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.

Even though this is Halloween, the following screenshot is not a trick:

iPod fanboys and girls might not like hearing news that their favorite player didn’t even make CNET users top 20 most wanted products list. The only Apple products to make this week’s top 20 list were the Apple iPhone 8GB at #5 and the iTouch 16GB at #10.

Yes, it’s true that the 80GB black Zune v2.0 is topping the CNET users wish list (thanks Zune Insider). The Zune v2.0 player will not be available in stores until next month.

Now for the devil’s advocate position: this is a far cry from Zune vindication, as wish lists don’t necessarily equal sales and the most wanted item isn’t for sale yet. And look who’s #3? The Sony PS3 which hasn’t burned up the sales charts to date (but is getting more attractive). The AT&T Tilt weighs in at #4 and I’m not familiar with.

Any readers planning on buying the Zune 80GB? I’m trying to decide between a Chumby and the Zune. The Chumby isn’t portable, but is programmable, unlike the Zune. I was hoping we’d see some kind of API for the Zune. Maybe that comes in version 3? I am looking forward to the increased podcasting features.

Last night there was a Zune preview event in Seattle that I couldn’t make because I was DJing our VTOR Halloween Party — which we were pleased with how it came out (a ssssssnnnnakkke avatar won). I’m guessing if I had been able to be at this event — why oh why can’t we be at two places at the same time? — I would have learned more about Zune v2.0. Maybe would have seen and been able to touch one of them.

Chumby or Zune, which one to buy?

Let’s embellish on some Quiet Riot: Bang your head. Web sites that will drive you mad!

Face it, neither your websites or ours are perfect. We need help. We need to listen to what visitors are saying aggravates them and do something. One good way to becoming a better listener is being accessible through services like Skype, answering email and replying to comments (instead of claiming you’re too busy), perhaps even [gasp] getting involved in social networking where your site niche is relevant.

The list scene is hot right now. Some days I think maybe that’s all we should do is just sit around and make lists. Would probably increase the traffic to this site tenfold. One interesting list I came across today was from PC World.

Noticeably missing from their 10 Biggest Web Annoyance list is something very annoying:

Unnecessarily spanning pages for articles — almost always to artificially increase page views — that could easily fit on one one page. It’s inconvenient and insults reader’s intelligence. Note that PC World’s list spans four pages instead of one. Shame on them. Why didn’t this make the top 10 aggravation list? Are there people out there who actually like having to click multiple times to read one article?

PC World’s list of 10 aggravations
With that said, let’s check out what is on their list and suggest some possible tips for how to combat aggravating site visitors and readers.

1. Dubious Privacy Policies. Aggravation factor: 69 percent. Privacy concerns continue to abound on the web. Do we need any more evidence that people visiting your site want to know what you’re doing with their information? If your site collects anything from people, what is the site doing with this information? Can they get it back out through an export function or non-crippled API?

How to avoid aggravating tip: Spend some time reading and going through and stripping the legalese in your privacy policy. Shorter is better. We need to do that with our privacy policy at Hmm. Short and straightforward privacy policies are better than long and convoluted.

2. Difficult Online Forms. Aggravation factor: 65 percent. I wonder how much we should thank spammers for this? The need to incorporate CAPTCHA or other less and more complicated techniques to trick the bots has added complexity to online forms. Also, with a growing desire to collect more information at some sites (see #1).

Tip: forms gotchas to avoid:

• illegible CAPTCHA. Offer quick refresh option like we have in the comments below using reCAPTCHA.
• forms with too short timeout. Ticketmaster, anyone? Not everybody is a speed typist.
• should allow entering in secure passwords. Why have a password field if one can’t enter in a secure password? This means allowing for password lengths as much as 12-24 characters, allowing symbols, upper and lowercase as well as digits. If your password doesn’t allow all of these or forces passwords smaller than 12 characters it is insecure.
• let us enter in valid emails with a + in them. A frequent gripe. It’s a handy Gmail filtering technique, although I picked up another one recently using a period in the email address (e.g h.m.m at gmail same as hmm at gmail).
• too many items on a single form. Unlike page spanning articles, I’d rather see page spanning for large forms. Let me go through the process in stages rather than show me a bunch of different things that are wrong.

