuing to post various bits of dorky minutia.

Also, while I was in my diaper changing training seminars, I received email from Mr. Kalsey asking...

Do you want pings to the communiblog only for categories that are at least peripherally related to your blog? To which I replied... To tell you the truth, I've waffled back and forth on that, and I think that if there were a ton of pings coming in all the time, I'd say that keeping things on topic would be a good idea. But the pings are slowly coming in, and randomness and serendipity need to be embraced. I say feel free to hit it with everything you've got.

You see, the about Communiblog page sees about 8 to 20 hits a day, and that hasn't dropped off or increased over the past two weeks, so there's some interest in it somewhere. I invite everyone to feel free to ping the Communiblog as much as they want, and can keep it on or off topic. I'll just trash anything that I think isn't quite right (ie, offensive to me, boring, or otherwise useless).


Oh shucks, no more feed for me.
[ April 03, 2003 | Permalink | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Today, I opened NetNewsWire for the first time in several days (due to the Spamomoter firedrill) and got this one-and-only news item from the slashdot feed...

Why Do I Not Get the Latest Stories in RSS?

Your RSS reader is abusing the Slashdot server. You are requesting pages more often than our terms of service allow. Please see the FAQ for more information, or email banned@slashdot.org.

Isn't it a bit ironic and perhaps hypocritical for slashdot to put this in their feed. Sure, slashdot itself doesn't abuse other sites, but a mere link from that will cause something, that in slashdot's terms in quote above, constitutes abuse. They know that happens, and implies complicity (I know, I'm getting a little smarmy here).

Now, "my" RSS reader is abusing the server? No, it isn't, it's fetching a file once, and then I read thru it with my reader, and then move on to other things (ie, I quit the app and thus it doesn't fetch the feed anymore). That's not abuse, but who really cares? There are plenty of other sources of dorky info that aren't so redundantly published (ie, same article posted multiple times within days). Cya slashdot.


Radio coverage of blogging.
[ April 01, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

NPR (thru affiliate WAMU) covered blogs, warblogging, and the democratization of journalism today on the Kojo Nnamdi show. It was a good segment and you can listen to it here.


BBedit shovelware please.
[ March 30, 2003 | Permalink | 9 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Brent Simmons, author of NetNewsWire (NNW) gets the once over by one of our favorite Mac oriented webloggers (ie, Daring Fireball). when asked if Net News Wire was always intended to be a commercial app, Simmons says...

Yes. It was the intention from the beginning, and that the main difference between the full and Lite versions would be that Lite is read only, while the full version is also a writing tool.

I definitely use NNW as a read only application, thus NNW Lite is good enough for me. The editing piece of the Pro version isn't bad at all, but I'm really a BBedit kind of guy and have gotten to the point where I need (rely upon) BBedit to be better at blog post creation.

Currently, I type everything up in BBedit and switch back and forth between NNW and Safari to assemble up the pieces of these posts. Perhaps I'm lazy, but all that switching back and forth sucks, and makes it harder to create the linkfests that each of these postings is supposed to be. And then I have to connect to my site, and log into MovableType, etc, etc. Doing all that junk is a hassle.


Umm Qasr is their Tijuana.
[ March 27, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

CNN is running a war blogging story that points to a blog by "L.T. SMASH" which is, of course, a Simpsons reference. It's interesting how CNN doesn't make that point though (likely because that would seem like a trivialization).


Aggregation site roundup.
[ March 23, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

There are more and more blog aggregation sites every month (and I'll miss many of them in this post). Rootblog seems to be the newest, and weblogs.com seems to be the most useless (to me anyway). Here's a list of these sites and a brief explanation of what they are trying to do...

• Like I mentioned, weblogs.com seems to be completely useless due to the fact that it only tells you who recently updated. As a consumer of blog media, I do indeed care about who recently updated, but a list of hundreds of blogs placed in order of their update timestamp is not helpful.
   
• NewsIsFree is pretty cool because it lets you know who updated recently, what kind of blog it is, and where their RSS feed is. The Directory of blogs and news sites, etc is good for discovering more of the types of blogs and sites you want to find. Also, if no RSS feed exists for a given site, NewsIsFree goes thru the trouble of scraping one together.
   
• Syndic8 is pretty much the same deal as NewsIsFree, but has an XML-RPC interface for extracting information in more sophisticated ways. That's pretty cool, even though I won't be using it (for now anyway).
   
