Cutting Commentary, The Blog of Strokes of Genius Painting Ottawa (Formerly SmithereensBlog)

Incommunicado

2008-08-25T15:30:00.003-04:00

I wanted to post a brief note just to let you all know that no horrible fate has come upon me. Unless of course by "horrible fate" you mean scheduling a move in the same week as one leaves for a Family Reunion 12 hours away. In which case, yes, this horrible fate has come upon me.

And now I will be in New Brunswick and incommunicado at a private camp for the next week, enjoying time with family and friends, so it will still be quiet round these parts for the next bit. The good news is, I checked it out and it appears that the world and the internet will continue to go on in my absence. Close call.

When I'm back next week, I promise to serve up some fresh content for you to make up for the past two weeks of relative stillness here. Until then.

15 Signs That You're A Blogging Addict and 7 Things You Can Do About It [A Guest Post by Jonathan Crossfield]

2008-08-19T21:42:00.024-04:00

It's been a been quiet around these parts this past week, I know, and I'm sorry. I am currently in the midst of packing up everything I own because I am moving this month, so the web has taken a bit of a back seat. On top of this, I have been toiling away on some exciting projects for my clients that are keeping me very busy, too.

I do have a great post coming up for you tomorrow on Posting Frequency (irony, how I love thee), but in the meantime, please enjoy this guest article by my friend Jonathan Crossfield, from the great blog CopyWrite. This is the very first guest post I have hosted on Smithereens, and I do believe that choosing these carefully is important, because it's your reputation on the line as a blogger. But I couldn't imagine anyone I would more readily entrust my blog to than Jonathan. So please make him feel welcome - enjoy this post and leave a comment, and be sure to visit his site as well, it's chock full of great stuff!

-Daniel

photo "Akron 293 AA Meeting" by watz on flickr, used under CC.

Blogaholics Anonymous

The room is stuffy. Dust floats in the narrow beams of light filtering through the broken Venetian blinds. In the centre of the room is a circle of old, metal folding-chairs.

Gradually, people arrive, nervously finding a seat. One decides to pass the time by Tweeting a message from his phone, until the accusing gaze of his peers forces him to switch it off. Another nervously slides a laptop bag under his seat, as if to to conceal it from the others. Even if he tried to explain that he needed to complete those spreadsheets for tomorrow’s meeting, no one would believe him. Best to hide it.

The last person arrives late, blaming it on her sponsor for confiscating her PDA last night. There are mumbled greetings and uncomfortable looks. A voice asks who wants to go first. The mumbling stops. After an awkward pause, I slowly get to my feet, my eyes never once straying from my shoes.

"My name is Kimota..."

“No avatars or screen names please.” The voice came from the group leader, sitting to my left. I cough nervously and nod, ashamed by such an obvious mistake.

“My name is Jonathan Crossfield. And I...I’m a… blogoholic.”

The First Step is Admitting You Have a Problem

If you’re concerned about blog addiction, you’ve come to the right place. We’ve seen the damage blogging can do to people’s lives. But it is common for people to be completely unaware of their own addiction, missing the signs that indicate intervention may be necessary.

The following list of questions relate to 15 common symptoms of blogging addiction. If you answer ‘yes’ to more than 50% of these queries, there is a folding metal chair here in the circle for you.

Do you become agitated if it has been more than 48 hours since your last blog post – even if you have nothing to blog about?
Do you check your blog traffic stats more than once a day... even though your stats aren't much to look at?
Do you check your Alexa rank regularly...even though no one trusts Alexa?
Have you ever done a vanity search to see what people are saying about you and your blog?
Have you ever boasted to family members or complete strangers about how you’ve made it to the top 100,000 blogs in the world on Technorati... even though they have no idea what Technorati is?
Have you ever missed an opportunity for...uh... meaningful personal contact because you wanted to finish a blog post first?
Are you unable to resist dropping text links to your blogs into everything you do online?
Do you carry a PDA, laptop or other digital device around with you wherever you go for blogging on the move?
Have you treated arguments over whether Wordpress is better than Movable Type or Blogger more seriously than a general election for the ruler of your country?
Have you ever signed an online petition arguing for the reinstatement of Capital Punishment for comment spammers?
Do you find yourself choosing activities – such as movies, books or days out - based on whether they may inspire blog posts?
Do you know more about fellow bloggers who live half a world away than you do about your next door neighbours? Or some family members? (If yes, the latter counts for two.)
Do you get frustrated when someone you’re talking to doesn’t know what a Tweet is? Or an RSS feed? Or a widget? What is wrong with these people?
Does your ideal weekend involve hacking the code in your template, missing a bracket and then spending the next twelve hours finding your catastrophic error?
Did you spend more time updating and designing the header for your blog than you did repainting your kitchen?

These are just some of the major symptoms that addicted bloggers can display. Left unchecked, a serious blog addiction can affect relationships, destroy social skills and reduce mental capacity to the point that discussions over whether Plurk is better than Twitter seem relevant and interesting to you. (This is a late-stage addiction symptom.)

But luckily, there are some things you can do to make sure you don't fall prey to the medium's heavy grip.

Prevention is Better than Cure

Don’t let your blogging get out of hand. If you are worried about developing a blog addiction, here are some precautions you can take now to avoid disaster later.

Once per day, stick your head out of the window. That weird smell is what is known in technical circles as ‘fresh air’. Inhale.
Proactively dump the girlfriend or boyfriend. That way you have no relationship to destroy and you’ll never miss an opportunity for blogging due to an opportunity for meaningful personal contact.
Avoid having to repeatedly tell people about your Alexa and Technorati rankings by buying tee shirts prominently featuring your blog ranks. Of course, you may need to buy a new t-shirt every few weeks, and the Technorati one may only display the rank one day per week if you're lucky, but at least it will be much easier to keep your circle of family and friends informed.
On second thought, ridding yourself of family and friends may be more cost-effective and efficient.
Blogging on the move is great and PDAs and laptops make it so easy. But since doing so will help others recognise and criticize you for being compulsive blogger, it is probably best to just to stay indoors.
Ask your neighbours if they are bloggers. If so, you may be able to befriend them online instead without feeling overly awkward AND nurture a sense of commnunity within your neighbourhood.
Kill two birds with one stone - model your kitchen after your blog header.

Blogging may be addictive. But if you follow these simple pieces of advice, you may just avoid its sticky grasp. And next time you're about to lecture your grandmother for her ignorance of Twitter, take a deep breath and remember: there's always an open chair here for you.

Are you a blogoholic? Reach out to us in the comments. We're here to help.

Introducing Streamulo.us: The Answer To Your Aggregation Frustration

2008-08-05T15:43:00.006-04:00

For the longest time, we technophiles had a nagging problem. You see, we were creating all this content and interacting with others on countless social networks across the web every day, but as more and more must-join networks cropped up and unending avalanches of friend invites poured in, it all became increasingly difficult to maintain...

Then came our aggregation salvation (or so we thought): FriendFeed.