3. Overcommercialization of the Web. Aggravation factor: 62 percent. I think with popup blockers in the mainstream we’re past that, but publishers and advertisers still have plenty of other annoyances to throw at us. I’m not a fan of those hover over text ads. They always seem to get in the way. The Flash overlays that run across the article you’re trying to read suck. And let’s not forget interstitials — those “skip to next page” full page ads.

Nice bit of honesty from PC World:

At MySpace, Yahoo, and even (we have to admit it) PCWorld.com such advertising has grown more aggressive, increasingly annoying, and impossible to avoid.

Tip: Laser focus about where to put ads and instead of adding more advertising, add more content. Keep the content to ad ratio no less than 70% content to 30% advertising on each page. Shoot for 90% content to 10% ad or better. Your visitors will love you and bookmark. So will the search engines.

4. Need for Standards. Aggravation factor: 58 percent. From the publisher side, trying to design sites that look good in all the major browsers isn’t quite rocket science, but feels like that with all the competing formats. We experienced this recently trying to get the search box CSS in the header in Internet Explorer (thanks again to web designer reader, Mikull).

Tip: Use tools like browsershots.org to see how your website looks in different browsers and work with designers — or do it yourself — to get your site looking good on the most popular browsers. And don’t forget about mobile users.

5. Trolls in Forums. Aggravation factor: 58 percent. Free for all forums aren’t about Free Speech, they are about free abuse. I’m in the crowd that strongly believes in at least some moderation of public areas. I’ve yet to see any completely unmoderated area that hasn’t devolved into a spam, flame and troll infested swamp. Yes, some of the comments from the “anonymous cowards” are funny, but too much and they turn people off.

Tip: moderate public areas and employ policies that keep some level of civility.

6. Buying Event Tickets. Aggravation factor: 54 percent. A whole annoyance devoted to Ticketmaster ticket fee gouging? Guess I don’t buy enough event tickets through Ticketmaster to get upset by this one. I’m thinking there are bigger annoyances than this, although it’s interesting that Pearl Jam thinks TM has a monopoly.

Tip: I don’t have any tips for this one, do you? Use the comment section below to suggest how to get a better deal buying event tickets online.

7. Web 2.0 Help Doesn’t Help. Aggravation factor: 49 percent. This could have been classified better as ‘Unhelpful help.’ I’m not sure who started the whole knowledge base scene, but I cringe when I’m being sent to one of those for help. The more technology employed, the higher the level of possible compatibility problems, I get that, but our browsers and OS can stay caught up.

Tip: don’t send people to a knowledge base or customer support form for support. Try using live help, provide Skype or other IM options. Don’t staff those live support options with people who follow moronic scripts.

8. The Expense of E-Books. Aggravation factor: 41 percent. I wonder if the expense of eBooks (or is it E-books?) have hurt the medium as much as the fact that people don’t want to read books on a computer screen? There is a distraction factor associated with computers. Some people associate — perhaps rightfully so — that the computer is for work, not for pleasure. I’d argue against this perception that the computer can be used for work and pleasure. Work hard, play hard, but I understand those like my wife who would rather relax with an old-fashioned paperback book over an eBook any day of the week.

Tip: If you release an eBook version, make it half the cost of the paperback version, at least.

9. Disappointing Web Video - Aggravation factor: 38 percent. No, they’re not talking about Scoble’s seemingly endless raw footage … or are they? It’s criticism of not enough top shelf tier content. Projects like NBC’s Hulu might help which bring more of the shows we see on TV to the computer screen. The subpar resolution and bandwidth constraints are a real issue. I’d like to see more HD quality video being released over the web. People are shooting HD video but then compressing the hell out of it so that it looks like pixelated crap when shown on a larger monitor or TV screen.

Tip: Shoot and share more high quality video using sites like blip.tv (better quality videos than YouTube). Use the medium (edit, edit, edit!). Don’t waste people’s time.

10. Boring Virtual Worlds. Aggravation factor: 9 percent. Since being active in virtual worlds since December 2005, I’m convinced those who label virtual worlds “boring” just aren’t trying hard enough. Go spend some time and really, really try to have a good time in virtual worlds. There are tons of things happening covering thousands of different interests. To say virtual worlds are “boring” is a statement about one’s own ability and effort, not about virtual worlds. The 9% aggravated need to be more creative.

