Blog

Site updates and anything else related to the technology of blogging and my site(s).

AdSense for Feeds

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Looks like the inevitable intrusion of advertising into RSS feeds just gained a major player, as Google‘s Adsense for Feeds program has just been announced.

On the one hand, I can kind of see where quite a few people might be happy about this. As more and more people read their news through RSS feeds, fewer people are as likely to visit a website and see their ads, and revenue drops.

At the same time — hey, that’s one of the things I like about RSS feeds. While I’ve not yet unsubscribed from a feed because it started carrying advertising, it is a little bit annoying. Not very, at this stage, as so far all the ads are at the tail end of each post and can easily be ignored, but I’d still be happier without ads.

So, while I do use Google’s AdSense program on my site (as unobtrusively as possible while still allowing for the occasional check to hit my mailbox), I’ll not be dropping ads into any of my RSS feeds. The way I figure it, the miniscule amount of extra revenue it might generate isn’t at all offset by the annoyance it could cause my readers (and since the ads annoy me, I’ll work on the assumption that they probably annoy others, too).

iTunes “Lords of the Rhymes (Kool-Aid Brothers)” by Lords of the Rhymes (2003, 5:03).

Seattlest

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Something I meant to mention a bit ago, but spaced — I’ve recently become one of the contributing authors to Seattlest, the Seattle-centric group weblog run by the Gothamist empire.

I’m tracking any posts I toss onto Seattlest on my del.icio.us account for quick access, and my posts can also be found via this listing on the Seattlest site. Lastly, here’s my author bio.

Getting involved was actually pretty flattering, as I was actually invited in, thanks to one of the local editors reading Eclecticism and keeping an eye on my Flickr photostream. Hard to say “no” to an invitation like that!

iTunes “Silo, No. 5 – Three” by User, The from the album Abandon (2003, 2:31).

Blog Definitions

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I ran across this amusing post today discussing Robot Johnny‘s upgrade to Tiger, linked first by Jeffrey Zeldman, then by Anil Dash:

And the built-in dictionary look-up is very, very cool, even if this definition of “blog” does seem like a sort of a challenge:

blog |bläg|
noun
a weblog : blogs run by twenty-something Americans with at least an unhealthy interest in computers.

It’s like it’s saying, “Blog, THIS, nerd!”…

Of course, I had to see this for myself, so I checked it out on my own system, using Tiger’s way-cool (yes, that’s a technical term) contextual menu dictionary lookup:

Blog definition

So now I’m curious. Was Robot Johnny making a funny? Or is the definition of ‘blog’ that he saw something snuck into the Candadian localization of Tiger (I’m assuming Candaian, given that his about page says that he lives in Toronto)?

If you’re using Tiger and live outside the US, what does your system define ‘blog’ as? If the definition he quoted is actually in other versions of Tiger, I’m both greatly amused, and slightly bummed that we Americans didn’t get that particular snark. Hey, I think it’s funny….

iTunes “Pigs (Three Different Ones)” by Pink Floyd from the album Animals Trance Remixes (1995, 20:26).

April Seattle Weblogger’s Meetup

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I finally made it out to another Weblogger’s meetup! It was long past time, as the last time I’d made it out was back in November. While I don’t have much basis for comparison, it seemed to be a pretty good turnout again, 20-some people all told, I’d guess. People I know were there and can remember names or websites for include Anita Rowland, Chas, Chris Prillo, TDavid, Jake, Dayment, Jeannie, and Samantha, plus a bunch more people that my brain couldn’t hold onto names or URLs for. I’m sure Anita will have a full attendee list soon.

I’ve tossed some photos up into a photoset, named and tagged as much as possible. Of course, if anyone can identify any of the people I had to leave unnamed, comment and tag away!

(Photo courtesy of Chris Pirillo)

iTunes “Cornflake Girl” by Amos, Tori from the album Under the Pink (1994, 5:07).

Friday cat Tribble blogging!

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“Friday Cat Blogging” is a well-known, oft-derided, but much loved cliché in the weblogging community. However, for those of us that don’t have cats, while we might enjoy looking at everyone else’s, we sometimes end up feeling a bit left out.

However.

I may not have a cat…

…but I do have a Tribble!

And so begins “Friday Tribble Blogging!”

Friday Tribble Blogging, my apartment, Seattle, WA

Isn’t he cute? :) He’s nestled up on my bed right now, napping on my pillows. They look so innocent when they’re asleep….

Bloggers in my neighborhood

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Here’s an interesting little web toy: feedmap.net. Give it your weblog address and (if necessary) physical address, and it returns a map of other weblogs close to you in the real world.

Apparently there’s about 154 other webloggers close to me though it seems to be a fairly loose definition of “close” — the map radius extends from Bremerton to past Sammamish east to west, and Woodinville to Renton north to south. Not terribly surprising, given how tech-centric Seattle tends to be, but fun to know.

Time to start clicking around to find out who all my neighbors are!

Search Engine Wars

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Statcounter has introduced a new section to the statistics they track titled “Search Engine Wars” — it’s a graph of how much traffic your site gets from each search engine. Out of the last 1,100 hits to my site, here’s what it shows me:

Search Engine Wars

Admittedly, my site isn’t representative of the ‘net as a whole, but from where I’m standing, it doesn’t look like much of a battle.

iTunes “Injected With A Poison” by Khan, Praga from the album Pragamatic (1998, 5:06).

WordPress, Inc.

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Congratulations to Matt on turning WordPress into WordPress, Inc. — and to [Jonas](http://www.jluster.org/ title=”Jonas Luster”) for being the first hire at the new company!

I haven’t met Matt, but he was kind enough to contribute one of the “pink” themes for this site, and I got to hang out with Jonas some time ago when he came through Seattle. Congrats to you both!

ecto powered

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Powered by ectoI’ve been using and recommending ecto for quite some time now (as well as its predecessor, Kung-Log), but as long as Adriaan’s starting to run a weekly “ecto powered blog” showcase, I figured I might as well make it a little more obvious and pop a “Powered by ecto” badge into my sidebar. Who knows if he’ll ever actually showcase me, but it’s worth a shot, right? ;)

(And on a totally unrelated note, take a brief look at the timestamp on this post. That’s what happens when I lie down for a short nap mid-day and wake up four hours later and have a neighbor who insists on keeping the volume on his TV loud enough that it actually wakes me up — and that’s not an easy thing to do. Complaints have been made, but progress hasn’t. This sucks.)

iTunes “Eye on the Gold Chain (Cut Chemist)” by Ugly Duckling from the album Journey to Anywhere (2002, 4:05).