I’m not into ‘why I haven’t blogged’ posts and try to spare you the exercise. For future reference, I write when:

1. I have the time
2. Something external (another blog post, news story, new site/service, etc) moves me and/or
3. I have something (fresh, preferably) to say or share

With #3 I’m being more challenged lately. This blog has well over 1.5 million published words and has covered a lot of different web terrain. Fortunately it isn’t niche, so finding something to make us both go hmm for the rest of my lifetime shouldn’t be rocket science. It’s not as easy any more, though because I keep getting literary deja vus. I’ve got to get back to more deeper web exploration.

You don’t care, I get it, just publish mon, publish!

I’ve found the editor in me getting much more picky about what gets published though. That’s really the problem. I just looked in the draft queue and see I’ve written around a dozen posts since April 2. Blame the editor, that’s it.

I digress. Recommendation: use the Hmm search or click the archive links from the home page to revisit the keyword(s) of your liking. There’s a lot of gold in them thar hills. I’ve been thinking about creating a couple pages with links to heavily trafficked past posts. Maybe one for the highest rated ones too, as that function is getting used more than expected. We tried a rating post feature here before and it bombed. I wouldn’t say the second time is a huge improvement, but more readers and visitors are using it. That helps determine what you like and dislike, so please take the time and rate every post that you read all the way through.

Providing fresh material should be every writer’s goal and I’m seeing — right or wrong — this blog as more like a book than a place to repeat something said days, months or [gasp] years ago. The five year anniversary for this site is fast approaching (July 4, 2008) and then I’ll need to make the call what to do the next five years, health willing of course. A few ideas are percolating. I might bring in some hired guns, what do you think of that?

Missing you
I do miss reading some of my friends when they don’t update their blog for awhile and wonder what they’ve been up to. I’ve been asked: hey, why no Hmm? Is everything ok? What’s going on? Those are questions that a 21 day off period don’t answer. I remember giving blog buddy Kent a friendly stick shake when he went AWOL and he’s been kind enough not to return the favor during my blackjack period.

The picture at the top of this post should answer where I’ve been — at least in part. Yes, I’ve been practicing playing my guitar instead of publishing blog posts. I have been writing a little bit here and there, but time where I’d normally be doing the blog exercise, I’ve been practicing so I can jam with the boys on Sunday nights offline. I’m hoping we get good or bad enough to shoot some compelling video because the Hmmcast is starting to grow some nasty looking cobwebs. It’s not much fun watching video, even in HD, of an average garage band, so that footage might never come to fruition.

The calluses on my left (playing) hand haven’t been there and needed to practice time to build up. This has turned me into one of those guys you see carrying around their guitar everywhere. I’ve always thought that was neat when I see people doing that. Every musician knows that practice is the only way to get better. Heck, any skill takes lots of practice. I’m stealing my writing practice time for guitar practice.

Oh, and couldn’t stand for playing live my 20+ year old electric guitar any more, so threw down for some Gibson Les Paul studio action at one of my new guilty pleasure stores: Guitar Center.

I’m a sucker for red guitars and this red wine style is a beauty. Oh, and it comes with a sweet case too.

What do you think? How many Hmm readers play guitar? I must admit with some embarrassment that despite buying this new guitar a couple weeks ago, it is still unplayed. I brought it home, told my kids they’d be cursed for life if they touched it, set the lock on the case and stored it away in a safe, dry place.

Now before you get on me too much, I bought it to only play live, not for practice. Maybe I’ll feel differently later on, but I’ve never owned a pro quality guitar. All my gear has been fairly low budget. I’ve wanted a really good guitar since I was 14 years old and the timing was right.

I also had a pickup installed in my Washburn acoustic guitar and it sounds great. I’m planning on bringing both of these guitars to our next jam session this coming Sunday night. I’m hoping to become regularly invited to the group which involves three other guys (two are younger, one is older). They asked me to play back after the first session so that’s a good sign. Much too premature to speculate on if we’ll ever get out of the garage. Last time I played in a band was back in high school, so lots of rust to knock off for me.

I’m compiling a list of songs I can play either in part or all the way through. Here’s the current list as of this writing:

Electric
AC DC - Back in Black, Dirty Deeds, Walk All Over You
America - Horse with No Name
Ben E. King (on bass) - Stand By Me
Black Sabbath - Paranoid
Blue Oyster Cult - Don’t Fear The Reaper
Dokken - Alone Again
Iron Maiden - The Trooper
Judas Priest - The Hellion, Livin’ After Midnight
Metallica - Fade To Black, For Whom The Bell Tolls
Ozzy Osbourne - Crazy Train, I Don’t Know
Styx - Suite Madam Blue
Ted Nugent - Cat Scratch Fever
Thin Lizzy - Jailbreak

Acoustic
John Mellancamp - Pink Houses
Five Man Electrical Band - Signs
Ritchie Valens - Donna

Have you got some good guitar song suggestions to add? There are a bunch of songs I’d like to learn how to play and, in some cases, learn how to play again. The song list shrinks if you don’t keep practicing.