Tip: the group blog I’m part of, VTOReality, is having a Halloween Avatar Contest tonight at 6:36pm PST. Dress up as your favorite avatar, create one from scratch, buy one from one of the virtual stores, and stop on by. Maybe we’ll judge yours as the best and you’ll win some L$.

Parting thought on the importance of listening
Stop a minute and ask yourself how good a listener you really are? Lately I’ve been trying to increase my listening skills by getting much more involved with a few third party sites/services that focus on social networks. I hope if you enjoyed or disliked this post you’ll take a second and either rate it above and/or leave a comment. Give me something to listen to, good, bad or indifferent.

One of the complaints about Zune v1.0 was the lack of built-in podcasting support. That’s all going to change when v2.0 comes out next month. Head’s up podcasters, Rob Greenlee in his new position as Zune Podcast Programming Manager, just dropped this podcasting link nugget in my Skype: how to add 1-click podcasting subscription. Just use the format for your links:

zune://subscribe/?PodcastTitle=PodcastRSSFeedURL

Our Hmmcast Feedburner feed is:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/makeyougohmm/hmmcast

So the Zune format link would be:
zune://subscribe/?Hmmcast=http://feeds.feedburner.com/makeyougohmm/hmmcast

I’ll be getting this added to the Hmmcast category page as soon as the Zune rollout begins. Thank you, Rob!

In a post titled “Sleazy Linkers Lose An Ally” Jeremy Wagstaff describes there being a “groundswell building against internal links” fingering Valleywag, Techcrunch, Mashable and other tech blogs of linking on the words of companies, sites and service leading to internal site pages. He ends his acrimonious post with:

What to do? Maybe a name-and-shame list until these recalcitrants start respecting the intelligence of their readers?

Blog Mccarthyism? Please. Before sharing some actual reader benefits of a site internal linking let me remind you of the most popular worst site on the internet for internal linking: Wikipedia. None of the blog posts I read cited Wikipedia as an example of internal links run amok. Ever been to an article there and wanted to visit the source and found yourself in a maze of internal links trying to find .. the … external … link? And yet look how Google and other search engines continue to idolize Wikipedia. It’s no wonder that some other sites are taking this practice to extremes.

And now for my own disclaimer. I’m guilty of being in this dark, “sleazy” club for internal linking on site names. Did this terrible deed here in two separate posts recently with AmazonMP3 and Zecco instead of linking to AmazonMP3.com and Zecco.com respectively. Before striking up torches, you should know that I’m not trying to do this as any kind of disservice to readers. Quite the opposite actually. Remember, writers are readers too.

Let’s consider the facts first. I removed banner ads from this site in September which took away 10-15% from the bottom line of this site. There are currently no ads running on this site that we get paid for by page views (CPM). They’re all cost per click (CPC) or cost per action (CPA).

Absolutely yes, I’d like readers to stop by and read more than one page before leaving. I’m hoping they’ll become subscribers and want to stick around and figure out this whole web thing together. And you know what, if they come to trust and like me over time, maybe we’ll do business someday. What comes around goes around. And if I write about something and mark it as an affiliate link and readers want to sign up and cut me in on a few $$ they wouldn’t see anyway, what’s wrong with that?

All site visitors that aren’t trying to do something malicious at the site are valuable to me, but I’ll freely admit those who are just passing through to click on the first link they see and leave are not as valuable as people who leave comments, get involved, subscribe and/or write about posts made here from their blogs. The fact that I’ve taken a few minutes in the wee hours of a Saturday morning to address Jeremy’s post in detail should be evidence that I care. If I mention AmazonMP3 in passing in a post on Apple iTunes, which is more helpful to readers: linking to the past post with an easy to find link or linking directly to AmazonMP3.com? Hopefully those who care about what I have to say and do, will understand the link I chose was there for a good reason, not intended to manipulate them or the search engines.

Searching for the best linking convention
Admittedly, I’m still working through linking conventions — and I’m working on completing year five of this blog and over 10 years as a webmaster — but I want to make it easier to identify links by linking the domain name rather than the name. To me if it’s the domain in the link text it should always be linked to the domain. I’m not convinced that using the name by itself, however, should always be treated the same way. Again, I point to Wikipedia. Do a little digging around subjects there and then compare. They not only have names linked internally but even the logos of companies linked internally on pages about the companies: like Microsoft. There does come a point when linking too much is bad and I think in cases like this, the Wikipedia goes overboard.

