This is bugging me. It’s like a song you can’t remember the name to. It’s either really brilliant advertising or really stupid.

On our weekend trip to Montana a motorcyclist pulled up beside and past us. I saw the advertising for blogspot.com but couldn’t quite make out the subdomain advertised on the back of the cycle because it was being squashed. I asked Kara to snap a picture, can you tell what the correct subdomain is?

It’s something like maniac–ssions.

Looks like maniacimpressions or maniacmissions, but both lead to 404 pages. Doesn’t seem like the best advertising when the ad is squished by your gear. Furthermore, if you’re going to pay to label something with your blog domain, why not pay the extra $5-10 a year and register your own domain? You can always redirect to the blogspot domain if you really don’t want to pay for hosting. People are driving, they aren’t going to be able to remember a long subdomain.blogspot.com thing.

See if you can uncrack the mystery of the mobile blogspot blog advertising. I don’t get this one on multiple levels but remain curious about the underlying site. I bet some reader can fill in the missing letters. Wheel of Fortune fans, it’s all yours.

Update 9:45am PST: darkmoon filled in the blanks below. He told me to “look at the helmet” which I didn’t realize also had the subdomain. Here’s a closeup pic of the helmet. The blog being advertised is about a cross country motorcycle trip to raise funds their “mission to Africa, South Asia and South America.” Yesterday’s post reads:

It was a cold, wet ride from Idaho to Montana and they hadn’t seen the sun for three days. But John Rusk and John Mitchell finally rolled into Helena, where they headed straight for the capitol building to pray for the citizens of “the treasure state.”

They didn’t mention the smoke-laden air of Missoula, but not sure if they headed that direction. The glowing embers and smoky haze pierced the black night when we pulled into Missoula, Montana on Saturday.

Quite the subjective list of blogging cliches courtesy of Jeff Atwood’s Coding Horror. Why the superstitious number? Why not 14 or 12? Step on a crack, break your momma’s …

And then he violates his own cliche list with #10. His entire post is blogging about blogging, but spoiler alert: he admits to breaking his own list at the end. I’m going to break even more than that, out of order. Non-conformist style.

Violating #10
Let’s begin with #10 (”blogging about blogging”), because I realized while leaving a comment on Sterling’s post that my words had eclipsed the length of his post. Fellow blogger readers, you’ve done that before, haven’t you? I don’t mind doing that in my own comment section, but prefer to use a post with trackback for other blogs. I’m sure Sterling appreciates the response either way.

Violating #2
I won’t violate #2 (”Random Images Arbitrarily Inserted In Text”) with a picture of me doing something somewhere, but the thought skittered across my brain. Check that, this picture fits this post and is intentionally not random. Neener, neener, Mr. Atwood.

Ahh yes, this is where we traveled last weekend. Over 6,000 feet above ground, up through a creepy moving fog. A first riding a ski lift when there was no snow and I got some video footage for a future Hmmcast (vacation days on Friday and yesterday, BTW). What does this have to do with Jeff’s list of blogging cliches? More on this in a bit.

Violating #8
Difficult to locate bylines and information about the author (#3) somewhat contradicts #8 (”this isn’t your diary”).

Wrong. It is your diary that you are sharing with your readers. Your voice. Your story. The following statement doesn’t apply at all to my reading habits: “your readers aren’t coming to your blog to read about you.”

Then from who’s perspective are they coming to read? Or are they only there to read about a story with no characters? Boring story, if that’s the deal. In Atwood’s comment section he sort of takes this back.

I subscribe to blogs because of the subject matter and the authors. Because I’m interested in you and how your adventures and experiences impact and influence whatever subject you’re writing about. If you are excised from the piece it would be less interesting to me.

Given a choice between a blog that has more interesting subject matter over a more unique voice and steady, reliable flow, I’m more likely to skim the former and read/subscribe to the latter. Machines can deliver us topics and subjects contextually, people are what make the pieces interesting and memorable. Stories are incomplete without the characters that inhabit them. People aren’t cliches, they are unique.

I’m thinking Jeff is buying into cliched thinking on the whole diary spiel. One of the major descriptions that almost nobody disagrees with when describing the characteristics of a blog are that the posts are in diary format that employ a relaxed voice stylestically.

Who is writing this, what are his/her experiences and biases how do they affect the piece? Some of what we do in life can more potently impact a piece and make it more compelling and sticky. That seemingly random picture can hook readers in like a seductive novel cover. The payoff better be the content though as readers do not like being cheated.

And then there are bloggers like dooce.com who have built a very successful following — a lot more readers than Coding Horror, I’m sure — completely off the diary format. People are twittering their daily happenings back and forth and while I think too many inane daily happenings are annoying, not interestinig, that’s up to the author to weave the textual tapestry.

