RSS, Echo, and Pie in BigPub-land

The flurry of debate and discussion about RSS / Echo / Pie has become such a tidal wave that I'm having a hard time keeping up with it all (thanks to Jon Udell for not only summarizing the core discussions but offering his typically cogent analysis of all the issues lurking on the perpiphery of the discussion as well).

I will add this relatively non-technical perspective from here inside the world of "BigPubs."  I've been quietly (in a public sense at least) advocating RSS within InfoWorld for a while now after coming over from Salon in early 2001, where we were producing RSS based on the 0.91 spec.  We launched RSS feeds at InfoWorld in April 2002 after I realized it was kind of silly to force NewsIsFree to screen scrape us to get our headlines (you can get them straight from us here). 

We didn't launch RSS feeds at InfoWorld by committee, but when we did it quietly behind the scenes, it gave me real ammo to start evangelizing and demonstrating the benefits to folks at InfoWorld and to some degree at IDG (the fine folks over at ComputerWorld and Network World were already well on their way). I've spent a lot of time in conference rooms patiently explaining RSS to business folks here at InfoWorld and to developers at some other IDG publications, always emphasizing how simple it is: you can do it and here's how.  We've used RSS to power the IDG Enterprise Network links on the home pages of InfoWorld, ComputerWorld, CIO, and Network World (interestingly, we're using different versions and that difference took up all of 10 seconds in our discussions -- vive la difference.)   At IDG, each business unit operates very independently, so the fact that four independently-operated publications could get together quickly and trade headlines with little friction demonstrates the inherent simplicity of RSS.  (We're all using RSS in some capacity publicly, of course, as you probably already know.)

It was only recently (April 28, to be exact) that I felt like RSS had completely turned the corner at InfoWorld when the various constituenices at InfoWorld (sales, editorial, and technology) agreed to include links to our feeds prominently on our home page.  Getting something on the home page is recognition that something has been politically mainstreamed within an organization, as RSS has been at InfoWorld.  I can't find any of our traditional competitors, even those who have RSS feeds, who have utlized precious real estate on the home page to promote them.

So, what's my point?  RSS is now burned into InfoWorld's organizational brain like the words Kleenex and Xerox.  Names can change, specs can change, people involved can change, and any number of other things can change, but in the end, if any of the business folks ask me what Echo is, or what Pie is, or whatever "it" ends up being called, I'll just say:  don't worry about the name, it's really just RSS.  I've just gotten to the point where I can use that term freely without explaining it, and I'm not about to trade that in.

VentureBlog, Due Diligence, and Gizmodo

There are all kinds of ideas being thrown around about what makes a weblog a weblog, but the defining characteristic for me is "writing in one's authentic voice."  That's why I enjoy reading Tim Oren's Due Diligence and August Capital's VentureBlog.  It's interesting to see useful information surface from real people working in a business segment that presumably invented a term like "stealth mode."  I'm making mental notes of the advice from Andrew Anker in this post (you can find the post below and more in their Presenting Your Company category): 

Short post for a simple point: know your burn rate. We'll forgive many sins in presentations but not knowing your company's burn rate is among the most mortal. It's just one of those things.

Over on VentureBlog, Naval Ravikant writes about "The New Platforms":

One of the nice things about being in the venture business is that one gets a large number of data points on what innovative independent software vendors are up to. In particular, it's interesting to watch what platforms they are developing on, as it is a leading indicator of which one the next killer app might pop up on.

I'm not in the venture business, so I appreciate Naval giving me a window into it.  If you value direct and unvarnished commentary (If Solaris is still a viable development platform, it's certainly not obvious from here), be sure to read the rest of Naval's post.

On an entirely unrelated note, I became aware of Gizmodo when Jay posted in the comments area of Sam Ruby's weblog about our decision to include advertising in our RSS feeds:

Gizmodo (http://gizmodo.net/) has been including subtle advertisements in their feed for a while now.  Every so often, they post a "news item" which is just a link to an Amazon sale item.

The RSS advertising discussion aside, Gizmodo rocks!  Gizmodo is the "gadgets weblog."  I could go on and on about it, but you should just try their RSS feed for a few days and you'll probably be hooked.

