Tag Archives: comments

RSS Summaries

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A reader chastises me.

The other day, while writing about the Reading Options in WordPress, I decided to experiment with this blog. I togged the settings so only summaries of my entries would be sent to people accessing with RSS readers.

Understand that I don’t use an RSS reader. I surf the old fashioned way, with a Web browser. I don’t surf that often and I don’t follow any one particular blog or site. So it’s never been an issue for me.

But for the book, I had to understand what this WordPress feature did. So I toggled it to the Summaries setting, downloaded a feed reader, and looked at the result. What I saw was a list of 10 or so posts in a window. I’d click a post title and the beginning of the post would appear in a window pane beneath the list. There was a link at the end indicating that there was more; clicking the link brought me to my Web site.

This seemed a logical way to release content via RSS. After all, didn’t I want visitors to come to the site where they could read not just the articles but the comments? And see all the pictures that came with the piece?

Dori of Wise Women didn’t think so. She commented on my “Stand Up for Your Principles” piece to stand up for her principles: that RSS feeds for blogs should include the entire content.

Whew! No problem. This morning, I remembered what I did to create the summaries (I did have to remember something I learned about 2 whole days ago!) and toggled the option back to its original settings. I just checked it with my feed reader and it’s working fine.

But this makes me curious. I’d like to know more from the folks who use an RSS feed reader to follow this blog. Here are a few questions; I’d appreciate it if you’d take the time to answer a few of them in the Comments for this post.

  • How often do you check the site? Regularly? (If so, I’m flattered to be on your list!)
  • Why do you prefer a news reader to a Web browser?
  • Does your news reader display formatted text and graphics?
  • Which reader do you use? On what computer platform?
  • Would you like to share any advice for people considering using a reader or for bloggers like me who aren’t fully aware of the benefits?

Although I’m a technical person and write about computer technology for a living, I made a decision long ago to concentrate on only those technologies that I use or write about. There’s just too much out there to learn it all — and still have a life that doesn’t revolve around a computer! As a result, my knowledge of computer technology is spotty, with expertise on certain topics balanced by sheer ignorance of others. (Ignorance is bliss, they say.)

Perhaps its time to give the RSS feed reader topic a bit more attention. What do you think?

PostScript: I just used my RSS reader to check out the other blogs that were included in it. It appears that none of them include the full text of the article. What’s going on here? Perhaps that’s why I discarded the idea of using a reader when I first tried it about two years ago? Because you had to go to the Web site anyway to read the article? It seems that, in many instances, the reader adds an extra step to following blogs. If you’re commenting on this piece, please comment on that, too.

Outsourcing, Continued

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Visitors start a lively discussion, but may be missing my point.

My “Just Say No to Outsourcing” piece has gotten a little discussion going in its comments. It appears that some readers are confusing “employ America” with “buy American.”

I’m all for the first, but have limits on the second. While I’d rather buy American-made products, I do have to spend my money where I’ll get the best value for my dollar. Nowhere is this more important than when making a major expenditure, like one for a car.

As I was growing up, my aunt was vehemently opposed to buying anything not made in the US. While that was possible back in the 1950s and 1960s, it soon became very difficult. She stubbornly stuck to her guns for a very long time, buying US-branded televisions and cameras and cars when she could have gotten better quality products, often at a lower price, from Japanese or German manufacturers. In the end, she had to give in, at least on the electronics stuff.

There was a time when the US was at the top of the game, when US-made products were technologically advanced and of better quality than you could get anywhere else in the world. But with some exceptions, that’s changed. For years, people have been recognizing that they can get more value for their hard-earned money by buying products made and marketed by overseas companies.

Personally, I think it’s tragic. I believe that America’s failure to stay at the top of the product manufacturing game is a result of laziness on the part of R&D teams and cost-cutting measures on the part of management. It also has a lot to do with pay levels, benefit packages (often required by unions), and the cost of living in this country. Even if we could make the best product in a given category — say, digital cameras — we couldn’t afford to make it or sell it. All these things combined — not to mention our smug “America is the greatest country in the world” attitude — have led to our manufacturing downfall. After all, it’s hard to make yourself better if you already think you’re the best you can be.

And things are getting worse, as goods mass-produced in China and Korea at rock bottom prices flood the marketplace, replacing quality with items so inexpensive that we can buy with the atittude that when it breaks, we can just throw it away and get another one.