Violating #9
Excuse for not blogging, or #9 (”Sorry I haven’t written in awhile”) in and of itself is annoying and I agree.

However, when a blogger leaves for an extended period of time without an explanation of where they went or why they left, it does leave an awkward hole in the flow of the ongoing narrative. Again, I don’t care for single posts with excuses about why the author hasn’t been blogging — that is a cliche — it’s very easy to weave in a one or two sentence explanation before leaving or after getting back to explain the lack of flow and post frequency. It’s a little like expecting your favorite TV show to air every Monday night at 9pm only to show up or have the DVR in place snag some sort of special in its place. Why was it preempted?

Probably my biggest complaint with Kent Newsome’s blog is the posting schedule. Hate to be a selfish reader, but if we’re being honest, we’re a demanding lot. We get used to expecting quality content with at least some desirable frequency. Kent has heard me on this one before and I hope he knows enough not to take this personally, but this bears repeating because he has indicated that he’d like to expand his readership. Posting frequency is like a fine wine formula, it takes time to get into a consistent, reliable pattern. Too much posting and people will choke on the firehose and too little and readers will be starved.

I enjoy Kent’s writing, especially his longer, more pensive posts like this recent one on online utopias and he’s awesome about responding whenever he’s linked to, but his post flow and frequency is conversely unreliable. He’s gone for awhile, then comes back, then disappears again. Watch his comments on posts where he leaves and you’ll see people stop by wondering if he’s ok. Pulse checks are usually a sign that readers are worried about you.

Being gone a few days isn’t too big a deal, that’s taking days off, being gone weeks or months is significant. With that in mind, a lot of people are worried about you, Donald Crowlis. We continue to hope you are ok. Give us a sign, smoke signal, something. Please.

I’ll never get totally engaged or engrossed as a reader with infrequent writing output, no more than somebody showing up for work when they feel like it impresses the boss. I want to be your blog fan, subscriber and reader but you have to throw me a bone. One laced with consistency.

There is a good reason why major authors follow a time release schedule with novel publishing (hardcover comes out, paperback of last hardcover available for sale). A reliable publishing cycle. Blogging can be a cycle too if you want to grow readership. I add that because some bloggers clearly state they post when they feel like it and they don’t care about number of readers. For those who do, you know what at least one prospective reader cares about.

Back to my chair lift picture above. At the beginning of 2007 I made a promise to try and publish a new Hmmcast video every weekday, but one wasn’t published last Friday nor yesterday, two chosen work days without explanation. The weekends and vacations are mine and I post when I feel like it during those times, if at all. The work days, however, gaps need to be explained.

I feel obligated to mention why that happened for continuity and flow, but don’t need to make an entire excuse post. Instead, I can weave in a teasing picture about a future post. Foreshadowing, yes, that’s it. Ahh, there I am in the post, not random, not unintentional. A picture near text in a post doesn’t always have to be about that very post, it could be a series or part of a greater collection.

I think Atwood is looking too much at every blog post as a single, separate work which is flawed for those of us who see our blogs as ongoing stories. Frequent readers, especially long time subscribers might see it that way too. Bloggers can help by referencing related posts so new readers and visitors understand the chronology.

When does your blogging journey end? When does mine end? Only one of two logical scenarios: when I’m finished writing here or death, whichever comes first. The former is unlikely as there are too many exciting stories to tell and new things to explore, and the latter is certain. Current mortality tables give me roughly 40 more years (2047 or thereabouts until the reaper stops by). But even death doesn’t mean a friend, family member or both won’t take over the story and keep sharing their adventures.

Not violating #1, 3-7
I’m totally in Atwood’s corner on #3 (”no information on the author”) the importance of a clear byline. Hiding and/or not providing some details about who is writing what is like hiding the football from the quarterback. Always give readers context about who, what, where, when and how.

As for the calendar (#1 “the useless calendar widget”), the sidebar and other stuff (#4 “excess flair”, #6 “nebulous tag cloud”) I find most of that more valuable to authors than readers and think that should be handled by a conditional template or switch. One could always display a different template with all the useful components to the author(s) and another to readers/visitors/SE with a one line conditional. In WP template code terms, something like this:

As for #5 (”the giant blogroll”), that’s more efficiently handled with an OPML file as Atwood suggests and/or link to a single dedicated page to share the linklove which is Sterling’s thinking. I link to mine off the homepage so it’s only one link away from home. No, that’s not as good as having every link on the homepage, but again, I don’t think readers mind making the extra click. Yes, other bloggers would rather be on the homepage, but those on my reading list have a greater chance of being linked more than once inside posts and every link there shows up on the homepage for a short time.

I’m split between Sterling and Atwood as to these lists sometimes being spammy. The way AOL/Weblogs, Inc does it is spammy. They are clearly interlinking all their properties for a certain purpose, relevance be damned. That’s not the same thing as Sterling, Atwood or I sharing our actual reading lists.

