Blogging Archives - Page 2 of 5

Moved: Feedburner Migration With Glitches

Posted on January 20, 2009 ·

Feedburner started as a cool new blog feed management/reporting service a few years ago, and quickly became a de facto standard. A quick scan of my Feed Reader shows hardly anything but Feedburner. Since Google acquired the company almost two years ago, we haven’t seen a lot of new services – but that does not change the almost monopoly status. Feedburner rules the market, and I’m no exception.

A few months ago Google started to migrate accounts – first only those who wanted to run Adsense in their feeds. Since I don’t care for advertising, I did not bother first, but knew the day would come: the final deadline is February 28th, but anyone can move to the new servers on their own schedule.

Seeing all the negative buzz on Twitter I was planning to wait – but then I “lost” 70% of my subscribers even with the old setup, so I figured I might as well take the plunge. And here it is now: a shiny, brand new (old) feed @ http://feeds2.feedburner.com/zoli.

Google says (FAQ) the stats will “recover” in about a week. Funny thing is, the one service entirely missing from the reports is Google’s very own Reader. I certainly hope this “loss” is only in the stats, and readers are receiving our feed without interruption. If you are, you don’t have to do anything, the old Feedburner URL will continue to be redirected, says Google. Then again, if you’re cautious (like I am), or perhaps are not following our feed yet, you might as well grab the new feed here.

Either way, thanks for reading my Blog.

Filed Under: Blogging · Tagged: atom, Blogging, bloog feed, feed reader, feedburner, Google, rss

Is There a New Twitter to Blog Spam Bot?

Posted on January 14, 2009 ·

An older post, If Scoble Thinks He Found Bad Startup Marketing, He Ain’t Seen Nothing received several comments, all showing the same structure, pointing back to Twitter accounts – some are clearly spam accounts with only this one update, but others appear to be real users, although I am not following any of them.

lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e

This is a test.

(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)

aleslie2 (Art Leslie) | January 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm e

Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.

(This appears to be a real account.)

bisfourbritt (bisfourbritt) | January 13th, 2009 at 9:52 pm e

This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts

Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah

(This appears to be a real account.)

radiomanmic (Michael Grider) | January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm e

This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.

(This appears to be a real account.)

deborahgtaylor (deborahgtaylor) | January 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am e

Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.

(This appears to be a real account.)

cineola (cineola) | January 14th, 2009 at 7:14 am e

This is a test.

(This appears to be a spam account with no real content.)

Is there some new Twitter-to-Blog spam bot that I am not aware of?

Update: There’s more now, on another post:

lbfd (LBFD) | January 13th, 2009 at 6:58 pm e

This is a test.

aleslie2 (Art Leslie) | January 13th, 2009 at 7:59 pm e

Hmmm … tweet completely disappeared. This is a test.

bisfourbritt (bisfourbritt) | January 13th, 2009 at 9:52 pm e

This is a test. Nd it ends with no friends. We will go on…..untl it hurts

Zonin with loud shit tonightt hah

radiomanmic (Michael Grider) | January 13th, 2009 at 11:28 pm e

This is a test. Don’t mind me, I’m just passing through.

deborahgtaylor (deborahgtaylor) | January 14th, 2009 at 6:10 am e

Is going to Brenham for a quilting lesson. This is a test.

cineola (cineola) | January 14th, 2009 at 7:14 am e

This is a test.

sztelzer (Rodrigo Sztelzer) | January 14th, 2009 at 11:18 am e

Só bebo tequila. This is a test.This is a test.
http://tinyurl.com/7jww4a Só beberei tequila.

In the meantime I disabled the Tweetbacks WordPress Plugin, which had not properly installed anyway, to see if it has anything to do with the attack.

Update: Follow-up thoughts @ CloudAve.

Is TweetBacks getting spammed already?

Filed Under: Blogging · Tagged: Blogging, spam, tweetbacks, Twitter, wordpress

Credit Crunch Has Reached Bloggers

Posted on December 26, 2008 ·

The Credit Crunch has reached the Blogosphere: it is now a WordPress Theme by Ericulous, developer of the lightweight theme I use here.