And you bet I added rel=nofollow to that link, touche for Wikipedia that adds rel=NOFOLLOW to all links on their site. The don’t think it’s important enough to help the search engines see the sources they use to build articles. Roach motel.

It’s not all transitory
New readers should be able to understand a bit of the history written on the site about each of the sites, products and services mentioned. Otherwise, why am I writing about these things at all? Just to be a point for people to stop by for a few seconds and leave to the other sites? Is it all just transitory?

Not always.

Isn’t it possible, Jeremy and others who despise this practice, that it’s actually helpful backstory to link to a prior review with screenshots or detailed text entry that fully describes a company and what it does — and in that post prominently link — to the subject website? Like how would you know how I feel about Zecco? Am I affiliated with the company somehow? Have I signed up for the service? How long have I been using it? What is my stake in writing about them, if any? You can only put so much backstory in each new post. I think it’s insulting your regular readers intelligence and irritating to keep repeating the same information instead of linking to it when relevant. No, not internal linking every time you mention a company’s name like Wikipedia, not even in every other post about a company, but when you’d like to give readers a chance to read more of the backstory and the history is relevant.

Here’s a sobering reality: an increasing number of sites I’ve written about and linked to aren’t on the web any more. This creates an operational issue for me: do I go back and remove the linkrot when something has dramatically changed? Leave it alone?

As a reader, I find it disappointing when a search engine leads me to a blog post or article about a site that is so short that I have to visit the external site to understand the context of the piece the search engine linked — only the link is now dead, so I’m off to the Wayback Machine or Google cache to try and figure out what it’s all about. Who really provided me any service? The blog/article site could have by providing more detail and history. That’s where the Wikipedia has thrived because they’ve created a more permanent experience.

Why longevity will be the new black on the internet
Longevity will be the new black on the internet, mark my words.

Blogs are riddled with dead links (including, regrettably a growing number here). So by linking to a main review or central page, bloggers are actually providing some sort of context to new visitors from search engines and they are also helping themselves to keep their archives updated and organized. I write detailed reviews for a couple reasons, one of which is I expect the review to have some sort of longevity. It’s also easier for me to return to one page and update that with the changes than updating dozens. That is a helpful service for readers.

With all that said, I’ll concede being frustrated with sites that excessively internally link for non altruistic means. Just wanted to point out that it is not that black and white though which Jeremy’s post doesn’t take into account. If it was, Google wouldn’t have assigned so much importance to Wikipedia, the most incestuous site on the internet for internal linking.

November is becoming the month for writers of all shapes and sizes. Literally and figuratively.

In November every year a bunch of writers take place in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) challenge: write 50,000 fiction words in the month of November. I tried this in 2004 and, despite having previously written and completed seven novels (unpublished), came up short. Also, bought the book by the creator of NaNoWriMo, Chris Baty, and joined a bit in the NaNoWriMo forums. Every year I think about the NaNoWriMo fondly, it’s a great writing exercise. If you’re a fiction writer, published or unpublished, it’s worth checking out.

Now comes the idea to run National Blog Posting Month (NaBloPoMo.com — hat tip to a strangled duck) concurrently with NaNoWriMo. The concept: post every day to your blog — no required word length — in the month of November. It’s not by the same folks as NaNoWriMo from what I can tell. They are using Ning for the social network platform surrounding NaBloPoMo.

Must admit, and this is only my own writer perspective, that I’m not as excited about NaBloPoMo as NaNoWriMo. Why not? The goal is less challenging writing on a blog without any monthly word count or genre requirement versus writing 50,000 words of fiction in a calendar month that has a holiday (Thanksgiving) and only 30 days. Heck, writing 50,000 words of anything that makes at least some sense in a single month is an achievement.

The NaTwiTweMo idea
The cynical voice anwers: how long before somebody comes up with a National Twitter Month (NaTwiTweMo) where the goal is to Twitter every day for a month? Don’t laugh too hard, if 50,000 characters was a goal in this hypothetical and fictional (as far as I know) NaTwiTweMo, that would be a mere 358 Twitter messages, or using the cornier term tweets with the full 140 characters over the course of a month.