And now we arrive at a pet peeve of mine, #7 (”excessive advertising”). I try very hard to find the right balance with ads at this site. It’s ultimately up to readers to grade the use of advertising more than it is to me. Some readers might define “excessive” as any ads period, but that’s not realistic for a blog with any sort of traffic and reach. The more traffic, the more bandwidth burned, the more time spent working on posts, the more money is required to at least break even. I’d hazard a guess that most blogs operate at a loss when the time spent is factored in. Not losing one’s shirt while sharing seems reasonable to me. That’s where I put advertising in as a perspective. This blog is expected to turn a profit and thanks to you, friendly reader and visitor, it does. We don’t need to be greedy about it and try not to be, but again, readers will decide what is and isn’t excessive.

It’s kind of silly with ad blocking tools to make your site too ad excessive anyway. Readers will just turn on the plugins to block all the ads and there goes any chance of making some ad revenue. I prefer respectful, related advertising as a reader, not intrusive, unrelated advertising.

Violating #12
Lists like the one that inspired this one and hence the response are violating #12 (”Top (n) Lists”). I disagree completely with Atwood that lists are “a substitute for critical thinking.” Look at sites like Mashable.com who lately have been publishing tons of lists. People love reading, bookmarking and sharing lists. Adding to my to-do list that I should be making more lists.

My favorite non-violation: #13
Hopefully you won’t ever see this blog violating #13 (”No Comments Allowed”). I believe strongly that a blog should be a conversation — and practice what I preach — which means giving you an equal floor to correct mistakes I’ve made or disagree with my opinion as I’ve done with a number of items in Mr. Atwood’s list. If those corrections become too long then add them to your own blog and trackback in. Both methods of continuing the conversation are welcome and encouraged.

Violating #11
Good place to end by violating #11 (”Mindless Link Propagation”). The thing that makes the web different than traditional press are links. What’s “mindless” about regular people commenting on the news? I like hearing different perspectives about the news.

No, I don’t want to read dozens or hundreds of different bloggers simply restating the news with nothing new or personal added (revisit the diary violation: how did this news impact or affect you?), but carefully consider the excellent point Mike from Techdirt mentioned yesterday in the post titled: People Want Analysis Of The News, Rather Than Just Facts:

In fact, despite the claims of an internet “echo chamber,” one of the things that makes the internet such an interesting medium, is the idea that anyone can respond and discuss stuff. If someone disagrees with our interpretation of the facts, we want to know about it, and we want to discuss it. That’s how we all learn and we all become smarter.

Maybe Atwood wants the facts from vanilla brand news agencies, but a growing number of people actually like receiving news from bloggers colored by their individual perspectives, experiences and opinions.

Score card summary
Let’s see, think I’ve violated six of Atwood’s thirteen cliches. Does this mean he will dismiss my rebuttal because it’s ridden with too many cliches? Don’t know. I do know that whatever the subject matter, leaving you out of a blog post makes it less interesting to me.

Oh, the horror!

Bummer, don’t you just hate it when somebody you’ve said was funny and praised in the past does something really idiotic and unfunny? Welcome to the sinking ship I’m the unfortunate passenger in for this post.

Loren Feldman from 1938 Media pulled a Don Imus and Michael ‘Kramer’ Richards in one excruciating take by trying to imagine what a black TechCrunch would be like. For those who haven’t seen any of Feldman’s 1938 Media videos and don’t know the guy, Feldman is white.

Bad idea? Absolutely.

Even if Loren’s sketch had been funny — and because it wasn’t that’s the cardinal rule of comedy he violated — the timing was abysmal. Timing in comedy is everything and Lynne D. Johnson is the Senior Editor of Fastcompany.com who also happens to be an African American woman explains (Lynne’s blog pictured right):

It appears that Loren Feldman of 1938 Media believes that it’s still funny and totally acceptable to perform in black face in 2007. And it’s bad black face at that. I’ve never met anyone (in the ‘hood) who speaks as he does in this video he released today called, Technigga. The slang he uses and outfit he wears is not only meant to be a racist parody, but it’s also a throwback — as in, black people don’t speak or dress like that any longer.

Not even Eddie Murphy, Chris Rock or Howard Stern could have pulled off the lame sketch and made it funny. There is a tremendous amount of sensitivity to racism in all forms in this country right now and it’s spilling over into comedy thanks to bad comedians like Michael Richards, guilty of a exchanging racial barbs with a heckler.

What makes this type of material unfunny is best explained by Gena’s video (11 minutes):

I feel pain when a whole class of people are made a target for crude attempts of humor so that one person can gain a micro-meter of notoriety. Is fame really worth this cost?

No amount of money or fame is worth being labeled a racist unless, well, you are a racist. Now Loren has to deal with this storm cloud hanging over him for what? A two minute comedy sketch. High price to pay.

