It’s Jared and it’s pink. Not much else to say.
Originally posted on May 25, 2006 @ 2:25 pm
Link To Your Site Then Redirect
I’m going to have to call out my good friend James Archer for inspiring this entry so hopefully he doesn’t mind me using him as an example. Recently I have decided I would give FeedBurner another shot. I used them when they first came out, but there were a lot of bugs and what not that made my feeds almost unreadable so I was curious to see if things had improved any. Unfortunately to use their service you must also use their feed url instead of your own.
Thank god for .htaccess.
With the way we experiment with services and technologies it can be a pain sometimes having to fix everything up whenever a slight change is made. Who knows if another feed service will pop up that blows FeedBurner out of the water? Will you stay with FeedBurner because all of your feed links point to it or will you go through the hassle of not only redirecting the original feed to the new feed service, but also adding another rule in your .htaccess that redirects the FeedBurner url to the new service? Mr. Archer has a link that points to the FeedBurner url and hopefully he never changes services in the future because he will have to add a rule in his .htaccess file. Imagine if he changed services 10 different times over the next couple of years. He might get stuck in an infinite redirect loop (maybe that would be cool though), but that might only happen if he continues to change the feed link on the site.
All is not lost for James though since he simply has to redirect his audience from the FeedBurner feed to the new one and can stick with that rule for the lifetime of his site. I like the idea that everyone points to this feed and are redirected to whatever service I choose to redirect them towards all through one rule in the .htaccess file. Try to keep all links on your site pointing to your site because you never know what the future holds.
Originally posted on May 20, 2006 @ 12:04 pm
DotD: Mojizu
Images. When used correctly they can be the most effective aspect of any design and a requirement when your site revolves around them. Mojizu is that kind of site that sucks me in due to its images. I will quickly admit that the dual-colored background on the headers is annoying, but the rest of the site simply works for me.
Seriously, any site that can keep my attention for over a hour has to be doing something right, unless of course you consider me feeble-minded…*cough*.
I love how the homepage just gets right to it by showing a ton of character designs encouraging the users to dig deeper. The color scheme is smooth to my eyes and they did well on the individual sketch pages. It’s just those damn header backgrounds…
Originally posted on May 23, 2006 @ 11:52 am
Steal My Content…Please
In yesterday’s entry on Pearl Jam I wrote:
I don’t worry about content thieves that much anymore. Most of the time when someone takes an article from here they at least provide a link back to the site and I have to wonder how many people are reading my content on my site versus the number that reads it elsewhere? I’m guessing not that many even bother to read it elsewhere and if they do and like it, there is a good chance they will come here to the original source and stick around. In a twisted form of logic when we complain about content thieves (the ones that provide proper attribution) we are acting like Sony who doesn’t want their content being seen in as many places as possible.
And I mean what I say. If you want to syndicate my content on your site with proper attribution (a link back to me) then by all means go ahead and do it. I’m a producer of content and I can only see the benefits of having my content in as many places as possible. One of the best podcasts around is Ask A Ninja could easily just keep their videos on their own site, but instead they use YouTube to distribute them which also allows their audience to post their videos on their site as well.
Now if you like what you see you will more than likely go and look for more episodes which may or may not be on my site, but eventually if you become a fan of the series you will go directly to them to get the content because there is no need to wait for me to post it. You produce content and you want as many eyeballs on that content as possible so why limit the places it can be seen? Maybe your concern is in a drop in pageviews, but what kind of effect do you really think a system like this has on your site? Maybe since your sole model of revenue revolves around advertising (entry coming up on that) you are a bit concerned with where your content is being viewed.
The folks over at WebDev FeedHouse use my full entry feed to post my content on their site and this doesn’t irk me one bit. What happens if someone reads that site and subscribes to their feeds instead of mine? It’s definitely a possibility, but they are still reading my content, but they are missing the ensuing discussion, which should entice them to come to my site. Either way my name is getting out there. I start to get concerned when content I produce and am expecting payment for starts to get passed around for free. Even when that starts to happen I am going to try and find as many channels to stick that content in as possible.
The FeedPass Dilemma
Today, Mike Arrington wrote about FeedPass and how it monetizes the content we work so hard to produce. Unsurprisingly, some members of the blogosphere are not too happy with this because they feel as though another company is making money off of their content. It seems they have jumped to conclusions.
If you look closely, FeedPass only post excerpts of your content and the last four items from your feed. Hardly dangerous to me and it seems that it helps push more subscribers to you then pull them away. Now are people really concerned because their excerpts are on their along with an ad that FeedPass is banking off of them? When did we become so greedy with our content, yet so willing to share it with feeds and post YouTube/Google Videos on our site? I can’t say I see a use for FeedPass, but really I don’t see the harm in it either. For further discussion of FeedPass I suggest you read Pete Cashmore’s take on it along with the ensuing discussion.
Tools to Spread
So if I am encouraging people to post my content on their sites what tools can I provide to help them with the process? Better yet, there has to be a 1,001 sites that do this kind of stuff already so if you know any please let me know.
Please don’t walk away from this entry thinking that I believe all content should be free and anybody should be able to do with it what they want. I’m just saying that with the content I produce on this site I don’t really have an issue with it being spread across the web as others might. I see more pluses than minuses when looking at the bigger picture.
Originally posted on May 21, 2006 @ 3:27 pm
Pearl Jam Does Business++
I admit to not being a fan of Pearl Jam, but they did something to at least make me reconsider my position on them. Yesterday they released their newest music video “Life Wasted” on Google Video for free and under a Creative Commons “some rights reserved” license. Unfortunately, free streaming and download is only available until next Wednesday (5/24) so they only really got it half right.
Why not keep it free forever? It’s not like it probably won’t show up on YouTube eventually once someone catches it on their DVR and when did selling music videos really become a big moneymaker? If anything I would keep the low resolution version free and simply sell a higher resolution one for the people who really want to see it. Music videos are meant for promotion and using Google Video is a great vehicle to make this happen, especially when people start to share the video on their own sites as I have done here.
It’s cool that Pearl Jam is doing this. It’s not revolutionary and I have to wonder why you don’t see this from every band. Songs are being released on MySpace daily and you don’t read about the negative effect that is having on a band’s sales so why would releasing music videos be any different?
I don’t worry about content thieves that much anymore.* Most of the time when someone takes an article from here they at least provide a link back to the site and I have to wonder how many people are reading my content on my site versus the number that reads it elsewhere? I’m guessing not that many even bother to read it elsewhere and if they do and like it, there is a good chance they will come here to the original source and stick around. In a twisted form of logic when we complain about content thieves (the ones that provide proper attribution) we are acting like Sony who doesn’t want their content being seen in as many places as possible.
* That doesn’t mean I am happy when someone steals my content and makes whatever amount of money from it without proper attribution. I just hate legal issues and having to worry about something that many times I have control over. Best to stick with producing content and having fun. Let your mom worry who is stealing what.
Originally posted on May 20, 2006 @ 4:37 pm