• Rootblog takes the tact of reading RSS feeds and listing who has updated recently, and listing the recent posts with their short descriptions. This is more useful to me than weblogs.com, but I think there is more Rootblog can do. I'd like to see some sort of info architecture that lets me know what sort of content is at the recently updated site. Maybe that means everyone should be using Dublin Core metadata and pings should carry that information.
   
• BlogTree isn't really an aggregator, but it does contain more semantically rich organizations of blogs by allowing authors to associate their site with others. You can say "this blog over here inspired my blog" and that gets leveraged by showing which blogs are children blogs, siblings, and parents. Very cool, but it's not much better than randomness for finding engaging blog content that you are interested in.
   
• blo.gs let's you know who recently updated, and if known, shows you a link to the RSS feed for that blog. That's certainly more useful than weblogs.com, and better yet, you can set blogs to be watched, and there's a listing of the most watch blogs. Popularity as an index can be useful in terms of finding quality. There's a mechanism for finding blogs that are related, but that is "determined by who other people who have added it to their list of favorites." That's anecdotal relationship building that can be useful.
   
• Technorati is kind of cool, but kind of promotes a High School popularity contest mentality, and is a manifestation of the blog power curve. Outside of that, I like the features of the site that allow you to see who is linking to a given blog, and consume that as HTML or as RSS. I read my server logs every day, and carefully look thru the referrers and follow them back to see who is linking to me site. Very often I find good sites that way, and I like that Technorati makes that useful information to anyone.
   
• Blogrolling.com "is a web service designed to take the hassle out of updating lists of links on your website or weblog. By using simple "bookmarklets" with one click you can add links immediately on your website. No pesky HTML to edit everytime you want to add someone new." I don't use it, but I see referrer links coming from it every day now, so someone likes the idea of avoiding "pesky HTML."
   
• AmphetaDesk "is a free, cross platform, open-sourced, syndicated news aggregator - it obediently sits on your desktop, downloads the latest news that interests you, and displays them in a quick and easy to use (and customizable!) webpage. With thousands of channels available, AmphetaDesk can shave hours off your day." It's important to note that you run an application and select blogs to aggregate and then view that aggregation thru a browser, so it's still sort of a website, but kind of an application. I use it.

Knowing that someone recently updated their site is good to know, but it is not the nexus of what compels me to go read that blog. I want assistance in finding new blog content that is interesting to me.


Stop the referrer spamming.
[ March 21, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

In the last week I have seen several referrer URLs show up in my server logs pointing to people's résumés. My advice? Knock it off, because anyone who thinks this is a useful way of finding work is delirious. I don't need anymore delirious co-workers.

Perhaps the bitter irony for some of these folks is that my group might be looking for someone with some mad skills, but referrer spamming is not the way to do it. Spamming, in any format, is dishonest.


Answer or ignore?
[ March 19, 2003 | Permalink | 8 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I have recently begun to receive emails from readers asking for help on things. Quinn asked me about an RSS issue, and I was more than happy to help him out on that (and I hope my suggestion worked). On the other hand, I'm getting emails from people about their broken javascripts, Macintosh oriented problems, and small phallus sizes, er wait, that was spam...

What I want to know from other bloggers out there is, do you get these emails asking for help? Do you answer them? All of them? Or just the ones that are bloggy in nature?

[Real life craziness continues to preclude robust blog postings. I'm hoping to get back to normal soon.]


New IMX weblogger.
[ March 10, 2003 | Permalink | 11 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Beginning sometime soon, my office mate (Lee) will begin posting to this here weblog type thing. I've made a few changes to the data under the blog postings to help show who is posting what, because I'm guessing Lee and I will likely be talking about similar things. I want you know who you are yelling at when you post your comments :)


Santa Clara, here I come.
[ March 07, 2003 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Last week I was sitting in front of my TV watching Cory and Rael on the ScreenSavers, which is pretty geeky to begin with (just ask my wife) and I was tooling around online. Thankfully I had a mail client up and poised for a new message when they announced a little contest. The first five emails to be received at some address would receive a free pass to the O'Reilly Emerging Tech conference. I typed like mad, forgetting who I was going to send email to, and hit send. Yesterday I got this back in the mail...