Feldman’s video and the ensuing debacle which involved follow-up video apologies of sorts (you can also watch the sequence of videos in question at this link) seem to have led to a “mutual agreement” to end Feldman’s working relationship with Podtech. So it’s not like it was just one video that made the levee break.

Also out is CEO John Furrier — not over Feldman’s video — because Podtech needed some different leadership and direction. Scoble is currently taking another one of his much deserved blog sanity breaks (it’s a wonder with your pace, Robert, that you don’t burn out more often), and is still hanging on at Podtech doing ScobleShow. He was vocally against Feldman’s video on Yahoo’s videoblogger group writing Monday, August 6 (note: must be a member of the videoblogger group to follow the link):

“I’ve already said that I didn’t like, or agree with, the video he posted (which wasn’t on a PodTech property, but did have a logo next to it).”

Should Podtech have parted ways with Feldman over this “experiment” as he labeled it? I’m going to take the cheap way out and say I’m glad that’s their business call and not mine. What do you think? Right to fire him over this experiment gone afoul or not? Or want to stay out of trying to Saturday Morning quarterback? If you side with Loren keeping his job, then some people will think you are soft on racism. If you side with Loren being fired, some people will assume you are soft on free speech. Ride the middle of the razor indeed.

At the end of the day, Podtech is a business and it has to make moves to satisfy customers and the bottom line.

I still believe Podtech is doomed but am rooting for them to find some way to plug all their holes. Why? Podcasting/videoblogging is a tough niche to make any serious money — I still haven’t figured it out (but keep trying) — and it seems like most comers to the dance of all skill levels and experience are stumbling. It would be great to see more businesses break through in this niche. Somebody will hit on the magic formula and the dam will break. Someday. When Adam Curry broke the Sirius deal (disclaimer: I own SIRI) for Podshow it seemed like the moment was arriving, but that show was a bust and it’s since been canceled.

Maybe when we all have more bandwidth and can more easily stream HD video. Not enough HD quality content out there and watching YouTube quality videos for anything longer than a couple minutes is painful.

UK Software developer Andy Brice smelled something foul when he created a program and saw five star award graphics from a number of different software download sites for competitor products.

He did some digging and found most of the download sites that gave him five stars gave almost all of his competitors five star awards too. Brice further tested the theory by creating a completely worthless application that was a text file saying “this software does nothing at all, it doesn’t even run” and named it awardmestars. You can Google awardmestars and find different download sites where it’s offered including the one pictured above.

Next, he used an auto submitter program to submit his worthless program to 1033 different software download sites. As of his blog post and some submissions are still pending 7% of the download sites that accepted Awardmestars gave him an award:

The truth is that many download sites are just electronic dung heaps, using fake awards, dubious SEO and content misappropriated from PAD files in a pathetic attempt to make a few dollars from Google Adwords. Hopefully these bottom-feeders will be put out of business by the continually improving search engines, leaving only the better sites. I think there is still a role for good quality download sites. But there needs to be more emphasis on quality, classification, and additional content (e.g. reviews).

Since the site opened for business I don’t recall ever displaying an award on tdscripts.com. We do display a PayPal certified badge. Even when I first started out I carefully chose what sites to submit my scripts and I’m still very picky. When the popular site hotscripts opened for business they spidered all my scripts and listed them and then started sending me emails asking me to update the listings “you submitted.”

Like Mr. Brice I realize some of these software and script download sites are valid and provide honest reviews, but I’ve always questioned what seemed a clear conflict of interest with these awards buttons which often “must link back” to the awarding site. It’s not that I’m selfish about linking back to other sites, but if I earn an award it needs to be worth something. It can’t be something that anybody who submits something gets. That’s not an award, that’s a reciprocal link exchange.

It’s not just software where this happens. The blog here has received a few awards over the years, some of which I’ve acknowledged on the homepage others of which I haven’t after seeing how often the highest rating is awarded.

I decided to check my own backyard Hmm Reviews and see how many times an A+ grade has been awarded. Any guesses how many A+ grades have been given? I’ll give you a hint and keep in mind this includes a few paid reviews, the answer involves a zero.

From the list as of this writing there are 19 A- or better review grades and three F grades, one of which was a paid review. Perhaps Hmm Reviews should create badges for B- or better grades? Why award a badge to some site/product/service that is average or worse unless it’s purely done for link SEO reasons as mentioned above (something I wouldn’t be interested in doing)? Or maybe just create a badge for A and A+? Even more rare, even more valuable.

I welcome below your thoughts below on the pros and cons of creating a legitimate awards badge system.

If you use the Firefox browser and would like to be able to identify what links on websites you look at are using NOFOLLOW, then the following quick Firefox userContent.css hack will help. It will turn links marked with NOFOLLOW to red with white text. You can change the colors to whatever you want, make the links even bigger, whatever you want. Along the right TechCrunch comments area pictured shows the highlighted NOFOLLOW comment links.

