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Filtering by Category: "feed reading"

Bloglines announces intention to support APML

Added on by Chris Saad.
Bloglines has announced support for OpenID and an intention to support oAuth and APML.

This is great news for users who want to take control of their Attention Profiles. We expect this to be the first of a number of announcements from larger players over the winter.

Thanks to Eric Engleman (New GM at Bloglines) for his support of open standards and user rights - he is really shaking things up over at Bloglines in the best way possible. Having spoken to Eric myself, it is clear that he has a keen understanding of the issues and is dedicated to creating an improved feed reading experience while giving users ownership of their own metadata.

You can read more on the Bloglines Blog. You can also implement your own APML support with just a few lines of code using Engagd.

Thanks must also go to Chris Pirillo for making the introductions.

You can read further coverage over on Read/Write Web where Marshall has done his usual thorough and eloquent analysis.

Further Coverage:

Ross Dawson from Future Exploration Network has written a very thoughtful piece about the growing APML movement and its implications for user control and advertising.

Ian Forrester from BBC has covered the announcement.

Elias Bizannes from PWC has also chimed in.

Daniela from Dow Jones has written a post. She may consider moving back to Bloglines now!

Duncan Riley over at Techcrunch has picked up the news also.

AOL will update their feed reader soon

Added on by Chris Saad.
Techcrunch reports that AOL will be upgrading their feed reader with new AJAX tricks and better OPML support. Check out the report on Techcrunch.

Also Nick of Feeddemon has released version 2.5 of his great desktop feed reader including item sharing through News Bins and a great popular topics feature.

It's more than redundant to say now, but it's clear that aggregation (in all forms) is here to stay and will be one of the primary ways people recieve and manage their information. From the mainstream AOL offerings to the power-user ready Feeddemon.

The next frontier, of course, is adding in Personal Relevancy.

FeedBurner Feed Reading Stats

Added on by Chris Saad.
The Moral of feedburner's latest round of stats for me is this:
  1. If you want to get lots of subscribers - get on some default fead reader lists so that your feed is bundled with all new accounts.
  2. Google Reader and Bloglines are winning in the feed reading space
  3. There is a huge difference between having subscribers and having (Feedburner's definition of) engagement with your audience.
  4. Does someone want to bundle our feed or the Media 2.0 Workgroup feed? :)

I think there is a another way to find your audience.

My Media Consumption Diet

Added on by Chris Saad.
Jeremiah has started this meme - I follow in his footsteps!

Here is my Media Consumption Diet (most used at top, least used at bottom).


Web: I get most of my web content via RSS. I read my favorite authors and track my information junkie world via FeedDemon because I am one of those people who has to read every single item.

I also (of course) run Touchstone so that I can get an ongoing view of my news while I work. Touchstone also, by virtue of it's "Automatically Find Information For Me" feature regularly finds information first before any of my trusted authors repeat it in the echo-chamber.

Any other web-browsing happens from recommended links from friends. I occasionally check Techmeme for 'what's popular right now'.

I subscribe to 176 Sources directly + The rest of the entire feed universe via Touchstone.

I also get a lot of mainstream news from Newsmap - I have it as an Active Desktop Component on my second minitor - it is amazing.

TV: I am as big a TV junkie as I am a Web/RSS Junkie. I watch too many shows every week (including Daily Show, Colbert Report, Lost, Battlestar Gallactica, Boston Legal and others). I get most of my shows online. The only TV I watch that comes from my cable or over the air is CNN (for real news and weather!!), Fox News for excitement and propaganda and BBC for a more international perspective. I avoid Australian news because it is rarely interesting or significant.

I watch my downloaded TV via Windows Media Center on a TV.

Movies: I used to watch a lot more movies than I do now. With all my TV consumption I have found that my attention span has been reduced to 41 minutes (the time it takes to watch a typical TV show without the ads). I find it mildy disturbing that I get so restless at the 41 minute mark. I often think to myself "A TV episode would be over by now and probably told a more compelling story".

That being said though, I have a long and growing list of landmark movies in my life that I try to convince everyone I meet to watch. I love movies. I get most of my movies from the theatre - some on DVD to play catchup or for what I call "DVD Movies" - movies not worth the cinema experience.

Update Here: Jeremiah asked me to clarify if my TV/Movies were watched 'On Demand' (or as some might call 'Time Shifted'). The answer is 99% yes. I rarely wait for the networks to tell me what to watch and when. In fact, living in Australia - if I did that, I'd never see anything because they would pick up the show 2 seasons late and cancel it after 5 episodes.

Communication: I access my email from either my PC, Tablet or Laptop. I am addicted to my email. I used to route my Gmail through Outlook, but my Outlook 2007 Beta expired and I have been too lazy to re-install it. The result has been amazing. Gmail + Online Office style apps have kept me going for a month now! When I am out I check my Gmail via my i-Mate JasJam Pda/Phone over Telstra Next-G.

I also sit on Skype and MSN/AIM all day (via Trillian). 99% of my communication is done via Skype chats or calls (even to land-lines from skype in and out).

Twitter is a bit of fun also. I started a MySpace account to see how it worked and now people keep adding me as friends. I don't like using it though (maybe that's understating it a little).

Music: I listen to my MP3s mainly. Sometimes when I remember I go to Last.fm. I love music but lately I have not put much emphasis on it.

Magazines: I used to read Time and a few others. But they are always 2 months behind on news. Like Jeremiah I think it's helpful to know when stuff has hit the mainstream but... latley I don't care.

Yes... I am an information addict.

What’s your Media Consumption Diet?
I tag Marjolein, John Tropea, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Chris Messina, Marty Wells and also my contacts at the Media 2.0 workgroup to share how they get their information. Or if you don’t have a blog, leave a comment to your media consumption diet.

Techcrunch subscriber stats - This post can wait until Wednesday

Added on by Chris Saad.
We have all seen this post 'A peek inside Techcrunch's 100k' which shows Michael Arrington's meteoric rise from fledgling blog to blogging superstar.




It's old news.

But something struck me as I was looking at our own subscriber history today. We have the same up and down pattern every week that Techcrunch does. And we are nowhere near as cool as them.

The reason is obvious. Most people turn off their work PCs during the weekend causing the subscriber count to drop and most people turn on their feed reader on Wednesday - literally hump day for feed subscribers - when they are bored and feel like catching up.

So what does that mean? It means that feed reading is (at least for a noticeably large group of people) a 'sometimes' activity. It's an activity that we dedicate time to. It's like we go off to read a newspaper - we dedicate a block of time to 'reading the news'. And there are times when we stop reading the news and turn off the PC or the feed reader - or at the very least minimize it away and stop paying attention.

So what about those other times when something happens that we need to know. An event in a new fangled web-based app...

  • You have a reminder from Google Calendar - wake up!
  • Come and pick up that file in that workspace your working on in sharepoint
  • You have a friend request from MySpace
  • Your industry just had a major shakeup
  • Your employer just filed for bankruptcy
  • Your competitor just changed the game on you
  • A customer just said something negative about your company
  • Your daughter just posted a picture of her new child on Flickr.

These are important "right now" events.

We need a feed reader that can stay 'on' without being 'in the way'. Reading feeds does not need to be like reading a newspaper - it can be a filtered and managed experience so you can stay informed while you're being productive.

That's the dream of Touchstone.