Category: Blogging

Blog Clean Up

~ rbonini

If anyone has been looking for my previous posts and can’t find them, there’s a reason.

I’ve done a spring clean ( not that its really spring) and removed quite a few posts. As part of my aim to focus this blog on technology, all the politics stuff is gone. I did keep the Quotes and Bushisims as well as a few funny items. This’ll also apply to my Link blog.  

And to reflect this new change in direction, I’ve altered the tagline  to “Random Technology Musings”. If anyone thinks that its too random, suggestions are welcome.

HD versus Blu-Ray

~ rbonini

Note: I’m far from an expert on this subject, but have been watching from the sidelines

I was at ASDA yesterday (that’s Walmart here in the UK) and found a few titles in both HD and Blu-Ray formats. It was exceedingly modest compared to the huge “normal” DVD collection that surrounded it. It seems to drive home the point that a single, unified format that runs on all devices works.

My collection of DVD’s ( about 100) can be played on any capable device I can find. From my PC to the my laptop to the DVD player to the Playstation 2. The only thing that changes is the screen size and controller format. Simple – no thinking require, literally.

As far as I could tell (and I didn’t look that hard to be honest – I wasn’t planing to write this post), the only device capable of playing either format was the PS3 (of which there were only 4 on sale). The reason for the lack of a) players and B0 titles to choose from comes from the confusion over which title is going to make it to the big time. Its a rather chicken-and-egg problem. Do you take a risk and back one over the other and hope that it will make it with enough pushing? or do you sit it out and wait for it to make it to the big time.

The thing is that once a format dominates, both manufacturers studios and retailers stand to make huge amounts of money since all the confusion will have cleared up and consumers will feel much more comfortable spending large amounts of money. Its not just the disks, its the whole eco-system that surrounds it. I’ll have to buy a new CD-drive capable to playing the new format. I’ll have to by a new player for the TV. I’ll have to by a HD-TV ( already done). I could go a bit further an by a HD set top box. And then there’s the disks (both with movies on them and for burning stuff to )

Since there is so much to gain, I don’t get it when manufacturers are prepares to duke it out to the death (or one or the other does a repeat of VHS’s move against betamax)

The thing is,  a push is already happening:

On the one hand, it looks like Blockbuster is going all Blu-ray (in other words, no more discs that conform to the HD-DVD format). According to a story from the Associated Press as seen on Fox (there’s also a blog on News.com about it)

…

Could Blockbuster’s move mean the death knell for HD-DVD? Is Blockbuster even relevant in this market where people are getting their video on-demand and through outlets like Netflix?

…

Meanwhile, elsewhere on the Net, questions are being raised about Blu-ray discs engineering. Via Engadget comes a report that certain Blu-ray discs are “rotting” to the point that they’re unplayable.

I watch with interest, while I save my pounds and penny’s to spend on the winner – to the victor, the spoils.

Partial Feeds

~ rbonini

Partial Feeds are the worst kind of feed there is to subscribe to. They drive me insane.

Fortunately, a few bloggers (in my blogroll, that is) are seeing the light and changing to full text feeds. Recently Michael J. Totten changed to full text feeds and I read more of his stuff now as a result.

Steve’s post at the Ransom Thoughts blog ( found via Scoble’s link blog) has the exact same thoughts about this. He goes a bit further than me and says he’s unsubscribing from partial feeds.

Feeds are there for the express purpose of giving people easier access to your information, not baiting links to drive up the PageRank and roll in the AdWords revenue.

Remember the blogosphere is a community with a vast amount of information contained in its many pages (and feeds). Since it is a community, a single blog survives only by the grace of others that link to it.

So be nice to people when it comes to full text feeds – let them read your stuff with as little effort as possible – it’ll help your blog in the long run.

The first comment to Steve’s post puts it best:

Life’s too short for [a] clickthrough.

Two things I’d like Google to Do

~ rbonini ~ 1 Comment

Just a short post while I’m thinking about this.