Bought a bass for son
You might have noticed in the list that I snuck a song on bass in there by Ben E. King. Stand By Me is a great bass riff and fairly easy to play. My son was having trouble learning the guitar so I bough him an Ibanez bass. He’s learned a few songs on there and seems to find it easier to play with his smaller fingers.

Our third Guitar Center purchase was a set of Simmons electronic drums and drum amplifier. They sound great and we’ve been jamming a bit with bass, drums and guitar. My son who plays bass is also working on playing the drums too. We got a double bass pedal for it.

Rock Band full albums
I think what has gotten me started back into this was the game Rock Band which I’ve given high marks in the past. And speaking of Rock Band, Harmonix which makes the game yesterday started offering the first complete album: Judas Priest most excellent Screaming For Vengeance available for 1,200 Microsoft Points on Xbox Live. We bought this and played last night for a little while. Great stuff, this could give the music industry something to cheer for as I can see fans buying their album multiple times.

Worked for Judas Priest. Last night we took our youngest to dinner for his birthday and then we went and bough a CD. Which one? Screaming for Vengeance, of course.

Not sure I mentioned it, but we’re on our third set of Rock Band drums now. The newest one seems more heavily reinforced and maybe (hopefully) will last more than a month or two.

Time for me to jump back into my reading list which shows 1,000+ in Google Reader and 1,446 in reBlog and grows by the hour. Before the day is done, I might cheat and mark all as read, but we’ll see how things go.

Please share in the comments below what you’ve been up to, especially if you’re a blogger. Are you publishing less blog posts these days? Playing music or some other hobby offline? It’s good to have some variety in your life.

I’ve been in need of a quick reference resource for people that are unfamiliar with the different types of blogging and came up with the following 8 different types of blogging in 2008.

1. linkblog

Some call this social bookmarking, but it’s only social if you’re sharing the links with others. e.g del.icio.us

2. moblog

Sending pictures from a cameraphone or mobile device. e.g Flickr

3. podcast

Audio recording, typically in MP3 format and served through RSS feed enclosure. e.g Utterz, Odeo

4. videoblog / vlog

Video recording offered in one or more popular video formats like mp4, wmv and served as enclosure in RSS feed. e.g blip.tv, YouTube

5. microblog - a short text message which may or may not contain a shortened URL. Popular with mobile users (SMS). e.g Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce

6. miniblog / reBlog - using a more significant amount of content from a third party in a post versus creating original material. Typically these posts are shorter than a regular blog post, but don’t have to be. e.g Tumblr, reBlog

7. liveblog - covering some type of live event like a sports event, press conference, tv show, etc. e.g Engadget live coverage of Macworld 2008, coveritlive (tool)

8. blog - a collection of other types of blogging mentioned above and/or typically longer, more detailed postings that could also be labeled as articles. Some blogs offer series or collections of posts around a topic. A blog can be self-hosted using software like Wordpress.org or by using a third party service like Google’s blogger.com. e.g. the blog you’re reading this on: MakeYouGoHmm.com.

Missing/corrections/updates
If I missed a key important point that somebody newer to the world of blogging might need to know, please include below. This is not intended to be an exhaustive reference but something that will point somebody new in the right starting direction.

Has some other new niche developed that I’m not following?

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.

I like Robert Scoble’s most recent fight with Facebook over data portability that led to his account being disabled but don’t like how he went about starting it.

Scraping without permission is wrong. Sorry, yes, even scraping your own data from a third party site.

We’ve rallied in the past against how some websites devalue our time, using us to make them money (digg) and trying to handcuff us to the door by limiting export options (Facebook). One thing I’ve come to appreciate with Twitter is their API which when it’s working gives any Twitter user the ability to export just about everything you do there. Even if you think Twitter is stupid, it’s hard to argue against an open API like that.

The problem many have with Facebook is how easy it is to get information in there and how difficult it is to export. Go there, interact with your friends, but be careful what you do when leaving. They also insist that you must use your legal name, but only seem to apply that to non-popular people. If you’re not a web celebrity and not using your legal name, expect your account to be dropped.

Back to Scoble who decided to demo an unauthorized script from Plaxo that scraped his Facebook contact’s name, email address and birthdays which is against the Facebook terms of service (TOS). Facebook discovered the script running and promptly suspended Scoble’s FB account.