I tried to buy a leather wallet in a leather goods store about a month ago and couldn’t find a single one that wasn’t made in China. It scares me when we get to the point that we simply don’t have a choice. I know now how my aunt felt when she bough her first Canon camera. But at least she was getting a quality product from an established and respected manufacturer.

Anyway, before I alienate any other readers with what will likely be taken as an unpatiotic attitude (a dangerous position to be in these days), I just want to remind readers that if they love America, they should support it any way they feel comfortable supporting it.

Although I’m not comfortable enough to buy a Ford, I’m very happy to avoid doing business with US companies that send customer service jobs overseas. And I’m not afraid to speak out against overseas outsourcing.

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AmazonConnect

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I officially become an AmazonConnect Author.

If you regularly read these blogs, you may recall my rant against Amazon.com a few months ago. I was POed because Amazon offers free “Super Saver” shipping but, when you choose it, they delay your order. In my case, they tried to delay it for two months. Then, when I complained, they sent half my order and never sent the rest. The incident convinced me to switch to BN.com for my book buying needs. Their free shipping orders are shipped promptly and in full.

Unfortunately (or in some cases, fortunately), BN.com’s Web site lacks many of the features of Amazon.com.

Unfortunately, it lacks a decent Wish list feature. On BN.com, your wish list is yours alone and can’t be shared with others. How idiotic is that? My Amazon.com Wish List, however, can be shared with a link on a Web page or by e-mail. What better way to ensure that I get what I want for Christmas or my birthday each year?

Fortunately, BN.com lacks all the marketing junk that Amazon.com is constantly throwing at shoppers. I’m talking about recommendations, member lists, “the page you made,” and “also bought” lists. Sheesh. When are those guys going to give it up already? What really irks me is how often I connect and get a recommendation for a book that directly competes with one of mine.

The other day, I logged in to look up the availability of a book I heard about on NPR. Amazon recognized me immediately from one of the cookies it had stored in my computer. And it displayed what it calls a “plog” with a series of blog posts from a woman I’d never heard of. Turns out, this woman is an author and she evidently wrote a book that Amazon.com thinks I bought. (I don’t recall buying the book; it’s about new age healing and I don’t believe in most of that stuff.) The blog entries were of a “here’s what’s new” and “here’s how you can learn more about my books” nature — marketing through and through. I found the link sequence to make them go away.

There was also a link on my page that invited me to be one of the blogging authors. I guess they matched my name with names in their book database. (Enough to recognize me as an author, but not enough to stop recommending competing books. Oh, well.) I followed a bunch of links and got myself registered as an author with my own AmazonConnect blog.

i’m not sure how this works. It seems to me that if I write a blog entry, it might appear on pages for everyone who has purchased one of my books. Now although Amazon.com lists 68 titles for me, I only claimed about 10 as mine — no sense doing virtual paperwork for out-of-print titles. So I think that if you bought one of those 10 books and connected to your Amazon.com account, you might just see a blog entry from me.

Anyone out there qualified to try this? If you bought one of my books on Amazon.com, do try logging in to see if they push some of my prose at you. Then report back here, please, and use the Comments link to let us know.

Now this means I need to contribute to yet another blog. Just when I thought that I’d combine a bunch of my sites to reduce my blogging workload, there’s another blog to write for. But don’t worry — I won’t write nearly as much or as often there as I do here. And I won’t fill it with marketing bull.

There’s enough of that on Amazon without me adding to it.

Is Organic Really Good?

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An article in Slate comments on Whole Foods marketing and reality.

If you’ve ever wondered whether organic food is more than just marketing, read this:

Is Whole Foods Wholesome? by Field Maloney.

I do have a mildly amusing story about organic food, so I may as well tell it here.

Years ago, Mike and I went for a week-long vacation in Hawaii with Mike’s cousin Ricky. Ricky is heavily into health foods and the like — or at least he was back then — and insisted that we buy organic fruit for snacking while we traveled.

I had a terrible cold and we bought some oranges at a supermarket so I could suck down the vitamin C and soothe my sore throat with the juice. They were delicious oranges, sweet and juicy, and I really enjoyed them.

But because Ricky wanted organic fruit, we tracked down an organic food market and bought some extremely ugly — but organically grown — oranges. They were terrible. Tough skins and membranes, dry pulp, and not even sweet. Mike and I refused to eat them. Ricky finally threw them away.

