EEDS have improved the lives of everyone who wishes to be ‘on top of things’. But what tools should ideally be used? For syndication, I continue to use RSSOwl, as opposed to more bloated alternatives such as recent versions of Mozilla Thunderbird. I partly helped in the testing of RSSOwl (as a gensture of reciprocity), so I still feel as though I must ‘eat my own dog food’. And yet — recently had to check some other feed readers that are Web-based (or a carefully-crafted script that outputs (X)HTML). I was interested in better tools whose development is more active. The same applies to newsgroup readers. Some describe themselves as ‘application whores’ in such contexts.

Over the years I developed this banal habit of reading feeds. At present, I read the news three times a day (i.e. three passes), but other feeds — those which I once followed closely — I only go past or glance at about twice a week. Desire has been lost for full RSS coverage. Mailing lists and newsgroups likewise. Often I just quickly look through the titles/subject lines. It’s probably due to excessive subscription and burdensome load that I can no longer cope with. But there is no sense of obligation anymore. I suppose many people reach the state of feed overload, which is closely-related (if not an alias for) ‘information overload’. Such overloads take over innocent cyberspacers.

Side-anecdote: In hindsight, the last sentence if a bit of an overstatements or maybe a gross generalisation (projecting one’s problems onto others). But this generalisation is probably a benign one that acts merely as a warning sign. Unlike, for instance, calling someone a murder for taking antibiotics and killing germs…

IGG.COM is a Web sites where more prominent news stories are voted for by a large pool of users. An informal blog post from ZDNet revealed some intersting ‘Digg facts’. It is of great interest to me as I have become a regular member and participants of the Digg community (I am currently ranked 17^th).

Diggtrends.com aimed to find out answers to the following questions:

1. What is the real contribution of top 100 users?
2. Who took Jason’s (Netscape) Offer?
3. How did the user statistics changed after July 18th (Jason’s Offer)?
4. How many dig users are really contributing?

To the first question, they found:

• top 10 users contributed 1792 of the frontpage stories – i.e 29.8%
• top 100 contributed 3324 stories i.e 55.28%

Nearly 30% of frontpage stories contributed by just 10 people is a pretty amazing stat – talk about the A-List!

Addendum: here comes the more official analysis/announcement

NLY a few days ago, Netscape and AOL offered money for people to participate in their on-line portal. Having created a Digg copycat, they were willing to pay some generous sums of money for influential Diggers to defect and help create a larger and healthier community elsewhere. The cited article views these recent events in a rather objective way.

Dollar signs went off in the blogsphere Wednesday, as blog pioneer and recent Netscape recruit Jason Calacanis offered up to $1000 a month to woo volunteer posters away from popular reader-generated link sites like Digg and Reddit.

[...]

“I’m just surprised that he feels like he had to steal people away from Digg,” said Danny Sullivan, editor-in-chief at SearchEngineWatch.com. “Certainly it’s starting to feel forced now. He’s looking for leaders in his community. None of them have emerged apparently, so he’s hoping to bribe them away from another place.”

[...]

Will the cool hunters in the Digg community take the bait? Reached via e-mail, Digg’s second most popular user, Dirtyfratboy (also known as Henry Wang), told Wired News that he was torn.

“Mr. Calacanis shows up this week and informs the world that users can receive payment for their work. I’ve stayed by Digg’s side ever since the 2.0 birth, but I’m in real pain right now. I would rather break my arm than to dismiss Digg, but my college tuition doesn’t pay for itself.”

Even to me this was tempting. Out of curiosity I got in touch with Calacanis and tested the ground, so to speak. They seem interested at the time, but this truly conflicted with my principles. It would also be awkward, if not a poor strategy altogether. Paying people to do what others already do voluntarily? A couple of days later this led to quiet riots by existing Netscape.com fans. So, I imagine the plan has been fully conceded by now.

HY is it that so many user interfaces simply fail to work? It’s because users are permitted to take shortcuts and ignore the instructions. This is in fact the message which is delivered by Jeff Veen, whose opinion was inspired by another’s.

Veen concludes: “They’re not stupid. They’re not lazy. Don’t treat them that way.” Users are efficient. They want to get the job done with the least effort. It just doesn’t bode well as far as the intent of the developer is concerned.

New Yanoff for Palm – an example of
poor UI design

Ever wondered if running a recreational Web site can become a full-time occupation? Ever wondered if bloggers can be paid a wage to blog in favour of a particular company? That it, using the audience as a tool for income? It is a rarity, yet a reality, which more and more people strive to attain.

I pretty much know what ambitious Webmaster are trying to accomplish with advertisements, but if it is income for life, I would warn them in advance. There are very few Webmasters who, at the moment, can actually boast getting a wage out of advertisements (WebMasterWorld is just one example). However, there is a difference between making ends meet and sustaining an income for life. As with all businesses, the terrain changes and one must change and adopt to to this perpetual change. This change is not intervention(time)-free.

The Web, for instance, is changing all the time and all sites need to evolve. Advertising channels and income sources are running dry even for journalists, in part due to online content, bloggers, and Web 2.0 sites, which are far more fascinating (interactive) than ‘old school’ news sites. And by the way, all my sites combined do not generate more than $30 dollars a month. This is not even enough to cover the hosting bills.

To elaborate on the issue of evolving to facilitate trends, 6 years ago I was using nothing but Windows. I thought my skills were well-invested and bound to endure. Nowadays, I never even lay my hands on Windows and, while I consider this change a tremendous improvement, I just know I would never have managed to do the same things as effectively had I stuck with where I was (a monoculture).

I have just learned (through Bruce Schneier) that, in a large German dating site, the password “123456″ works 1.4% of the time and 2.5% of all passwords begin with “1234″. People are simply lazy or unwilling to memorise passwords. This all means that it would only take about 60 attempts to break into a user’s account.

In an era of Web services, remembering many password can be difficult. For this reason, I personally chose the ‘master password’ approach, as I call it, and I also manage everything as such on my PDA. Password choices are a very important matter, which is something you come to realise only when you get hacked/cracked. In the case of unencrypted comminication, they need to be changed very regularly, as well.

A story on Open Source parasites — one which I submitted yesterday (click for full-sized image)

story/link I had submitted to Digg.com has just made it into the front page. Digg is, at present, among the top 100 sites on the Web, which makes this a high achievement. My site was also once referenced in the front page of Slashdot.org, which appears to be losing (some of) its community to Digg. The term ‘Slashdot effect’ was recently substituted by the ‘Digg effect’, at least to some folks.