One presenter at Mesh proudly stated they have over 700 RSS feeds they watch. Do they read them all? No, do they skim them all? Sure, and if you don’t get their attention with your title or first sentence, well you’ve lost them. I say great. I hope to lose skimmers with my writing. Maybe I’ll add a mandatory fluff sentence at the beginning of any story in order to filter out the fluffers.

RSS is doing to writing and books what mp3’s and digital downloads have done to music and the album format. People feel like they’re reading without actually having to read. It’s destroying people’s ability to patiently sit down with a book and read it from cover to cover. That is reading, and reading a book is an entirely different act than reading blog posts. It’s not the same thing to skim the titles of 349 RSS feeds.

Do I use an RSS reader? Yes. Do I publish RSS feeds? Yes. RSS is a useful and effective tool. I spend more time these days, however, trying to remove feeds from my RSS reader than add. I’m trying to strive for less not more, and if I do add a new feed then I remove at least one feed I’m currently subscribed to.

Skimming RSS feeds and marking them “read” is not reading but sometimes I find myself mistaking it for that. I get sucked in and have to cleanse myself with a good book. It’s exciting to have access to all these sources of opinions and information. The problem when I get sucked in is that I find myself becoming an aggregator of opinions. I like, or don’t like, something not because I’ve experienced it, or have in depth understanding, but because I’ve skimmed other people’s opinions of it. I fear that RSS and it’s ilk will leave me without my ability to acquire that deeper level of understanding on my own.

Or not, time to find a new feed….

Tad and the StoryStream kids have put the videos they made for Mesh available on their site under the ‘work’ link. For those not there, these videos were played prior to the main keynote presentations.

Ok, so my credit card was apparently stolen digitally. I grabbed some cnet recommended spyware scan software, spyware doctor, in order to scan my system. It will scan for you, however, you have to purchase the software to run any removals. I removed the 4 high rated infections by hand.

I’ve been using CA’s ETrust suite for virus scanning so it made sense to add spyware into that as they have pestpatrol now. I tried to download the trial but of course they require your credit card information. I don’t have that because my credit card was stolen and hence canceled. I went to the effort to call them and after some back and forth they informed me there was nothing they could do for me.

“Does it not make sense that someone who has had their credit card information stolen, and therefore canceled their card, would be calling you to use your spyware product?”

“I’m not sure, we need a credit card.”

“Ok. You do realize that I’m currently a customer of yours, I need your help right now, and you’re forcing me to go find another company’s product to help me?”

“Yes.”

“You’re ok with losing me as a customer?”

“There’s nothing we can do, we have to have a credit card number.”

While at mesh yesterday afternoon, using the building’s wifi, I purchased a domain name I’ve been meaning to grab. I received a phone call later that evening from a software company wanting to validate my $249 purchase of their software. I obviously informed them I hadn’t made that purchase and I verified that they had indeed been given my credit card information to make that purchase.

I got on the phone with my credit card company and the only purchase I hadn’t made was a $1 paypal purchase. I cancelled the credit card at that point and they are reissuing me a new one.

I’m obviously not sure where the information was stolen from. I purchased the domain through my host, qwk, using flock. I’ve been in contact with qwk and they assured me their systems are secure. I have no way of verifying that for myself but I’ve been with them for years and have a lot of faith in them.

I scanned my machine for spyware and found 4 high ranked entries, all *.wmv files located in the temporary internet files. They’re in “Content.IE5” and dated about a week ago. The only other issue I’ve noticed is that I’m having to login to all my usual sites like my wordpress admin, feedburner, etc.

If anyone has any recommedations on preventing this in the future, please add to the comments.

I hate the term blogging and all it’s baggage.

“I want a blog, I want to start blogging”

A blog is a tool, it’s a self-publishing system, that’s it. It allows you to easily manipulate your website. I forget, when word processors came out were we saying “I want to word process”?