140 characters x 358 tweets = 50,120 characters
358 tweets over 30 days = 12 tweets a day (rounded up) of full 140 characters

Let’s assume you’re not full on 140 characters with every Tweet, that’s maybe 15-20 tweets per day, every day in the month of November. I believe there are many Twitterers doing that right now.

Confession: I’m not being completely serious on the NaTwiTweMo thing, but if anybody wants to run with that idea, have at it. The domain is probably still available. Let’s get back to being serious.

A more challenging monthly blog goal
Writing 50,000 words on a blog and posting every day in the month of November would make the NaBloPoMo more challenging, but that’s not how NaBloPoMo rolls. Word length does not matter.

Hmm. Why couldn’t it be? Warning: navel gazing alert!

Curious, I looked over these blog archives to date to see how many months I’d reached 50,000 words. Had I ever done that? According to my TD Word Count plugin, yes, twice before: September 2005 with 53,103 words in 125 posts and then again in June 2006 with 51,591 words in 120 posts. Most words in a month in 2007 thus far has been May with 37,501 in 75 posts. My number of posts has decreased over the last year. The average number of words per post is actually higher, but the quantity of posts has decreased. Still averaging over a couple posts a day, but it’s been over a year since there has been more than 100 posts in a month published here (July 2006: 108 posts 47,045 words).

(Sidebar: looking at the plugin screenshot, I’m seeing a month sorting bug I need to sort out.)

Time to set a new single month word goal.

Goal: 53,104+ words in November 2007
Rather than suggesting blogging every day over the course of a month is easy — and hopefully that’s not how this is coming across because I don’t think it is — I am suggesting it is easier for me than writing 50,000 words of fiction in a month. But talk is cheap, right? So I’ve decided to challenge myself and have joined the NaBloPoMo challenge for next month.

I’m joining the 1,354 others taking the challenge of writing and posting at least one blog post every day in November 2007.

However, I am adding one additional goal for myself that is not required by the NaBloPoMo: beat my best personal word count at Hmm to date by posting at least 53,104 words.

I’m also considering a contest where readers can get involved and either cheer along with or jeer at me next month. It’s past time to do some sort of contest with one or more prizes here anyway and this sounds like it could be fun and engaging. Even if I don’t succeed with the writing goal, it will be a good writing exercise and hopefully a little interactive for readers. Readers who enjoy my longer, more pensive pieces, or enjoy a higher volume of posts with varying lengths should hopefully get treated to that in November if the goal is achieved.

Maybe I was too constrained by my past fiction writing experience instead of letting the words flow freely when I failed completing the 2004 NaNoWriMo challenge. In this blogging challenge, I won’t feel remotely as constrained however, 53,104 words is still an average of 1,770 words per day (rounded down). That’s not an unrealistic goal, but a good challenge.

I encourage fellow blogger readers to challenge themselves with some sort of writing goal in November 2007, either by joining NaNoWriMo or NaBloPoMo or just telling your readers: here’s my writing goal for November 2007 — and then charting your progress. One of the main goals behind National Novel Writing Month is to teach participants that the novel you’ve been saying you always wanted to write will never get written unless you sit down and stroke those keys.

Blogging is fun, but can be work too. Words used and time spent are both mechanisms by which we can judge progress. I’m not suggesting that by merely writing 50,000+ words in a month one is any better writer from a quality standpoint than somebody else who writes 5,000 words the same month. It’s possible the blogger who carefully vets and edits those 5,000 words will be more successful in the craft than the one writing 50,000. But in both cases there’s one important similarity: both writers are doing something.

When you stop and think about the difference between people who are successful versus those who aren’t, you can usually spot an abundance or lack of effort and activity (practice, practice, practice). Action versus words. We can sit around and talk about all the things we might have done or could have done or want to do in life — or could be out there spending time actually doing all of them. Checking them off a list. One. After. Another.

Action equals results while inaction equals decay and eventually death. When you’re staring down death in those final fleeting sands of time, how do you want to look back? As the person who had many wonderful unfulfilled dreams or someone who did everything in his/her power to make those dreams come true?

