Tag: boing boing

  • From RSS to Today

    Is RSS dying? Quick answer: No

    But RSS (Really Simple Syndication) has a lot more to compete with in 2010 than it did in 2005 when it took off.

    In 2005, the advent of aggregators like Bloglines, Google reader, and even the über popularity of my.yahoo.com made RSS the best way to grow your reach as a blogger. If you could just get them to click that orange button– they’d get your blog post every time you published automatically!

    RSS was king.

    For a few years RSS was one of the easy measurement tools of blog power. As people visited a site for the first time they were more likely to subscribe to a blog if they knew say… 1034 other people already did. (And yes, tons of the names in the Christian blogosphere you know today got known simply because they figured out how to manipulate the Feedburner subscriber chicklet. They made it seems like they had tens of thousands when they really had about a hundred. Tricky, tricky. It was dirty but you bought their books. Sorry.)

    In 2006, the apple cart began to get upset with the popularity of sites which sifted through thousands of relevant RSS feeds within a niche` and curated the niche` into a website. Power wasn’t just measured in your ability to have thousands of RSS subscribers… it became measured in your ability to get your conent brought to the front page. Sites like Boing Boing, TechCrunch, Huffington Post, and Mashable exploded simply by curating their respective niche`. (Imagine editors looking through tens of thousands of RSS feeds and choosing 10-12 things a day to link bait.) Interestingly, since that’s essentially what newspapers and television news folks do, these curators became recognized as legitimate news outlets within their sector. All because they subscribed to thousands of RSS feeds and started to bring the best stuff to the top. Along the way they earned more than your RSS subscription– they earned your trust.

    In 2008 and gaining strength through today RSS has become less important. Why? We don’t need to have tons of content automatically sent to us via an aggregator. Nor do we need the big niche` sites to curate the conversation generally. Instead of subscribing to Mashable or Boing Boing or the New York Times, I monitor my friends feed on Facebook or Twitter. I allow them to go through their aggregators and allow them to be my curator. In other words… I read what my friends tell me to read because they thought enough of it to retweet it or recommend it to me on Facebook.

    Here’s the new reality bloggers, news agencies, and marketers are wrestling with every day: We’ve gone from RSS to FFS.

    What is FFS? I just made it up.

    Friends and Fans Syndication: Delivering your content through relationship-based platforms.

    Learn how to manipulate FFS and you will be king in 2011.

  • Beat up by my elderly neighbor

    This story rocks. It’s living proof that you can’t judge a book by its cover. Apparently, this 24 year old man thought he could intimidate his elderly neighbor. Instead he got the beating of his life.

    05_Flatbed_1 - JUNEGregory McCalium, 24, was left with severe facial wounds after the knife-wielding thug attempted to rob his elderly neighbor in tBotley near Oxford, England, Britain‘s SkyNews reported. The would-be burglar broke into the home of Frank Corti last Aug. 19 – without realizing the 72-year-old was a retired boxer.

    A mug shot released by the Thames Valley Police reveals the results after Corti disarmed his attacker, let loose with two punches to the face and restrained McCalium until the police arrived on the scene.

    On Tuesday, McCalium was sentenced to a 4 1/2-year sentence for the crime. link

    Please tell me this will be made into a movie? Rocky 10?

    HT to Boing Boing

  • Born Dropped Out

    I found these videos fascinating. There is a guy doing some research on children of hippies and how they’ve prospered or struggled. The researcher asked the participants to answer 20 questions on video in a self-produced kind of way.

    Quick disclaimer, I have watched a couple of them so I can’t guarantee that if you watch the whole series they will all be wholesome. Keep watching at your own risk.

    HT to Mark

  • “A-Bomb” at FSU

    bombThis story cracked me up. A 17 year old visiting the campus of Florida State University accidentally shut down parts of the campus as a briefcase left on or near his car was mistaken for an explosive device.

    The area was cordoned off, buildings evacuated, a command post set up, local fire departments and bomb squads summoned.

    It turns out the briefcase that caused so much suspicion and labeled as “displaying a message of destructive device” was actually his nickname, “A-Bomb.”  link to alert messages

    ht Boing Boing 

  • Great quote

    No need for my commentary here, it speaks for itself. Put your coffee down before reading this sentence.

    CNN apologized today for getting on-air analysis of Gov. Spitzer’s legal options from a former U.S. Attorney who resigned after being accused of biting a stripper.

    HT to Boing Boing

  • Kristen’s Dream Bed

    igloo bedMy wife is a bookworm. While I struggle to finish books before they are due at the library, Kristen reads 4-5 books per week. In turn, Kristen has turned my children into bookworms as well and the highlight of their week is the trip to the library to pick up new books and take back the old.

    Her dream job would be to run a children’s bookstore or work at a library or somehow find herself surrounded by books 24 hours per day.

    So when I saw this I instantly thought of Kristen. When I showed it to her she said, “Oh I want that!”

    HT to Cory Doctorow

  • R.E.M. and the President: End of the World

    HT to Boing Boing

    From the same people who did “Sunday, Bloody Sunday” comes this old REM classic.