Last year, I posted a series of videos during the week of Christmas so I thought I'd carry on the tradition this year.
“JCB Song” is a great song to start with this year. It's not really a Christmas song but was contender for the UK Christmas #1 a few years ago. The song has a wonderful story behind it, especially for a new father like myself or for any parent (or for anybody who's been a kid for that matter – so yeah, a great song anybody can enjoy! ).
The songwriter was dyslexic as a child and was often bullied and harassed because of this. One day, his dad picked him up from school in a JCB digger (like the North American Caterpiller) after coming straight from his workplace and that memory led to this song where the son imagines how cool this has made him, how much his dad protects and loves him which, in turn, puts the dad on the level of ultimate heroes like Bruce Lee and B.A. Baracus from the A Team.
I recently posted about the lack of access to comments being one of the main downfalls of every type of RSS reader I'd seen – web-based, e-mail based, software-based.
Astute reader, Heather M. sent me the following Bloglines announcement (note how they subtly plug the ability to click ads! Those RSS ads are coming I tells you!):
One of the problems with a feed reader is that you can't see the blog in its
full glory. We've solved that problem in Bloglines
Beta. We've created a setting in 3-Pane View which allows you to get all of
that bloggy goodness in your feed reader. Plus, you can get easy access to the
comments, other features or, heck, even click on an ad to help you favorite blogger.
This is great for highly designed blogs that cover knitting, design, art or funny
pictures of cats.Here's how you get access to the feature. Go to 3-Pane View.
Click on a headline. Look for the Preview or RSS buttons to toggle between
Feed View and Blog View (see below).
I don't think this is enough to get me to switch RSS readers…yet. But if NetVibes doesn't add this functionality soon, I'd probably have to think about it!
Housecleaning isn't just a physical activity anymore – now, I find I have to take the time to clear out my virtual detritus every once in awhile too. So here are some links and articles I've had kicking around for awhile waiting for a good time to post.
Amazon: New & Future Book Releases Librarians talk a lot about making our online services more like Amazon and Google but this is at least one place where (at least some) libraries have the online services beat. Amazon just announced an e-newsletter of new & future book releases but doesn't provide any additional customization at all.
So, unlike the NextReads subscriptions I still get from London Public Library which allows me to choose to receive news about Fiction books (or Pop Culture or Health & Body or Biography & Memoir or about a dozen or so other categories), it's all or nothing with the Amazon subscription. Still, that could be useful if you're doing collection development work and you don't have access to a niche list. But why not take advantage of their extensive categorization system and provide subscriptions right down to the micro-level? (“There is one new book published this month in the area of New Guinea architecture. Click here to buy from Amazon.com”)
BabyCenter's Top 10 Baby Names for 2007 Sophia for girls, Aiden for boys and not a Pace to be found. Trends include multi-syllabic names and unique spellings – again, not a Pace to be found. (Whew!)
Genetic Social Networks? (via Julie M.) If the wife of one of Google co-founders is right, the next frontier in social networking could be based on your DNA. You do a swab (for a couple hundred bucks) then the sites link you to people who are genetically similar tot you (ie. distant relatives you never knew you had.)
How Breastfeeding Benefits Add Up I think everybody knows (okay, should know) the benefits of breastfeeding over formula. But I like how this article Shea sent me shows the benefits at different stages of a baby's development.
Amazon's New E-Book Reader, The Kindle, Discussed on MetaFilter I admit, I haven't even read the whole thread yet. But what I saw so far covers a lot of the debate – positive and negative – about both e-books and the future of publishing so it's worth reading if you're interested in that sort of thing.
Lakota Indians Declare Independence From USA I'm not sure how serious this is and how much is political grandstanding. But if it's real…wow…another country for Bush to invade…without even having to go overseas!
the
fact is, the record is a smash, but not using your traditional
measurement, i.e. sales and airplay. However, consider the new
measurement tools, i.e. those that actually track what people listen to
and play, and the radiohead album is by far the biggest release this
year.
On Last.fm, last week, Radiohead occupied slots One to
Ten on the Popular Track Top Ten! And we’re not talking small numbers –
this is a site that measures tens of thousands of music fans listening
preferences…. it may be sitting unplayed on your ipod, but evidently
there are millions of people playing it….I’m sorry, but how do you
define a ’smash’?????”