With much fanfare, the brainchild of some former-Googlers arrived on the scene and promised to make sense of all that scattered social media information, aggregating into one, easy-to-follow interface. Phew, what a relief.

But, alas, we all know that when it comes to web 2.0, solutions are just invitations for new problems, and this scenario was no different than the rest.

For just as the early adopters had started to get their FriendFeed on with a vengeance, out of the cracks came countless new startups vying to be the bigger, better social aggregator.

Second Brain. Swurl. Profilactic. iminta. Socialthing!. The list, unbelievably, goes on and on. And then, to make matters worse, other established web services like MyBlogLog, blogcatalog, Facebook and Plaxo started making "lifestreaming" a core part of their own offerings, too.

Before we knew it, we had effectively moved from a web 2.0 landscape of social media overload into an era of social media aggregation overload. So much for technological progress.

But hey, don't give up hope, for I have a solution.

That's right, with this post, it is my great pleasure to present to you a project I have been slaving away at, which will solve this exact problem.

This service is admittedly still far from market-ready, but if Cuil has taught us anything, it's that being market-ready is extremely over-rated. And so, in true web 2.0 fashion, I'm excited to launch my startup prematurely so that you, the user can ~~risk all your data~~ help me iron out the wrinkles and improve the service prior to the "real" launch.

So, without further ado I give you the answer to your aggregation frustration: Streamulo.us.

What is Streamulo.us?

Quite simply put, Streamulo.us, which is currently in private pre-alpha (omega?) testing, is the aggregator for all your aggregators. It is the lifestream for your lifestreams. It's the...ok, ok, you get it. It's pretty darn amazing.

Using this wunder-app, it will only take you 5 minutes to pop in your credentials on an exhaustive list of 15 aggregators, and presto- all your aggregations ~~are belong to us~~ will be automatically fed into your Streamulo.us stream!

With the advent of Streamulo.us, you will never again have to visit 15 sites in order to not have to visit 100 sites!

Still not convinced? Well then check out my '3 Ways Streamulo.us Will Probably Change The World.'

1) You'll Never Visit Another Aggregation Site Again

Have you ever seen a Twitter Tweet talking about some Shiny new Tech object that promises to help you manage your social network clutter, only to follow the link and realize that, oops, you already signed up for that thing the last time Rubel Tweeted it.. and you've never been back?

I know I have.

And clearly, if we can't even keep track of our keeping-track-of-stuff apps, something is amiss.

What we need, obviously, is another app. A better one. To keep track of the keeping-track apps. What we need... is Streamulo.us.

On Streamulo.us, all the activity of all your friends from every aggregation service that has ever been launched (and 2 that don't even exist yet) will be fed directly into your personal stream! No more logging into dozens of services. No more hassle.

2) You Can Use Steamulo.us as Your Web Megaphone, Too

But Streamulo.us won't just be useful for managing all your aggregation streams. It will also be an excellent way to broadcast yourself to the masses. Let me explain with an illustration.

Have you ever felt like no one listens to you on social media networks?

Come on, you know what I mean. You post a witty, insightful Tweet on Twitter, and sit back with a sheepish grin, waiting to see the flood of @-replies praising you for your mastery of the delicate balancing act that is mixing humour and intellect.

Only, no replies are forthcoming.

It's like that old proverb: 'If you send a Tweet on Twitter, and nobody is around to care, does it still make that annoying sound in Twhirl?'

Think about it.

Anyway the point is, many of us often feel like no one listens when we are active on social media. But luckily, Streamulo.us can help!

That's because, with its super-aggregation powers, Streamulo.us can also be an awesome amplifier for your online voice. If you take full advantage of its aggregator-compatibility, for example, you can force a single Tweet to appear in your friends' stream up to 15 times!

Ignore that, Scoble!

Just take a look at the screenshot below to see this awesome broadcasting overkill in action (Click here for a bigger version):

When it comes to blatant self-promotion, it doesn't get any better than this.

3) Follow Your Favourites Closely With Our Patented "Stalker Streams"

Finally, Streamulo.us will be different in one other important way: we'll have Stalker Streams.

This feature is still under development, and will not be included in the alpha release because I am still ironing out the "legal wrinkles." And I can't provide screenshots at this time for the same reason, but I still want to give you a taste of what's to come because it's so ~~creepy~~ awesome.

The Stalker Stream will be a one-of-a-kind feature that allows you to track your favourite online friends in very fine detail.

Using patented technology that ~~hijacks~~ borrows your identification information for other aggregation networks like those I listed earlier, and ~~exploits~~ makes use of weaknesses in their respective APIs, Streamulo.us will be able to tell you everything your favourite friends have been up to, whether they want you to know or not, in one quick glance.

The level of trivial detail in this Stream will be much greater than in the regular Streams and you will be able to click on each item to dig down further if you want (and you know you do.)

Frankly, this incredible feature is best demonstrated with an example, so just to give you an idea of what to expect, here is a plain text rendering of my own Stalker Stream of Louis Gray:

Louis Gray has Logged In on Blogger.com
Louis Gray has Saved A Draft on Blogger.com ["How to Write Blog Posts Without Getting Distracted by Social Media"]
Louis Gray has Logged In on Friendfeed
Louis Gray has Clicked Ten [10] Links on FriendFeed
Louis Gray has Liked Six [6] Items on FriendFeed
Louis Gray has Commented On Two [2] Items on Friendfeed
Louis Gray has Retrieved a Saved Draft on Blogger.com
Louis Gray has Saved A Draft on Blogger.com ["How to Write Blog Posts Without Getting Distracted by Social Media"]
Louis Gray has Commented On One [1] Items on Friendfeed...

You get the idea. Needless to say, the potential for snooping on your soc-med pals will be truly limitless using this feature. Stay tuned.

So, To Sum It All Up:

Streamulo.us is the future of tracking social media-tracking media, socially.

Streamulo.us is the shiniest, newest startup to launch this week.

Streamulo.us is the Answer to Your Aggregation Frustration.

So what are you waiting for? Why not give it a spin? Sign up for the closed pre-Alpha here now, and be sure and let me know what you think in the comments!

The Return of Wordplay Wednesdays: Deconstructing the Witty Tee

2008-07-30T16:17:00.008-04:00

I know, I know, you all probably thought Wordplay Wednesday was dead and gone, a relic of a bygone era (last month.) But alas, if you did, you were wrong.

For this Wednesday, our date with clever diction will be kept!

Well, on this Welcome-back Wordplay Wednesday, I thought it would be fun to highlight a common canvas of cleverness: The Witty Tee. (Or if you prefer, Wit-Tee-Shirt works, too.)

Plenty of online shops have popped up in recent years to cater to our inherent desire to wear t-shirts that make people think we think we're funny. But who has time to go through all those designs and find the best, most punny shirts?

Well, luckily for you, apparently I do.

That's right, just for you, I've scoured through some of the most popular tee-shirt shops online, looking for designs that in some way used wordplay to elicit the requisite chuckles (or groans.) In the interest of keeping it G-rated, I also filtered out quite a few models (including a few entire sites that were decidedly NSFW.)