This will make it easier to spot what sites are using NOFOLLOW and what sites aren’t. Keep in mind in some cases the webmasters might not even realize they are using it as it is the default behavior of some popular blog programs like Wordpress. One of my friends had NOFOLLOW enabled and when I told him what it was about, he immediately installed the DOFOLLOW plugin. It’s way too easy to setup a new blog with Wordpress and forget about adding the DOFOLLOW. The group blog I participate to had NOFOLLOW in play, but I fixed that this morning. Disclaimer: I still have NOFOLLOW in play on a couple less updated and moderated blogs I contribute to like my Wordpress plugins/mods blog. I’m not completely anti-NOFOLLOW on blog comment areas, it really just depends on how closely the blog is being monitored for spam.

Wondering what NOFOLLOW is about?
NOFOLLOW was intended to be an anti-spam tool for webmasters as the major search engines do not follow links with NOFOLLOW but to date it’s been largely ineffective at combating spam. For a more detailed discussion of the politics surrounding NOFOLLOW as well as my personal feelings in detail on the subject, try reading these past posts (the first one is a Hmmcast video where I talk about it, if you’d rather see and hear what I have to say on the matter):

Februrary 12, 2007: Hmmcast #60 - Why NOFOLLOW continues to be against the spirit of the web
December 13, 2006: The FTC and somebody please give me something positive to write about Sony
September 28, 2005: Debating what is/isn’t spam in the comment sections
September 26, 2005: TypePad offers tip jar feature, still forcing rel=nofollow on all comments?
March 15, 2005: Disabling nofollow in Wordpress 1.5
Jan 22, 2005: Google responds to my nofollow concerns
Jan 19, 2005: Treating all commenters like spammers is a slippery slope
Jan 15, 2005: No Google juice for nofollow attribute, will this negatively impact legitimate comment activity?

Again, by default if you are using programs like Wordpress 2.2x or lower you are using NOFOLLOW. There is no way to disable it in the admin area, you need to use one of the Wordpress DOFOLLOW plugins out there. When I switched over Hmm from the previous blog system to Wordpress getting rid of the NOFOLLOW was one of the first changes I made.

Andy Beard has a nice roundup of dofollow plugins and tools. He also started a DOFOLLOW community at Bumpzee where you can add your blog(s) that use DOFOLLOW for comments and trackbacks. I’ve added MakeYouGoHmm to the list.

Step-by-step how to highlight sites using NOFOLLOW
STEP 1. Navigate to the chrome directory inside your Firefox profile section and rename the userContent-example.css file to userContent.css. Below is where to find this file in Windows and Mac

Windows
Documents and Settings -> USERNAME -> Application Data -> Mozilla -> Firefox -> Profiles -> NUMBERS.default -> chrome

Mac
/Library/Application Support/Firefox/Profiles/NUMBERS.default

Need more help locating this file? See the official Mozilla Edit Configuration Files page.

STEP 2. Add the following code to the top of the userContent.css file, slight modification of Phillip’s code offered and explained here:

STEP 3. Save your edited userContent.css and watch for links in pages that are marked with nofollow.

Here’s an example NOFOLLOW link to Wikipedia. Since Wikipedia chose to add NOFOLLOW to all external links from their service, I’d encourage other bloggers to add NOFOLLOW to any Wikipedia link, if you even link them at all. I’ve been trying to link Encyclopedia Britannica instead. I also filtered Wikipedia from my search results in Firefox using the excellent Customize Google plugin.

Extreme? Perhaps, but so is adding NOFOLLOW to every link in every article. With the userContent.css hack described in this post, you’ll be able to spot other publications on the web who are sharing the love, trying to keep it all to themselves or don’t even realize how their external links are being formatted.

Hmmcast #154 mp4

Assuming the theaters aren’t too packed, we’re planning on seeing The Simpsons Movie this weekend. How about you? The Simpsons are clearly on surfer’s minds searching for Simpsons-related posts at this blog. Pictured right six of eight search query results as of this writing are related to the Simpsons.

We’ve been watching the DVD of the Complete Season Nine Simpsons upscaled on the PS3. Good stuff. I’m liking how the PS3 upscales DVDs and it is fast becoming our DVD player of choice. While we’re still not playing many games on the PS3 it’s nice to see it getting use as the most expensive DVD player in our home. With Lair, Heavenly Sword and other hot games on the horizon as well as the HOME interface, I’m seeing a brighter PS3 future this winter and beyond.