The DMV online is still the DMV

Back when Network Solutions had a monopoly over domain name registrations, I used to refer to them as the "DMV of the Internet" for all the times I was stuck in senseless queues waiting for resolution to simple problems.  When the California DMV launched online vehicle registration, I had high hopes that my dealings with the DMV would be simplified.  I was dead wrong.  My dealings with the DMV have taken a few Kafkaesque twists and turns, but this time, I came out the other side with a happy, if somewhat absurd,  ending.

On May 4, I registered my car online and paid with my MasterCard.  After I paid, I got a "thank you" screen that said my updated sticker would be mailed out within a few days.  After two weeks, I hadn't gotten my sticker.  I checked my credit card statement and the DMV had indeed charged me for the registration.  Just for the heck of it, I went back to the online registration sitem entered my vehicle information again, and got this message:

Our records indicate that a transaction for this vehicle was already completed on 05/04/2003 at 6:54:49PM.  Please be sure that you are registering the correct vehicle and resubmit if necessary.

For further assistance, please contact us at (800) 777-0133, or send us an email. [Here, I leave the actual e-mail out deliberately. . . . don't want to contribute to making this customer service e-mail more useless than it already is.]

Last week, I got a "notice of delinquent registration" dated May 21 (more than two weeks after my original payment). Just for kicks, I tried the online registration process again today and got the exact same message as above, which presumably acknowledged that the DMV had already received payment for the car in question.  I dialed the convenient 800 number.  Busy signal.  Dialed it again.  Busy signal.  Again, busy signal.  After at least a dozen tries, I finally got through (after the requisite time on hold of course -- hey, why didn't they just use the "on hold" system instead of giving me a busy signal earlier?).  After briefly toying with the idea of providing the name Gregor Samsa, I gave my real name and explained the situation.

Bottom line:  the agent at the DMV acknowledged that my registration had been paid -- and wait!  They actually owed me money -- I had paid some parking tickets twice and this had somehow jammed up the system.  So, I went from a delinquent registration with threat of my car getting impounded by the state if they found it parked on the street to getting a check in the mail from the DMV along with my registration sticker.  Two catches:  1) according to the DMV agent, if I get pulled over by a police officer, the fact that I've paid my registration won't show up in the police system for 2-3 days, and 2) the refund check will take 2-3 weeks to process and be mailed to me, although the original credit card charge was instantaneous.

Suddenly, I'm not so worried about Total Information Awareness.

Long live the hacker

From this week's column:

When I saw The Matrix Reloaded on opening weekend, like most hard-core techies, I was excited when Trinity (played by Carrie-Anne Moss) prominently used nmap to exploit a known SSH CRC-32 security vulnerability in the course of the action. It's about time that computing on the big screen was represented in a real way, not ridiculous holograms and blinking images more suitable for toddlers than adults. Trinity's exploit got most of the attention in IT circles, but for me, the key IT moment in the film comes when Link (the operator of their "ship," the Nebuchadnezzar, played by Harold Perrineau), running out of immediately sensible options, grits his teeth with steely resolve and solves the problem at hand the only way he knows how, muttering "This has got to be the ugliest hack I've ever done." The hack works, and the immediate issue is settled. Of course, the plot thickens, but for the moment, the hacker is the hero, and deservedly so. Every IT staff needs a few good hackers. [read the rest here]

The column above is a close cousin of this one, which got a lot of attention on Slashdot.  (By the way, The Matrix: Reloaded is pretty amazing on IMAX -- just saw it last Friday.)

RSS advertising response

Lots of responses to our decision to put ads in our RSS feeds.  We truly appreciate all the feedback, positive and negative.  Some of the comments were fair and balanced and some of the comments and insinuations out there are basically incorrect or at least misleading (I'll point those out below). 

A useful and productive interchange between Phil Windley and Jenny Levine on the topic.  One note of clarification for the discussion -- in Jenny's post, she links the words "Obviously, InfoWorld sees this differently" to a quote from the AdWeek Technology Marketing story on our decision.  Just wanted to point out that those are not actually our words and InfoWorld and AdWeek are completely unrelated, though we do appreciate Jonathan Angel's article.  He's covering us and offering his own analysis.  You can get our point of view from reading comment #1 from Matt McAlister under Jenny's post.