The fruits of my labour? They're all organized nice-like in the slideshow below, complete with my own not-nearly-as-funny-as-the-shirt commentary. Enjoy!

[By the way, if you're reading this in a feed reader, you'll most likely have to click through to the site to see the slideshow. Sorry! But it'll be worth it, I promise.]

[All the shirts in this show can be bought from Busted Tees (the vast majority), Threadless and CafePress. None of the above are affiliate links. The show itself was made using the very cool Slide.com.]

Also, Jon Jackson left a comment below with a link to his own little t-shirt boutique called Crossty.com.

There are some excellent punny shirts on his site, so check it out! Twitter fans might also like this one.

So, dear readers, what did you think? Good ones or groaners? Let us know in the comments.

Or do you have a favourite funny tee shirt that I didn't come across? If so, drop a link in the comments and let us join in on the fun!

Oh and here's another fun game we can play, as well: If you were going to design your own hilarious tee, what would it say?

I would probably go with: "Treehuggers are Sappy." (Busted Tees, call me.)

Ok, your turn.

---

UPDATE JUL 31/08:

I've been testing out Plurk today and so far, the discussion has been really lively. There have been some great witty tee shirt suggestions from fellow plurkers on the threads about this post over there, too. You can check them out here and here.

The Top 10 Features Twitter Should Have, But Doesn't (No, "Uptime" Isn't On The List)

2008-07-23T14:44:00.020-04:00

Twitter is one of those services that seems kind of stupid until you try it, and then you can't get enough of it. It's kind of like meth in that regard. Ok, bad metaphor. But anyway, the point is most people (my former self included) just don't get Twitter until they give it a whirl (Twhirl?) Then, they're hooked.

Something about the seamless merger of instant(ish) messaging, link-sharing, micro-blogging and forum posting just keeps users coming back time and time again, even when they were seeing more of the Fail Whale than the Twitter birdies.

Twitter has been a textbook example of the strength of community ties and the importance of being first-to-market. Even though they were (and to a lesser extent, still are) plagued by embarrassing downtime issues, and even though early adopters and tech A-listers talked up a storm about leaving Twitterland for Friendfeed or Plurk or Jaiku or Las Vegas, in the end they all came back when Twitter got its act together. The bottom line is this: nobody wants to move if they can't take their community with them.

And besides, those of us who use Twitter on a regular basis, well, we just like it, ok?

But hey, that doesn't mean we don't have our gripes.

Over the past month, I've been using the service on a nearly daily basis, and I've been compiling a wish-list of features I think should be available on Twitter, but for whatever reason, aren't. Now that Twitter seems to have, for the most part, gotten its Fail Whal-itis under control, went on a little shopping spree, and has even been trying out a new look, I thought the team might be looking for some other ways to spend whatever's left of that 15 million dollar seed injection.

And so, without further ado, here they are The Top Ten Features Twitter Should Have, But Doesn't (According to Me.)

1) Let Me Reply to a DM From Email (Like You Can From Text)

Ok, this feature won't change the world, but it sure would be nice. If someone DM's me and I have Twitter set up to forward DMs to my cell via SMS, when I reply to the text and include "d TheTweepWhoWroteMe...blah blah blah", it automatically delivers a reply via DM. Smart. Intuitive.

But when I receive a DM by email on the other hand (which is usually the case), I can't count the times that I've instinctively clicked Gmail's Reply button, only to remember belatedly that...oh right, you can't do that.

Instead, you have to fire up your Twitter client of choice, or go to the Twitter site, to respond to that message.

It should be easier: You should be able to hit reply, type the same "d Username" string that you would use in an SMS, and then type your message. Press send, and Twitter would route it to the right person. Presto. Make it so.

2) Stop Splitting @-'ems

Bad puns aside, the way Twitter treats @ Replies needs a serious overhaul. Perhaps you didn't know this, but when you publish a Tweet that begins "@smithereensblog...", it will show up in my Replies tab, even if I don't follow you.

Makes sense, right? Otherwise you could never send a message to the A-listers who don't follow anyone back, or just to someone you've come across in your stream, but hasn't yet followed you.

But if you don't put the @ at the beginning of your Tweet and instead say something like: "Thanks a lot for being such a great blogger, @smithereensblog", it won't be added to my Replies tab and I may never receive your unabashed flattery. (Unless of course I manually search for "@smithereensblog" on Twitter Search, the former Summize, but I shouldn't have to do that.)

Scratching your head? Well that makes two of us.

Twitter, an @ should be an @, should be an @.

Whether I am talking to someone or about them, it really shouldn't matter. If I'm taking up the precious characters specifically to @ them, chances are I want them to see my Tweet. And if I want to talk about someone behind their back without them knowing, I could always drop the @. I'm sneaky like that.

3) AJAX Up My Twitter, Please

Ok, so sometimes, I forget who people are, even when I follow them. I know, it's horrible. But because of this, if someone I don't recognize right away says something profound or funny or interesting (or sometimes all three), now I have to click all the way through to their profile just to find out who they are.

Why not use some fancy AJAX to provide an unobtrusive popup with the Tweep's basic info: name, location, bio? I know this stuff is already pulled away by your API anyway, because sites like MyTweeple conveniently present contacts alongside these tidbits. So why not make better use of this info yourself, Twitter?

Oh, but one big caveat (and please take note, Friendfeed), if you do implement something along these lines, please make the popups appear on click, not on hover. There is nothing more annoying than scrolling over a page and suddenly being attacked by popups you didn't know you asked for.

(Yes, I know some of the Apture links on this blog do the same thing, and as much as I like them, I may be removing the plugin for that reason alone.)

Oh and hey Twitter, if you're going to be AJAXifying the site anyway, how about a Gmail-esque auto-refresh function? (One that doesn't require a Greasemonkey Extension, that is.) And if you're feeling extra generous, everyone loves that never-ending-page trick, too...

To demonstrate the benefit of adding these features, I've created a helpful illustration for you:

Disclaimer: I'm not a coder and don't claim to be one, so maybe I sound like an idiot suggesting that a Ruby-on-Rails app should include AJAX. Who knows. But I'm sure there must be some way to at least do things like hovering popups in Rails. There must be. Right?

4) Let Me Reply to Tweets From Profile Pages, and DM Friends From the Main Page

I admit it, I have favourite Tweeple. These are the people that publish such interesting Tweets that I will often click through to their profiles to see what I've missed while I was away.

And nothing annoys me more than when I come across a particularly insightful Tweet, and want to send a reply...but can't. At least, not from the profile page.

The only way to do so is to go back to the main Twitter page and manually type "@WhoeverItWas" and then send my reply. And when you do that, it messes up Twitter's Reply-Threading.