As I pointed out to him on Twitter, Scoble has a history of violating the TOS of other websites/services. I was disappointed to see from the many different bloggers writing about this on Techmeme so few pointing to Scoble’s history of openly admitting TOS violations. Are memories this short or is data portability more important than basic respect of agreements you make? When you agree to a EULA or TOS, you are making an agreement for how you’ll conduct yourself. Scoble makes these agreements and uses and evangelizes the services and then decides when he doesn’t like something it’s ok to violate it on principle because the company is wrong.

ScanIam remembers:

It’s very remeniscient of the time he let his underage son play in 2nd Life even after being told that it was against the rules.

1) hissy fit
2) apology
3) profit.

Steven Hodson also remembers when Scoble brought his son Patrick into the adult grid of Second Life? Whether or not we agree/disagree having a separate grid for adults and teens is a good idea that’s the agreement. While generally I think Scoble is a likeable human character, complete with imperfections like all of us, this is one side of Scoble that I don’t care for at all. He openly violates agreements because he doesn’t agree with them. He seems very wishy washy with his word. Take how he kept his Plaxo NDA under wraps until he “was released” and yet he doesn’t hesitate violating TOS?

Dare Obasanjo completely agrees with Facebook:

So if Facebook allows you to extract information about your Facebook friends via their APIs, why would Robert Scoble need to run a screen scraping script? The fact is that the information returned by the Facebook API about a user contains no contact information (no email address, no IM screen names, no telephone numbers, no street address). Thus if you are trying to “grow virally” by spamming the Facebook friend list of one of your new users about the benefits of your brand new Web 2.0 site then you have to screen scrape Facebook.

Now let’s read the Facebook Terms:

By using the Service or the Site, you represent and warrant that you are 13 or older and in high school or college, or else that you are 18 or older, and that you agree to and to abide by all of the terms and conditions of this Agreement.

The ethical choice if Scoble disagrees with the TOS isn’t to openly violate and then use it as an opportunity to further promote himself and agenda even if that agenda is worthwhile. This is what Robin Hood did, right? He robbed from the rich (Facebook) and gave to the poor (the vast majority of Scoble’s gathered 4,999 contact names, emails and birthdays).

Nick Carr makes an excellent point about how Scoble may have thought this information was his, others may not feel the same way:

I have no doubt that Scoble didn’t mean any harm, but in what sense are names, email addresses, and birthdays not “personal information”? The important question isn’t what Scoble intended to do with the information. The important question is this: Will others who use such scraping scripts necessarily have benign intentions? And the answer is: No.

What Scoble did by allowing his teenage son into the adult grid of Second Life was neither professional or polite. He knew there was a teen grid and yet he intentionally allowed his son to use the adult grid and promoted this fact. He admitted he knew this was against the rules but he did it anyway.

And here he’s doing it all over again with this Facebook drama. Yes, he’s right that data portability is important, but he’s wrong to use sites/services where he openly disagrees with the TOS. And then when the company takes action against him, use it as a platform for self-promotion.

Scoble pointed me to opensocialweb.org as a response to if he approached Facebook directly before violating their TOS. The Open Social Web lays out the following principles:

Sites supporting these rights shall:

* Allow their users to syndicate their own profile data, their friends list, and the data that’s shared with them via the service, using a persistent URL or API token and open data formats;
* Allow their users to syndicate their own stream of activity outside the site;
* Allow their users to link from their profile pages to external identifiers in a public way; and
* Allow their users to discover who else they know is also on their site, using the same external identifiers made available for lookup within the service.

These are noble guidelines and I agree with them all. However, because Facebook apparently doesn’t agree with these and has a TOS defining this as a violation the choice is clear: use the service and live with it or leave. Scoble decided he wanted to leave, but the caveat is he wanted to leave with the information he had already agreed to leave with them.

Wishy washy.

Don’t worry about Scoble’s squeaky wheel, it will get grease
Mark my words, Facebook will back down and reinstate his account not because he didn’t violate the TOS and deserve having his account suspended. Not because FB actually believes and supports data portability, but because it’s Robert Scoble going on CNBC and running off at the mouth about it.

Scoble gets my support for the fight for data portability, but he gets two thumbs way down for the tactics he’s employed.

Update 2:02pm PST: Predictably Facebook has already caved and reactivated Scoble’s account. They say it’s part of the normal appeals process and since Robert as agreed not to use a script like this again, that’s why they are reactivating his account.

2:34pm PST: Scoble held an impromptu live video with chat show/blogger press conference where he answered questions from the crowd using Mogulus. Good demo for their video and chat service actually.

I asked Scoble if he respected TOS and he responded by asking if I drive 55? Strange analogy considering I know he doesn’t drive by cops giving them the middle finger while speeding, but whatever.

This morning a micro conversation broke out about podcasts and satellite radio.

