If the planets align I’m on the verge of a surprise announcement. More on that in #4 below if you want to scroll.

Whew! This post and me thanking you, friendly reader, for an exciting 2007 at this blog is way past due. The last couple weeks I’ve been more in holiday mode than working mode and some dust is kicking up as my nose gets back down and hits it.

1. RSS aggregator: who and what’s being used as a reading list
Like many others the new year switchover has me re-evaluating the prior year goals. Let’s start where we did in 2007 with how I plan to handle RSS subscriptions this year. Am I subscribed to you? Should I be? How can I be?

From 2007 in reBlog:

to 2008:

Yes, I’m still using reBlog as my primary RSS reader. Feeds subscribed here are my regular reads and will be likely to be jumping points or segways from new posts in 2008. Last year I waved “goodbye” to my current subscriptions and started fresh. This year I copied over the subscriptions at the end of 2007. It was a relatively small number (74) and quite manageable. Down to 73 as of this writing because I unsubscribed from one source.

In 2008 as part of my ongoing Twitter experiment that began 82 days ago (see left sidebar of homepage for counter), I’ve spent the last few days subscribing to 500+ blogs, podcasts or vlogs of those subject to the following criteria:

1. Must be primarily original content. No reblogs, spam/splogs, automated, etc.
2. Blog/podcast/vlog must primarily be in English (only language I speak fluently).
3. Must follow me and remain following on Twitter (I try to follow more than follow me).

Many of these are brand new, first time subscriptions for me.

I subscribed to these Twitter contact feeds in Google Reader and am using that exclusively to go through the feeds on a daily basis. I’m planning to treat reading these feeds similar to how I follow Twitter: a let it flow, let it flow strategy, which should scale (hopefully). The posts that I find interesting will be shared in my Google Reader shared feed, which gives Twitter contacts the ability to see which of their posts I enjoyed in a very transparent fashion. If anybody reading this doesn’t want their posts to appear in the Google Shared feed then let me know and I’ll unsubscribe from your feed.

In an attempt to provide similar information last year I played in the Hmm Labs with a digg-style system that used posts seeded from reBlog, but that was based on the pligg software and was too slow and buggy. That system is going to get the axe and I’ll probably use the domain for something related to promoting the posts of my favorite reads.

2. The state of Hmmcast
Some of you have probably noticed my goal to do the Hmmcast every work day save for vacations worked out good until September when I got better equipment and attempted to create and share more high quality video. Quality of the video went up dramatically but days went by and soon weeks and finally all of last month without new Hmmcasts being published.

I’ve come to the realization that until I can either focus on this nearly full time or am retired, it’s not realistic for me to do this type of videoblog with the production values I wanted on a regular posting schedule. Perhaps if I had help, but not primarily by myself and while Hmm does turn a profit, there isn’t enough money yet to hire somebody to help with a videoblog that wasn’t bringing in any revenue. It’s not that the Hmmcast is about money to me, I love doing the vlog, but I have two businesses to run and can’t spend hours — literally — producing something every day that doesn’t give back at least some form of revenue.

This doesn’t mean the Hmmcast is dead by any means in 2008.

It does mean that it will likely go back to a frequency of weekly instead of daily, starting in the not too distant future (how’s that for vague and murky?). I’d like to do something more spontaneous like I did yesterday with Modulus. A live video with perhaps a little less production value covering Hmm-related items. Or maybe it will go back to an audio-only podcast covering favorite comments from you, posts or reads from the Google Shared feed perhaps, of the week. I like the idea of using the Hmmcast to further promote/highlight good comments and reads from others.

We went from having 30 Hmmcast episodes to 180 and I learned a ton about how much work goes into producing a daily videoblog. I already had a lot of respect for daily vloggers which work hard at their craft. Anybody can go in front of their webcam and say a few things and hit publish, those aren’t the vlogs I’m talking about. It takes time, good equipment and skill to create and edit something entertaining in high quality and publish five days a week. Tip of my hat to these vloggers.

Here’s your chance to give some feedback on the future direction of the Hmmcast. What would you like to see from it? Do you like the idea of infrequent videos with high production values? How about more spontaneous live stuff like yesterday? Do you miss the weekly podcast (audio-only) version?

3. Hmm Labs
I was a bit surprised by the activity in 2007 of the seldom mentioned, seldom updated Hmm Labs. While only one of the experiments in the lab actually was implemented live on the site in 2007, some favorable feedback was received to the concept which encourages me to explore in greater depth in 2008.

Some of you were more interested in the tinkering behind the scenes than I expected. I think at least one major new project will appear in 2008 in the Hmm Labs first and if all goes well rolled out here on the site.

As mentioned with the Hmmcast, there isn’t a budget which allows for anything too large in scope, but there are a few key things I’d like to see done with MakeYouGoHmm that would encourage more interaction and sharing of hmm-inspiring content around the web.

4??? And the surprise announcement … is ….
Last year there were five items, but I’m keeping my goals fewer in number this year.

Now back to that surprise announcement I teased about at the start of this post: if all goes through things should be finalized by the end of January. I don’t want to say anything yet because it’s not a 100% done deal.

It is something that will impact this blog to some degree in 2008 which is why I’m bringing it up here. I don’t think it will impact the actual blog output (# of posts / frequency) too much, but it could impact some of the content that I write about, or at least how I write about some things. It could also pull this blog in a very interesting and unexpected direction and open up some avenues not previously available to explore.

You’re welcome to speculate in the comments below and I can play politician (hey, it’s that time of year) and deny the rumors and speculation. Try to keep it somewhat clean though, as it’s not anything scandalous. Even if this deal should fall through, I will post about the details in full either way.

In closing, thanks to those who keep reading and subscribing and welcome to the new people I’m meeting both here, on other sites and offline. Without you it’s like writing on an out of order bathroom stall.

Related Posts

• 2005 prediction time
• When the ex-boyfriend mails you a severed finger
• Use Book Suggester to find similar reads
• Wireless gambling approved in Nevada
• My Oh My! Angels sweep Mariners in opening series
• Into the Valentine’s Day gift fryer