If you follow me on Twitter, you noticed that I recently bought a home and that I was confused about the date of BlogIndiana. I’m happy to say that our move-in date and the blog conference are on separate weekends, so now you don’t have to help me move (you were planning on it right?). You can go to BlogIndiana at the IUPUI Campus Center on August 16th and 17th.
It’s been a hot debate over what to include in your blog’s RSS recently. I say you should include more than blog posts in your RSS feed IF (and this is a big if) you can editorialize what goes in. The following, explains how to change which tweets from Twitter get posted to your blog and into your RSS feed.
If you use Alex King’s Twitter Tools (version: 1.1b1), you will want to make the following two changes to his code. The first one will make your tweet-post URLs and title more beautiful and SEO friendly by not splitting words at the end. The second one will remove reply tweets (’@username’) from becoming posts in your blog, so that half-conversations do not get recorded. (more…)
bbPress is still under version 1.0 (as of this writing, it’s at 0.8.3.1). You might think forums are dead, why not just Tweet away on a closed group channel or such. Although not the latest thing, forums are foundational. They are the web version of newsgroups and essential for large groups of people. As a lover of WordPress, I can’t wait to see bbPress develop and mature. Looks like others can’t either: Automattic raised $29.5 million in their Series B round of funding.
The advertising agency that I work for was profiled in the Indianapolis Business Journal this month. Miles Brinson Brown: Small agency still thinks big, size gives ad firm advantage when it comes to being flexible
I use a Mac for 8 hours everyday at work and they have definitely grown on me. Except for the simplicity of Finder (all 3 viewing modes are awful because they are not easily navigated by the keyboard) and lack of 10 million free programs that you can get off the net to run on Windows–I’d say I like it more (that’s a big step, btw).
So I’m in the market for a new PC and I actually thought about an Apple, but once I realized the options (or lack of), I didn’t look back and bought parts for a PC.
There are only 3 models of Mac: Mini ($500+), iMac ($1500+), MacPro($2500+). I am a media designer, and I will need 1GB+ to run Photoshop, Flash, and Illustrator at the same time. The only one that can do that (that also doesn’t require buying a monitor) is the MacPro which costs five times as much as I’m making my new PC for. I’m only buying a motherboard, 2GB of memory, a mATX case/power supply, and an AM2 processor for $500 from Newegg.com, since I already have hard disks and 2 DVD drives and an LCD monitor.
I know that building a PC from scratch is nothing compared to listening to the OS-X installation background music 
, but I’m sure I could get a Dell with enough processing power and upgrade the memory for $150. And anyway why would I need 4 Xeon processors (Mac Pro) if I’m not editing video? My work’s dual G5’s are fine. I think Apple just wants a pretty profit margin for their top of line system–one that I’m not willing to fill with my money.
Sorry, Steve, you need more options.
–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com
This is a Fast Company article about managing Generation Y/Millennials. I thought it was humorous, but only because much of it is true.
FC: Scenes from the Culture Clash
Excerpt:
“They are the traumatized bosses, as well as the 47-year-old woman from HR who has been hassled time and again by her youngest workers and their parents.”
–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com
This Saturday, I realized that sometimes I’d rather data mine about my favorite movies. You’d think that NetFlix and Blockbuster would enable movie blogging–similar to Rhapsody’s send to blog. I know that feature films aren’t constantly playing in the background, nor are they 2:46 min long, but blockbuster doesn’t even do RSS–which is why NetFlix is so much cooler.
I’m still not sure why people STILL go to movie rental stores and pay $4 per movie. Maybe it’s because they are impulsive. Maybe it’s because they’ve only bought books online from Amazon.
If you are listening, NetFlix make one’s RSS of their Queue public–optionally, of course. Why? Because I ONLY watch cool movies.
Tonight’s readings/watching:
Security Now! 24: Questions and Answers
I, Cringely – Google’s Grand Plan to Take Over TV Advertising
I, Cringely – How Pay-Per-Click Is Killing the Traditional Publishing Industry (death to magazines by mail!)
I, Cringely – The Falafel Connection (NSA wiretaps explained–it’s based on data mining)
After Words: Ambassador L. Paul Bremer interviewed by James Hoagland
Afternote: I had to reinstall Apple Motion 2.0 last week in order to get it to work. Readers, if you are keeping track, that’s the third time in two months.
–Stephen M. James
www.smjdesign.com