Before we get too far, it’s important to understand I like podcasts. I’ve also created podcasts since the early days, as well as hosted a live weekly web streaming radio show since May 2000. This Friday will be episode #361. There are some very good podcasts out there and I fully believe someday internet live streaming and pre-recorded material (podcasts, vlogging) will replace satellite and terrestrial radio.

But that day isn’t here yet.

This morning I suggested to WickedGood to give satellite radio a try after seeing his message:

Radio everywhere is awful, unfortunately. That’s why I never leave the house without my iPod anymore.

I’ve been a satisfied Sirius subscriber since September 2006 and see where WickedGood is coming from. One very big problem is he hasn’t actually tried satellite radio before to experience the content firsthand. It’s too easy to question why others would want something if they have never tried it. His response: why should I pay for satellite radio when I can get podcasts for free?

Now let me share why this is the wrong question to ask.

You need the internet to sync podcasts
Firstly, podcasts aren’t always free. You still need an internet connection to get to them and unfortunately the internet isn’t always free and isn’t always available. Yes, there are some free WiFi hotspots, but unless you find one of those to sync up new podcasts, you’re listening to the past and not anything live. In some rural areas like Montana, you’re lucky if you get much internet coverage at all.

Live talk radio
Truckers and people who travel a lot and enjoy talk radio know how fun and interactive these shows can be. It’s a type of content that rarely happens with podcasts, but is more associated with live web radio streaming or video. Stuff like you’d find at justin.tv or ustream.tv with lifecasting. Problem there is always internet connection required and bandwidth available. We have an EVDO connection and while it works great in our surrounding area, if we travel too far, we’ll lose the connection and the feed.

The same thing happens with terrestrial radio. You are listening and getting into a talk radio show and then the signal fades as you drive away. I’ve been in situations where a talk radio show was getting good and had to crank up the volume and reduce treble to try and hear the signal as we … drove … away.

That never happens with satellite radio. Satellite works almost everywhere. No, it won’t work well when there are tall buildings or overpasses or concrete structures that block the satellite which can make some city driving frustrating, but if you’re on a long car trip through rural areas there is no better live radio fix.

Live sports
If you’re an NFL or MLB fan like me and want to hear the home broadcasts for different games, satellite is currently the only answer. Yes, you can listen to MLB games through mlb.com (I do that since I don’t have XM) but again, you’re restricted to having an internet connection. NFL games aren’t available (legally) in the United States streaming through the web. So those with XM can get live MLB games and those with Sirius can get every NFL game broadcast in both home and away broadcasts as well as some foreign language broadcasts. Podcasts? Forget about it.

And when, not if as I believe, the Sirius + XM merger goes through, subscribers will be able to get both the NFL and MLB under one subscription. This is a sweet deal that the internet doesn’t (legally) offer, and even if it did, the connectivity concerns would still be there.

Commercial free music serendipitously
There are lots of good ways to discover new music online. If you want to listen to genre music streaming live on the web there is shoutcast and icecast offering tons of stations, most of which are commercial free. However, if you don’t have the internet, you’ll have to preload onto that portable music device music. Some podcasts will deliver some outstanding indie music via podcast.

Pandora is one online music service which would be great to have with EVDO if only EVDO would work everywhere, I wouldn’t need satellite to fill this gap. Satellite offers a bunch of different commercial free radio stations. About the only area satellite music is weak where podcasting is strong in is indie music.

Bottom line: finding new music in genres you like with live DJs spinning the tunes (old school) while driving around with the least amount of hassle, satellite is strong. Terrestrial radio is too watered down with commercials.

Live news, traffic and weather
If you need live news and are connected to the web, either through your cellphone or PDA that’s great, but podcasts don’t deliver timely news very well. By the time the podcaster has recorded and uploaded and shared the podcast the news is growing stale. Some news in specific niches like tech don’t stale as fast and a podcast tech news show might work assuming you sync in the morning before going to work and sync at work for the drive going home.

As for traffic and weather, there are numerous websites and services that can help. Satellite radio for traffic is a pale replacement for a GPS like the Garmin c330 or better yet: Garmin c340. I’d much rather have a GPS with live traffic service than satellite radio. However, if you’re looking for major city traffic reports, Sirius offers the following channels entirely dedicated to traffic and weather in: NY Traffic (148), Philadelphia & Boston (149), Los Angeles (150), St Louis (151), Baltimore (152), Atlanta (153), Dallas (154), Las Vegas (155), San Francisco (156), Phoenix (157) and Orlando (158).

Exclusive live and prerecorded content
WickedGood might not care for Howard Stern, but a lot of people do. The only place to listen to Howard live (legally) is on Howard 100 on Sirius. If you miss a show live, it continues in a loop throughout the day. That’s 5+ hours of high production value content four days a week (Howard isn’t live on Fridays), save for vacations and holidays. 20+ hours of exclusive content, and that’s only Howard.

