hmm. this "blogging" stuff ...

(Before you start, I couldn't make this entry 140 characters or less!)

I read a lot of online content - from all the big names, doggdot, Gigaom, Techcrunch, El Reg, and so on. I've just been doing a bit of surfing based on some names that fell out of one of the big sites, so I tracked down the applicable personal site and had a look at it.

It appears that the site I visited was another "bloggers co-op" where some obviously savvy people had decided to pool their efforts. Maybe I caught them on a bad day, but to be honest, i wasn't very impressed. (hey, this is only my second entry myself, so maybe i should quit gobbing off at this point, but i will press on regardless).

I think the main problem with "blogging" (what a horrendous name for a technology that is), is that to make someone read an entry, the title has to have a good "hook" - it is the first thing that catches the readers interest. It also seems to contain 97% of the relevent information.

For example: "Company X is going to buy Company Y for PQ squillion dollars"

Ok, so far, so good. I click on the above title, and then i'm presented with 'n' paragraphs of waffle
on why it's/not a good idea in the author's (or his mate down the pub/in a hedge fund) opinion.

Now "Twitter" (http://twitter.com) , I really like. It restricts you to 140 characters, so you can't waffle with it (well you could try I suppose, but you won't get very far).

However, you *can* get an awful lot of useful information into 140 characters. (or, you can list the contents of your sandwich box and thermos flask in 140 characters too, probably - and people do do things like that on twitter)

Personally, I don't have hours on end to spend wade through huge personal tomes (like this entry i'm bashing in now *blush*), and to be brutally frank, I don't *really* care what the "bloggers" opinion actually is, but the *facts* that they are reporting (usually in the title) interest me a *lot*, and the blogger who reports the most facts the most speedily is definitely going to get me "throwing up the horns" in reverence when I hear her/his name being mentioned.


Anyway according to this blog entry I read, Google (alledgedly) are allegedly buying Feedburner (allegedly) (insert all necessary legal disclaimers at this point) for a lot of money (alledgedly). That's all I need to know. I know what feedburner does and I know what google does. I don't really need read someones prediction that "maybe they will start stuffing adverts into rss feeds" - Because in this case it's patently obvious!

For example: Chocolate manufacturer buys major Biscuit baking company - "the author suspects that maybe this will pave the way for a new line in chocolate-covered biscuits?" Well, "Stap me vitals!" I say - I'd never've worked that out without the "bloggers" acute insight.

Maybe I'm being a bit harsh, but the people who break this sort of news "company x buying company y" etc are obviously brainier, better-connected people than me - however I'm not a *complete* moron, and the prediction of "revolutionary 'chocolate covered biscuits' or other chocolate/baked confection hybrid technology that we've yet to imagine being just around the corner" are pointless and devalue the posting.(Why not just say, "see subject line" ? - all the *useful* content is in it after all)

The point for this prolonged rant ? Well, I'm just back from my holidays, and have had to read my backlog (AKA "catch-up" - another hackneyed over-used management-cliche that belongs to the check shirt, cuff-links, but no tie wearing brigade - Yes, you know who you are ;) of email and favourite tech site content. maybe next time i should settle with just reading the email subject lines and the raw xml from the RSS feeds, then I wouldn't work myself up into such a froth.

Bright Blessings to you and yours ...

tape-monkey

back from hols

well, just back from four days away. pretty knackered now (and hungry, too!). Highlight of the trip for me was visiting Slad (a small village outside Stroud in Gloucestershire where "Cider With Rosie" by Laurie Lee is set).