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RSS or Atom

Politics aside… who really cares?

There’s been much said from various mucky-muck tech studs (you can search it out for yourself if you care) talking about the benefits of atom vs rss and why the other sucks, or why one is just so superior.

From a user perspective, I want a feed format that lets me subscribe to a site and read it via aggregator (web or local). I only have a few ATOM feeds, and have mostly RSS feeds, though I’d be hard pressed to tell you which flavor they are .9 or 2.0. Once they are subscribed in my aggregator, I have no way of knowing whether I am reading one vs. the other and don’t have any desire to think about it either. All I really care about is the full article… excerpts annoy me since they require that I take an additional step to read something and really break up what is an otherwise efficient process. I still subscribe to excerts though since I like getting informed through my aggregator first. As local aggregators advance and include web browsers, it becomes easier to keep things streamlined within a single application…

The important thing to remember is simplicity. As more people adopt syndication and large media companies offer feeds as well as the existing blogger camp, no one will want to try an sort out what button to press if you offer multiple versions. It’s hard enough to figure out what to do with the link, since browsers either download the file, or display a lovely page of XML. Users (and it really should be about the users) want a positive, easy experience so that they can understand why syndication might work out to be of great benefit to their workflow or reading list.

There is a good discussion in the comments of a post by Scoble to which I have contributed.

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What’s the buzz?

Some good reads on Buzz today…

Word-of-mouth marketing and “buzz” are all the rage these days, but how do you effectively foster idea viruses and viral marketing?

More importantly, how do you measure and track its impact? Boston-based BzzAgent has some solid ideas, and services such as the Viral Charts rank the top 10 viral advertising campaigns.

[FastCompany]

Scoble also tells of his experience, finding the buzz-makers and watching them influence traffic and response.

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Cometa Shutting Down

WOW – While I knew that had a few issues thanks to Glenn’s reporting, I did not see this coming…

Cometa Networks has confirmed that they are ceasing operations: Wi-Fi Networking News was able to confirm through multiple independent and reliable sources this morning that Cometa Networks will start the process of running down its hotspot network operations tomorrow. Cometa vice president of marketing Kent Hellebust acknowledged the news in an interview early this afternoon. [Wi-Fi Networking News]

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Carriers sold on shopping by cell phone

This just might get really annoying!

First, if you don’t have Verizon or any of the other carriers who might try this, you are going to see some annoying pop-ups on your TV program when they have no relevance to you since you can’t respond even if you wanted to… Universal Short Codes are the answer here, no carrier specific ones, like how they are used by Cingular on American Idol for voting. Even if this goes through, I’d like to see an option to turn this off – or at least push it to a corner on my screen, though off would be best. I guess the cable providers are going to have to build this onto their platforms as well to even show you the ads… much like the iTV experiments which seeem to continue on a smaller scale.

Verizon Wireless plans to announce on Monday that its subscribers will be able to bill any transaction made using their cell phone’s Net connection directly to their Verizon account instead of a credit card or bank account, according to sources familiar with the company’s plans. The new service uses a version of text messaging that’s beginning to become popular in the United States. [CNET News.com]

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Online Grocery Shopping, Take Two

Online grocery shopping is a wonderful thing! We use FreshDirect for our main grocery store and YourGrocer for bulk (primarily baby and drink stuff). The convenience is terrific – you schedule when you want things delivered and the quality of food has been very high as well… much better in fact than many of the very local stores in our neighborhood. There’s no going back…

After the spectacular crashes of big-name Internet grocers in the late 1990s, the dream of a grand new wave of online food stores appeared to fizzle. But with intentionally meager fanfare, grocers have made Internet shopping available to tens of millions of consumers nationwide, and upcoming expansions will expand it to millions more.

Industry watchers say it’s no longer a question of whether Internet grocery can be successful, but rather of how big it will become. [Wired News]

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AT&T to partner with Sprint for cell service

I’m not even sure how this is possible given everything we’ve been told about the network incompatibilities of GSM and CDMA… but who am I to question this?

The Wall Street Journal is reporting today [subscription] that AT&T is expected to announce a partnership with Sprint to offer wireless service to AT&T customers. [MobileTracker]

UPDATE — Now I recall… ATT kept the brand even though they sold the customers and newtork to Cingular…so it’s a pure MVNO deal now.

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Broadband Adoption

As of March 2004, most users in the US connect to the Internet using dial-up modems of 56Kbps or less.

  • 44.42% use 56Kbps modems,
  • 6.88% use 28/33.3Kbps, and
  • 2.73% use 14.4Kbps modems.
  • 54.03% of home users in total in the US connect to the Internet at 56Kbps or less

Broadband penetration in US homes increased by 0.82% in March.