I have not found a "Recession" WordPress theme (yet), but there is one called Depression.

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor · Tagged: Blogging, blogs, ericulous, wordpress, wordpress themes

The Human Touch: TechMeme Getting Nostalgic

Posted on December 16, 2008 ·

TechMeme recently gave up trying to get a 100% working algorithm, instead Gabe switched to half-manual (edited) mode. I suppose and along with it came emotions, otherwise how could we explain TechMeme getting nostalgic. There’s an antique classic in the sponsors’ display:

Memeorandum – The Google for blogs on Microsoft’s Startup Zone. First I got suspicious – is someone recycling TechMeme’s original name for a new venture? But no, clicking through takes us to a fresh post just off the press, dated January 10th, 2005. Don Dodage announces:

Memeorandum is a new blog “news clipper service”. It constantly monitors new blog posts and publishes the title and first 50 words or so to the dynamic news page. The page updates every few minutes with new high quality material. There are currently two news pages. One for technology and another for politics.

Obviously a glitch, I don’s suppose you’ll see it long on TechMeme. Oh, and Happy Birthday, TechMeme ( the 4th, I suppose, more or less).

Filed Under: Blogging, Humor · Tagged: Blogging, memeorandum, techmeme

Uncov’s Back… Sort of.

Posted on October 18, 2008 ·

I’ve never particularly liked Uncov, the anti-web 2.0, anti-startup, anti-everything rug. Not that it was always wrong: it’s criticism was often well-deserved, just a bit too vitriolic for my taste. But vulgarity is popular, and titles like I’m Going To Scale My Foot Up Your Ass certainly grabbed attention.

Of course it’s always easier to criticise than actually build, and for Uncov editor Ted Dziuba the opportunity to put his money where his mouth was came when he finally launched his own startup, Persai – soon renamed Pressflip. To focus on the startup, Ted and his fellow authors shut down Uncov.

Will Pressflip make it? Too early to say, but TechCrunch wasn’t too positive about it a few months ago. (they can always rebrand it again, this time to Pressflop).

A few days ago Uncov came back to life, but with a twist: it opened up to guest bloggers. And here’s Dziuba’s Ars Poetica, which perfectly sums up why I still dislike Uncov:

If you want to blog at uncov.com, it should be in the style of Uncov. It doesn’t have to be technical or nerdy, and you should feel free to take shots at people, so long as you do it in the Uncov fuck-you-and-everyone-that-looks-like-you fashion.

The latest twist in the story: Ted Dziuba has just quit Pressflip.

I’m leaving for personal reasons: mostly because I’m going to be a father in March and need some stability, but also because I’m tired of the fight.

The announcement is on Ted’s personal blog, not Uncov. It probably does not meet Uncov standards. For the first time Ted Dziuba sounds perfectly normal. Family man. Human.

Filed Under: Blogging, Startups · Tagged: Blogging, entrepreneurship, pressflip, Startups, uncov, web 2.0

Turn the Doom-talk into Constructive Business Model Ideas

Posted on October 12, 2008 ·

Image via Wikipedia

TechCrunch Turns Into F**kedCompany 2.0 – says Dare Obasanjo.

Really? Tell me something I don’t already know. Have we all forgotten that TechCrunch acquired FuckedCompany.com over a year ago? OK, that was just an April Fool’ s Joke , but you can really say TC is unprepared for a downturn – after all, they own FuckedCrunch.

OK, on a more serious note: I also said, way back in January 2007 that TechCrunch Did Not Build it; It Can’t Knock it Down Either:

TechCrunch did not build this boom. Yes, a well-timed review helps a startup gain initial traction, but Mike does not make those companies successful: whether they make it or not, they do so on their own. And when they fail, they fail own their own merits, too. Failures are part of business reality, and reporting on them only makes TechCrunch balanced. Without it Mike would be just a biased cheerleader (something he was accused of in the past).

I still mean what I said there, except that in the downturn there will clearly be more failures, and it won’t always be on a startup’s “own merits”. Reporting on them is part of reality.