The future
Some year, health and spirit willing, I’d like to try that NaNoWriMo challenge again — and I will try my best to be victorious next time. Positive thinking, right? I have been working behind the scenes on a few fiction-oriented projects and that still remains an unfulfilled dream on the list. I’m sure readers here will be among the first to know if/when this dream is realized. Hopefully it’s not posthumously.

Lights, cameras, action.

A person’s name isn’t something, it’s everything. Machines have a hard time understanding the emotional nuances of identity, human beings shouldn’t.

If you’re out there personally marketing a blog with your latest, greatest post, always be certain to get your contact’s name right. Double check, triple, quadruple if necessary. This extends to leaving comments on blogs and all other communication online. Step #1 to becoming an online “Rock Star” Ich.

Today’s early morning lesson in the Twilight Moan.

Kudos to Marshall Kirkpatrick for laying out how he uses Twitter — and no, it’s not for nonsense messages — with his excellent post: Twitter is paying my rent:

Earlier this week I was remarking (on Twitter) about how many of my recent story leads came from Twitter. I counted and at that time 5 of my last 11 stories were based on news I learned first from my friends on Twitter. It was amazing.

I’ve been down on the usefulness of Twitter since it’s launch, but a lightbulb glowed yesterday when Marshall described his real world Twitter usage. A good example of why it’s so important for bloggers to share their customer/user experiences rather than providing only vanilla descriptions. Your individual experiences are vastly more useful to me as a reader than a spec sheet. Fellow blogger readers, please remember this the next time you write about the newest, greatest site/service/product.

Admittedly, I haven’t understood how Twitter was that different from dozens of (often competing) IM services and what was already happening in niche groups like IRC. Marshall’s post caused me to revisit and rethink the passive listener dimension of Twitter and remember that it’s not the service as much as the people using it. One of the things I like about RSS is that I don’t have to go to the news to stay updated, it comes to me while I’m working thanks to bloggers, mainstream media and anybody else who provides site updates via RSS feeds. RSS is a timesaver. With Twitter one can do something similar with one important caveat:

Update notification speed.

There’s more latency involved in RSS than Twitter. The time it takes for the blogger to publish, the time it takes for the ping services to pick it up, time it takes for others to write about it and link to it (if I’m not subscribed to said blogger) and lastly the time in our individual RSS readers to retrieve the new content and the services to update them.

Even if you subscribe to the best sources and cut down on the noise in signal ratio, some amount of latency still remains.

Twitter message speed
Now consider how Twitter latency works.

1. Person leaves message in Twitter. Basically you can just type it and hit enter. There’s very little editing, no HTML, you only have 140 characters. Much faster than blogging and equal to IM and IRC as far as speed and immediacy.
2. Update within minutes in your Twitter client (I’ve been trying all of them to see which I like best, Snitter is shown in the screenshots in this post, just FYI).
3. If you’re already following the person on Twitter, you’ll see it as soon as your Twitter client updates, almost like an instant message, but a little slower. If you’re not following the person, somebody else could leave a message (they call them “Tweets” and I’m desperately trying to avoid that term) replying to that person that you are following.

RSS speed
It might be 15 minutes, 30, 60, maybe even a couple hours before I see something appear in RSS, but in Twitter, if I’m following people who talk about things I’m interested in — and no, I don’t mean only or even primarily the A-list, really anybody who uses their Twitter for good signal (subjective, I know, but so is subscribing to quality RSS feeds) will work — I can see the new site, service and/or news sooner. This gives my aging brain more time to think about it and see if it’s something that motivates me to write about it.

Once I see too many other people blogging about a topic, my energy on the topic usually wanes. If I’m really late to the party, the comments drain my interest in commenting as well. We might discuss this in our IRC channel, but it’s not something I’ll probably write about. The opportunity (for me anyway) to add in a beneficial way to a conversation generally diminishes the longer the topic is out there. Especially when it’s news-related topics. Is this the same for you?

Twitter experimental listening phase begins
I’m still concerned about too much noise and not enough signal, so Sunday 10/14/2007 I warily began following more Twitterers (yes, another corny term). At first less than a dozen, but will begin to expand the list as I become more comfortable with the signal-to-noise ratio and try to integrate into my workflow in the coming weeks. Marshall was among my first new Twitter follows. I added his blog to my RSS reader as well. Marshall used to write for Techcrunch and now writes for Read/Write Web.