(Without getting into too much technical detail, when you click the Reply button on a normal tweet in your stream, your new Tweet gets linked to the first one, so that when other people click the "in reply to" link on your Tweet, they will be directed to the initial comment... which make it easier for people trying to eavesdrop, I mean, join your conversation. Got it? Well anyway, if you just type "@Whoever", you don't get this linkage... Hm. Well, you never know, that might have been clear to someone.)

In any case, the bottom line is that I can Reply to Tweets from TweetDeck or Twhirl or myriad other Twitter Clients. I can reply to Tweets from inside Friendfeed or from a Summize (now Twitter Search) query. I can even Tweet in reply to a blog post using TwitThis. But I can't Reply to a Tweet from that person's profile page WITHIN Twitter itself? That's just plain dumb.

And here is an issue that is sort of the opposite of this last one: On a Twitter Profile Page, you can't Publicly Reply to someone's Tweets (see above), but you can send them a private Direct Message using the Send Message To link.

But on the main Twitter page, where you can Reply to any Tweet that appears in your stream from any of your friends... you can't send a Reply AS a Direct Message, unless you click through to their profile first.

Again, this just doesn't make a lot of sense from a usability standpoint. If I see a Tweet from someone who follows me, and I want to reply to it, but not publicly, it should be just as easy to send that message privately. It's not.

5) Let Me Correct My Mistakes

Everybody makes mistakes. That much we can agree on. But if that's the case, why do we insist on developing messaging platforms that provide no way to repair damaged comments?

When email was developed, for example, the ability to edit one's message once one has clicked the send button wasn't built in. Years later, companies are being funded to invent email that allows users to recall messages. (Sadly, it's too late to ever catch on widely, in my opinion.)

But Twitter- you are the pioneer when it comes to microblogging and nano-messaging. This is your platform, you can do with it what you like and dare to innovate. Why not break the old mould and allow us to edit Tweets after they're sent? Even if it's a timed feature, similar to the one used by Digg for comments or Mixx for submissions and comments.

The reality is that we all make typos and say things we didn't mean to sometimes. If there is no insurmountable technological barrier (there may be), why not allow us to fix those embarrassing muckups without having to simply delete-and-retweet?

Take a chance, Twitter: become the first messaging medium that allows us to have second thoughts.

6) If You Can't Stay Live, Well, You Could Always Just Pretend

As I mentioned above, Twitter has mostly gotten its downtime issues under control. Mostly. But we do still get to see our favourite Whale from time to time. Sometimes it's plain old overloaded servers. Sometimes it's the absurd decision to run maintenance in the middle of a major tech conference. Regardless, the point is that there are still times when Twitter Addicts are frantically refreshing their browsers, hoping to get their fix.

Well, Twitter, if you can't stay up all the time, why not offer your users a safety net? A backup?

There is already a service called Twiddict that lets us Tweet to our heart's content when Twitter is ailing: it just sucks in your garble and spits it out at Twitter when it decides to come back online. Don't have time to implement the same features natively? Well hey, if you can't innovate, integrate. That tact worked with Summize, didn't it?

Ideally though, I'd like to see an even more comprehensive solution, something like Google Gears integration.

Imagine being able to continue reading and replying to Tweets long after Moby Dick rears his ugly head. No, you wouldn't be getting new Tweets, but at least with a Gears-Enabled Twitter interface, you could continue Tweeting until you ran out of content to respond to.

And who knows, by the time you've worked your way through all that material, Twitter just might be up again.

7) Make Your FriendList Portable Already

For all the talk of portable social network data in the past six months, you wouldn't think it would still be such a chore to re-add your friends to each new social network you join.

But alas, not much has changed. If I have 200 followers on Twitter, and then join FriendFeed, it sure would be nice to have someway to automatically follow all the people I know I like already. Instead, I have to manually go through and add them one-by-one. (Which explains why I follow almost 250 people on Twitter, and only 50 on FF.)

Now if you're on a Windows box, you're lucky: This guy has hacked together an app that will import all your Tweeps into FriendFeed. But if you're on a Mac (like yours truly) or Linux, no such luck.

Twitter has shown promising signs of openness with their recent decision to open their XMPP firehose data to Gnip, so that third party apps won't have to ping Twitter directly every time they want to grab Tweets, they can just slurp them from the Gnip stream. Now I'd like to see them take the next step and make our friendlist portable too.

Wether this is an extension of Google's interesting Social Graph project, or an in-house solution, or even just a data-sharing partnership with FriendFeed for starters, I don't care. Just make it happen and stop holding my friendlist hostage, capish?

8) Provide Bulk Follower Management Tools In-House

This one's easy. If it weren't for services like Twitter Karma and MyTweeple, trying to figure out who follows you and who doesn't would be an extremely arduous process. For a service that revolves around social interaction, why do you make it so difficult just to keep track of reciprocating follows?

As I said above, don't reinvent the wheel if you don't have to. If it would take too many resources to make follower-management somewhat usable on Twitter, then just figure out a way to integrate one of the great services that already provide the service. But as it is, the two I've listed here only work sporadically, often giving API Rate Limit Exceeded error messages if you use a Twitter client at the same time. Sorry, that's really annoying.

UPDATE: Dozens of people have been adding me on Digg today, thanks to Problogger's great Social Media Love-In project, and as a result, I've realized something else Twitter is lacking: a user-friendly "New friends" notification.

On Digg, even if I miss a few email notifications, I know I can log in to my account and they will all be there in one place under New Friends (there's even an unmissable flag at the top of the screen when you log in alerting you of this fact.)

On Twitter, if someone follows you and you miss the email (or it just never comes, as has often been the case), you may not know about your new friend until much, much later when you see them pop up in your bulk manager of choice. So while you're at it, Twitter, maybe take a page out of the Digg book on this one too.

9) Thread My Tweets, Please

This one is a stretch, I'll admit, and something I unfortunately don't see happening for quite some time, given the architecture overhaul it would likely require. But boy, would it ever be nice to see conversation threading in Twitter!

New-kid-on-the-block Plurk has it. But unfortunately Plurk also comes with another "feature" I'm not very fond of: an unusable interface. (Oh I'm only poking fun, Plurk fans, don't worry. But seriously, I do find the timeline view confusing. Must be my lack of spacial intelligence.) Anyway, I digress, but the point is, one of the most often-praised features of Plurk (as well as other services like FriendFeed) is the threading of conversations.

After all, it just makes sense to be able to view conversations as, well, conversations. The focus on conversations, rather than disjointed messages, is one of the things that has made Gmail so popular, for example.

But currently, trying to follow a back-and-forth exchange on Twitter is a bit like a scavenger hunt, only often without the excitement of finding the treasure at the end.

First, you might read an intriguing comment from one of your followers, directed at another Twitterer. Wondering what prompted the response, you click the In Reply To link, and it brings you to that other person's comment, but of course, that wasn't the main comment. So then you click the In Reply To Link again on that Tweet, and it brings you to yet another witty retort, but alas... still not the original. Finally, you click on the In Reply To Link one last time, only to find that the reply-provoking comment must have come from @chrisgarrett, except when they decided to reply to him, they didn't use the Reply link in Twitter but rather manually typed "@chrisgarrett", thus breaking the threading (See my attempted explanation of this problem under number Feature Request 4.) So after all this clicking, all you have to show for it is a completely unrelated Tweet from Chris displayed on your screen, and a defecit of 3 minutes of life you'll never get back.