Hi there! and Congratulations!
You are a winner of a free conference pass to the Emerging Technology Conference, April 22-25, 2003, in Santa Clara, California at the Santa Clara Westin Hotel.

Whoot! If anyone in Northern Virginia is going to this too, drop me a line.


Wholesale "borrowing"
[ March 06, 2003 | Permalink | 9 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Check it out, a wholesale adoption of my UI appears here. Even the logo!

I'm assuming that they are using the UI as a basis, and will be making changes, but I've sent a note along asking for that change to happen. It's sort of flattering to have this sort of thing happen, but kind of uncool to see they didn't remove my logo.


Audio blogging is a two way street.
[ March 05, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Blogger wants to make it possible for webloggers to call it in, so you could push your material out as MP3's. That's pretty cool, and I think opens up the possibility for Blogger peeps to become on-the-scene reporters. Now, if you wanted to create a system where you have your normal blog outputted in HTML, and RSS and now in audio, you could do that. If you did, would you put an index.mp3 file in your web root directory, and edit your httpd.conf file to hand that out? (after index.html, and index.shtml, and index.php, etc.)

If so, do you need a <link> tag to point to this alternate presentation layer? We have this tag for pointing to our RSS files...

<link rel="alternate" type="application/rss+xml" title="RSS" href="http://inmyexperience.com/index.xml">

Why not make one that looks like this...

<link rel="alternate" type="audio/mpeg" title="MP3" href="http://inmyexperience.com/index.mp3">

Now you may ask, how do I easily make an MP3 out of my little bloglets? Thankfully someone already asked the LazyWeb and there were several answers (one is nearly perfect). But they cover how to take in an RSS feed and turn that into an MP3, not making the MP3 at the time of your posting. That's no big deal really, after (before?) you post your blog item, you could turn around and run your MP3-ification routine (and assuming you use Mac OSX, you could automate a lot of that, including the upload).

If someone made all of this work, and wrote it all up, I'm guessing it would probably qualify for Ben's Weblog Hacks book.


Yep, Antidote.
[ March 03, 2003 | Permalink | 7 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Viral marketing only works when people don't know that they have been infected. It's kind of like people who have the flu and don't come to work to spare those who are healthy, but in reverse I think. Those who are healthy (me) avoid the infected (see below).

"Nicole, 18, a Louisiana high-school senior with a popular blog" has been flown somewhere, with other bloggers, to be Dr. Pepper'd. Being a gen-x'er, and being aware of a marketing attempt by proxy, I already think the whole thing is dishonest.

[via boingboing]


New blog item... stop.
[ February 28, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Ranchero points us to an article about RSS feeds taken from the journalists point of view...

"...perhaps the biggest potential impact of news readers is the prospect that they will further level the playing field between Big Media and individual content creators... For news providers, it's useful to remember that information stripped to its bare essentials - that is to say, text - is what a great many readers come for."

And perhaps that's true, but even more fundamentally, what they come for is information and knowledge and then ultimately, understanding (one begets the next). Does the format of that information really matter? HTML, RSS or even audio will probably do, and that's what Blogger seems to think. Perhaps this will level the news reporting playing field a bit between the pros and Joe Blogger. After all, your news outlet is just a phone call away.

If the format does really matter and people demand text, then some sort of voice to text parser would be really cool, which of course would require a long and complicated W3C standard for VTML (Voice to Text Markup Language). And we could sound like we were back in the telegram days (but on our cell phones) saying stuff like...

"New blog item... stop"

"New paragraph: I'm on the corner of Avenue A and St. Mark's Place and there's some dude, or girl, I can't tell, wearing a Strongbad Sweatshirt and screaming something about squatter's rights... stop."

Etc. etc. and that all gets translated, via VTML thru XSLT into HTML (triple recursive parsing is oh so efficient) and then posted to the blog as the final output. Right...
[via ranchero and metafilter]


Threaded Commenting (?)
[ February 24, 2003 | Permalink | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I'm considering installing a threaded commenting plugin that allows for subject lines and threading in your comments. You would be able to reply not only to my posts, but to the comments of others as well. The plugin will show comments in the familiar nested format that we all know and love.

Does anyone have any opinions on how useful this might be at this site? Like Phil, I want to think about it before I implement it (who wound up implementing it).


