RambleOn

The New York Times still does Partial Feeds?!?

I subscribe to four blogs that deal with politics: Laura Leslie’s Isaac Hunter’s Tavern – which covers NC politics. Andrew Sullivan’s The Daily Dish – which I read as much for how much they link out to others, as for the commentary of the staff bloggers. Matt Yglesias’ blog – who has a whole informal award named after him by Sullivan. And until today Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight blog. ( I also read Rogers Cadenhead’s Workbench blog – but I don’t stick that in a politics category).

Until today meant that I really was digging Nate’s site, and learning, his posts are long and involved and a challenge for my online attention span.

But Nate went to the New York Times, which would be incredibly exciting, I like the Times.

But Nate’s feed is not full. I’m not making time to click on the post to go to the website to do the scanning based on a teaser line.

Hey Nate, FiveThirtyEight and the New York Times, it’s 2010 – stop with the partial feeds. Because you sure lost a subscriber that your advertisers love to cater to.

Bupkus

Beware the danger of the single narrative.

That’s why I have three.

Narrative one: I was reading Marius Ducea’s post about Google Analytics and high traffic sites tonight. None of the sites I’m currently responsible for are, or will ever be, in the fortunate category of having Marius’s problem, but I was pretty intrigued with the fact that he tried to tweet @googleanalytics with his question and got bupkus.

Reminded me of Narrative Two: Last year I needed a fast quote on a price for a Google Search Box. Sure, I was a podunk shop, just wanting a quote on one. But I needed just a quote. And I got… bupkus.

Narrative Three: While at OSCON, I was totally jazzed by all the Google Waving going on – and I was totally jazzed on Google App Engine, and because email sucks, I tried to wave with Ikai Lan at OSCON and ask what the licensing terms were on their tutorial information for their Intro to Google App Engine. I mean, I assume it’s Creative Commons because http://code.google.com/appengine/ is creative commons – but I’m not completely sure about Codelab at Google sites – and heck, it was a way to reach out and let Google know that somebody was totally jazzed about GAE, and spreading it to their colleagues.

I wanted to teach Google App Engine to an audience in Cooperative Extension. What did I get? Bupkus.

I should have know then that Wave was about to get canned. And based on that, and based on the silence I got about the license, I canned my own Google App Engine plans, as well as sharing with my colleagues in the nation.

I guess my takeaway from this? If you aren’t contributing to Google’s advertising bottom line – or in contact with the parts of the company, that in spite of the company’s advertising direction – do actually care?

Bupkus.

Face(s) of the Week

Larger

Today’s fabulous error message

I was going to sign-up for a Windows LiveID to look at some service offerings they have that I wasn’t aware of, and be able to IM some live-only IM addresses.

This was my sign-up experience:

WTF?

The Night Google Gone Evil

I came out of the OSCON conference with a renewed appreciation for Google. I don’t like Java, and that colors my perception of Android (and caused me to miss out on a Nexus One, because I dislike Java that much) – but between all of the activity surrounding Wave, and App Engine, and Android and my first time hearing Chris DiBona. I came away with a new appreciation for Google as a whole, even more questioning of my position on Android vs. iPhone, and I was ready to start building on App Engine, and especially on Wave.

When you take one’s normally highly cynical seen-too-many-technology-transitions-in-19-years self – and that begins to be overcome with the potential of the efforts a company is making – enough that you actually have more excitement than cynicism, moves against that excitement can feel a little like betrayal.

It’s silly really, it’s business, and collections of individuals operating behind corporate cultures are going to move in the directions that make immediate revenue sense. But when you believe a little in the product, it still stings a little. I believe in OS X enough, and I believed in iOS enough that the App Store policies still felt bad. Really, there are more important issues. But it’s my career, I’ll let it matter to me a little.

Yesterday was a bad day to have started down a bit of “Google fanboy” path. First wave, then network neutrality.

I’ll get to Wave in another post. Network Neutrality is the real issue here.

Google’s Public Policy team says that the New York Times was wrong.

I’d like to give Google the benefit of the doubt, but that feels like spin. GPP says “we aren’t talking payment”. The Times didn’t say you were, Google. They were saying that your conversations could lead to groups like YouTube paying for carriage.

David Weinberger points out Eric Schmidt’s comments (via GigaOm) on the matter.