  • As of March 2004 broadband penetration was at 45.97%, up from 45.15% in February
  • The average increase in broadband was 0.76% per month from October 1999 to February 2004.
  • Broadband share in the US should exceed 50% by July of 2004.

[Center for Media Research]

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Will Souping Up TiVo Save It?

Business Week has a piece on TiVO and what they’ve got cooking. They are trying to push things forward while also fighting off the Cable and Satellite competitors who are seem to no longer be interested in including their branded DVR software…

TiVO says they’ve got a much to be excited about, moving past just simple DVR functionality and looking to include things like satellite radio, digital photo editing, and the ability to surf the Web from TiVO boxes. Sounds to me like the Moxi box (without web), I’d like to own. Moxi is going in another direction enabling a very rich platform for the MSOs (View a Demo WMV Movie here) while TiVo is looking to enhance consumer electronics devices like DVD players to help get away from their revenue reliance on stand-alone set-tops, which in my opinion is going to be even tougher than competing simply on the DVR box.

We’ll just have to wait and see how TiVO plans to spend their estimated 50 Million in marketing. It’s a great technology, that’s been vastly under-marketed, relying too much on word of mouth and not expanding through educating the next tier of consumers…

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A Stunt Double For Your Credit Card

What if there was a way to fool those who would try to fool us, so that purchases could be made online without any danger of card numbers falling into the wrong hands? A few companies are trying such a plan: think of it as the stunt-double approach to online shopping. [The New York Times]

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The SixApart solution

Jeff Jarvis suggests Typepad divest from Six Apart as a full service business so that Moveable Type can offer more attractive licenses, which he feels are clearly limited based on blocking potential competitors to Typepad. Jeff’s logic seems right on, based on and considering the backlash currently rising within the MT community, somethings going to have to give if they expect to pull out of this without too much damage to their existing market share.

I suggest divesting. Then SixApart, the software business, will come up with licenses that serve its customers well and will sell as many as possible. Rather then having your entire customer base scream in protest — as they are now — they would beat a path to your door to pay for your mousetrap (whenever your customers are screaming in protest, you know you are doing something very wrong). Meanwhile, TypePad — a licensee of Movable Type software — would offer no-hassle and reasonably priced hosting and would compete with other licensees. Competition would lead to more business for the two companies and happier customers and probably market dominance for Movable Type and its standards (e.g., TypeKey and Trackbacks). Instead, what we’re seeing now is that SixApart is driving present and potential customers to competitors. [BuzzMachine]

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Verizon: Take That, Cable

Your call is important to us… please hold for the next available operator.

I’ll be very surprised if this happens before cable is offering a completely revamped, much more adavnced and higher speed service. There are 6MB trials happening today, not planned for the future like in the Verizon marketing plan… we’ll see I guess but doubtful this will compete in any real time.

Good thing Verizons marketing announcements don’t stump advancing technology like in the old Microsoft vaporware days.

More intense and more expensive. Verizon expects to spend about $1 billion on the first phase of its rollout, making fiber lines available to 1 million homes by this fall. The Texas markets will include Keller, a suburb of Dallas. Although the identities of the other eight states could not be learned, one is likely to be California, a person familiar with the strategy says. Verizon plans to offer the service to 1 million more homes next year and a total of 12 million by 2008. Over the next 15 years, Verizon expects to spend $20 billion to $30 billion to extend service to nearly all 35 million customers.

Television is only part of the strategy. The new fiber-optic lines also will allow Verizon to offer the most advanced consumer broadband service the U.S. has ever seen. Internet connections of up to 30 megabits per second, more than 10 times faster than a state-of-the-art cable modem or digital subscriber line (DSL), will be possible, Verizon executives say. Five- and 15-megabit versions will be available for customers who don’t require all that juice. Although specific pricing hasn’t been decided, the 5-meg version will be competitive with cable modem service, which typically costs $40 to $45 a month. Eventually, if there’s demand for it, Verizon intends to offer consumers Net connections of 100 megs or more.

Cable rivals in Texas insist they’re not quaking in their cowboy boots. For one thing, Verizon has tried this before. Its corporate predecessor, Bell Atlantic Corp., unveiled grand plans to offer pay TV to its customers on the East Coast during the 1990s, but the project failed because of high costs and technological problems. Even if Verizon can make the economics work this time, it has no experience in entertainment, where it will have to face off against Time Warner Inc. (TWX ), Comcast Corp. (CMCSK ), and other powerful rivals. “We are already in a highly competitive marketplace. We face satellite in every market we are in,” says David Mack, a spokesman for Charter Communications Inc. (CHTR ), which provides cable service in Keller. “We believe we will do just fine because we offer superior choice, price, and quality of customer care.”

