MSN has a new RSS reader.... I guess. I'm not sure what the hell this is, actually.Filter.MSN.comThey also have one on Start.com. I'll tell you, though, I hate them all. All RSS readers. Nothing works. I have some requirements:
- Let me read everything in order from page to page just by hitting the space bar
- Combine the news stories together so you get a single page (less empty space... no need for an entire window for each story)
- Allow ordering and grouping of blogs
- Be super reliable about what I've read and what I haven't, and make that portable from work to home to mobile
- Load the page in under 10 seconds
I was close with Bloglines... very close. And that's what I continue to use. But it fails on the last two really badly. And it really feels like it's getting worse. But I've tried everything else: Feedburner, RSS Bandit, NewzCrawler, NewsGator Online, NewsGator Outlook, you name it! It's funny because I didn't even care about blogs a couple of years ago, and since I've started having all this trouble, I feel practically disconnected. I promise, if someone comes along and solves this, I'll pay. Really!
DGod forbid I actually defend Microsoft. Defend Microsoft! The 22 year old me would slap the today me across the face and punch me in the balls. Anyhow, I had a bit of an interesting experience the other night that was further exacerbated by the absurd furor in the past few days over a name.Incident one: I was sitting talking with a very intelligent person from another company chatting about Microsoft’s RSS strategy. He was absolutely convinced that MS was trying to take over RSS by handling the APIs. I can guarantee that is not the case. Well, not quite guarantee; I don’t know every person in the company and I can certainly only speak for myself. But, I am as sure as I can reasonably be on this one that, like practically every business decision that ever gets made, the singular reason this decision was made was because MS is trying to make life easier for the people they care about (in this case computer users and developers). That’s it. No big conspiracy plot. No thoughts of megalomania. MS talked to developers who produce RSS applications; they say they hate handling downloading content, handling subscriptions, handling content and so on. MS said “hey, we can solve that for Windows users by providing that functionality for them”. If the developers want to use it… great! They can use it! If they don’t want to use it… great! They can do it themselves! If someone else wants to build the exact same APIs on another OS… great! MS looks at it as their job is to build tools and technologies that make the lives of Windows developers and users richer. That’s their only goal.Some may feel that MS may not deserve a fair chance due to perceived wrongs in the past … fine. But the past is the past. There is absolutely nothing MS can do to change that. MS is doing everything they can possibly do to be open with their decisions and developments in RSS. Really! There are no secrets!Anyhow, I explained this to him, and he seemed hesitant. I don’t think I was very convincing. It’s one of these things where I try and imagine myself on the other side of the conversation, trying to convince myself. Ultimately, when you don’t believe a person’s perspectives, it’s usually possible to just have a conversation with the facts. I’ll be interested to have that conversation after the PDC and a little more is public.But then it got even worse over the past few days, pretty much epitomized by this:Microsoft exec defends RSS rebrandingThe Blogsphere seems to be aflame with the audacity that MS rename RSS to Web Feeds. First, anyone who thinks that RSS has brand equity beyond about 2000 geeks, I would encourage you to walk down the street and ask the first thousand people you see if they know what RSS is. I’d be fairly surprised if more than 2 could answer correctly. For a few historical instances:AM/FM becomes “radio”
VHF/UHF becomes “television”
HTTP becomes the “Web” or the “Internet”
HTML becomes “Web Pages”
AAC becomes “Tracks” or “Songs” and is listed but once on iTunes’s home pageThere are many others. Consumers don’t know and don’t care about the underlying technology, and that’s what RSS is. Further, RSS isn’t even a noun… it stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. You can’t subscribe to a “Really Simple Syndication”… that just doesn’t make sense. Mr. Winer, I have nothing but huge respect for you but let go of the name. Please. I’m not even saying that MS should name it, but it’s got to be named. It’s time.My reaction to this whole thing has been a bit of a feeling of helplessness… in both situations. We have really done everything we can to stretch out… propose what we are doing before we do it, be open and explain everything. But it never fails … anything attempted is just buried in thousands of negative sniping comments. It’s not the only commentary, there are plenty of positives as well, but it seems practically impossible to get even a reasonable majority of positives. It’s just very frustrating to try and do everything right and still end up with all the insanity. If I could say one thing to the outside world, it'd be the following... "We're doing our best! Really! Help us help you!"D - LUSG