Bottom line: Every tweet should have a Tweet-page, just like every Plurk has a Plurk-page. But instead of the Tweet-page being a largely useless floating message on whatever beautiful background that particular Tweep has chosen, why not show the message and any replies that are attached to it, in a meaningful, easy-to-follow chain?

There is a third-party service called Quotably, which aims to provide this exact service, and does it fairly well... some of the time. But it also acts as a reminder that if Twitter were to implement such a feature natively, they would have quite a bit of work to do first in making Reply-To use, and thus Tweet-threading, a lot more accurate.

To illustrate, take this interesting "conversation" Quotably says I was a part of yesterday:

rjleaman: Nothing like an evening spent scrubbing down a dog breeder's kennels to put the whole blogosphere into perspective.
ephealy: It's too bad about SU, @rjleaman - They're great for driving traffic. siyab: @rjleaman Have you heard of a thing called 'sleep'? ;) smithereensblog (me): @rjleaman @kristenking I do the same thing. It provides a neat, organic kind of growth. khalidh: @rjleaman excellent article. Thanks for sharing!

Reading that, you could be forgiven for thinking that Rebecca (rjleaman) had stayed up all night writing an article on cleaning kennels, then submitted it on StumbleUpon and that I agreed with her "organic" promotion strategy (and felt the need to let Kristen King know too?) But in actuality, none of that happened. As best I can tell, none of those 5 Tweets were related at all. Worse still, most of them were replies, only to different comments made by Rebecca. I rest my case.

Twitter needs to make threading better, and then they can either buy Quotably (hm, are we running low on VC funds yet?), or implement a similar service themselves. If they don't, they'll forever be playing catch-up with the services that already offer this functionality.

10) Give Us Groups

I've written before that Twitter should really have a Groups feature, but alas, it does not.

Last time I checked, Twitter was a social network. Sure it might get called a micro-blogging platform, but at its core, its all about the communities people form there, and the conversations that are fostered among those groups.

And because of the community-centred nature of this service, sometimes people want to post Tweets that are related to an event, or a project, or a subject. Currently, they often use hashtags to provide a way for Twitterers to track these linked Tweets. For example, check out this Twitter Search for #f8, referring to the conference that Facebook is currently putting on.

But here's the thing: when we only have 140 characters at our disposal in the first place, we shouldn't have to use up any of that space to add hashtags in order to hack together makeshift groups.

In the use case described in my article (the link above), the Copyblogger Twitter writing contest attracted 700 entries that each had to be exactly 140 characters to qualify, leaving no room for hashtags.

How great would it have been if there had been a way for entrants to categorize their Tweets as "Copyblogger-140" or some such?

As a start, I would humbly suggest the addition of a simple box underneath the Tweetbox where users could add optional tags or categories. Then, de facto groups could be formed just by tagging one's Tweets accordingly, but without eating up valuable Tweet-estate.

The creation of full-out group pages, akin to those on Facebook or FriendFeed's Rooms, might be great too, but I can foresee arguments about Twitter starting to overstep its boundaries, and that contention may be true enough.

In any case, as of right now the hashtag solution is clearly a workaround, and it looks and feels like one. So how about an official groups/tags/categories feature to make our lives a little easier Twitter?

So What Now?

First of all, let me just say that this wasn't meant to be an attack on the Twitter team. In fact, if I didn't love the service so much and believe in its potential, I wouldn't have spent all week banging out such a comprehensive post.

Just know that I could just as easily have written a post entitled "10 Things I love About Twitter." But the nature of web 2.0 is that services need to be fluid, flexible and constantly improving in order to survive, and so this list is meant to be helpful to the Twitter team as they try to do just that.

So please, take a second to comment and let me know if you agree or disagree with any of these feature requests.

And if you think Twitter would indeed benefit from more than a few of these ideas, why not give this post a Digg using the button below and help make it as visible as possible.

Who knows, if we yell loud enough, the Twitter Fairy just might hear us and grant our wishes.

Burn Category Feeds On Blogger In 2 Simple Steps (Things You Didn't Know You Could Do On Blogger Number 1)

2008-07-21T14:45:00.013-04:00

In my last post, I promised that I would update soon with a guide for other Blogger-bloggers who would like to know how to create Category-specific RSS feeds.

This is something that can be done easily enough on self-hosted Wordpress, but it isn't quite so intuitive on Google's free blog-hosting service. Nevertheless, just because you're not ready to pay for hosting just yet, that doesn't mean you should be left out of the Category Feed Party! (Oh yes, it's a party.)

As a matter of fact, I've received so much feedback lately about certain things I've managed to do on my blog, despite Blogger's seeming limitations, that I have decided to start a new, ongoing segment on Smithereens called Things You Didn't Know You Could Do On Blogger. So sit back, grab a cool drink and enjoy this, my first entry in this new series.

First of All: Why?

Right off the bat, you may be wondering: 'What's the point of Category-specific feeds anyway?' Fair question. Well the short answer might go something like this: If Content is King, then Choice is the next-on-command.

To provide a real illustration, you may want to read my last entry if you haven't already to get an idea for why I felt the need to split up my content here on Smithereens into just three succinct categories. (Productivity, Persuasion, Prose.)

Next, you could take a look at the popular productivity blog Lifehacker as a secondary case study. While obviously not on the free Blogger platform, LH does cover a broad subject base-- anything related to productivity, from useful gadgets to scheduling haircuts with Google Spreadsheets.

They also post a lot. As in often. So, to help readers whose interests may lean closer to certain categories than others, they too offer feeds by category (or "tag".)

So now that you can't call me crazy because I've cited a wildly popular pro-blog that agrees with me, let's assume you're on-board and just can't wait to find out how you can replicate my categorical feed-burning.

Step One: Clean House

If you've decided that your readers would benefit from having more options when it comes to subscribing to your blog, the first order of business is to make your list of categories somewhat usable.

Depending on how old your blog is, this could take 5 minutes, or 5 hours, and it could very well be the most difficult part of this process. But trust me, it will be worth it.

Many Bloggers (myself included, up until last week) fall into the trap of using Blogger's Categories as a whatever-pops-into-our-head list of tags.

The result is an unwieldy and largely unusable list of random words, instead of a short, precise and intuitive list of categories that can be used for navigation.

So, to avoid this predicament (if you're just starting out) or to fix it (if you're a long-time offender like I was), you'll need to either choose a short list of categories and stick to it (for the former) or go through and remove all your tags post-by-post and replace them with the useful categories (for the latter.)

(If you've been Blogging and miscategorizing for so long that it's impossible or just very implausible for you to actually go through all your posts and do this, another option is just to turn over a new leaf as of now: Draw up a more precise list and stick to it going forward. Your resulting feeds won't be comprehensive, but at least your Categories will be useful going forward.)