What’s the secret behind the Simpsons staying power?
What about those Simpsons, how have they endured so long in our collective minds? I think it’s because of the excellent writing, characters and jokes. It’s hard to get through a couple minutes of the Simpsons without at least a smile. It’s healthy laughing. It relieves stress. Groening and company seem to get that treating an animated show like a stand-up comedy act was a good recipe for success and they’ve been handsomely rewarded for their efforts.

The non-main character that makes me laugh the most is Barney. His drunken antics are great and I’m looking most forward to see what his part is in the Simpsons Movie. As for main characters, I’ve never been a huge Bart fan. The Lisa storylines have been kind of boring too. Homer is my favorite main character. What’s yours? Why?

In a post wondering what’s going on with PodTech.net, TechCrunch claims to have spoken to CEO John Furrier who admitted they pink slipped a few employees, were refocusing on “syndicating third party stuff” and moving out of the content creation business.

Scoble’s still there, Feldman is hanging on. I think we’ll know when the iceberg of podcasting has fully pierced the Podtanic when those two scramble for the life boats.

Of Podtech’s new direction, Techcrunch postulates:

Their new model, which finds and signs talent for guaranteed revenue, and then aggregates sites to advertisers, is a good one. They need to continue to cut staff and get their burn rate very low - they will effectively become a production house and ad sales team for their partners. If they can complete the transition before they run out of cash, Podtech could still have a bright future ahead of it.

The magic words: if they don’t run out of cash.

Scoble left a hint in one of his recent posts about just how much time it might be before Podtech completely implodes. On a post July 19 titled “Changes at Podtech”, he wrote:

Just for the record, I’m 100% committed to PodTech and the moves that John Furrier and the executive team is making and won’t reevaluate my career until Spring of 2008.

Summer of 2008, Scoble heads back to Microsoft? Becomes Apple evangelist? No odds will be given on Scoble replacement at Podtech when that happens.

Scoble and wife Maryam are having a baby in a couple months and they have racked up some new bills with an expensive house. Take it from a guy with three boys, kids ain’t cheap. I hope Scoble lands on his feet somewhere else with a good paying gig when — not if, it seems unfortunately — Podtech tanks. Scoble is one of the nice guys out there, contributing a mountain of neverending raw tech footage with some gold in them thar hills. Sidenote: no clue if the Podtech budget cuts mean that Scoble’s editor got the axe too.

As for the other content created at Podtech? I’m sure many outside Podtech are saying: “what content?” because they haven’t had a single Rocketboom to their credit. Too bad with talented, but marginally focused guys like Loren Feldman they couldn’t generate a breakout title. Video and podcasting isn’t nearly as easy as it looks. Speaking of Feldman, check out how he artfully calls out Nick Douglas at Valleywag’s negative Podtech coverage because Podtech said no to Look Crappy, er Shiny. More proof that Feldman has comedy chops? Check out his Om Malik impression below

Funny stuff, but something your company can build a business model around? Probably not unless you’re Loren’s company 1938 Media and doing direct ad deals. Doubtful that Podtech can do anything with this type content that they haven’t already done. And don’t even get me started again on mixed message shows like the one hosted by Jennifer Jones. Not a tech audience? I’m still chuckling over that one.

Mixed reviews of Podtech’s future direction
You’ve probably figured out that I’m not in agreement with TechCrunch that it’s a good move to focus on finding other Ze Frank’s and Rocketboom’s out there especially with Steve Gillmor as their new VP of Creative Development. Gillmor is one of the most obtuse guys I’ve ever listened to or read. Some think he’s genius like professors at conferences who rattle on about the long tail but he’s failed keeing this writer’s attention for longer than a few minutes.

Raise your hand if you can actually understand most of what Gillmor is saying. If he’s your company talent scout, you might as well pack in the production now, tickets are going to cry dust. Gillmor could be a really swell guy in person, as Kent Newsome has met him and recounts, but I’d much rather follow what his much more coherent brother Dan is doing on the web. Crap dice, Podtech.

Again.

Personally, I think PodTech would be smarter to fold up shop early while they still have money and pick another niche. Perhaps build some killer app with the remaining funds and ride that pony. Beating the dead horse of monetizing podcasting is a noble goal, but doesn’t seem to hold much in the way of a true business model. Many have tried to monetize podcasting and failed. I know we all want to believe that citizen journalism and radio is the new frontier but, you know what, it’s not. I believe anybody can be a talent, but it takes time, effort, money and lots and lots of practice. You don’t just turn on the cameras and microphones and become the next Larry King or Oprah Winfrey.

A good day for reflection surrounding goals of amateur content creation. If you produce a podcast and/or videoblog, who is your audience? Why are you doing it? What are you hoping to get out of the experience? If you’re looking to learn a new skill, hone an existing one and/or broaden your publishing horizons more power to you. That’s pretty much what I’ve been doing with the weekday Hmmcasts. I don’t have any lofty goals for the production and think it’s fairly clear that I’m experimenting and learning a heck of a lot about the skills that go into the ongoing production and publishing of a videoblog. It’s never a bad thing to increase your skillset and I know that time is the most powerful ingredients in any venture.

