Symphonious

Got a couple of good comments on my last post about NewsGator Syncing that I thought were worth following up on. Firstly, Greg Reinacker points to the article I had in mind about how NewsGator polls the feeds, and Andy pointed me to this forum posting about it which shows how to see why feeds aren’t updating.

When I go and look at my feeds I find a whole bunch reported as having errors from the source of the feed - obviously why they’re not updating. There’s just one problem, even Andy’s comments are marked as broken:

Comments for Andy's blog All Error from the source of the feed 6/22/2008 12:37

So Andy, when did you break your comments feed, how do you plan to fix it given that it’s hosted by WordPress.com and what do you think the chances are that it was a temporary error that’s now caused NewsGator to barf and stop pulling down your comment feed?

It gets worse:

Google Blog Search: EditLive All Authentication failed 5/16/2008 1:17:27 AM

So did Google screw up or did NewsGator? I think you can toss a coin on that one. After going through and pinging all my feeds there’s suddenly 41 new items from those dead feeds dating as far back as February that NewsGator was hiding from me.

I think Greg’s posted summed up the problem with the current approach nicely:

Something I’ve been thinking about is some kind of status page or something where someone can type in the name of a feed, and we’ll display status for that feed (including why it’s in the penalty box if it is)…we’ve resisted doing this because it’s just one of those things our users shouldn’t have to worry about.

User’s shouldn’t have to worry about this! NewsGator needs to do a much better job at pulling feeds back out of the penalty box or better yet, get rid of the penalty box altogether. There are just way too many feeds out there that are broken in some way and way too many ways that a site might time out because of connection problems between NewsGator and them or a maintenance window or whatever. I just want to read the news when it comes through and I want NewsGator to stop getting in the way and make that happen.

PS: Apologies for the number of comments that have been incorrectly marked as spam, the anti-spam system isn’t working out too well and the feed that notifies me of marginal comments to review was being eaten by NewsGator (they had some down time a while back so it obviously got permanently moved to the penalty box).

I’m commuting to work these days since Ephox has a sweet office in Windsor and while I’m there by myself at the moment its still nice to get out of the house.

Anyway the point is I now have 30 to 40 minutes each day walking to the train station, waiting for trains or sitting on the train. In the mornings this is the perfect opportunity to review email and feeds but in the afternoon there aren’t many of those so the trip is somewhat boring. Of course this is the perfect use case for audio books an podcasts so I’m going to have to try a few out.

Previously I haven’t bothered with podcasts because the information density is too low. Its so much more efficient to read text instead of listening to someone talk. Its rare that emotion and speaking tone really adds anything to technical discussions. If you have spare time sitting on a train though that’s not really a consideration so you may as well cover off that extra content that isn’t provided as text.

I come from a family of teachers and despite running for the technological hills myself, still wound up marrying a teacher, so I’m surprisingly familiar with schools, teaching and technology in schools. It also helps that I’ve had a couple of jobs running IT in schools and I’ve always kept an interest in how technology is being used to aid teaching.

It should come as no surprise then that I was quite interested in Mark Ahlness’ post about a new WYSIWYG editor being added to the blog software his third grade students have been using. Now firstly, it’s cool that third graders are blogging - it gives them an interesting place to practice writing and by being interesting and novel, hopefully develops an interest in writing. After all, behind most learning there’s fun and passion.

Allowing teachers to teach writing in this new medium is, for me at least, huge. Now, I've of course got kids who will go nuts over fonts, colors, pictures, links, etc, etc - because they look so cool. Some teachers see this as a nightmare. OMG, the kids are just going to waste their time, etc, etc. Well, get a grip and teach them, I say. To me this is a dream come true - a chance to teach my kids that, as much as content, design matters - to borrow a phrase from Dean Shareski. And content does indeed come first, yes it does.

This is the point where we all learn from 3rd graders. Design matters and design is as much a part of the actual content as it is part of the site layout. Having an editor that lets users express their meaning rather than just enter text is really important. If you’ve locked your CMS down to the point where content authors can’t do anything but write text, you’ve probably gone too far and you’re now through out visual content - not just formatting. The key is in finding the balance and I’m really glad to see that third graders are getting the opportunity to experiment and find that balance because that’s the only way to learn.

There are a lot of articles around the place giving generally good advice on how to be a better blogger and get noticed. Alastair Rankine highlights one of the key problems with slavishly following this advice - you become boring:

I was initially attracted to Atwood’s blog for its relatively simple premise and smart delivery. With startling regularity over an extended time he managed to deliver bite-sized morsels relating to the stated domain of programming and human factors. He writes well and generally illustrates his point in a clear and easy to digest style. It’s quite engaging.

…

It seems quite apparent that Jeff Atwood has stepped outside his expertise recently, and that this is something he did comparatively rarely in the past. I haven’t gone groveling through his past posts, but from my recollection I’m pretty sure his hit rate used to be better.

What I think has gone wrong is that Jeff, like most bloggers who go pro, is trying to keep to a regular posting schedule even when he’s too busy to do it well or has nothing good to post about. Regular posting scheduled is a universal recommendation on how to blog lists and it’s got a lot of merit. If you blog more often, you’ll get better at it. The more content on your site the more likely searches will lead people to your site. The more you comment in response to other people’s sites the more likely they’ll notice you and respond, including linking back to you.

The problem is that life and inspiration don’t work on regular schedules, they fluctuate. If you quit your day job just to blog you can probably keep life under control enough to post every day but inspiration still isn’t guaranteed. If you’re trying to start a new company or maintain a day job, your life probably fluctuates so that some weeks or even months you just don’t have time to sit down and write a good blog post. Similarly with inspiration, sometimes you’re doing something so interesting great blog topics just keep popping up and sometimes you’re doing stuff that’s fairly mundane and you don’t have anything too interesting to contribute to the conversations going on in the blogosphere. That’s ok, just don’t post anything for a while or simply point to the interesting stuff that’s going on without comment.

It’s a fairly common process which probably should be named after Robert Scoble since he seems to go through the process over and over again. For most people it’s a one way process where they get stuck being boring, but Robert seems to have turned it into a cycle:

1. Blog based on what you know and are passionate about
2. Become popular
3. Feel an obligation to your audience to blog a certain way or blog regularly. Sometimes this is trying to please everyone, sometimes it’s trying to go pro and others it’s just getting caught up in the hype of being a celebrity.
4. Become boring or lose credibility.
5. Reflect, refocus and go back to blogging about what you’re passionate about.
6. Become popular again…

I think this process is why I read so few blogs from people who make their living from writing/publishing. The interest I have in blogs is to hear from people on the front lines doing the interesting stuff, not the ones that are just writing about it and it’s really hard to be an A-List blogger and get much else done. When I do read full time bloggers it’s usually because they make good filters for the great torrent of information that flows around the internet, allowing me to read the good stuff and skip the rest.

Finally, to provide something constructive, let me point to Planet Intertwingly. Since subscribing to it my list of articles to consider more carefully and/or blog about has started overflowing. Sam Ruby hosts it and it’s full of seriously smart people with a strong tech focus. I’m pretty sure it picks up all the Planet Apache blogs (also good quality), but I take it as a huge compliment that my name appears in that list anyway.

Andy Herron:

Tomorrow  is a day I’ve been looking forward to for quite a few years.  Dylan Just, one of my best mates from uni, is starting at Ephox.  He’s not yet on Planet Ephox but I think we’re fixing that tomorrow morning.

 Indeed that has been fixed. Welcome on board Dylan! Any other Ephox folk who want to start blogging - just let me know!