Synderella is Syndirella.
[ February 22, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I'm seeing a lot of searches for "Synderella" that fail because the name is actually "Syndirella" (note the "i" instead of the "e"). So I'm just tossing this post up so searches will find a page that will help people download Syndirella.

After you've downloaded it, subscribe to this url...

http://inmyexperience.com/index.xml

...and you will never have to come back to this site again. The full text of every post is included in the feed, but it's still a transient listing (last 10 posts). Also, if you use Syndirella, send the author of the app email asking him to support relative URL's in the content:encoded portion of the feed. Thanks.


Comment icons explained.
[ February 20, 2003 | Permalink | 1 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Morbus Iff was curious about "the faces you used for your commenting." He asked "How do you have that hooked into Movable Type? What's storing the 'what face you chose' info?" I answered via email, but it's probably useful to post this up on the site...

First, I don't write anything into any db tables or handle any hidden form elements, instead I'm using two plugins from Brad Choate (this one and that one). One of them lets me read any MovableType field and see if there is a key value pair in that field. I'm placing a key and value into the MTCommentBody field when a user submits a comment in this format...

faceurl=some/url/to/an/image.gif

...and goes at the end of the comment (placed there via JavaScript). At the same time, I set that value into a cookie. Currently, I am only saving that value if they select one of the faces I have in the pop up menu. If you select the 'normal guy' I don't save it's value (and assume a default later...)

In the individual archive template, I use the key-value plugin to look into the MTCommentBody fields to see if faceurl exists, and if so, we use its value to set the src of the face icon image. If there is none at all, I assume the default and insert the url for 'Normal Guy.'

THEN, when we output the value of the comment body, we regex MTCommentBody to remove any face url text...

s/faceurl\=[\w|\W|\S]*//g

Don't laugh an my lame regex skills. heheheh.

Future plans are to make it possible to save any URL to an image the user wants. Currently, if you select 'normal guy' as the face, and then write in "faceurl="http://yoursite.com/your_image.gif" on the bottom line of your comment, that url will be used. But it isn't currently saved.

Rumors are that the Pro version of MovableType will have custom form fields making all of the above unnecessary (except for the cookie thing).


There's more left to do.
[ February 17, 2003 | Permalink | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I have this site at a point visually where I sort of like it and can at least live with it for a while. I've attempted to create a simple and targeted version of the site that will be easy on the eyes and invites you to participate.

15 months ago, this site was developed with the notion that it would help me find a new job (I was at a dot bomb), but now it's based on half assed ideas, poorly written missives and functionally incomplete technology. The idea of course is to intelligently improve my skills in all of those categories thru today's uber meme, blogging. I am looking for any suggestions you might have for improving this site, so speak up.

Meanwhile, here's what I have left over from the most recent (and hopefully last) redesign effort...

1. I need to create a utility to allow visitors to save a 'faceurl' in a cookie that is used in the comment form.
2. I need to test everything in PC based browsers (seriously).
3. There's an odd bug in Safari (1.0 beta, v60) on the "external links" checkbox. Sometimes you can't click it on the search results page, and I don't know why. I want to fix it, but I don't think I can.
4. Also, the links in the top left box (eg, "home") will behave in the opposite way they should based in the state of the checkbox. The links in blog posts will behave correctly. VERY weird. It works correctly in IE5.x/mac and Chimera.
5. I'm not validating 100% for my chosen doctype, HTML 4.01 Transitional.

If you see any odd behaviors, broken links, missing images or just want to make a suggestion, please feel to post a comment.


It's about time.
[ February 16, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Finally, someone (Google) has bought out Pyra (the company that runs Blogger), and that's bad news for AOL. The value of Blogger is pretty obvious when you multiply the (potential) monthly fees against the number of subscriptions over the next twelve months. I say potentially, because most Blogger users don't pay and instead use the base configuration, and this is why AOL is missing out.

It has been my opinion since I joined the company that AOL should either buy out Pyra, or put them out of business. One is easier than the other, and now that the buy out ship has sailed, there's two problems. If AOL decides to get into the web logging market, they will have to buy someone else, (and obtain the subs list (eg, Live Journal)) or build their own tool set and introduce that to the AOL user base.

Either way, that will put them in a competitive position with Google, with whom they already have a relationship. uses Google for their search technology provider (STP, hehehehe) and likely has little desire to piss them off because the Google experience is a good experience, and no one wants to lose that. Co-optition is unavoidable though if you engage in so many diverse businesses that AOL Time Warner does.

