April 13, 2005
This Blog is Dead — Long Live the New Blog!
04:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Whatever
Ok, the wait is over. This will be the last post for this (old) blog, so you’ll have to update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to the new Zoinger. The new blog is located here (http://www.zoinger.com/words/) and the new RSS feed is located here (http://www.zoinger.com/words/feed/).
The index page for this (old) blog will now be located here (http://www.zoinger.com/old_blog.html) if you are interested in reading any of my old posts. I’ll also have this linked to from the sidebar of the new blog.
April 12, 2005
Zoinger RSS Feeds to Change Soon
08:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
Well, I’ve been reading up in detail on WordPress, and it looks like I’m going to have to change the URL for the Zoinger RSS feeds. Sorry in advance for any inconvienience this is going to cause.
I’ll probably be changing over in the next day or so, but will let you know what the new feed URL is/are when I do the change over. I’m planning on keeping the entire MT site live so old URLs to the posts won’t break.
April 11, 2005
More on Moving to WordPress
04:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Movable Type
As I’ve written about previously, I’m in the (slow) process of moving my blogging application from MovableType over the WordPress. WordPress has got momentum behind it, so I think it’s going to be more future-proof than MT.
Anyway, a sneak preview of my WordPress blog is available here. I’m obviously still working on the sidebar links and such.
I installed a new theme over the weekend, which was a piece of cake. I also did some quick edits to the main CSS file to change the look and feel a bit. I’m a little unsure about how I’m going to do the transition… I’ll thinking that I might move the pointer for Zoinger.com to my WordPress directory, or I might create a jump page for Zoinger.com which will have links to the blog. WordPress also allows you to create a manage static pages.
So far, I’m really impressed by the easy-of-use and great documentation of WordPress.
April 08, 2005
Memory Maps — Why Yahoo! Bought Flickr Reason #126
03:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
I was reading the Flickr Blog today and came across this post about “memory maps.” The idea is that you post a screen shot of an area you are familiar with (from a service like Google Maps), and annotate the screen shot with your memories. Wild!
Here’s part of a picture from the Memory Maps Flickr group showing an example of the annotations.
Just make sure you have a browser that has Flash enabled so you can view the annotations.
Google Maps Satellite View vs. TerraServer
09:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
This is probably not news to anyone but me, but I just noticed that Google Maps now has a “satellite” view. This displays an aerial photo of the area you are looking at.
However, if you’re looking to zoom in further than Google allows, it’s worth checking Microsoft’s TerraServer. For areas that they have recently updated (such as Palo Alto, CA), you can zoom in much further than Google. In addition, the TerraServer offers older aerial shots and topo map overlays.
Here’s a screen shot of 500 University in Palo Alto, CA from Google at maximum zoom:
Continue reading "Google Maps Satellite View vs. TerraServer"
April 07, 2005
How "Good" Are RSS Ads?
12:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
By “good” I mean would I actually click on one, and is the click-on result relevant to the content.
In my post on why RSS ads are important, I wrote about how this article discussing MobileTracker.net’s use of Feedburner’s feed-serving technology. This allows Feedburner to serve ads within MobileTracker’s RSS feed.
To try some RSS ads out, I used Bloglines to set up a RSS feed from Mobile.net. The first ad within the feed was attached to a post entitled Virgin Mobile launches K10 Royale . The ad was for Ring Tones and Wallpapers from Jamster which points to here. Here’s a screenshot this post and ad.
Ok, I might not be their target, but I could see people clicking on that.
The second ad was for Liquid Lense - $13.95 which points here. It’s a little off topic from the post’s content, but you can see the “match.” Heck, they might even sell some of the stuff. Liquid Lense, that is. Liquid Lense “Repairs Scratched & Cloudy Glasses“… oh, and for the quality seal of approval… “As Seen on TV”.
And finally, this one.
Which leads to YourMobileDesk.com’s page offering all times of retractable-cable products (like a mini travel mouse). Pretty good.
Man, these are all better than the old days on the GlobalHyperMegaNet with endless ads for ImGonnaFailRealSoon.bomb.
April 06, 2005
Ads within RSS Feeds... Important Stuff
07:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
So… some random surfing led me to Scoble’s post about why Google might be syndication shy.
This lead me to Steve Rubel’s post on that subject which, in turn, lead me to an article on how Overature is working with Feedburner to deliver ads within RSS feeds.
That’s the important point.
Feedburner… Yahoo! or Google should either re-create this service (unlikely) or purchase Feedburner (more likely). Since Feedburner’s business model places it as an intermediary between blogs and their readers (readers that use RSS anyway) Yahoo!/Google would be buying reach into blogs. Oh, and they get a little thing called reach into RSS feeds. Clearly RSS is looking like it will be a mass-medium… ie, everyone will use it in the future.
Perhaps in a few years RSS becomes a big part of how users interact with the web. Heck, you can already get a Gmail RSS feed, do package tracking via RSS, so why not? Being stuck in the “old school” of browsing-only ad serving — ie, not offering RSS reach and ad-serving technologies — could be a huge shortcoming for web media companies.
The Feedburner model is pretty cool… publishers get ad revenue from their RSS feeds by merely letting Feedburner serve the feed, and advertisers get reach into RSS via a targeted, contextual ad-serving technology. Right on!
History Flow — How Wikipedia Pages Evolve
07:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) ~ Biz - Internet
History Flow is a tool created by IBM’s reseach team to study the history of collaborative documents. Specifically, they study how subjects on Wikipedia evolve over time. I found out about History Flow over at Nate Koechley’s blog. As the IBM folks say…
history flow provides answers at a glance to questions like, Has a community contributed to the text or has it been mostly written by a single author? How much has a particular contributor influenced the current version of the document? Is the text’s evolution marked by spurts of intense revision activity or does it reflect a smooth transition from its beginning to the present?
Here’s a screen shot of one of the History Flow displays for term Islam.
This and Jon Udell’s screencast looking at how the the heavy-metal umlaut page on Wikipedia evolved give a good overview on how the Wikipedia community is working.