Anita blogged my rambling rant about Mozart’s Requiem. Her comments page has good feedback–particularly comment #3 which correctly calls me on my imprecise musical history. No one is really sure why Süssmayer or Mozart chose to end the final movement with the opening angry Requiem theme, and there is a lot of history between Mozart and Fauré. But at the end of the day, all we are left with is the final artifact. And I still argue that the outraged emotion of Mozart is a more adequate response to the World Trade Center attack than Fauré’s peacefulness–at least from where we sit today, one year on.
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Day: September 18, 2002
Back from the Meetup
Just got back from the Seattle blog meetup at the Sit ‘n’ Spin. Decent turnout–at the peak we had seven folks, six of whom blogged. Attendees besides me: Brent, Anita, Nat, Jerry, and C. (whose name I truncate not for privacy’s sake, but because I never quite caught it across the table. Sigh. The hearing is the second thing to go, and I forget the first.) plus C.’s friend “Rusty” who was there for the poetry reading in the back room.
Interesting night. Fun discussion. After some initial effort, we kept from talking about the RSS wars, though it was hard–I don’t think anyone had met a former Userland employee before. But poor C.–the rest of us spent most of the time talking about different weblog packages and programming languages. There is a difference between techbloggers and other bloggers, and I am starting to suspect that for me, at least, it’s the same difference that got me beat up in elementary school. C. was the only one who had the presence of mind to write down everyone’s URL; I’m sure that I’ve gotten at least one of the links above wrong.
Other note: I’m sure glad that Anita posted her picture on her blog; I don’t know how we would have figured out how to find each other otherwise.
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Happy birthday to Lisa…
Happy birthday today to my wife Lisa. She has put up with me and has made some very stressful years of school and moving not just bearable but enjoyable because of her continual wit, humor, and energy. Plus she makes sure that I keep on my toes!
RSS 2.0
Jay gets beta fever
Looks like Jay got into the Xbox Live trial. I guess there’s no NDA on participation :). This is good–we’ll get some really good perspectives from him about how that’s going. The man thinks critically about his gaming, a trait I admire.
First thoughts from Jay: “…the bad news is that I cannot log into the server where I have to register. Evidently, Microsoft is overloaded and cannot handle the situation! Hah, how funny is that, an online service that won’t even let you register.”
I hope it’s just congestion on the backbone between Redmond and Boston…
Reliable data about RSS usage?
Dave and a bunch of folks have been fighting out the question of how to take the next step forward for RSS. This is an important fight, but I have a different question: how big is the RSS market?
Dave has a good idea about the market for producers and consumers of RSS feeds from a tools perspective. But how many websites are out there actually producing RSS feeds? How do they break down by number of unique users–how many 1000 pound sites like the BBC produce RSS to increase their reach? Same questions apply for other syndication formats, too–like the New York Times’ custom headlines format.
Another question: Are websites that have to make a choice to adopt the technology (i.e. RSS syndication doesn’t come from their backend software for free, as it does in Manila, Radio, or Movable Type) doing so to extend the number of people who read their content–simply to grow traffic? Or do they find value in the contributions of people who consume their RSS feeds and comment on them?
Days like this, I wish I were totally self directed and could spin the cycles on figuring this out. But I’m hoping someone out there whose business is in RSS has actually done this. What does the market for RSS generation look like? I’ll be blogging a bit about this for a few days.
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