For the adults in the crowe, there is also Playboy Radio (channel 198) which offers frank discussion on that fascinating three letter word that begins with an s and ends with an x.

Podcasting provides an almost neverending source of new material, mainstream and adult, to listen to without any subscription fees. You still need to sync up the episodes which isn’t a big deal, but there is a much smaller number of high production value podcast content that exceeds 20+ hours a week per show. High production value almost goes against the grain and spirit of podcasting, since it’s often amateur based, I get that, but if you are looking for some quality high production value radio, satellite has a very compelling selection. In the podcasting space you can find it, but it requires more work on your part.

Terrestrial radio still has some great exclusive content, particularly local station DJs, but again these stations are ruined by way too many commercials and there is the FCC which means you’ll hear neutered conversations. You won’t hear that on podcasts and satellite.

Satellite subscribers don’t have to worry about what content to subscribe or unsubscribe to, that is taken care of by Sirius or XM. That could be a benefit or detriment depending on the individual. You only have to remember what channel and time. Some receivers allow programming reminders and/or even recording shows at certain times.

What have I missed?
I wish somebody would have pointed to a post like this before I subscribed to satellite radio, which would have helped me understand the differences. If you love radio it will be hard to deny the value in satellite. One of the other turning points that made me pull the satellite trigger were the people I talked to who already had it. I encourage you to talk to other satellite radio listeners. There is overwhelming amount of passion around and between satellite subscribers. They get what makes it so appealing and while I speak only for myself, I don’t mind paying for this service at all.

Podcasting is great, live streaming web radio is great and so is satellite radio all for different reasons and listening scenarios. There is going to come a time when internet is available almost everywhere like satellite is as of this writing and that will begin the end of satellite radio. A lot of people are talking like that time is already here. It’s not. Yet.

Why can’t we like them all? What have I missed about comparing satellite radio and podcasts? My ears and eyes are ready in the comments below.

Jim Kukral is getting drowned with messages from Twitter and is considering quitting for awhile. He’s looking for suggestions for how he can better manage the flow:

Anyone have any tips for Twitter information overload?

I checked out how many people Jim is following as of this writing: 195. While he might have cut this number back, I’ve been using Twitter regularly for the last 45 days or so and am up over the 300 follows mark, so I have an idea of quantity of message flow Jim has been receiving. I still consider myself a bit of a Twitter newbie and learning more about how to tap the signal and let the noise flow by, so if you’re looking for tips from more established Twitterers please keep this in mind.

My piece of advice for Jim and others who feel similarly burdened by the number of messages (Twitter vernacular: messages = tweets)? Setup a system where the messages flow freely like he might tune into a favorite radio station. I have satellite radio in the background and tune in here and there. Don’t let Twitter eat up valuable business flow space like your email client. Jim tried that and found some 800 messages waiting which made him feel overwhelmed.

In the comment section of Jim’s post he’s receiving tips like cut down the number of people he follows. That’s a bit silly if you’re also trying to use Twitter as a networking tool. If that’s a worthwhile goal, the idea should be to grow your network, not reduce it, correct? I think Jim’s problem is he is attributing too much priority and importance to every message. Twitter isn’t like reading a blog or news source you’re subscribed to, it’s more like being part of an IRC channel. I’ve made this comparison to IRC before and people have disagreed, but to me the two are very similar as far as the flow.

With that in mind, my preferred Twitter client is part of an IRC bot I wrote which brings me the messages as a private message in the channel. The bot also keeps track of the number of messages and some other stats so if I’m away and want to catch up on messages missed — again, I don’t feel obligated to do so — all I need to do is navigate to the number I left off at and read forward. I’m planning on refining this system even further to be able to quickly search through messages from people I’m following. This way I can follow interests within the messages of those I follow, similar to subscribing by keywords to RSS feeds. This way I won’t miss things that are of more interest to me.

One thing I’ve decided in my Twitter experience was that I didn’t want or need to read every. Single. Message. Readers might remember that my original reaction to Twitter was like many others: what’s the point? It was less than two months ago that my eyes opened to a way to utilyze the service that seemed worthwhile. Since this time, I’ve been using the service regularly and am growing both the number of people I follow and those following me.

So I don’t feel obligated to read every single message from every person I’m following, nor do I expect every person following me to read all of my non direct or non reply messages or follow all the links I’m sharing. Is this the best way to utilyze the service? For me it’s working.

My system has the messages flowing by and while I will go back and read many of the archived messages, I stopped feeling like I must read every single message after following 200 people. I do watch for and try to respond to every reply so if I’m following somebody reading this and you want to be certain I’m seeing your really important message, send it as a direct message or reply. Otherwise, expect me to be tuning in periodically throughout the day. I don’t feel the slightest bit guilty treating Twitter message flow like what’s playing on the radio.