Ok, so come back to me when you have trimmed down your Categories to a list of ten or fewer (any more and you'll subject your readers to analysis paralysis.) I'll be here when you get back.

And when you do return, it will be time for the fun part: Burnination!

Step 2: Burn The Feeds

Now that you have a beautiful, simple list of Categories, it's time to burn a special RSS feed for each one and be done with it.

I'm going to explain the process using Feedburner because it is both a) what I use here; and b) the most popular feed-burning service out there. However, you may be able to use part of these instructions to burn feeds in your service of choice.

Head over to Feedburner.com and log in (or sign up if you haven't already.)

Next, on the main page you'll see a box that says "Burn a feed right this instant..." (see screenshot above.)

Into that box you're going to want to type the following URL:

http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/YOURCATEGORY/

Where YOURBLOG is.. your blog name and YOURCATEGORY is... ok, ok, just making sure.

Wait! I know Feedburner is beckoning you to "Burn a feed right this instant", but just hold your horses, because there is one more thing to consider.

If you have a large blog with lots of posts (especially if they are long articles) and if your category contains 20 or more posts, you will probably run into an error trying to burn your feed because Feedburner will basically tell you that you talk too much. Don't take it personally.

But alas, I have a solution!

All you need to do to get around this issue is add the following string, "?max-results=10", without the quotes, to the end of your URL, which will make the final thing look like this:

http://YOURBLOG.blogspot.com/feeds/posts/default/-/YOURCATEGORY/?max-results=10

If you didn't already guess, you're basically telling FB now to limit itself to only the last 10 posts in that category. That should shut 'em up.

Finally, add a Title, maybe something like "YOUR BLOG- YOUR AWESOME CATEGORY" (I know, I'm a creative genius) and you'll be done. FB will spit out a new feed URL that you can then link to on your blog, and those who subscribe to it will get only the posts that you Categorize accordingly.

Lather, rinse, repeat with the rest of your Categories and Voila, you're well on your way to offering your own readers some great new options as to how they consume your content.

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Did you like this post? Want to see more like it? Then let me know in the comments or feel free to pass the word along on your social medium of choice. Thanks!

Is there a specific thing you're trying to do with your Blogger blog that you can't quite figure out? Well likewise, leave a note in the comments and I will try my best to help you out. And if enough people share your query, I'll make it the topic for my next installment of TYDKYCDOB. (Now that's a winning acronym if I ever saw one.)

A Quick Housekeeping Note:

As you can see, I've made some changes to the Smithereens template yesterday as well. But going to this new, whiter look wasn't strictly an aesthetic choice (although I do think it looks really clean.) Rather, it was the only way we could fix a loading bug that had been plaguing the site for awhile.

You had probably noticed that Smithereens always loaded kind of slowly. Well after a day of widget-chopping and CSS-wrangling, I, with the tremendous help of Rebecca Leaman (of the Domestik Goddess and Wild Apricot blogs) was able to get the loading time under wraps. To that end, every widget that wasn't essential has been banished from my sidebar (sorry Blogrush, Statcounter.com and Pepperjam.)

But even after removing these widgets, the site still "seemed" to load kind of slowly because the old dark grey background would load first and the white content background last, meaning that readers couldn't really read the blog until every single thing on the template had loaded first. To put it simply, by switching everything over to an all-white background, you can now read the content milliseconds after arriving on the page. Mission Accomplished.

So, what do you think of the new look and load time? I'd love to hear your feedback in the comments.

A Categorical Imperative: The Importance of Using Specific Blog Categories

2008-07-17T13:21:00.010-04:00

Can you even imagine a pun that is more high-brow than the one I just used in this post's title? (I certainly Kant.) But fear not, this post is not about deontological philosophy, it's just about categories. On this blog. And how important it was that I started using them effectively.

You see, I realized last week that my long-and-growing list of Categories and accompanying tag cloud (see left) was becoming unwieldy and largely unusable. Chris Pearson's recent post on the importance of keeping categories trimmed to avoid provoking analysis paralysis in your blog visitors really hit home and I decided to do just that.

And so from my old, never-ending list of 100+ labels, I pored through every post and pared them back to just three, which coincide with this blog's three main themes: productivity, persuasion and prose. (I also added a few others like "technology" to denote the tech-heavy productivity posts and wordplay-wednesdays and marketing-wednesdays to set apart my ongoing series.) But the main purpose here was to create categories that were actually usable.

Finally, my categories are specific and few enough to truly be used as navigational devices, which Pearson advocates, rather than just a (pretty, but ultimately) useless cloud of stream-of-consciousness spouting.

Next, I went to work, looking for ways to leverage my newly trimmed categorical list in a way that would help my readers.

Enter the new navigational bar.

Yeah, My Blogger Blog Has a Nav Bar Now, What's It To You?

As you may or may not have noticed, Smithereens is sporting a spiffy new navigational bar across the bottom of the header (if you're on the site and missed it, scroll back up and admire, or if you're reading this in a reader, click on through and check it out.)

Now this may not seem like a very big deal, but the lack of easy nav bar implementation on Blogger blogs is a notorious shortcoming of the platform. It took some serious template tweaking to get it working. (Oh and if the header looks horrible to you, instead of slick and seamless, you're probably using IE version 6 or earlier. Why are you doing that? It's time to upgrade to Firefox. Or at least get IE7+ for the love of standards-compliant browsers! But if you're not on an antiquated browser and it still looks funky, please let me know in the comments as I'm trying to quash the last of the template bugs as quickly as possible.)

But what's important about the new navigation bar (and relevant to this post) is the addition of the "Choose a category" buttons. Let me explain my rationale for adding these, and explain what it means for you.

The New Smithereens Blog Buffet (It's All-You-Can-Eat)

When I started this blog just 6 short weeks ago, I wasn't sure exactly where it would take me. I knew that my most passionate interests were (and still are) writing, marketing and general lifehackery, so I decided to set those three subjects (poetically paraphrased as productivity, persuasion and prose) as my basic slalom poles, to use a skiing metaphor.

But one thing I have noticed recently is that having such an eclectic subject base can cause splintering among my readership. For example, the readers who were most enthralled with my Twitter Wit Writing Contest are not the same as those who drove my gadgety iPhone scoop post to 600 Diggs and beyond.

The problem came to a head when I started to feel as though posting about productivity and technology was putting off those who were more interested in writing or marketing, and vice versa. As the saying goes, you can't please everybody all of the time, only some of them, some of the time.

And so, I felt like I had to do one of three things to fix this issue:

1) Split the blog into two - one on productivity/technology/gadgets and one on writing and persuasion,

2) Narrow the focus of my blog down to just one or the other and stop writing about some of the things that interest me; or

3) Provide mored ways for readers to dynamically choose what content they consume.

After consulting with many of my trusted friends who've been blogging much longer than I, I decided that the third option was the best idea for now. (I don't have the time to properly maintain two personal blogs right now on top of client obligations, and I don't want to limit the scope of my writing just yet.)