But what I really hope for is that TechCrunch and other influential blogs that are a strong part of the startup ecosystem will take a constructive approach, and instead of becoming doom-reporters they start discussing ways of survival – i.e. how to tweak one’s business model to establish a healthy revenue stream.

I’ll have more on this soon.

Update: I’m often amazed at the image selection Zemanta proposes. The word “train” does not once occur in my post, yet it recommended this image of a train-wreck.

Filed Under: Startups · Tagged: Blogging, business model, fuckedcompany, recession, revenue, Startups, techcrunch

Steve Jobs Panic – the Anatomy of Fake News on Twitter

Posted on October 3, 2008 ·

I often praised Twitter for being first reporting breaking news – typical examples were several recent earthquakes in Japan, China, New Zealand…etc.

This morning’s news brought panic, as hundreds of Tweets reported:

Steve Jobs was rushed to ER after severe heart attack.

AAPL took a nosedive, then recovered.

Fortunately the news turned out to be bogus. Citizen journalism failed today.

Read the full chronology over @ CloudAve.

(Oh, and while at it, you may want to grab the CloudAve feed. Thank you.)

Filed Under: Blogging, Misc · Tagged: AAPL, Apple, Blogging, Citizen Journalism, cnn, inews, Steve Jobs, Twitter

CloudAve: the First Week

Posted on September 21, 2008 ·

Ah, the end of the fist week! The new baby, CloudAve is 7 days old! (..and I’m alive…)

We launched with a discussion on Harry Debes’s famous prediction, i.e. the imminent collapse of the SaaS market in two years. I doubt he realized just how much he re-energized the entire SaaS business, analyst obeservers – he certainly sparked a healthy discussion, even including Software Icon Dave Duffield, who refuted Debes’s argument. He should know, having been on both sides of the fence. (The podcast is available on CloudAve).

On my personal blog I don’t have to be as politically correct as on CloudAve, so here’s my summary: they tried SaaS, could not crack it, so concluded the market as a whole did not matter – a strategic mistake.. or… well, as they say, a picture says a thousand words. Ironically, the collapse of the US financial markets may just put things in a new prospective … more on this soon.

Ben compares the advent of Cloud Computing to corporate cars being replaced with allowances, while I present frustrating personal experience that could have gone smoothly using On-Demand tools.

We often talk about Cloud Computing and Software as a Service interchangeably, but are they really the same? Krish answers in a mini-series discussing the differences, i.e. segmenting out Infrastructure/Hardware as a Service (HaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS) and Software as a Service (SaaS). In the second part of his mini-series Krish goes on a myth-busting mission, clearing up several common misunderstandings. His piece on Governor Palin’s email hijack episode could very well be considered myth-busting, too.

Dan Morrill addresses why Anti-Virus in the Cloud can offer more efficient protection and is also major relief to owners of slower computers, whose resources can be completely bogged down by the frequent Av updates and scans.

Ben, so far the most prolific author reviews Oprius, an online productivity tool for sales professionals, then proves that the second “S” in SaaS is the most important, presenting two service / help desk oriented services: Zendesk and HelpStream. He discusses NetSuite’s launch in Australia, then starts a discussion on Channels, largely triggered by another NetSuite related move – this may very well become an ongoing thread.

Talk about threads, next week we are launching a new daily feature, CloudNews – the title says it all.

If you’ve been reading CloudAve, thank you, if not, why not head over and try … or perhaps just grab our feed.

See you on Cloud Avenue next week.

Filed Under: Blogging, SaaS · Tagged: Blogging, cloud avenue, cloud computing, CloudAve, On-Demand, SaaS

3-year Old Millionaires

Posted on September 17, 2008 ·

No, not talking about babies here, but two Tech icons who both reached the Million milestone around their third birthday.

TechCrunch, launched 3-year ago as Mike Arrington’s hobby blog had 1 million Feedburner subscribers for the first time last week. Of course it’s no longer a hobby blog, but a blog network run by a professional CEO, supported by a growing blogger team. Mike himself has become a Silicon Valley institution, his Atherton home Web 2.0 Central.