But it’s OK to discriminate across different types, so you could prioritize voice over video

No. That’s not open. And it doesn’t matter if you aren’t paying, if you are making a deal with Verizon that says “hey, we won’t threaten your spectrum again, and we’ll back off, just let our ad-driven YouTube videos have priority over some LOLcats” – money doesn’t have to change hands to mess with the internet.

Bad day Google. Bad day.

View of the Week

The view from earlier this evening:

(larger)

Pup Face of the Week

( larger )

My Letter to the AT&T CEO

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Jason Young
Subject: AT&T Tethering Charge
To: rs2982@att.com, randall.stephenson@att.com

Dear Randall (or the AT&T Executive Relations Team),

I am an AT&T wireless customer and have been for just over 2 years, I switched to AT&T from Verizon because of the iPhone.

I am happy with AT&T. My service in the Raleigh/Durham area has been good. I have found your customer service department to be excellent. I did have one issue where your stores refused to honor your own corporate statement about subsidized pricing for an iPhone upgrade – and had to call myself corporate support from the store. After a period of momentary confusion where the representative thought I paid late (when I pay bills consistently a half-month early) – your support representative was fantastic, and ironed out the issue with the local store. (Keep working on those stores, it’s one great reason why Apple is doing as well as they are).

I’m a satisfied AT&T customer.

But I do have a question for you.

I understand your move to placing data transfer caps on your service. I consistently only use 100MB-200MB a month each for each of our iPhone lines in our household, and I should be well below the limits. I do have some concerns where the phone appears to be transferring data while I’m asleep:

244 FRI 04/30/2010 1:59AM Data Transfer Data 31 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
245 FRI 04/30/2010 3:05AM Data Transfer Data 1,467 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
246 SAT 05/01/2010 2:34AM Data Transfer Data 3,428 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
247 SUN 05/02/2010 2:16AM Data Transfer Data 45 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00
248 SUN 05/02/2010 3:14AM Data Transfer Data 886 KB CMB1 AT GPRR Out 0.00

But at the moment, I recognize that may likely be due to the fact I’m a Microcell user (coverage at phone is poor, but it’s poor for every wireless provider) and the phone is connecting to the Microcell instead of the house wireless to update email, or whatever. That’s somewhat concerning, considering that you piggy-back the Microcell on my internet connection already, but I understand if you are handling the data, you need to account for it. I will figure that out at some point – and I’m not really worried about it (though you may want to check with your engineers on that).

Here’s what I don’t understand. I don’t understand why you are going to charge $20 a month just to set a tethering flag on the phone. I have read your GigaOM interview about it. But it doesn’t make any sense to me. I’d already be paying for the 2GB data! It’s not like the tethering does anything else other than increase the chances that you’ll make additional fees on additional data transfers.

That extra $20 a month just for the privilege of being tagged as a tethering customer is beyond the pale.

It’s, in a word, bullshit.

Please do review that policy within your organization. As I said, I have personally been very pleased with AT&T – but that tethering charge seems to be completely out of line with a company that is trying to win the hearts and minds of their wireless customers.

Jason

p.s. I have read with great fascination that you threatened a Cease and Desist on one of your customers for emailing the CEO – but I’m glad to see that has worked out.

The Road Ahead Means Leaving One Behind

I sent this in a note to our staff today. It was a response of sorts to a discussion in a staff meeting about seeking outside perspectives within a specific setting, but the point I wanted to make was a general one.

I didn’t have my thoughts formulated in time to make this comment with regard to today’s staff conversation

We have a surfeit of ideas of how to move forward – even in many of our most egregious examples of established “groupthink” – higher education usually doesn’t suffer from a lack of exposure to new ideas, and new directions, new ways of working – there’s often enough flexibility in our jobs that you’ll find staff at all levels that have great and forward-looking ideas.

What we suffer badly from, that seems almost impossible to overcome, is how to leave things behind. So much that I’ve referred to the technology aspect of this (in tongue-in-cheek fashion) as “Young’s Law” that “all technology applications are permanent in Higher Education”

This is key to bringing new people in. This is key to whether we could tap in to the narratives and stories and ideas that already exist in Cooperative Extension. We can’t move forward without leaving something behind. And that may be the perspectives we critically need – not the things we should be doing – but the things we need to stop doing.

That’s where the hard decisions are.

(In the same vein: this 37Signals post I read after I sent my note)

Don’t Mess With Texas

Also, the Alamo was burned down by the Yankees in the War of Northern Aggression

(obligatory reference – from the British, who also burned down the Alamo in the Texas history books)