[BW Online]

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Movable Type 3

Here’s to not looking back on my switch over to WordPress. I even paid for MT and would still have to pay more (yet it was free) to upgrade to 3.0. My previous site will live on for now, but thankfully all the content was easily migrated to this one. No need to deal except amazingly to continue to delete the comment spam.

There’s a lot of talk on the blogs today about Movable Type 3, of course, and a lot of negative feedback about their new pricing and licensing models. It seems topical to discuss a few things that worry me about Six Apart as a company moving forward.

First, they’re up against the biggest unspoken rule of Internet commerce: You Are Not Allowed To Charge For What Was Once Free. I don’t know how the rule came to be, and I don’t like the rule, but it’s pretty much incontrovertible. Try to bend it and you’ll likely have a mutiny on your hands. [~stevenf]

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NYC Wireless offers secure wireless email

If you were concerned about wireless security….

NYCwireless, Corp., a New York-based non-profit organization, today launched NYCwireless SafeMail, an affordable secure email solution for the wireless community. NYCwireless Safemail utilizes industry-standard Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) technology to ensure data privacy and security for users on public Wi-Fi networks. Both secure IMAP and webmail services will be provided. [Smart Mobs]

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Google’s New Groups

If I was Yahoo, I’d be very nervous. First Gmail and now email groups… In my quick test and review, I’d say it’s very similar to Yahoo Groups, though slicker and without the crass ads you find all over the place. Its close in experience though without the UI of Gmail. Simple and clear which is good… hope it stays that way. I can definitely see moving groups from Yahoo to Google through this…

Called Google Groups 2, the service builds on Google’s archive of more than 845 million Usenet postings and adds the ability for users to create and manage their own public and private mailing lists. It also offers faster indexing of postings for search and features for joining groups and tracking hot topics, Google officials said. [eWeek]

I created a group and am inviting anyone reading this to join… I figure we can carry on a parallel discussion though more directly between readers if you like. Just a test, no feelings hurt if no one is game… we’ll see if it sticks.

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(not so) Great Customer Service

My most recent customer service adventure happened last week when I finally had to call T-Mobile and find out what the heck was happening on their network that was not only asking me to confirm timezone and time changes, but doing so multiple times in succession and even suggestion new timezones for me to try.

When I called TMO, I was greeted by a friendly helper who suggested this behavior happens when you travel between time zones. I agreed with her that in fact does or should happen, though perhaps it should not happen when I am in my apartment or having lunch — not traveling at all – in the same city.

(now the good part…)

She asked me if I was sure I was in fact in the same time zone throughout the city. When I mentioned I lived in NYC, she suggested it was possible for multiple time-zones to exist within a city. Perhaps, though …It’s not only the same timezone throughout the city, but through the entire east coast of the country. Completely undettered, she asked if I was sure and suggested again that there were cities in which parts are actually in different zones. I casually and politely (ok I was an asshole, but come on!!) suggested she might want to better familiarize herself with the country we are living in.

I was not able to detect any accent with this person, so I am assuming she is a citizen and living in the US. Just an idiot as far as I can tell… but at least she was not reading from a script — though perhaps in her case improvisation is not the best course.

At least I know I am not alone in my experiences with stellar help —

But in the midst of that conversation, George informed me (reading from boilerplate) that Sprint “cannot guarantee that your phone will work in an office building, in your home, or when in a moving car.” Are you kidding me? Who is this service designed for, the Amish? “Never a dropped call whilst thee is standing outdoors in a flat plain, scything wheat.” [ZDNet AnchorDesk]

PS – My phone still gives the updates a few times a day – I did not have the patience to wait it out with her on the line and have yet to call back.

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Trouble in Tablet Land?

I guess Steve Jobs was right on about not pushing quickly into the Tablet space. I’d still love to a convertible Powerbook with handwriting recognition though if I had to choose where Apple was going to push things I’d much rather see a PDA/mini-computer device.

At WinHEC, Microsoft execs almost went so far as to admit that the company is now resigned to positioning Tablet functionality as just another notebook computer feature. (Or, if you prefer the Microsoft spin on this, for the Tablet PC to “assimilate” the mobile PC segment. [Microsoft-Watch]

Scoble responds on his blog…

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Reverse Product Placement?

Watching 24 tonight the thought occurred to me that Ford asked/payed for Steven Saunders (the bad guy) to be driving with his entourage in Chevy trucks rather than the Ford trucks all the good guys drive.

Ford has been a marquee sponsor for all three seasons and has even gone as far as to present the opening of season 2 and 3 commercial free following a cinematic spot. Their product placement is hard to miss (as are the other products for that matter) but the Chevy emblems seemed too obvious not to be placed.