The problem with a home grown solution is the learning process. Blogger is a refined product, and the crew building it knows what web loggers want and how they do their thing. AOL will have to learn all of that from scratch if the rumors are true and they are building a web logging system (disclaimer: I work at AOL, but not in a products group, and certainly don't know anything more than what has been published online).

To be honest though, I wouldn't expect that AOL would be inclined to simply buy a web logging business. As far as I can tell, AOL is a lot like Apple was five and ten years ago (ie, the 'not invented here' syndrome). If they are able to come up with a smart web logging solution that is user oriented (per 's core capabilities) then I think there's some interesting possibilities.

The Blogger business plan (it's basically free) can be more easily swallowed at AOL since you already pay to be a member. Thus the company could just add this as a another service under the umbrella of AOL services that members currently enjoy, and you have another vehicle to drive subscriptions. Another option is to offer it as a low cost add-on premium service for a few bucks a month. This way you probably still drive AOL subscriptions, and then boost the revenue with a few extra bucks a month from those who subscribe. That's likely not a lot of money though, and driving users to the service is a better idea.

Now, consider the Bring Your Own Access plan that AOL sells for $15/month. If an AOL web logging service was bundled into that, then I'd likely be a buyer (note: I get free access to the service). $15/month is two dollars less than my monthly costs for InMyExperience.com which is hosted at Pair.com (who rocks by the way). The feature set of the product would still have to sufficiently robust for a web developer like myself to be interested in abandoning my current system. And that is pretty much the same problem they would have if they choose to compete with Google/Pyra/Blogger.

By the way, is in no position to be buying any businesses these days due to extreme debt levels. 2003 is a debt reduction year for AOL Time Warner, and that creates a competitive disadvantage over one or two product cycles, so I have to believe any possible web logging business will come from within.


Ok, here's the plan...
[ February 14, 2003 | Permalink | 12 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Like I mentioned in my comments to the last post, I'm going to scrap the current design and introduce something better. Here's the plan...

1. The CSS will be simplified and more uniform.
2. I'm going to use em instead of px for font sizes and see what happens.
3. The site will be fully viewable in a window smaller than 800px wide.
4. Netscape 4.x will not be supported in any way. I won't even test with it. IE5/mac is another browser that I'm considering dumping support for. Over night IE5/mac and Safari switched positions for browser market share on this site (the night that Safari was first released).
5. Custom icons will stay, and I'll make a tool for using your own icon and saving that to a cookie (saving the url to the icon that is). I'll document how I'm doing that (I've already received emails asking me for the system) and post it to the site.
6. Even though I'm not getting very many, Ping Posts will remain and be positioned in a prominent location. They will not be contained by an iframe anymore (which was a dumb idea).
7. The over all page layout will be similar to what you see now, but will be cleaner brighter, and use some more negative space. I'm packin' 10 pounds of shit into a 5 lb bag right now, and I don't need to be doing that.
8. I'll be using less div positioning because it's still not consistent across the browser landscape.
9. I need to update my 'Elsewhere' links to include the sites of all the regular posters (I'm a slacker, I admit it).

The risk of doing another redesign is that I can't keep changing the UI and confuse visitors, but I can't leave it in its current state. The next rev has to be solid and able to stand the test of time (ie, more than a week, hehehe) for the sake of consistency. the good thing is that all of the complicated comment icon code is done, and I can simply migrate to the new UI templates.

The weather reports for this weekend are pretty ugly so far, so I think I'll have some time to hack this out on Sunday. After that, I hope to get back to some high quality posts. Quinn, thanks for the words of reason and encouragement. My mind is made up.


Redesign: Failure.
[ February 12, 2003 | Permalink | 7 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

The redesign I've been slowly working on and implementing has been, imho, a failure. The only good things to come out of it are custom comment icons and, uh, that's prolly it right there. I already hate this UI and think it's too wide, dark and flat. I need to make some changes...


Redesign in process.
[ February 08, 2003 | Permalink | 35 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I'm currently working on the implementation of the new UI, and I'm doing it to the live site, so expect lots of oddness for a while. Don't even bother emailing about any prblems you might encounter until tomorrow.

Thanks.