Liberate your flow.

Good signal Twitterers
Occasionally I see people asking for recommendations of good people to follow on Twitter. My preferred follows to date are people who are interactive.

If I send you a reply and you reply or acknowledge in some way, that’s interactive. Conversely, I’m not as interested in following people who don’t reply and/or have a lot more people following them than they follow. There are exceptions like people I’ve met in person, but for me anyway, communication and microblogging tools like Twitter don’t work nearly as well if communication is only one way. In some ways, I’m treating Twitter like trackbacks at this blog: two-way trackbacks are preferred.

Another plus for people to follow are those who are actively using the service. The reason somebody being active is important to me is because what if I’m looking for feedback or something or vice versa? The likelihood of getting a good response is better with people who are actually using the service.

One of my friends asked me what was too many messages? I replied that there wasn’t a solid number as far as I could tell, it’s subjective, but a message an hour (24 messages a day) would be considered very active by most people. Maybe too active for somebody in Jim’s situation who is reading every message. Since regularly using Twitter I’m averaging around 15 messages a day but suspect this number will fall off a bit when my experimental time with the service ends (3-6 months planned).

Take control of your stream
To recap: it’s important to remember that it’s your flow. You, and only you, get to choose how much attention and time gets attributed to your flow. While I don’t consider myself selfish, I am definitely selfish when it comes to how much of my time and where is spent. I encourage others who are interested in being more productive in their lives do the same. This doesn’t mean you’re being like Guy Kawasaki and too busy to read other people’s blogs but want them to read yours (having a high follower to follow ratio might mean that). Rather, it’s a way for you to be able to read and follow in a way that fits your life. I’d rather have somebody reading my non-direct non-reply messages who doesn’t feel obligated to read them as opposed to somebody who does and critically judges every message. Life is too short, really.

For Jim and others feeling overwhelmed: take control of your microblogging reading and make it convenient for you. Make it fit your schedule. Don’t become a slave to the stream. For those who enjoy Twitmas Music: let it flow, let it flow, let it flow.

Despite living within a couple hours of the ocean, we only get over there about once a year. After visiting Lincoln City over the weekend we’d like to change that going forward. We were able to get an oceanfront view at the Nordic for $80. Check out this guy on the beach in the morning writing a birthday message:

Nature’s eraser showed up to wash away his work:

Kind of reminded me of how blog posts, messageboards threads and so on are wiped away by time. What we’re doing today, how long will it last, really? One of the strengths of blogging remains the immediacy but one could argue that most blogs have a high rate of decay.

The last time we went to the coast, I wrote about beach blogging and the guy writing in the sand immediately reminded of this. If you’re traveling down the Oregon coast, Lincoln City is recommended. It’s good to go AFK once in awhile.

Being the shopping time of year with Black Friday behind and “Cyber Monday” (who made up that weird name?) today, what about gifts for the people you work with or some other group online or off? Buying everybody a gift can become expensive and make some people with tighter finances the ability to get involved.

A Secret Santa gift exchange allows a group of people to participate in buying one gift for one other person in chosen randomly. This morning I was reminded of the site Elfster.com which helps to automate Secret Santa gift exchanges.

Sign-up is a breeze and Elfster helps by offering a detailed FAQ page with three sections: Organizing an Exchange, General Questions and Tips & Tricks.

You can create multiple gift exchanges and then send email invitations to those who will be participating. The exchange organizer can limit the dollar amount of the gift so that it is affordable for everyone who participates. The exchange organizer also sets a deadline date. This deadline date is used for the Elfster system to randomly select the person in the exchange to buy a gift. The exchange organizer can also define so one person won’t pick another (e.g a husband and wife in a group, and not wanting them to pick each other).

Have a large number of people in your group and emailing each of them would be a hassle? Easy, just send them a link to where they can voluntarily sign up to participate. I’m going to recommend to our VTOR blogging group this coming Friday that we set one of these up and use it for buying virtual gifts up to a recommended limit of L$1,000 (about $3.77 USD). An additional bonus of buying virtual gifts is there is no shipping delays to worry about.

Need to give ideas to others what to buy you and vice versa? Make a wish list, just keep in mind the gift exchange value. Elfster is a handy website for the gift giving time of year.

On May 24 of this year, CAPTCHA was added to the commenting area as a means of protecting against the onslaught of comment spam and helping the good reCAPTCHA cause. At the time this blog was receiving over 1,000 comment spams a day, no doubt increased because we weren’t and still aren’t using rel=nofollow on links left in comments.