Do we call someone who writes a book a booker, or a magazine a magaziner? No, we call them writers. While blogging is a fascinating new tool at best, in the end, it’s just writing. You don’t need a blog or even a computer for that. Stop by a convenience store, buy a pad of paper and a pen, go sit somewhere and fill it with words. Once you’ve done that for a few months then start worrying about where you’ll host your blog.

You want to blog? Great, start by reading lot’s of books and practicing writing. If you don’t have a love of the written word then you’d better develop that or not bother. I’m not trying to discourage anyone from blogging, I’m trying to encourage people to write and you need very little technology for that. Not having a blog is no excuse not to be writing. If you are going to blog, great, but please, treat it more like writing a book then using some cool new tool.

What do you need to start blogging? If you haven’t read it already, I’d start here with Brenda Ueland’s book. By the way, Guy offers a money back guarantee for Brenda’s book so it’s a risk free purchase.

I’m not even going to touch the term blogosphere….

Random notes from mesh.

I’ve touched on my love of bumper sticker marketing terms like web 2.0 in the past. I sat in a panel yesterday where the host and a presenter had a dialogue about whether blogging was web 2.0 or web 1.0. Someone please have the sense to stop conversations like this. How self-absorbed can we get in technology? It’s like flipping to FT and watching two designers arguing if grey is this year’s black. Who cares and how can that argument ever come to completion?

“Oh, ok, I see, that hadn’t occurred to me before. Ok, you’re right, grey is black. What now?”

You can’t define web 2.0 because it doesn’t exist. It’s an umbrella term meant to capture a shift within a community or the maturing of that community. Stop calling it web 2.0 like it’s an actual product. It’s confuses, and leaves people looking for the release notes.

So what do you call it? I don’t know but I’ve been calling it the internet.

If you’re interested in what blogs I frequent, I added a link to my blogroll to my about page.

“A blogroll is a collection of links to other weblogs.”

I reworked the shiftMode sidebar, adding a picture of moi, and a zoomcloud to provide another way to browse content. I’ve always cringed at the idea of adding a picture of myself. It strikes me as such a vain thing to do. I finally caved on this as I’ve come to realize that I want to know as soon as I browse to a page whether or not it’s written by an individual, a group of people, or a company. The fastest way to convey that a site belongs to an individual is to add a picture of yourself to the main page.

I apologize for putting you through the agony of seeing my mug but I swear, it’s just so new visitors know that this is just me not some shiftMode Inc.

Thanks to Chris for the offer, I’ve started a CoworkingGuelph page on the Coworking wiki. Absolutely nothing there yet but please add your name if you’re interested as well as any helpful notes.

I’ve been working out of my home office for well over a year now. When people ask how I enjoy it I usually give some reponse along the lines of “it’s ok, there are things I miss about being in an office and there are things I could care less to ever be a part of”.

A few specifics, I don’t miss commuting everyday, office politics, standard office hours, traditional bosses. I do miss long Friday lunches, the social aspect of an office and collaboration in general.

Ultimately I much prefer working in an environment I have absolute control over, ignoring for a minute the fact that my wife and two kids are clearly the ones in charge, and my real issues with working in an office are more attributed to corporate culture than the office itself. Working with ClearSpace, regardless of whether we have an office, means I don’t have to deal with traditional corporate culture issues.

So if I can work towards getting some of the things I miss about an office, ie the good stuff, while still working at home then I’m gold. To that end I am very serious about establishing a coworking house here in Guelph. My plan is to put together something along the lines of the Queen Street Commons in Charlottetown PEI.

The idea would be to purchase a house close to downtown Guelph, renovate it so that it’s broken up into clean simple offices, a common space, a kitchen, a boardroom, and hopefully an outdoor patio. Then offer basic services such as wired and wireless internet, voip phones, printing, etc. It’s a place you can show up to 24/7 and have a private office to work.

Would you pay $35 to $100 a month for something like this in Guelph? If so, please contact me. The more people I know of who are interested, the faster this could actually happen.

Links:

• Coding in Paradise
• Linuxcaffe in Toronto.
• The Office