At Podtech, and in the immortal words of a great Iron Maiden song, the sands in the hourglass are running low. Running lowwwwwwww.

It took some four years and a few weeks to receive 10,000 comments here at MakeYouGoHmm and wanted to take a minute and thank all of you who have left comments whether it be one comment or hundreds over the years.

I hope you will continue doing so. I enjoy receiving on topic, non-spammy comments. One way to my blog-friendly heart is a well thought out related comment or two way trackback that advances, supplements or improves the original post in some way, shape or form. I lean toward the view that blog posts don’t have to be as time sensitive as some make them out to be. I’ve seen posts years old continue to get new life pumped into it by fresh, valuable comments and it’s inspiring to continue the keyboard journey along with you, dear readers.

If you do the math over the days the numbers, for those who like to see them, work out something like this:

365 x 4 years = 1,460 days
+ 24 days
= 1,484 total days / 10,000
= 6.8 comments a day (rounded up)

Over the last year the commenting activity has increased dramatically. On July 11, 2006 Hmm had received 5,889 comments with Sterling being the most prolific commenter with 359 comments. Today, July 23, with 10,000+ comments and counting from 4,045 different people, Sterling still has the most comments, raising his total to 542. Sterling has several others hot on his trail though including darkmoon, Lestat and FrancisoIV, so who knows where things will be a year from now.

Nice, thank you again!

How many published posts over that time?
4,381 published posts / 1,484 days
= 2.95 posts per day

The most popular commented thread remains the Nintendogs post which has well over 500 comments and counting (four yesterday). There are many posts with zero comments and plenty in between 0 and 500+.

One of the common concerns I read and hear from other bloggers with comments enabled is: how can I get more comments? I’ve written with specific suggestions on the topic before, but looking back over the last 4+ years, I’d say the number one way to get more comments is to write posts in a way that invites them. If your posts are written more standoffish or not open to outside opinion, then you’ll receive less comments. It’s ok to write posts that don’t invite comments once in awhile, but if you want to get something, like some other things in life, you have to ask for it. You have to step up and tell your readers: you know what, I really like reading what you have to say.

Some people like Joel Spolsky who claims to have learned this from Dave Winer would rather not have comments on their articles. Dave chose not to share his Google PR8 and instead opened up comments in the last year or so a wordpress “mirror” of his site. In a follow-up post, Joel points to TechMeme as having really smart algorithms for putting back together the “intelligent comments” around an article.

Talk about elitism. It’s practically oozing out of Joel’s keyboard. I’ve enjoyed some of Joel’s posts in the past but this post came off as arrogant.

Personally, I think this is a load of bull. It’s perspectives like these who don’t want to — or begrudgingly — share the stage with anybody. They think they are smarter than you or I and would rather have their accountability placed off somewhere else out of sight and mind. Don’t sully up our space. This thinking stinks of 1995 and old media and is everything about the web that doesn’t work in my opinion. If I want to read one way material (which sometimes I do), I’ll make a run for the Border’s.

I’m not saying all bloggers who choose not to have comments enabled are selfish or even that Dave or Joel are selfish, but it’s typical of websites that have the most to give in the form of reach and attention — the bigger and more popular sites — create rules which limit benefits back to the very people who participate at their websites usually for free. It’s these people who click on your ads, buy your products (Mr. Fogcreek Software, Joel) and spread the gospel about what you’re doing. How many of the big sites have user profiles with nofollow on links? How many don’t even offer links to people who participate?

And then there are pieces of work like Guy Kawasaki who outright admits he is too busy to read what you have to say, but surely wants your eyeballs for his textual Picaso. I’m glad we have middle fingers for people like this.

In Joel’s original post he wrote:

When a blog allows comments right below the writer’s post, what you get is a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed, followed by a long spew of noise, filth, and anonymous rubbish that nobody … nobody … would say out loud if they had to take ownership of their words.

Is Joel actually assuming that readers believe he creates “a bunch of interesting ideas, carefully constructed” only to be ruined by the comment section? Come on, Joel, how smart do you think readers are? You’d think Joel was going to win a Pulitzer by not having comments enabled. Rubbish.

In Joel’s defense, he isn’t completely off base.

Unmoderated comments, especially on larger sites where more flamers and trolls run wild can damage the overall value of the material. The thing that always gets me is who has the most money to moderate comments, bigger or smaller sites? Why doesn’t sites like YouTube and digg offer moderation of comments instead of comment anarchy? What you end up with is people leaving flames calling you names and contributing zero to the content. Some of the comments are funny, I’ll grant them that, but it gets old fast reading 14 year old rants.