After reCAPTCHA immediately was cut down to less than 10 comment spams per day. From 1,000+ to less than 10 per day on average? From a blog publisher standpoint that’s a win. It’s a timesaver, but what about you, dear readers?

Shortly after activating the reCAPTCHA on May 24, and on a reader’s suggestion (see the comments on that post), I made it so that the CAPTCHA would disappear after commenters left at least five approved comments. It was never my goal for the CAPTCHA to be a nuisance for commenters, which is one major gripe with blogs that use CAPTCHA.

The other claim is that those blogs who use CAPTCHA will have fewer comments. I’m a strong believer in numbers not lying, so I decided to see how many approved comments have been left in the 174 days since the CAPTCHA have been activated.

Before getting to the numbers it’s important to note that the amount of traffic this blog receives isn’t the same. While the number of RSS subscriptions has increased, web traffic to this blog has gone down a little bit over the time range since 2006 which would further impact the actual results.

Wordpress MySQL database queries to count number of comments since date
Below in blockquote you’ll find queries you can use on your blog. If you use a table prefix, be sure to change the wp_comments to TABLEPREFIX_comments instead. For example, let’s say you used myblog as a table prefix then replace wp_comments with myblog_comments in the SQL statements below.

SELECT count(comment_ID) from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_date > ‘2007-05-24′;

Result: 1,739

Now to check the comments in the days before the CAPTCHA was implemented, first the query to use in shell (my favorite) or your favorite MySQL editor (like PHPmyAdmin):

SELECT count(comment_ID) from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_date > ‘2006-12-01′ and comment_date < ‘2007-05-24′;

Result: 1,932. That’s a 10% decrease in comment activity. Now before saying aha! let’s examine a query of the same 174 day period from the previous year.

SELECT count(comment_ID) from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_date > ‘2006-05-24′ and comment_date < ‘2006-11-15′;

Result: 2,198. Ouch, now say aha! That’s a decrease of 21% (rounded) in comment activity over the same period of time a year earlier.

Just for fun, let’s go back one year.

SELECT count(comment_ID) from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_date > ‘2005-05-24′ and comment_date < ‘2005-11-15′;

Result: 1,227. This query result doesn’t mean much because comment activity actually increased significantly in 2006 over previous years at this blog. In 2004 over the same time period the result was 352 comments and this blog was created on July 4, 2003 so the same period can’t be reviewed in 2003.

Bottom line findings: although I replied to reader A. Brinck this morning that comment activity hadn’t decreased and even Twittered about it, I was basing this off a flawed initial query. Further focus revealed I wasn’t using the correct number of days (163 instead of 174) for my past query, which is my bad. Detailed review reveals that indeed, comment activity has decreased by 10% at this blog since adding CAPTCHA. Again, it’s important to note that there has been a decrease in traffic, so the actual amount of impact on blog commenting is less than 10% doing real numbers.

Does CAPTCHA reduce the number of unique commenters?
While the above queries answer the title question of CAPTCHA impact on the overall number of comments, it doesn’t speak about the unique number of commenters. We need to refine our MySQL query to get these results for the research.

With the current setup it is new commenters being inconvenienced the most. I decided to run a query to check the percentage of commenters since adding the CAPTCHA versus the 174 days before. First let’s look at the most recent period and let’s remove trackbacks from the results (comment_type != ‘pingback’):

SELECT count(comment_ID), comment_author from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_type != ‘pingback’ and comment_date > ‘2007-05-24′ group by comment_author;

Result: 431 unique commenters over the last 174 days. Compared to the preceding 174 days?

SELECT count(comment_ID), comment_author from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_type != ‘pingback’ and comment_date > ‘2006-12-01′ and comment_date < ‘2007-05-24′ group by comment_author;

Result: 528 unique commenters, a reducton of 18.4% unique commenters. Ouch. Now let’s check the same 174 days time frame in 2006.

SELECT count(comment_ID), comment_author from wp_comments WHERE comment_approved=’1′ and comment_type != ‘pingback’ and comment_date > ‘2006-05-24′ and comment_date < ‘2006-11-15′ group by comment_author;

Result: 599 unique commenters, 28.1% less unique commenters since adding CAPTCHA over the same time period in 2006.

Get rid of the CAPTCHA or not?
This is another chance for readers to weigh in on the use of CAPTCHA in the comments. Would you like it to go away completely or should the number be reduced to one or two approved comments not to show the CAPTCHA instead of five?

I’m leaning toward reducing the number of comments left as opposed to eliminating CAPTCHA altogether this time but it’s not off the table. Frankly losing 10% of the comments over the same period of time versus having 990+ comment spams a day could be a worthwhile tradeoff. Less time sifting through BS to be able to work on posts, promotion and conversing with those who are leaving comments.

What do you think?