And so, dear readers, now you can choose exactly which type of smithereen you want to take in on any given visit, and which you'd rather ignore. It's a buffet of useful ideas and now you can skip the salad bar and load up on dessert at your leisure.

If you like gadgets and productivity but could care less about how to differentiate tricky homonyms, click the Productivity tab (which also encompasses technology articles) and go to town. If you entered the TwitWit contest 3 times (I'm looking at you, washwords), but all the iPhone chatter drives you batty, click the Prose tab, and maybe the Persuasion one, and enjoy reading only the content you want to read.

Or if you're eclectic like me, and like all kinds of subjects, then...well... carry on. As you were.

But what about the many of you who follow my content by RSS or email? You're thinking: 'What do I care about all this? I never even go to your site.' (Thanks a lot.) Well don't worry, I thought of you too.

Brand Spanking New RSS Options, As Well

As of right now, not only can you get your Smithereens fix in subject-specific morsels on the site, you can also get separate post updates for free for any of the 3 categories.

This endeavour took a bit of Blogger hackery as well, and I am writing up a brief tutorial to post later tonight in case others are wondering how to do this, but the point is, you RSS addicts now have options too, so it was worth it:

For the Productivity feed, click here.

For the Persuasion feed, click here.

For the Prose feed, click here.

And of course, for the regular all-for-one-and-one-for-all feed, you can just click here.

I hope you find these tweaks helpful, and a good alternative to splitting the blog up into different sites. But what do you think, will you use the new Categories for navigation, or not? Let me know in the comments, I really appreciate the feedback.

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By the way, I know there was more silence than usual these past few days - I hope you'll understand. Along with the many changes I've been making to the Smithereens template, navigation and feed architecture, I've also added a couple neat plugins, like the informative contextual popups you can see in this post from Apture (an article on this service is forthcoming, too - very neat implementation.)

As well, I've been knee-deep in preparation for the launch of my first client blog for NewHomeAssociation.ca, an innovative company in Ottawa that is aiming to be the MLS for new home listings. It should be live tomorrow and I will update this post with the address so you can check it out.

Failure to Launch: Rogers Botches iPhone Debut

2008-07-11T16:20:00.015-04:00

I've spent most of the day today running around Ottawa and visiting as many Rogers and Fido resellers as possible to get a handle on how well the 3G iPhone launch is going.

The Verdict?

Well, for the most part, it isn't going at all.

First of all, let's talk stock.

By the looks of things, my assertion one week ago that Rogers stock of phones had been depleted was correct, having been confirmed multiple times today by reps who admitted they had originally been expecting many times more units than they received for today's launch.

Most locations said they were expecting 100 or more iPhones at first, but they received on average (of those who would tell me how many they had) just 6-15.

Secondly, my suggestion yesterday that Rogers was likely diverting the bulk of its iPhones in each city to the special corporate "launch party" locations also seems to have proven true, as many stores today were actively pointing customers in the direction of these central corporate stores saying "They have 10 times as many as we do."

And I can understand why they would want to send customers away: Many stores couldn't sell their iPhones today if they wanted to, since the Rogers account database (SalesCentral) was down for most of the day, crushed under the weight of so many simultaneous activations. (Something Rogers isn't used to, perhaps?)

Every single store I visited today had the same story: They were able to activate a few lucky customers who were at the front of the lines this morning, but soon after, the database started crashing erratically. Every rep I spoke to had a tale or two about customers who showed up at 9:30 or 10am and didn't leave with their iPhone until noon or later.

In essence, to describe this launch as anything but chaotic would be quite a stretch.

Customers lined up for hours at certain (albeit not all) non-corporate locations, only to be told upon entering that no iPhones would be sold as upgrades for existing clients. (Nothing like a blatant cash grab to show customer appreciation.)

Others waited in line only to find out that they could not purchase an iPhone either because they were on a family plan or a corporate coded account.

Employees cursed under their breath as they repeatedly tried to log in to the customer database. Said one rep: "I keep trying to call the backup 1-800 number to activate manually, and they just keep hanging up on me!"

And while most stores eventually sold their limited stock to the most patient of consumers, one store that had received 15 units only sold 8 today because it took so long to activate them between system crashes that everyone else who had waited in line walked out and left sans iPhone.

The frustration was evident in the eyes and vocal tone of nearly every employee I spoke with today. It's no wonder: they had been thrown to the dogs and there was little they could do about it.

One Rogers employee spoke with me candidly and his sentiments sum up today's general atmosphere quite well:

Our systems have been down all day. Estimates are we might be back up tomorrow. Maybe not. I am swimming to find another job on short notice so I can quit. I have never been so angry in my life. This is the biggest cluster#$%^ I've ever been a part of and I hope Rogers gets absolutely crucified in the media for this.

Well, crucifixion may be a little harsh, but it sure would be interesting to see them tell it like it is for once.

To be fair, Rogers isn't the only one running into issues with this launch (on Apple's part, the worldwide iTunes sites required for activations has been very unstable or down all day as well), but somehow I'm just not surprised that they seem to be handling it the worst of any other provider.

Frankly, everything that possibly could have gone wrong here (short of not having any stock at all) has gone wrong and it looks like those who decided to stay home were right.

So to all the employees who dealt with enraged customers all day long and to all the eager early adopters who have only adopted migraines, head on over to your nearest 7/11 because at least it's Free Slurpee Day. Go on, you deserve it.

UPDATE: After catching up on my reading for the day, I've learned that the iTunes failure is even more widespread and i-Pocalyptic than Rogers' own monumental internal server issues (and that's saying something.)

I won't re-tell a story that has been told a thousand times by now. But basically, this just that means the poor customers who DID get their iPhones unlocked on Rogers' end couldn't get them activated by Apple anyway... What a mess.

Looks like Apple is deserving of their very own Fail Whale this time, too.

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How about you - got an iPhone launch horror story of your own? Well misery loves company, so dish in the comments, my friends!

Putting The AM in (15 Seconds of) FAMe

2008-07-11T00:23:00.006-04:00

On Monday, I had the pleasure of being invited to speak with Mike Blanchard on Calgary Today, a talk radio program on AM770 in Calgary, after they stumbled across my original post on the Rogers/Apple situation (and even after I assured them I was not a qualified expert by any means!)

I've never done a radio interview on this side of the mic before (though I've done plenty on the flip-side back in in j-school) and I really enjoyed the experience.

I hadn't heard the audio myself until today when received a copy of the mp3, so I figured I would post it here for your listening ~~torture~~ pleasure.

So, what do you think? Should I start my own podcast toute suite ... or stick to my day job?

[Thanks to Kim and Mike at AM770 for having me on.]

Get Your Own Free Player

The Empire Strikes Back: Rogers Responds (And The Media Plays Right Along)

2008-07-10T13:52:00.018-04:00

A story by Vito Pilieci in this morning's Ottawa Citizen (and possibly in many other CanWest newspapers across Canada) claims that Rogers' iPhone stock is the same as it always was for tomorrow's launch, and he all but accuses yours truly of flat out lying in my original post. A hat tip to Jon Newton of P2PNet for bringing the story to my attention early this morning, and for responding in my defence here.