I contribute to a few blogs with comments disabled, so am not trying to be hypocritical. I look at comments as something that you have to cultivate like a farmer. If you aren’t going to take the time to moderate them, react and respond, setup rules for what is and isn’t cool or pay others to do it for you then you’re better off not having them at all.

But.

And this is a big but: when your site grows bigger and you’re claiming to want, appreciate and welcome feedback of any kind from others then you really are talking out of both sides of your mouth by not allowing comments in an convenient place for readers. Forcing them to participate at their own site sounds suspiciously like: “I want you to promote me elsewhere.”

Convenient for readers is right below the article or prominently linked below the article
Dave Winer talks about his Scripting News Annex and yet there are no links on Scripting News PR8 to it on each of his posts (some posts links to the conversation). He can tell us all day long if we want to leave a comment, we know where to find him, and yet Dave misses that most readers according to Google anyway should go to Scripting.com first, not his Wordpress.com annex.

Solutions, anyone?
With the Wordpress plugin competition being completed a week from now, I’m working on a plugin that hopefully will be done in time that could help bloggers get a few more comments. It will be GPL licensed, per the contest guidelines. For those who would like to tend to their garden and help grow more comments, I hope it will be welcomed. For the other camp, the people who think they are too smart and too proud to have their precious work marred, they need not and likely won’t apply.

Now here’s to another 10,000 comments, hopefully in less than 4 years this time, but if it’s longer that’s fine too. Thank you again for your comments and the space is waiting below to add your inspiring words of wisdom.

Historically as a webmaster it’s been inefficient dealing with the invite-only system many of these new websites are employing.

You write about a service that’s in invite-only status and have a few invites to pass around. After your friends and family what do you do with the leftover invites? If you post that you have invites on your blog then inevitably the comments area will fill up with people stopping by and saying they want one. That’s cool, that’s the web working.

But.

Most of these people from my experience only stop by for the invite and then are seen nevermore. In one case the number of “send me an invite” comments after it was stated several times the invites were gone got so bad that comments needed to be closed altogether. I love sharing and that makes up a great part of this blog, but having to tell people who stop by so briefly that they can’t even read the post and comments that we don’t have any more invites to share is a time waster for both of us. More importantly, it puts the burden of distributing and thus promoting a site on the webmaster, not on the site/service. At least if a site is going to make us part of their marketing department, they could make it an affiliate program and pay us for the work.

The existing process makes me feel like we’re being used.

Some people might not have a problem feeling or being used, but I do. Frankly, my enthusiasm in a new website / service wanes considerably these days if it’s setup as an invite-only deal. I’m not talking about private invite-only situations, I’m talking about public invite only distributions. I realize there are some legitimate reasons a site might want to go invite-only, but that doesn’t seem to be what’s happening in too many cases. I’ve seen a disturbing trend develop, what about you?

This morning Thatedeguy was first to tip me off to the service InviteShare, followed by TechCrunch. That’s just the order of how the posts came in my RSS reader but maybe Techcrunch was first. I gave them both links for writing about the topic, but no link for InviteShare after I learned that they are already trying to auction away their site on Sitepoint (picture above). A number of TechCrunch commenters are annoyed as well. What’s the deal, guys, are you just using Techcrunch (and other bloggers) to pump up the sale price of your service and then dump on the highest bidder?

After seeing this, I don’t care how useful this service is or isn’t, this gives me a very sour taste in my mouth.

If you’re site/service is so new that it’s in invite-only, why are you auctioning your site? Or even thinking about selling your site, if that’s the story here? You haven’t even launched yet. I’m surprised that Arrington hasn’t updated his post to point out the site is trying to pimp itself and using a “front page listing on TechCrunch” to increase its value. Talk about leading your readers down a potential dark path, Mike. Shane does tell his readers that it can be bought in a “by the way…” at the post end but doesn’t seem to have any problem with this concept. I can understand being duped and writing a post about the site before you learned these details, but now that you know what they are doing at least update your posts and make readers aware of this important sidestory and how you feel about what this means for how your reader’s information might be used.

Unless of course you want your readers to sign up for something and then have their emails sold to the highest bidder. I’m not saying InviteShare are spammers or intend to do anything nefarious with your information, but that doesn’t mean whomever buys their service won’t be. A lot of ifs, ands and buts here, but I’ve been around the web too long not to be more cynical than the average bear. Just what we all need, more spam.

Unless InviteShare drops the auction and plans to be around a month from now, I’ll continue searching for a service without baggage like this to better deal with the invite situation, which I still believe is a scheme in and of itself, no thanks to Google and others.

Update July 21, 2007 5:02pm PST: TechCrunch ended up buying InviteShare in the auction for (the rumored?) price of $25,000. So they contributed to making the price even more expensive, Mike admits. At least TechCrunch won’t be putting this one up on the auction block write away and it already has more buzz than Edgeio.