First thing this morning, I upgraded my Zune 1 software to Zune 2. I made sure the Zune 30GB was unplugged from USB before proceeding.

The process was smooth and error-free on Windows Vista. Very different installation experience than what happened with Zune 1 software on Vista. I started by going inside the Zune 1 software and checking for updates. It found the update. I started the installation process and these are the step-by-step screenshots:

Accepting the End User Licensing Agreement (EULA). A missed opportunity to provide a common-sense EULA. One of these days companies will provide a quick summary version of an EULA with a link to the detailed legal speak. Most people don’t read EULA in their current form.

I’m still waiting to get into the social aspects of Zune. I mostly used the first Zune to listen to music, not be social. Perhaps with version 2, there will be more social opportunities.

Two of the new things I’m looking forward to include built-in podcasting support and non-DRM MP3 files. The former is a big improvement, previously you needed separate software to have podcasting included. The latter isn’t very clear. I think the albums that are in MP3 format show up with “mp3″ in small text on the album covers, however, I didn’t see any clear way to search for only MP3 albums. I found very few albums with the MP3 text. Disappointing if these aren’t broken out into separate section like iTunes does.

Magic text: successfully installed. Oh yeah. I was given the following two choices at the next screen: go right to my collection or customize settings first. I chose the second one.

I was fairly certain the settings were fine, but wanted to review what Zune 2 was using. The categories broken out are for music, video, pictures and podcasts. Click remove or add. Simple UI. Effective.

Zune is setup to associate MP3 and MP4 files, but not Windows Media files.

Checked by default to enter the customer experience improvement program.

Next the new display interface of your existing music. Gone are the brown frames, although it is templated and can be changed. To change go to SETTINGS->DISPLAY. Settings is located at the top.

The new background is called Phyta which is a darker red with an artistic background. Other options include: Diaphanous (lighter red), Everglade (off green), Meridian (silver), Organica (black and white) and Slate (white to black).

The album covers you have will show up, the others won’t (see above and below).

Zune 2 firmware upgrade
After the roughly 10 minutes to upgrade to the Zune 2 software, I plugged in my Zune 30GB. It jumped into action, installing the driver and then offering the following screens.

I clicked the button and waited. After a couple minutes — no errors — the process was complete.

On the Zune 30GB the words “connected” are smaller. Minor gripe: what’s up with that? My eyesight sucks, make the font larger, not smaller.

Zune podcast area
Podcasters and podcast fans will be happy to see there is an entire section dedicated to podcasts. What isn’t so clear are the podcast RSS feed URLs or the ability to import OPML files with collections of podcasts you’re already subscribed to (tweeted by kosso), making this a one podcast at a time process. Hopefully the Zune team adds OPML support.

Entering a single Podcast RSS feed is straightforward. If you produce a podcast and aren’t listed in the Zune directory (only 1,000 or so are) you can submit your podcast RSS feed.

You might also want to add 1-click podcasting subscription inside Zune to your website/blog. At the top of the Hmmcast category, I’ve added one of these 1-click subscription buttons or you can click this button to subscribe:

Overall, I’m impressed with how smooth the Vista installation process went but this is expected behavior, not a feature. Based on my past Vista experience, I expected problems which is a stain that Zune needs to wipe clean for Vista owners. I didn’t have any problems installing the original Zune software on Windows XP, but some others did. Kludgy software was one of the major complaints the first time around.

I’m disappointed that the new Zune marketplace doesn’t do a better job of separating out the MP3 from the DRM-infested tracks. Please fix this, because it is easier to shop for MP3 at iTunes Plus, AmazonMP3 and Wal-mart MP3.

The podcasting support is good to see, but admittedly it should have been included the first time around. On the Zune 30GB player side, the interface doesn’t seem that different, except for the big text options at the starting menu: music, videos, pictures, radio and podcasts. Here’s what it looks like:

After subscribing to the Hmmcast in the Zune software it didn’t automatically sync to the Zune 30GB, I needed to start the sync. Why when the device is plugged in already doesn’t it do this automatically? Maybe there is a setting for this somewhere? Compare this to my Pocket PC which is synced via USB. I use the program eWallet and whenever I add a new site user/pass it syncs with my Pocket PC without a manual sync. Might just be a settings thing here for the Zune, but I’d like it to work the same way.

Zune 2 is definitely more than an incremental improvement and the fact that they made the firmware and new marketplace backwards compatible is a great thing, thank you Microsoft. Should leave some of the Zune haters of v1 less to complain about. As for buying a Zune 2 player? Haven’t done that yet, but probably will be doing so as our youngest son needs a player. Sounds like a good Christmas present. Also, as we’ve grown our music collection past 30GB since I’ve been ripping our CDs into MP3, the need is there.