I also started following Scoble and Winer who I’ve met previously in person as well as a couple others who seemed like interesting people that I don’t know at all or very well. Interestingly enough, Winer has been the only new Twitter follow that I’ve met in person who hasn’t reciprocated yet (did our meeting at the local blogger meetup in Seattle suck that much, Dave?). I haven’t reciprocated to everybody who follows me, so not meant as a criticism for Dave. Just curious.

How others are using Twitter
Yesterday I noticed Dave Winer replying, comment style, to various posts in Twitter, offering this view of how he uses Twitter (pictured at top right of post). Scoble used Twitter yesterday to point to each of his new posts, and although he says he isn’t using Twitter as a “publicity network” he did that along with comments he didn’t leave on other blogs like these to Allen Stern pictured below:

Since I didn’t see the @ next Allen’s name, it doesn’t appear Scoble was talking directly to Allen on Twitter, rather he was musing in Twitter about Allen’s post, as Winer also was doing yesterday. Fortunately, Scoble also commented on Allen’s blog post, so a brief and apparently positive exchange happened, but I noticed yesterday that this doesn’t always happen.

On these Twitter messages that don’t lead to blog comments, many people won’t see them, perhaps including the parties involved, which is another downside to the service. Twitter creates another channel to watch for feedback. Argh, multiple listen channels are not very efficient, but if you want to receive feedback on what you’re writing, you need to go where the people are talking about it, not expect them to come to you. As much as I’d prefer the latter for convenience and organization, it’s not about only my convenience in a conversation, it’s about the convenience for everybody involved in the conversation. Add to that the fact that I’ll gladly accept genuine feedback on a cocktail napkin, in a podcast, from another blog, mainstream news piece, on a videblog, at a conference in person, and yes, even a Twitter message.

Allen Stern craves one way links?
It’s interesting seeing Allen write this in his post linked above:

“Naturally I am not suggesting that everyone uses these networks in a publicity-oriented manner, but it seems many of the smart marketers are doing so.”

Smart? Hmm, not always. He follows with this:

“As long as the people attached to your account (personal or business) understand that’s the use, then it’s a perfect marketing opportunity.”

Is this is one of those do as I say, not as I do pieces of advice?

I had to ask Allen several times to please stop replying to posts here with links to his posts at Center Networks. It’s one thing if you want to add something intelligent and on topic in the comment area along with a link the signature area — that’s encouraged — but if the substance of your comment is “here’s what I have to say about this at my blog -> insert link” then do that elsewhere. Maybe this isn’t a rule in all comment areas like it is here, but I thought this was common sense netiquette? Yes/no?

In the process of leaving comments elsewhere, I’ve noticed Allen doing the same thing in other comment areas around the web, perhaps most frequently at Techcrunch where apparently Arrington and crew don’t mind this type of blatant marketing. Um, isn’t this what trackbacks are for? Obviously Allen thinks other blog comment areas are his publicity network. He hasn’t left a comment here since I delinked his site so I guess he wasn’t really interested in joining in any conversation here, only interested in using our space as a publicity network for Center Networks. Not cool, but in the scheme of what he ascribed to Scoble and some other “smart” marketers primary use of Twitter, undeniably relevant.

One last thing on using the comments area to point to your own blog posts. I’m not saying you can or should never do this. Just try doing it in a non-selfish way. Summarize your thoughts in your blog posts and then put a link in the signature for others to follow if interested if they don’t allow trackbacks (two-way trackbacks are always preferred). That’s not in your face marketing, which means it won’t get you as many clicks, but it won’t have people remembering these details at some later date and bringing them up like I did in this post.

Feeling a little warmer about Twitter
To date I’ve been using Twitter — sparingly, just check my timeline — to keep track of Twitter-related programs, but heretofore will be using as a notification and listening service to supplement my RSS feed and to catch comments not being left on blogs. As I become more comfortable, I’ll likely start replying to some of the other Twitters of those I’m following. If you have a good signal-to-noise ratio, let me know in the comments below and I’ll start following you.

I’m not doing a complete about face on Twitter and clones like Jaiku that Google just bought, but am now listening more carefully to the stream. Hey, at least a start. Thanks again to Marshall for sharing a real world business use for Twitter. And now I’m off to Twitter what I’m eating for lunch.

(just kidding)