Congratulations, Mike! And Congrat’s to the other 3-year old millioinaire: Zoho.

When Zoho Writer launched three years ago it was the underdog compared to Writely (which later became Google Docs). But it improved week by week, was soon joined by Zoho Sheet, and one had to be blind not to see the benefits of a complete Suite on the Net. Today Zoho has a million users, is recognized as a leader along with Google, has made inroads to the Enterprise (400K users at GE? Not bad…), The Economist calls them the force that will Deflate IT… a lot of achievements in three years.

Once again, congratulations to both… and now the race is on: who will reach the 2 Million mark first?

Filed Under: Blogging, Collaboration, Personal Productivity, SaaS · Tagged: Blogging, cloud computing, Collaboration, Google, millionaire, office 2.0, SaaS, techcrunch, web 2.0, web office, zoho

Let’s Meet on CloudAve, the New Cloud Computing / Business Blog

Posted on September 10, 2008 ·

My regular readers no doubt noticed that I’ve been blogging less recently. I’m not about to give up ( although that’s a fashionable trend nowadays), in fact I’ve increasingly felt dissatisfied not being able to talk about everything I wanted here… be it industry trends, opinion pieces or product reviews.

I enjoy writing longer, thoughtful pieces, but often don’t have the time, and the quickie “fillers” I do in the meantime tend to become more popular then the deep, analytical ones. Fellow blogger Louis Gray contemplates the same this morning. I’ve especially hit the wall with reviews: after a few popular ones I got inundated with requests to review this and that…but I don’t reprint vendor PR, and simply don’t have the bandwidth to do them justice, spending days on research before writing them up. (Need to focus on activities that… well, pay the bills).

“Oh, no, he’s gone crazy… starting another pro Blog network, when pageviews and ad revenues are drying up for all but the few best…”

Don’t worry, I am not about to launch another TechCrunch- ReadWriteWeb- Mashable- wannabe blog. But I am launching a new blog, Cloud Avenue where, working with a few like-minded bloggers we’ll focus on the intersection of Cloud Computing, especially SaaS and Business, ranging from small business to enterprise.

Our blogging team is as diverse as it gets: fellow Editor Ben Kepes is from New Zealand, Krish is in the Seattle area, other contributors are from the US, Europe, Australia and India. (Long nights and extensive use of Web collaboration tools are in store for us – eating our own dog food.) Our writing styles are equally diverse, so we’ll have a mix of “quickies” and longer analysis, and as for reviews, we’ll have our own CloudLab that will from time to time venture into a series of comparative reviews.

Now, what about that craziness factor? Well, we have a No Ads sign at CloudAve, and we mean it: none of those flashy boxes, banners that make content hard to find… but how do we survive? An old friend comes to help. I’ve been a long-time Advisor to Zoho, and increasingly a fan – not simply for the services they offer, but the longer term impact and their business philosophy. I better let The Economist explain.

Zoho stepped up as exclusive Sponsor of CloudAve, allowing us to focus on content, without worrying about revenue generation. In fact since we’re not dependent on page-views, we can afford to give our content away: everything on CloudAve will be available under a Creative Commons licence.

The sponsorship does not turn CloudAve into a Zoho PR outlet – we retain full editorial independence. Then what’s in it for Zoho? In CEO Sridhar Vembu’s words:

First, CloudAve’s mission jives with our own, which is to advance cloud applications. Second, the community tools we provide are the same ones that Zoho customers need for their own businesses. So we get to sharpen our own applications by providing them to CloudAve.

Of course the the proof of the pudding is in the eating, so I’m offering you the first bite: sign up for our feed here, and you’ll catch that first bite before we launch next Monday.

See you in the Clouds!

Update (9/15). CloudAve launched.

Filed Under: Blogging, Business, SaaS, Software · Tagged: ad-free zone, Blogging, business blogging, CloudAve, no ads, pageviews, sponsorship, tech blogging, zoho