VHF/UHF becomes “television”
HTTP becomes the “Web” or the “Internet”
HTML becomes “Web Pages”
AAC becomes “Tracks” or “Songs” and is listed but once on iTunes’s home pageThere are many others. Consumers don’t know and don’t care about the underlying technology, and that’s what RSS is. Further, RSS isn’t even a noun… it stands for “Really Simple Syndication”. You can’t subscribe to a “Really Simple Syndication”… that just doesn’t make sense. Mr. Winer, I have nothing but huge respect for you but let go of the name. Please. I’m not even saying that MS should name it, but it’s got to be named. It’s time.My reaction to this whole thing has been a bit of a feeling of helplessness… in both situations. We have really done everything we can to stretch out… propose what we are doing before we do it, be open and explain everything. But it never fails … anything attempted is just buried in thousands of negative sniping comments. It’s not the only commentary, there are plenty of positives as well, but it seems practically impossible to get even a reasonable majority of positives. It’s just very frustrating to try and do everything right and still end up with all the insanity. If I could say one thing to the outside world, it'd be the following... "We're doing our best! Really! Help us help you!"D - LUSG
This guy has been getting a lot of coverage in the media.http://www.thefatmanwalking.com/I find the story really quite inspirational and would probably like even MORE updates on his weight and health. I mean the guy is going to come out the other end as strong as an ox.For me, though, Tour de France riders are always going to be the best method of making me understand of what the human body is capable when it comes to diet and exercise. Those guys burn 6,000 calories a day... they eat as much as they can and still lose weight. Nothing could be a better example of how easy it is to balance diet and exercise. Calories in > calories out? You get fat. Calories in < calories out? You lose weight.D
Man, what is it about the simple games that keep you going for hours. Example:Sugar CrashI won't get into a huge rant about how modern games are crap, because I don't think they are. But I will show this as an example of how it doesn't take much to keep humans occupied.D
Interesting bit on Marketplace earlier on the demand generation of drug companies. The interesting part here is that I don't think the drug companies are doing anything really wrong. Yes, they're coming out with studies that accentuate (in the public eye) problems that their drugs will help solve. In this case, people are tired and don't get enough sleep. So they propose their drug which does help solve the problem. Ok, a teeny little bit grey (on the quality of the research) but this is not world ending. The fact is, though, some people DO have trouble sleeping and, to the extent that this helps them, the drug is a GOOD thing. Those people no longer have that problem.Here's the detailed article. I think to the extent that real critique or coverage of a drug is in any way stifled, that is a Bad Thing(tm). But just posting your results and letting people know that you have something out there that helps whatever problem your results point to is pretty low on the evil scale.Further, this line from the piece:
Technically, it is accurate; the temptation is stronger than ever. But I worry that it is a scare tactic... yes, it requires very little for a piece to go from negative to neutral or get killed (which may or may not have anything to do with the advertising budget) but, to my knowledge, there's very little proof of a wide spread epidemic of stories being killed. I suppose this is why more openness in public media is a Good Thing(tm).D
This doesn’t mean that news executives consider such income when they make story assignments, but in places where the wall between the news side and the business side has weakened, the temptations are stronger than ever.
Technically, it is accurate; the temptation is stronger than ever. But I worry that it is a scare tactic... yes, it requires very little for a piece to go from negative to neutral or get killed (which may or may not have anything to do with the advertising budget) but, to my knowledge, there's very little proof of a wide spread epidemic of stories being killed. I suppose this is why more openness in public media is a Good Thing(tm).D
TV will kill you and your children!orTV will save humanity!
