Seybold: RSS and Blogs Intro (notes)
Christian Crumlish
I came late
Missed Sam's presentation (damn)
and some amount of
Tim Bray
note to self: get PPTs
(make index of all blog-related presentations at Seybold)
good overview of weblogging
as way of staying up on trends from leaders
interesting people: dave into mark
micropop culture niches (queer knitters)
Bill Humphries
his history
read Scripting news circa 1997
built custom weblog tool then and has been blogging since
how it works
add rss feeds to my.yahoo.com (full circle re my.netscape.com)
demos mt on screen
blogs about the moscone bomb
pastes (doesn't use bookmark), but safari doesn't cooperate... has to type it
simple window, just entry body (like i set up for my dad yesterday)
[screenshot?]
Hosted:
Blogger
Says TypePad is by Mov(e)able Type (rather, Six Apart)
Kasia (Kaisa)
Mentions diaryland (doesn't mention pitas)
LiveJournal,
but not Xanga
On your server:
Movable Type
good questions about anonymous comments
comments, comment spam, i nearly derail the stuff...
client/server example: Radio
hand-made:
example Zeldman's The Daily Report
(drawback: archiving - no database)
note he writes his RSS by hand too.
making up summaries for each entries
Is this for you
What should you do
Are you in the business of providing informatiion
Should you have an aenterprise weblog
C level weblogs
-Macromedia
-small companies (antarctica, UserLand)
exposes faces to the outside world
if you are going to do this you have to decide to not be afraid
a high wire without a safety net
updated, daily content?
[Really, daily required?]
what to syndicate:
Magazine: top stories
Enterprise intranet: new content
Everybody: bring buried content to the top
use standards (feedvalidator.org)
it only works if it's fresh, thus editorial and production workflows simply aren't going to work
Sam Ruby
i slightly disagree with that: don't try to censor
(example: IBM)
Take responsibility for what you say...
"there are boundaries"
people have gotten fired
also hired
get known
googling up to the top
use common sense in what you publish
Dave Hyatt
explaining safari decisions (example of recent table in div issue, see also daring fireball)
a big win for apple
comment spam
referrer spam
google rank leeching
note to self: make sure I cover "promoting" a blog in my course.
letting other people put links on your site is risky
culture of trust, scaling issue
will trust-based community break down as scales up
or can technology fight a continuing arms race
blogging is an incredibly effective search engine optimizer
Ford doesn't have as many inbound links as Sam Ruby
Sam: words used in ordinary conversation -
that's what webloggers are getting pretty high on
"binary search" points to Tim
focus on a niche
sam: follow your bliss / airline / cat
tim: it tends to happen anyhow
question:
C Level blog internal blog
anonymity such as a "suggestion box" in an intranet context?
sam:
anonymizers
(cautionary tale: anon.penet.fi -> fbi subpoena)
tim: risk of nutcases
policies, rules:
Prashad Kothari comment:
we use blogs internally
we enable anonymity but it's not been used yet
Sam: eventually will only accept nonanonymous comments
lazyweb: responding could make someone create a new blog and use trackback
strength of blogging is conversational
unlike news and magazines
web has its aspect
Question: we have chat spaces and forums moderated by SMEs
i was thinking this technology would help me more on our public side
Sam says internal blogs are more than just chat room and forums
feedback loop
we know who's reading which posts (how is that different?)
Lauren Wood (Textuality) host:
software updates would be the perfect application of an RSS feed
Tim: currently, news and blogs mostly, but this could be an awfully convenient way to do business:
stock ticker
bank acct
credit card
product releases
Unfortunately, I will the next session in this sequence as I am doing a half hour myself in the WOW booth from 2:30 to 3:00 PM today.
I expect to rewrite these notes into something coherent when I get a moment.