Monday, April 28th, 2008
Only a very small percentage of the Internet population is aware of the RSS format and its benefits, and that number is growing slowly over time.
Let me do my part to spread the importance of RSS (specifically, full RSS if possible).
What is RSS?
RSS = Really Simple Syndication
RSS is a format used to deliver information from websites and pages that get updated regularly. An RSS document (which is called feed) contains either a summary or the full content from a website.
Why RSS is important to me?
I no longer read any blog directly on any website. I wouldn't be able to read that much if there is no RSS. Imagine that you have to visit website by website, to see if they have updated it. If you have 20 blogs to follow, clicking and waiting them to load would have to take a long time. What if you have 50 websites/blogs to read?
With RSS, you can see it all in one screen when you are using RSS reader. I'm using Google Reader and I'm very happy with it. Do give it a try, if you are not using any.
If you are a web content publisher, make sure your site provides RSS feed so that your readers can subscribe to it. Besides saving your followers' time, you save lots of bandwidth! Of course, you might be earning less ads revenue, but if that's so important to you, there are lots of advertising networks that allows you to put ads on your RSS feed. One good choice would be to use Google AdSense with Feedburner.
Sunday, April 20th, 2008
Linking to own blog is something that every blogger does. Normally, after I finish writing a blog, I shall receive email notifying that I'm receiving ping(s) from the blog post I have just written. Then, I had to delete the mail (it's polluting my pure inbox), then delete the ping manually. I can accept ping from other blogs, I just don't like to see my own ping showing up in my own blog.
Just days ago, when I was browsing in WordPress support forum, I saw somebody asked how to disable self pings. I never thought somebody actually created a WordPress plugin to do this.
Go here to get it for yourself: No Self Pings
(This is also a test post to know whether it really works)
Sunday, April 20th, 2008
Three weeks of hard work and I finally cleared my inbox, from 3,000 messages to 0 message. Maybe I'm not as effective as the problogger who took only a day to do it, still, I managed to clear it! Some of the mails in my mailbox dated year 2005. That was the last time I cleared everything. It even run out of storage at some time, luckily Google increased it.
All I did was to label each of the email with related Gmail labels (I have 20+ of them), then archive it.
If you are interested to do the same, Lifehacker has a good guide on this.
Other than my mailbox, I also just remove all icons and files from my desktop. I love empty desktop. Especially when I need to show it on a projector when I am doing a system demonstration.
I also had a paper tray that keeps all documents pending to be filed. Two hours of filing work yesterday, it is also empty now!
I feel good now. Hopefully I could keep them always empty after this.
Saturday, April 19th, 2008
I really don't understand why a blog like the adCenter would want to use show short rss feed, when their main purpose is to spread the news. Are they afraid of spammers took their blog contents and post it to somewhere else? I thought that would help them further spread their products to more audience?
A second reason I could guess would be that they want their readers to check out their website? Or, they want their readers to click on the advertisements on their website? As far as I know, subscribers, whether they read on RSS reader or at the website, they don't click much on ads. If they are so worried about this, make some RSS ads.
I'm not sure about you, most of the time I really won't click on the "read more" link, unless they really are giving out money.
After thinking a while, I think maybe I should go to the site and have a look. Maybe their website is really so cool that everyone has to check it out. Guess what I see?
Maybe we should create a campaign to boycott websites with short feeds. We want full text feed! We want full text feed! We want full text feed!
Are you with me?
