Interview of Todd Storch by Tom Parish – A business manager, a radio guy and a blogger that talk about business, radio, podcast and blogs

Frederick Giasson

Want to know what a business manager, radio guy and blogger think about blogs, podcasts and related technologies? My blogging friend Todd Storch had been interviewed by Tom Parish. The discussion is a great one and talk about every socials technology that emerged with blogs.

It’s really inspiriting. He also tells how he became a blogger and why he is now blogging. Blogging remember him how he feeling when he was young, listening at the radio.

I share the same feelings and ideas they have about this new emerging trend that blogging is. This new social tool used to create emerging communities.

Take 35 minutes to listen at it, you’ll not be disappointed.

I need to thank Todd to have emailed me this interview. It’s my first real podcast experience, I need to confess, and I liked the experience, thank Todd ๐Ÿ™‚

Technoratie: [] [] [] []

Why do I use Omea Reader as Feed Reader?

Frederick Giasson

There are many, many feed readers around. Many people didn’t know which of these feed readers they should use. The answer is not so simple: it will depend of what your needs are. There are many type of feed readers. Some are web based, others are integrated in already know environment like outlook, others are addins for Mozilla or Internet Explorer and finally others are standalone software that works on Windows, Linux, Mac, etc.

Personally feeds reading now take an important place in my everyday life. I’m subscribed to more than half hundred feeds of any sorts. So I need a robust software that can work easily with thousands of posts without corrupt them. So given these needs I tested many standalone feed reader softwares. I now only use my laptop computer. I carry it everywhere to see my clients, at the coffee shop, at my friends’ houses, etc. So I’m restricted to a 15″, non wide laptop screen. Given this feature, I need to have the possibility to have the maximum of spaces to read my posts.

I tested many of these softwares but only one is filling all these requirements: Omea Reader. Many people will think that I can be crazy with my requirements; that I should not reject software only for a little problem. They are probably right, but now I use my feed reader much more than my email program; I use it many times a day, so it need to be exactly what I need otherwise it will make me mad.

So, why I took Omea Reader? I use it since 5 months now and it work as a charm. This software fills all the above discussed requirements:

  • His look is modern, beautiful and simple. It’s smooth and not aggressive. It’s a charm to read hours with it.
  • The software is robust. It never crashed while I was reading my post. I have a database of around 15000 posts and I never saw a corrected one.
  • It took as many computer resources as Firefox, Acrobat Reader or Maxthon so it’s acceptable in my case.
  • I can easily setup the control panels to have a maximum space to look at my posts without always clicking on buttons to show and hide panels. It’s the best organization I saw (it’s a really personal opinion).

All these features are filled by Omea Reader. But the most beautiful features aren’t listed bellow. Omea is probably the feed reader who gives you the best possibility to manage the way you see your feeds’ posts. Why? Because he work with a views system. You have only one entry for every post that is archived by Omea. But this post can be see by more than one view. So with these views you can restrict, with categories, which posts you want to read. This is the only feed reader I saw that worked like this and it’s the most powerful feature of Omea: the way you can manage your information.

What’s a good feed reader without a search engine? There is an advanced search engine included in Omea. It uses the same view system. So when you perform searches in your posts, a new view will be created with searches’ results. So you can easily, without adding entries to your database, keep the results of your searches. Is that not so beautiful?

There are also 2 other really cool features I like: the flags and the annotations. You have the possibility to flag posts. By example, I put a green flag on posts that I comment, I put blue flags on posts where I find a beautiful quote, I put red flag on important posts, etc. So I can easily, through a view, find where I posted comments, where I found good quotes, etc.

Annotations are as important as flags because it give you the power to annotate, with personal idea, incoming posts. So you can, in the future, look at what you thought about this post, etc. It?s also a really interesting feature for bloggers because you can annotate post that you’ll blog about in the future.

It’s how and why I use Omea Reader. It’s sure that this post is really personal. I didn’t mention other feed reader because I didn’t want to compare Omea with others, to say that Omea is better than this one, this one or this one. Why? Because the use of a specific feed reader depend of your needs. For me, Omea is the best I know and it’s why I used it since 5 months.

It’s sure that I forgot to talk about features (because I didn’t know them or I didn’t use them) but feel free to tell us how you use it, I’ll be really happy to ear it!

Don’t forget that you have a free license until the 31 mars 2005. But if it’s like past months, they will extend it to the next month, and the next month, etc? ๐Ÿ™‚

Technoratie: [] [] [] [] [] []

About blog back-references in your blog’s posts

Frederick Giasson

It is essential to give credit to authors and build your relationship with other bloggers

You find a good article on the web or a post of another blogger with a so beautiful idea. You want to blog about it; to present it to your readers and add some comments. Will you rip the whole thing; put it on you blog with your comments without reference back the original author? I hope no!