Viral Videos Similar to YouTube's Top Video charts but taking in other sources as well, a good way to see which clips are popular today, this week, this month and all-time.
Closer to home, our top story of the day is that Shea won the AM1190 “Turkey Trotter” today by stalking the radio station's van as she drove home from a doctor's appointment. It parked in its “secret location” (one block from our house) and Shea was there banging on their window as soon as they announced their location. So we get a free 15lb turkey and I guess we're providing the main course for Christmas dinner!
Now that I've been blogging for a year (actually heading towards two years I think), I've started to think about some posts that may become recurring features.
For example, last year around this time, I posted a link to a site that collects all the end of year “best of” lists in movies, music, books and so on (although strangely, I titled that post about a “25 Food Hacks” site I found and threw in the “Best of” site link as an afterthought.)
So today, I'm correcting that mistake by linking to Fimoculous as my one and only site o' the day. Enjoy!
Hard to believe it's less than week to Christmas. (Actually, it's hard to believe that it's been seven months – happy birthday Pace, by the way – since time last had any semblance of meaning.)
As best as I remember, at our house, the Santa gifts were wrapped, often in the same paper as our other gifts and with tags written in my dad's handwriting. (Even with big red flags like that, I don't think I still ever caught on to the whole Santa thing although that was probably a case of willful ignorance as much as anything. Of course, I'm also the type of person who never sees the twist coming in movies either nor tries to figure them out.)
Interestingly, it was the same guy who clued me into the Santa thing on the playground in kindergarten or grade one who also made me stop believing in god a few years later. I'll save that story for another day though…
I was looking at my blog stats today and started thinking about RSS (really simple syndication for anyone who doesn't know – a technology that allows you to use an external source – either your e-mail client or a web site or a piece of software or whatever) to track your favourite sites.
So, if you use RSS, you don't have to manually visit this site to see if I've posted that day or not. Instead, you can use your RSS reader to track this site (and many others all at once) to see at a glance via a single interface if there any updates to any site you follow, usually via a brief title and a excerpt from the post appearing in the RSS reader.
It's a great technology and makes it easy for me to follow dozens of web sites when in the past, I might have only followed a few on a regular basis. But I also realise it has some significant downsides…
– most RSS readers (okay, the one I use does this so I'm happy to generalize about all of them ) only show new posts and don't show comments. So you're less likely to read the comments on a blog (or even know if a post *has* comments) and that's often where the most entertaining, informative content is to be found.
– this probably also discourages readers from becoming active participants themselves if they're not right there with the “Submit Comment” button in front of them (I know I'm as guilty of this as anyone with the blogs of friends that I follow via RSS but rarely comment on. Sorry all!)
– if you don't at least occasionally visit the blog directly, you also won't know if the blogger has added new widgets or other features. For example, I have a feed of my del.icio.us bookmarks on my blog and often post interesting articles there that I find but don't want to devote a full blog entry to. Unless you visit my blog directly (or subscribe to the RSS feed for my del.icio.us content specifically – yes, it gets that convoluted), you don't see those articles. I also recently added a widget that shows where people are visiting my site from geographically. But for many readers, this is probably the first time they even know I did this.
– you also don't see if people have redesigned the look of their site visually unless they tell you in a blog post that shows up in your RSS feed that they've done so.
By far, the largest number of referrers I get to my site are from Google Reader and Bloglines, two of the main RSS providers. So, it's hard to tell with my stats package, but I'd guess that RSS readers outnumber direct visitors by 2:1 and possibly even 3:1. (And don't even get me started on Facebook – I syndicate my content there too but am constantly doubting whether this is a wise thing or not for all kinds of reasons – of which this article is just one (big) example.)
So yeah, anyhow, the point of all of this is to say that RSS is great (for the most part), I use it all the time (for the most part) and if you use it to visit this site, make sure you stop by directly every once in awhile to see what's new, throw in a comment if you're thusly inspired and see if I ever get brave and decide to change the default style I've had in place for over a year now.
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