I probably fall into the former camp more than the latter, but this is exactly why it's so hard for Joe Random Individual to figure out what to do when it comes to raising his kids, eating right or generally doing good things. I'm sure there's a way to rationalize two totally opposing views like this, but I don't have it. And I doubt that 99.999% of the population does either. So we go along, choosing the sources that seem to make sense from us and reading them (or more likely, just skimming the back of the books) and using them as a guideline for our lives.I was thinking that the way out of this might just be to try to imagine what evolution had in mind for us. If we evolved (and by evolved I mean during the time period from the primordial soup to about 50,000 years ago) to be creatures that would benefit from a lot of random stories and flashing lights, then TV would be good. If we evolved to be creatures that could react to those stories and flashing lights, but that was a bastardization of areas of our mind that were really tuned for other things, then TV would be bad.But then I came to realize the possibility that maybe evolution was done with me, meaning that the way our bodies were originally designed no longer has any meaning at my age. Basically, we are just sperm/egg carrying machines and our single goal appears to be to shoot them out as soon as possible, have kids and get them old enough to an age where they can do the same. If that's the case, then I am WAY past that age and, evolutionarily speaking, I'm off the map. Much like the salmon who swim upstream to spawn die right afterwards, perhaps that's what we were intended to do after hitting the appropriate age. Though I do believe in God, I've never been a fan of thinking that humans had some higher purpose that we were living for. Generally, passing on our genes and leaving the Earth a better place than we found it was pretty much the extent of my thoughts on "why we were here", whether you did that at 15 or 75. So does this mean I should just pop them out and shuffle off this mortal coil?Actually, I think evolution will again be my saving grace. If there's one thing that evolution has going for it, it is that whatever you've got costs something... food to keep it alive, personal space, energy to heat it, keeping it out of pain or not broken, and so on. The very fact that my femur CAN survive for 90 years indicates that, evolutionarily speaking, it's a good thing that it can last for 90 years. Otherwise, it would have gotten the heave-ho long ago. So what to guide me for another 60 years? Who knows. Maybe I'll find my reason for living on the Discovery Channel.D
Last week's episode of Six Feet Under was absolutely brutal... check out the summary here and, of course, with added snark here.Couple of things about the episode that are just priceless. First is the title... I love it when a writer packs in every available nook with meaning... in this case "Ecotone" wonderfully describes the entire episode. To quote Nate: "It's an area where two ecological worlds overlap. You know, like wilderness and civilization." except here it's Nate's wilderness, and everyone else's civilization. Just beautiful.Second is the fight between Claire and her date. Nicely, neither was portrayed as infinitely knowledgable and certainly both arguments had their flaws. But the thing that resonated with me was how passionately both people seemed to be talking past each other. It wasn't even really ideological... they both basically had their positions and were just reciting. I find myself identifying with one quick exchange which I think rolls up my biggest problems with the war. I'll paraphrase:Republican Guy: "Bringing democracy to Iraq freed these people from a brutal dictator"
Democratic Girl: "That wasn't the point of the war."Both are right. The fact is that IF the purpose was to free the Iraqis from a brutal dictator, there could be a thousand ways to do it. Invasion simply does not seem to be the most efficient way to do it. You could massively fund opposition parties... you could get the CIA in there and incite some riots... you could assassinate him! There are a million ways to go about removing a bad person from power and invasion is not optimized for accomplishing that goal in the shortest amount of time with the lowest cost and the highest rate of local support. Invasion is optimized for the goal of removing a threat as quickly as possible, and very little else. Basically, if you defend the policy of going to war in the way that we did you really have two choices... 1) Accept the fact that we did it to remove a threat, first and foremost or 2) Believe that we went in to free the Iraqi people and did it in the worst possible way. Given the state and length of the insurgency, I do not see how there could be any middle ground.And for those that say that changing governments is hard work and takes a long time, I don't understand why this was so much more complex than Japan after WW II, or the Czech Republic or Russia, or Kosovo. Substantial changes and no long running insurgency there.
Democratic Girl: "That wasn't the point of the war."Both are right. The fact is that IF the purpose was to free the Iraqis from a brutal dictator, there could be a thousand ways to do it. Invasion simply does not seem to be the most efficient way to do it. You could massively fund opposition parties... you could get the CIA in there and incite some riots... you could assassinate him! There are a million ways to go about removing a bad person from power and invasion is not optimized for accomplishing that goal in the shortest amount of time with the lowest cost and the highest rate of local support. Invasion is optimized for the goal of removing a threat as quickly as possible, and very little else. Basically, if you defend the policy of going to war in the way that we did you really have two choices... 1) Accept the fact that we did it to remove a threat, first and foremost or 2) Believe that we went in to free the Iraqi people and did it in the worst possible way. Given the state and length of the insurgency, I do not see how there could be any middle ground.And for those that say that changing governments is hard work and takes a long time, I don't understand why this was so much more complex than Japan after WW II, or the Czech Republic or Russia, or Kosovo. Substantial changes and no long running insurgency there.
My bro is traveling the world spreading the poison^W gospel that is Xbox.com.Check out where he is here!
I always find it cool when someone I actually know is a big time blogger. Scoble is so big and friendly that EVERYONE knows him, but I've known this guy before he was big time :)Anyhow, he's got a really cool post about the stuff you can do with the search provider in IE 7... check it out!Much respect to the IE team... if one guy can do this much cool stuff on your platform, you've got to be doing something right.