Number 1 – Integrate your winning search engine into Google Reader

The number of times I’ve read something and forget from which feed or when I read it is unbelievable. I have to go trawling though my feeds BY HAND!!!!! looking for it. Its a hit or miss affair with a less than 50% success rate. Very frustrating.

Thus I have to either post items to my Link blog ( you’ll see it in my side bar) or star it. Neither of which are substitutes for a good search facility.

It would do wonders for my blogging 🙂 !

Number 2 – Integrate Google Notebook into Google Reader

Again, a good tool for bloggers.

Right now I have a ton of stuff about Microsoft/aQuantive waiting to be blogged about. And it would do so much to help if the notes pointed to the original material instead of to Google Reader ( I use the Explorer extension to right click and add  the selection to my Notebook)

While we’re on the subject, Google might want to add a “Share” feature to post stuff from your Notebook to your shared Items feed. Its such a pain when you come across something worth sharing and its NOT in Google Reader

(this is turning into more than two things, but hey, I’m helping improve things)

Number 3 – Make it easy for bloggers NOT on Blogger to work with Google Reader

But this I mean the “Add to Google” button that bloggers use. Mine either flat disappears or doesn’t work. And I can’t remember the page where you get them from ( I DO remember that it took me an age to find in the first place).

Secondly, work with other blogging engine to get them to allow users to add a clip of their shared items to their blog. My solution at the moment isn’t nearly as good as what Google provides via JavaScript ( making it impossible to add to WordPress).

Number 4 – Allow us to see how many people subscribe to our shared items feed

For no reason than this would be really cool.

In fact, this plays into Google’s hands. the more people add an items to their link blog, the more popular the item is. And the more people subscribe to a link blog, the more authority  that link blog has, thus helping Google better rank items shared. In short, its the RSS/Atom version of their PageRank system.

Update 1:

Maybe Google should make a new acquisition:

Joke apart, Google Notebook is really an online yellow sticky, while Zoho’s Notebook is a full-featured multimedia application to create, aggregate, share, collaborate on just about any type of content easily, be it text, database, spreadsheet, image, drawings, audio, video – you name it.  The only thing the two “Notebooks” share is the name, otherwise they simply play in different leagues.  I tend to agree with Read/WriteWeb:  “Zoho Notebook offered different things than Microsoft OneNote and more things than Google Notebook.“

Adobe Apollo (Updated)

~ rbonini

Jim Turner, via Scobe, holds this interesting opinion of Adobe in the aftermath of the launch:

I can tell you what they are not doing, they are not having a conversation with the influential people in their industry.  Sure they are presenting some cool things and people like Tim O’Reilly, Robert Scoble, and others are all madly discussing the new apps and talking about it, but from the Adobe side I get nothing but crickets chirping.  Where is the Adobe blogger?  If they are truly in competition with Microsoft, how about competing?  Put a company evangelist on a blog and let the blogger talk to all of the people now linking to the rest of the discussion.  Adobe may be getting excellent marks for their new and latest in technology but I give them an F in showing that they are truly in the market of discussing their products.

I tend to agree here. Microsoft has changed its public image completely simply becuase of the 3000+ Microsoft bloggers out there. Every single start-up, I’ve noticed, has a blog or two on their site. Seems everyone is jumping into the blogging trend with two feet. Well, nearly everyone. Amazon stands out as the big tech company that dosent have a corprate blogging strategy/guidelines/policy/site going.  Traditional customer relations tools simply don’t have the oopmh they used to. Blogging turns faceless corprate giants into somthing a little more human. 

Mea Cupla:

Scoble corrects the record:

Jim Turner says about Adobe: “I can tell you what they are not doing, they are not having a conversation with the influential people in their industry.” and “Where is the Adobe blogger?”

I guess Jim missed that Adobe has tons of blogs.

And, I would expect that Adobe will increase the discussion over the next few months. I am telling them not to invite me next time, but to get a bunch of .NET developers in a room like Scott Hanselman. Those are the influentials that Adobe really needs to have a conversation with.

I’m heading over right now to blogs.adobe.com to see what interesting stuff I can find.