Aggregation post processing.
[ February 05, 2003 | Permalink | 3 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Does this solution solve this problem? Probably not, but it's fun to think of the possibilities surrounding NetNewsWire and the platform it's built on, OSX. It certainly seems that RSS 2.0, and insertion of comment elements will create a different (better?) way of surfing the blogosphere.

At times like this, I really wish I was a good Perl coder and AppleScript guru.


Got CMS?
[ February 04, 2003 | Permalink | 2 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

The AIfIA has a compiled a study on the problems with CMSs, but there were only 64 responses. In a world of millions of CMS users, 64 responses seems kind of anemic. Having the respondents be "Members of sigia-l, AIfIA, and the ia-cms" mailing lists would tend to skew the numbers in one direction due to those respondents being generally cluefull and skilled. So I'm not sure what I take away from the report after reading it.


TrackBack Pings = Comments? I guess so.
[ February 03, 2003 | Permalink | 9 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

In a short discussion about TrackBack pings being displayed JC said...

I wonder if it might be worthwhile (or even possible) to combine comments and TrackBack... if someone does a TrackBack on your post to display it in line in the comments, as if it were also a comment, which, in a way, it is.

To which Adam replied...

I agree, TrackBacks are comments and should be displayed as such.

Stop! Consider the context. In the redesign, I'll be providing a place for people without regard to any articles or categories (well, ok, I've made a category called 'Ping Me' so that people can ping it). I had this idea before LazyWeb came along, and there's some discourse on the merits of what I'm trying to do as opposed to the LazyWeb meme. I'm hoping folks like Josh, Milbertus, Josh (a different one), Adam, Paul and JC will ping the category when ever they post to their sites. That's better than simply linking to their sites. But who knows if people will use it.

Now, those TrackBack pings won't have the same referential (semantic?) value as a comment on a particular post, however, TrackBack pings on individual posts will (and perhaps should be shown inline like normal comments). Same technology, two vaguely different applications there of. We'll see how that works out. :)


Take Two.
[ February 03, 2003 | Permalink | 5 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Based on your suggestions, I've taken another stab at the redesign for this site. Let me know what you think. Note: at the top of the page, aboce the title of the article, there is a next and previous article link. Those will only appear on individual archive pages.


Redesign Preview. Please Comment.
[ January 31, 2003 | Permalink | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Here's a look at the redesign I've been mentioning for the last month or so. It's still in the stage of 'build out' (no links work) where I am fully designing the output files for the site. I'll be retiring some of the less used features and will be introducing a space for people to TrackBack-ping-post their blog entries. That location is on the left side of the page, and the url noted at the top is the real URL to ping, so go ahead and start using it if you want.

I'm also attempting to minimize, but not totally eliminate html tables in favor of divs and spans, but only where it makes sense (making sense = less work + more value). Rendering overhead can escalate quickly for tons of html table tags which is especially true if you are viewing a page at IMX with many comments. One example is this post I made about my car, that now sees over a 100 visits a day and at least a few new comments per day.

Also, I'm using HTML 4.01 Transitional as my DTD and will NOT be fixing a div alignment bug related to that DTD in Internet Explorer 5 for Mac. That browser is dead to me (and based on my server logs, dead to everyone else too). Using that doctype affords me greater control over a few visual elements, and is a good place to be in terms of wide spread browser support. I won't achieve 100% compliance though, and I'm not concerned about that at all.

Comment posting will take on an added dimension of the user being able to choose an icon to go next to their comment. I have about 6 or 7 done so far, and have the tech worked out using a couple of Brad Choate's MovableType plugins (this one and that one). It all works in theory right now, but we'll see what happens in real practice. User data will also be saveable via cookies (finally).

Now, be warned that I'll be doing the implementation on the live site. I'm too busy and lazy to create a dev site, replicate my production environment, implement and then push the new templates. This is a small personal site and no one is going to lose money or hours of productivity if the site is down or weird for a few hours (and maybe days). I'm hoping to get this redesign implemented within the next two weeks, but real life is getting crazy right now. In the meantime, please have a look at the redesign preview and post your comments below. Thanks.


I am a syndicated writer. No kiddin'.
[ January 30, 2003 | Permalink | 6 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I've started telling my friends that I'm a syndicated writer, and they laugh at me for being a dork and saying something stupid like that, but it's true! Heh. I'm not seeing the sort of traffic that Mark or Cory get, but it's enough to change the way I write (for more people than just me).