He never bugged us about buying organic again.

Now I’m not trying to say that organic is bad. I’m just saying that it isn’t always good.

On Cell Phones

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I think a lot of valid arguments can be made that cell phones are out of control. It’s gotten to the point that everyone seems to have one.

Or maybe I should say at least one. I had a real estate agent last year who carried two of them and a pager.

Is anyone really that important?

No matter where you go, you see someone with his cell phone pasted to the side of his head blabbing away, often oblivious to what’s going on around him. Or even funnier: apparently blabbing away to himself because he’s wearing some kind of fancy Bluetooth earpiece that looks suspiciously like communications head gear from the orginal Star Trek.

Do these people really need to be talking while they’re shopping for groceries, standing on line in the post office, crossing the street or — dare I say it — piloting their car through a crowded parking lot?

Does everyone need a cell phone? Even kids have them now. Heck, when I was a kid, it was a real treat to have an extension of the house phone in my bedroom. I didn’t have my own phone number, a number that would reach me any time of the day or night wherever I was.

Am I jealous of today’s kids and their cellphones? Hell, no! What’s so good about being reachable anywhere you are when you’re a teenager out goofing off with your friends?

I do, of course, have a cell phone. It’s for business — and I’m not just saying that. I set up my office phone number so I can forward it to my cell phone when I’m not at the office. People call that published number and reach me. I’ve booked more than a few helicopter flights on that phone.

And I do use the phone when I need information or need to tell someone something. Going to be late for an appointment? I call. Can’t find the street I’m supposed to turn on? I call. Need to know if we have any plans for next Tuesday night? I call. According to my phone bill, more than 80% of the calls I make last less than a minute.

The important word here is need. I use my cell phone when I need to. I don’t use it for idle chatter. There’s two reasons for that. First, I like to be comfortable when I’m chatting with a friend or family member. So I usually do it from home. Second, lengthy chats wear down the phone’s battery. A dead cell phone won’t meet my communication needs.

And no, I won’t buy the second battery pack. Or the colorful face plate or case. Or latest ring tone.

What’s with the ring tone thing anyway? I think that’s the most obnoxious part of cell phone usage.

We’ve all experienced this: You’re sitting in a restaurant with a friend/spouse/family, having a nice dinner, when the cell phone the idiot at the table behind you owns starts playing the cha-cha or the opening bars of a Def Leppard track or some digitized sound effect that sounds like a primal scream. He thinks its funny. Do you?

I don’t. I think it’s a selfish attempt to get attention at the expense of the people around him.

I read somewhere recently that people have no qualms about plunking down $10 for a ring tone but they hesitate when it comes to buying a new CD. (If anyone out there can find that piece online, please use the Comments link to share the URL; I can’t find it.)

My phone, a 1-1/2 year old Motorola flip phone, has a vibrate mode. Since I wear it on my belt, I feel it when it rings. If I don’t pick it up after a few moments, it plays a sound that’s kind of like a doorbell. A simple little chime. I’m not saying its not obnoxious — any sound a device makes in a public place is obnoxious — but it’s far less offensive than some. And frankly, every time I hear it in a public place and someone looks at me, I’m embarrassed. I don’t want to be seen as one of them. (And we all know who they are.)

Mike’s got one of those Razr phones. He says people are envious of him. The phone is extremely thin, has a built-in camera and e-mail features, and does more than my original computer did. (I’m sure it has more processing power, too.) But come on guys — it’s a phone. A phone.

I’d still have my original Motorola flip phone if it would work as well as the newer one. I liked it better. It was simpler and started up quicker. It was plain black and it didn’t have a color screen. It didn’t have to make a sound when you turned it on or shut it off. And it didn’t have a built-in camera, Internet capabilities, Bluetooth, and dozens of ring tones to choose from. It was a simple, small, easy to use phone. Like the original Princess phones. Although it no longer is connected to any network, it’ll still work for 911 calls. So I keep it and its car power adapter in my car, just in case I need to make that emergency call and my other phone is dead.

That’s what cell phones were originally for, isn’t it? Emergencies?

Anyway, what started this whole rampage about cell phones was an article I read on Slate.com about fiction where the cell phone becomes the villain. It’s called “Can You Fear Me Now? – The cell phone goes from annoying to evil” and it’s by Bryan Curtis.

Some of the stories aren’t that farfetched, either.