Personally if the idea came from another source than my mind, I’ll put a link to the source of information. If I found it on a specific web site and that site reference back to the originator, then, I’ll reference the place where I found it and the place where the original idea came from. It’s the way I work. I put the reference of the place that point me out a thing, and if it’s the case, the reference to the originator of the idea.

Personally I think that back-referencing is probably the most important thing you have to do while building information web pages (like blogs). The first point is to give credit to the author. It’s a simple act of civism essential for the good health of the Internet. Secondly, it helps you to give credibility to your works. Finally it will help you to build a good relationship with other authors. If I take the example of blogs, it will help you to be read by other bloggers. Why? Because most bloggers are addicted to their blog’s statistic. Usually, if he doesn’t know the reference web site to one of his post, then he’ll check by clicking on it, and he will read what you wrote about him. Usually he will eventually give you the credit back by blogging on one of your post.

The core of this healthy relationship between bloggers is the fact that peoples references-back the originator of ideas.

Technoratie: [] [] [] []

A letter to his readers by Frank Herbert – How he wrote dune and his intentions behind it

Frederick Giasson

I just started to read the fifth book of the Dune chronicle: Heretics of Dune by Frank Herbert. In the ACE edition, they added a little letter of Frank to his readers after 10 millions copies sold. I’ll retype it there because I think that this is a really interesting reading for people interested in writing and Dune. It describes his intentions and the process of his writings. There it is:

… there was no room in my mind for concerns about the book’s success or failure. I was concerned only with the writing. Six years of research had preceded the day I sat down to put the story together, and the interweaving of the many plot layers I had planned required a degree of concentration I had never before experiences.

It was to be a story exploring the myth of the Messiah.

It was to produce another view of a human-occupied planet as an energy machine.

It was to penetrate the interlocked workings of politics and economics.

It was to be an examination of absolute prediction and its pitfalls.

It was to have an awareness drug in it and tell what could happen through dependence on such a substance.

Potable water was to be an ecological novel, then, with many overtones, as well as a story about people and their human concerns with human values, and I had to monitor each of these levels at every stage in the book.

There wasn’t room in my head to thing about much else.

Following the first publication, reports from the publishers were slow and, as it turned out, inaccurate. The critics had panned it. More than twelve publishers had turned it down before publication. There was no advertising. Something was happening out there, though.

For two years, I was swamped with bookstore and reader complaints that they could not get the book. The Whole Earth Catalog praised it. I kept getting these telephone calls from people asking me if I were starting a cult.

The answer: “God no!”

What I’m describing is the slow realization of success. By the time the first three Dune books were completed, there was little doubt that this was a popular work ? one of the most popular in history, I am told, with some ten million copies sold worldwide. Now the most common question people ask is: “What does this success mean to you?”

It surprise me. I didn’t expect failure either. It was a work and I did it. Parts of Dune Messiah and Children of Dune were written before Dune was completed. They fleshed out more in the writing, but the essential story remained intact. I was a writer and I was writing. The success meant I could spend more time writing.

Looking back on it, I realize I did the right thing instinctively. You don’t write for success. That takes part of your attention away from the writing. If you’re really doing it, that’s all you’re doing: writing.

There’s an unwritten compact between you and the reader. If someone enters a bookstore and sets down hard earned money(energy) for your book, you owe that person some entertainment and as much more as you can give.

That was really my intention all along.

Technoratie: [] [] [] []

Spamming problems on Del.icio.us; you don’t really need to validate your account

Frederick Giasson

I was surprised to see, this morning, a sort of bookmark spam attack in one of my Del.icio.us feed (tag:writing). I had around 30 bookmark entries with user names like: rollofle500, rollofle502, rollofle503? etc. All the messages have been sent at a minute of interval with different tags, different topics and all linked to the same website: http://torrents.on.nimp.org/?u=rolloffle that redirect us to http://www.gnaa.us/. I think the attack have been performed with an automated script that worked like this:

  1. He creates an account with a random name and a random email address.
  2. He login to this newly created account.
  3. He post a bookmark with this newly create account and put random tags that he get in a special word dictionary created for this effect.
  4. Finally he restarts the whole process.

It seems that the administrator of Del.icio.us had deleted these users and entries. They probably have been alerted of the situation and deleted them on the spot.

The problem is that erasing all the entries hadn’t repaired the entire problem because their feeds have been infected and distributed to hundred of subscribed users.

We are in right two ask this question: Why this situation happened? The answer is ease: because their authentication is not working properly. You can post bookmarks without validating your account. This is the real problem and why the spammer had been able to perform this sort spam attack. Even if you see this message:

ยป A verification email has been sent. Please check your mail. If it does not arrive shortly, go to the settings page and ask for another verification email.

You can do what you wish with your account.

What’s the solution to prevent future bookmark spam attacks on Del.icio.us? They will need to upgrade their registration and validation system to prevent the new users to be able to post bookmarks without being validated by the system.

Technoratie: [] [] [] [] []