A post from Rich Miller is mostly negative on the inclusion of ads in RSS feeds:

Maybe there's a way to do this that will align with the culture of the Blogosphere, in the way text ads have been seen as an acceptable alternative to banners. But I don't think we'll see it originate with professional marketers or magazine publishers.

We're certainly trying to align with the culture by advertising something that is relevant (an RSS newsreader), but also testing new ways to pay for things like the large-scale 10 gigabit ethernet switch tests you read about in InfoWorld.  I was responsible for managing the costs of those tests -- it wasn't cheap, and it was the kind of story that really couldn't be done with a laptop and a DSL line.  I also have to call Rich on saying we issued a "press release" in his post -- we didn't.  As I mentioned above, this was a story from Jonathan Angel about our decision to put ads in our RSS feeds.  

Calling it a "press release" also obscures what it really was -- a bottom-up, grass-roots advertising effort.  As a consumer of InfoWorld's RSS feeds and a producer of an RSS reader, Greg Reinacker contacted Matt McAlister and asked if he could advertise with us, Matt suggested our RSS feed, Greg agreed, and they worked out a deal.  Matt came to me and Chris Lin (our wonderful senior software engineer) made it work.  In the end, two people spoke and made an old-fashioned deal. To me, this is the sales and marketing version of manufactured serendipity.   No press releases, no advertising agencies:  really just a manual human version of a bidding process that you already see working successfully with Google and Overture. 

The important point is that we are still experimenting.  In addition to the feedback above, we are taking note of and actively discussing what other folks in the blogosphere are saying: 

• Dwight Shih's comments about the parsimonious nature of our RSS feeds (Dwight, we're working on that -- point well-taken!)


• James Snell's suggestions to tags ads as such, or just create a new type of element for ads (and James, I especially appreciate your entirely fair and reasonable comment on Sam Ruby's weblog: If I like the content enough, I'll gladly pay a subscription fee to access it.)


• As I referenced above, Phil Windley makes comments that I agree with.

Thanks for the feedback -- more updates to come as we work through the suggestions.

Experiments in the RSS economy

If you subscribe to any of InfoWorld's RSS feeds (Top News, App Development, Operating Systems, Wireless, Columnists, Security, or Web Services), you probably noticed the the introduction of advertising for Greg Reinacker's NewsGator RSS newsreader.  Greg announced it in his blog along with a few user comments.  It was also picked up in a story in Technology Marketing. 

I really think Matt McAlister, our director of online product development, has it right when he says this ad is "specific and relevant, not some big branding campaign."  An ad for an RSS newsreader within an RSS feed?  Seems perfectly reasonable to me.  In any case, we're experimenting to see what works, and if you have any comments you should certainly send Matt an e-mail, or better yet, post to your own weblog and criticize or praise us. 

Back in April, Doc Searls posted a compelling piece in his SuitWatch newsletter for Linux Journal:  The New Advertising Business.   It's required reading for anyone involved in traditional advertising and media, and I sent it around to the appropriate folks at InfoWorld when it came out (I'll fast-forward to the end here, but you really should read it all):

So what's happening here? Simply put, companies like Google and Overture are blowing away everything the old advertising business holds dear. Beautiful images. Attention-grabbing graphics. Awards. Strategy. Even old conventions like branding--a term Procter & Gamble borrowed from the cattle industry, back when they created mass media advertising in the dawn of commercial radio more than 70 years ago. They're blowing it away by connecting users and advertisers and helping both offer something valuable to each other.

I think this is in the spirit of what we're trying to do, but since no real model exists, it might work and it might not.  We'll see.

IT doesn't matter

I stepped into the ring in this week's column to comment on Nicholas Carr's Harvard Business Review essay: "IT Doesn't Matter." [available here for $7 from Amazon].    As I said in my column, this is must-read information not just for CTOs and CIOs, but for anyone working in IT.  Carr catalogs many of the responses to his piece in the media and elsewhere on his web site.

While I agree that what Carr defines as IT ("the technologies used for processing, storing, and transporting information in digital form") is a commodity, I think his definition is too narrow and views IT within a sterile vacuum.  It's still not easy to put it all together and make it work because the successful assembly of IT "commodity inputs" is not a commodity itself.  Think of IT like the food that comes into a restaurant -- yes, the meat and vegetables most restaurants use are commodities that anyone can buy themselves, but what the restaurant does with the food is what really matters.