Still though, the fact reamins that I am indeed a syndicated writer. There has been a recent jump in requests for my XML feed (up to 700 a day from 400 a month ago) and this site has appeared in another site (sort of). The American Press Institute (which sounds important, but I had never heard of them until last week) ran a story about RSS and NetNewsWire. In a screenshot for the app, In My Experience appears as a subscribed feed. That's ego surfing at its best, and I find it funny to see me in the same list as C|Net.

Also, beginning this week, Syndirella (a Windows equiv to NetNewsWire) has been showing up as a referrer. Welcome Syndirella users, I hope the feed is working out well for you.


Search is fixed.
[ January 25, 2003 | Permalink | 0 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I must be an idiot to let the search results page be foobar'd for so long, but it's fixed now.


Taking Stock.
[ January 20, 2003 | Permalink | 7 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

Mark aggregates some comments about 'the blogging scene' that will likely resonate in the minds of many bloggers. They certainly do for me, especially this one...

A very consistent voice cropped up among the new writers: casual, chatty, inoffensive, usually a dash of false self-deprecation, and a kind of subtle condescension?the sound of someone who has been chosen to pass along valuable information to others. This tone of I am interesting, right? was underscored by the guestbooks and comments and karma points and permalinks and trackbacks and referer logs.

When one takes some time to look back and evaluate where they are and where they came from, it's a maturing experience. That's a good thing, but I'm tickled by some of the irony of how that posts begins...

I started writing online in 1995.

I've dropped that timestamp before too in an attempt to impress my geek friends and co-workers and parents, and it has never worked (they think I'm a bigger dork). The holier than thou 'tude of "I've been doing this since before the boom" is pretty much worthless these days and says little more than "I went to college in the 1990's."

What's my excuse for thinking my writing is worth reading by someone else? I don't, but I have been writing HTML since Netscape 0.98 was out (I still have Nav 1.1n on floppy), have earned a degree in English, have worked as a web developer for six years, and I still think blogging is cool (no matter how much my office mates dis me for it). In my post the other day, I asked the question about how to keep it real, but I suppose I have to confess that I never thought anyone would read this site on a consistent basis, making that question a little hollow. This site was originally conceived as a résumé site and knowledge repository, but having any audience at all has changed the content and the character of this site.

I read my server logs almost every day. Sue me.


Keepin' it real (?)
[ January 17, 2003 | Permalink | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I've discovered recently that postings about html markup, web browser bugs and the related issues will generate more traffic than usual. In fact, my post about Safari last week was the most viewed posting yet (623 page views to be exact) and I'll do my best to keep the postings in the normal genre I've established over the last year.

I've been considering adding video game and music reviews to the site, but am unsure if anyone would be interested in that sort of thing since there are multiple outlets for that type of content. Hell, there are plenty of other blogs out there spewing the same junk that I am, so maybe I'll take a chance. Let me know if there's anything you would like to see more/less of on this site. Thanks.


LazyWeb Theory.
[ January 09, 2003 | Permalink | 4 Comments | 0 TrackBack | TB URL ]

I had my doubts about the signal to noise ratio that LazyWeb might produce, and Clay Shirky had a few opinions he wanted to share with me (seemingly in advance of this article at O'Reilly). I want to share all of that with you (thanks to Clay for permission to reprint) in its original form...

From: Clay Shirky
Date: Fri Jan 3, 2003  9:43:43  AM US/Eastern
To: Daniel Kapusta
Subject: LazyWeb

It's unlikely that the LazyWeb.org pings will be numerous and random,
because it raises a threshold of actually using the Trackback URL, and even
tiny thresholds have a huge filtering effect.

And LazyWeb is only random if you think of it as a site -- its real
usefulness is as an RSS feed, so that third-parties can, say, subscribe only
to those posts that say "Chat" or "Wiki" in the title, thus pulling
something useful out of the general feed.

-clay




------------------------------------------------




From: Daniel Kapusta 
Date: Fri Jan 3, 2003  10:06:12  AM US/Eastern
To: Clay Shirky
Subject: Re: LazyWeb


On Friday, January 3, 2003, at 09:43  AM, Clay Shirky wrote:

> It's unlikely that the LazyWeb.org pings will be numerous and random,
> because it raises a threshold of actually using the Trackback URL, and 
> even
> tiny thresholds have a huge filtering effect.