You can read the online version of the story here, and read Pilieci's blog post about it here. (It's the top story there for now, although his blog provides no way to link to a specific article, so that link may not be so useful later.)

To begin, let me just say that this "news" piece is remarkably regurgitated and voiceless for a story that appeared in a major media publication. I also find its tone to be incredibly condescending.

Pilieci's blog entry is even worse, but then blogs aren't held to the same standards as the MSM. In any case, I'll come back to these points. First, the Rogers statement and my thoughts.

The Empire Strikes Back

The article quotes a Rogers rep (Senior VP and Chief Marketing Officer John Boynton), who says:

Despite popular rumour mongering, which is always a popular sport on the Internet, we have more than enough inventory. In fact, we are getting our inventory plus some.

My initial reaction to Boynton's comments are that one of 3 things could have happened here:

1) False Information

The information that Rogers gave to their own dealer principals last week, which clearly stated that initial inventories would be reduced and prompted some dealerships to lay off extra help... was...um... false.

Don't believe people were let go? Then take a read through the following email. It was sent to me directly just now by an ex-employee who read about this story on CBC.ca and wishes to remain anonymous for now:

Dear XXXX,

We regret to inform you that due to circumstances beyond our control,
we unfortunately will not be requiring extra staffing for the summer
and therefore your employment opportunity with Rogers must be
rescinded. We appreciate your time and effort during the interview
process and the training that you may have attended. We regret any
inconvenience that this may have caused.

As you attended in class training, you will be compensated for your
time. As of 07/11/08, you can pick up your cheque at our XXXXXXXX
location. At this time, we require that you return your copy
of the employment agreement when you pick up your check.

If you have any questions, please feel free to contact me via e-mail.

Again, we truly appreciate your time and enthusiasm towards working at
a Rogers store this summer. We will keep your resume on file in the
case a future opportunity arises.

We wish you a safe and happy summer.

A happy summer indeed. Needless to say, this option seems unlikely.

2) Ignorance is Bliss

It is possible that the inventory was depleted, but since no one but Rogers and Apple know what the original expected number was in the first place, there is no way we could know...so why should Rogers admit as much?

Furthermore, the "launch parties" planned for major urban Rogers Plus stores tomorrow (with breakfast even!) will probably have access to the bulk of the unit stocks, and this stunt could be used to obfuscate the significance of any shortages elsewhere.

And shortages elsewhere I'm sure there will be.

My source's response to the Citizen article and its claims was this:

Well some stores are now getting only 15 phones, so obviously Rogers is lying about getting "our inventory plus some."

My source is expecting a surge of business at their store between 9am and 10am, at which point they expect to be out of units. If a stock that small was "the plan", I daresay it wasn't a particularly good one.

3) Unlikely Scandal

The third and least likely possibility is that Rogers has indeed received "inventory plus some" from Apple as a last minute arrangement, perhaps arising from Rogers'caving and offering a 6GB (basically unlimited data) plan.

This is highly unlikely, given the fact that it would have involved Apple hoarding stock and releasing it contingent on pricing demands. However, there is the question of why Rogers waited until today to make this official announcement, if their stock was truly unchanged throughout this week.

My So-Called Retraction

Anyway, as I clearly said in my original post, we may never know what truly went on behind the scenes this week, and that remains as true as ever.

Oh, and speaking of things I clearly said in my original post, here's another for you: "I am going to post a very plausible rumour that has caught my ear..."

That was in the opening paragraph of my original article. Or if that was too difficult to read for Mr. Pilieci, he might have caught the words "Plausible Rumour" in my article title.

But no matter, that didn't stop him from claiming in his print story that I "have been reporting on the relationship between Apple and Rogers, stating that Rogers' cellular data pricing is too high and that Apple is not happy about them" and that I have "since retracted most of [my] story, now referring to it as a "plausible rumour."

Interesting time-line, Vito.

That's some stand up investigative reporting.

Voiceless Regurgitation

But wait, no investigative reporting was really involved here, was it? The entire story reads like a Rogers Press release, and quite frankly, I can't believe the Citizen let it go to print like that.

Apparently, Pilieci's idea of a neutral second source is the president of a Toronto PR firm.

"This is a case where the people who scream the loudest get the most attention," Carmi Levy of AR Communications was quoted as saying in the piece.

Well, not really. If that were true, then I would have been picking up my stories on this lowly blog from mainstream sources, and not the other way around.

Perhaps the reason my little rumour expose was so popular is because, even if it had not been true, it resonated with a deep-seated dissatisfaction among Canadians with their wireless pricing.

But I digress. More to the point, where is the comment in Pilieci's article from someone closer to operations than a Marketing VP, like say, someone at store level who isn't being paid to make the company look good to the press? Where is a comment from anybody on the "other side" of the story for that matter?

The Pot and the Kettle

The most ironic part of Piliesci's piece is its unbridled condescension towards bloggers and its inherent hypocrisy.

First he puts down blogs and bloggers in general, playing right along with Rogers' claims about internet "rumour-mongering."

He then quotes this inflammatory statement from Levy:

If you are a blogger, unlike a real journalist, you are not subjected to the same checks and balances of real media and you can pretty much say anything. Whether or not it is backed up by fact is almost irrelevant.

There is some truth is Levy's comment, to be sure. There is a lower standard imposed upon bloggers when it comes to knowing-for-sure before going "to print", as it were. And in my opinion, that is part of the beauty of the medium. We wouldn't have ever known about Lewinski were it not for Matt Drudge, after all.

But to imply that that immediacy somehow makes the medium illegitimate or that bloggers are somehow less "real" than print journalists is just silly.

Those of us in the blogosphere who care about our readers are not going to make up stories for attention and throw our reputation under the bus. That in itself is a check and a balance.

And what about the myriad prominent journalists who maintain their own blogs. Like... oh, I don't know... Piliesci himself!

Finally, the icing on the cake here is that just to clearly demonstrate the superiority of the print medium, he included this statement in a "real" journalistic piece that reads like little more than a re-written Rogers press release.

Canadian Consumers Are Just Confused

But the condescension doesn't end there. Not content to have only put down millions of online publishers, he turns his attention to Canadian consumers as well.

In what I can only assume is a party line directly from Rogers, Piliesci informs us that the reason for all this hulaballoo over data pricing is that "Canadians are confused about what it means to pay to download cellular data" and that "blogs and websites full of false reports are confusing customers further."

Oh my gosh, I feel so foolish! Here I was thinking that we consumers were legitimately concerned about the amount of data we have been getting for our buck, especially compared to pricing in the US... when all the while the issue has been that we just don't understand how great our plans really are.

And then it's sites like this decidedly unjournalistic blog that are only muddying the waters even further.

Well, for that, Mr. Pilieci, I do apologize.