I suppose you are right about the threshold part, but a general 
resource will be more general. The only threshold that exists is 'those 
who can send trackback pings and are motivated to do that.' That 
threshold does little in terms off content likeness since bloggers are 
in general motivated, and there are many MT based blogs. Within the 
scope of the interests of the trackback pinging public, randomness 
indeed exists.

But, if I were successful at getting 10 or 20 other like minded 
bloggers to ping my site on a regular basi, would that threshold be any 
more valuable? I think so. But maybe not, and there's only one way to 
figure that out.



> And LazyWeb is only random if you think of it as a site -- its real
> usefulness is as an RSS feed, so that third-parties can, say, 
> subscribe only
> to those posts that say "Chat" or "Wiki" in the title, thus pulling
> something useful out of the general feed.


I don't think that is necessarily true. I could post a note on my site 
saying that I had a chat with my mom about her visit to my home this 
weekend and ping lazyweb. That's useless to the blogosphere, but I 
wasn't prevented/filtered from shoving my minutia in front of the 
blogeratti who are interested in 'chat.'

Don't get me wrong though, I like the lazyweb idea enough to have come 
up with it on my own. It's already better than the weblogs.com recently 
updated list (which really is useless imho).

Dan

ps, do mind if I post this as a comment to my post? It's useful 
discussion.




------------------------------------------------




From: Clay Shirky
Date: Mon Jan 6, 2003  9:10:18  PM US/Eastern
To: Daniel Kapusta 
Subject: Re: LazyWeb

> I suppose you are right about the threshold part, but a general
> resource will be more general. The only threshold that exists is 'those
> who can send trackback pings and are motivated to do that.' That
> threshold does little in terms off content likeness since bloggers are
> in general motivated, and there are many MT based blogs. Within the
> scope of the interests of the trackback pinging public, randomness
> indeed exists.

Sure, but the randomness is constrained by payback. The karmic value 
of pinging something is low, unless there is some response. Of course, 
if LW takes off, then there will be spam problems, where free riders 
identify a high-quality message stream and attempt to steal its 
reputation, but that’s a problem of success, not failure.

> But, if I were successful at getting 10 or 20 other like minded
> bloggers to ping my site on a regular basi, would that threshold be any
> more valuable? I think so. But maybe not, and there's only one way to
> figure that out.

IN many cases, it will be more valuable, because in general you 
will characterize problems of interest to your readers.

But you don't have to give that value up to use the LW as well. The 
two questions are "Is the additional value of pinging the LazyWeb 
non-zero?" and "is the additional value high enough to be worth the 
time it takes you to add the trackback URL?" My guess at the answers 
right now are "Probably, and It depends."

> ps, do mind if I post this as a comment to my post? It's useful
> discussion.

Not at all, post away.

-clay




------------------------------------------------




From: Daniel Kapusta 
Date: Tue Jan 7, 2003  9:51:59  AM US/Eastern
To: Clay Shirky
Subject: Re: LazyWeb


On Monday, January 6, 2003, at 09:10  PM, Clay Shirky wrote:

>> But, if I were successful at getting 10 or 20 other like minded
>> bloggers to ping my site on a regular basi, would that threshold be 
>> any
>> more valuable? I think so. But maybe not, and there's only one way to
>> figure that out.
>
> IN many cases, it will be more valuable, because in general you will
> characterize problems of interest to your readers.
>
> But you don't have to give that value up to use the LW as well. The two
> questions are "Is the additional value of pinging the LazyWeb 
> non-zero?" and
> "is the additional value high enough to be worth the time it takes you 
> to
> add the trackback URL?" My guess at the answers right now are 
> "Probably, and
> It depends."


I would guess 'yes and yes' due to the ultra low cost of a 
cut-and-paste. That leads me to believe many people will ping LW (if 
they are aware of it, which is another filter of sorts) leading to a 
higher noise ratio. Part of the basis for the idea is that LW doesn't 
have a well defined semantic basis (imho). It's new. It's open to 
anyone for any reason, at any time.

I suppose I'd like to see Dublin Core metadata sent as part of the TB 
ping, and then be able to scrape the LW rdf feed for things I am 
interested in, but I read the site every day now anyway.

Cheers

Dan