Nick Bradbury

FeedBurner Site Statistics

The statistics packages offered by most popular blogging services are either limited or non-existent, leaving many bloggers struggling to get good information on traffic to their blog. Those of us who use FeedBurner have long had good feed-related statistics, but we've had to rely on other services to get information on blog traffic.

In my case, I've been using Google Analytics for blog stats, and while it's a good service I've found it awkward to have my feed stats and blog stats in different places. So when I was offered an early look at FeedBurner's site statistics service (announced earlier today), I jumped at the chance.

I've been using FeedBurner's site stats for several days now, and overall they've done a great job of providing a lot of information in a very friendly way. Now in addition to seeing information about my feed subscribers, I can also see things like:

• Which searches lead people to my blog
• Which external links are bringing visitors to my blog
• Which pages are being viewed the most
• What browsers, operating systems and screen resolutions my visitors are using

In other words, I can see the sort of information you'd expect from a site statistics service, except that it's integrated with my feed stats.

As with all new services, though, there are a few missing pieces, the most notable of which is that I didn't see a way to exclude my own traffic from the site stats. Update 16-Feb-2007: FeedBurner has added the ability to ignore yourself in your site stats. Nice!

Disclosure: NewsGator (the company I work for) shares an investor with FeedBurner.

Blog Update (Mostly) Complete

I've made a ton of changes to my blog over the last few days, and I'm curious whether others see them as improvements or annoyances:

• The home page Category pages show excerpts instead of full posts (example), so you can quickly scan the headlines looking for articles of interest (similar to how FeedDemon works by default).
• Each post includes a Technorati link count widget which displays the number of external links to that post.  This has enabled me to get rid of trackbacks, which sadly have become far more trouble than they're worth due to spammers.
• The sidebar includes a category cloud, and each category links to a page containing all posts in that category (for example, this page lists all my posts about software development).
• A Google search of my blog is now available in the banner above each page.
• A monthly archives page has been added.
• The comment form has been widened, so you no longer have to type lengthy comments into a tiny box.

Of course, most of my readers rarely see my actual blog since they're subscribed to my rss feed, but hopefully these changes will be useful to stragglers who still read via a web browser rather than an RSS reader ;)

Blog Update

I'm experimenting with my blog's design this week, so you may see some weird behavior here for the next day or two. If so, just ignore it - it's only me playing around.

What's the Story Here?

It was interesting to watch the evolution of the Microsoft RSS patent story last week.

After reading about the patent applications on Dave Winer's blog, I read through them and posted my thoughts (in a nutshell, I disagreed with the inventions claimed in the applications, but given all the patent lawsuits Microsoft has experienced, I understood why they filed them). By the time I uploaded my post, several bloggers were claiming that Microsoft was attempting to patent RSS, so I quickly updated my post to make it clear that the applications were much narrower in scope.

Over the next few days my FeedDemon search feeds brought in a ton of other blog posts and mainstream articles about the subject, many of which continued to claim that Microsoft was trying to patent RSS. By the time Microsoft's Sean Lyndersay had posted his response, much of the geekosphere was already up in arms.

CNET's article was the first mainstream piece I read about about the patents, and to her credit the author tried to decipher what the applications were about. Perhaps that's one reason the article was so widely copied? It quoted both Dave Winer and myself, and the same (or very similar) quotes were used in many other pieces about the patents. I'm not one to complain about free publicity, and I'm flattered to be considered a trusted source, but it's hard to believe that so many independently thinking writers decided to quote the same two people.

But there's more to this story than how bloggers and journalists reacted to a couple of minor patent applications. There were 69 Microsoft patent applications published the same day as the two RSS-related ones, and a quick perusal of LatestPatents.com shows how frequently patents are sought by major tech companies. It seems to me that there are several stories here:

1. Why do large companies feel the need to file applications for dubious inventions (cursor interaction and window repositioning, for example)? Do they expect to make a fortune from patent licensing? Are they seeking ways to sue their competitors out of business? Or are they merely protecting themselves from patent trolls?
2. We're all building upon prior art here, so why do so many software developers permit themselves to be listed in patent applications as inventors?
3. How do companies who on principle refuse to file software-related patent applications defend themselves against patent lawsuits?
4. How many of our beloved Web 2.0 companies will turn into (or sell their inventions to) patent trolls if they run out of cash before being acquired? It happened after the first dot-com bubble burst, and it will happen again.

I'd certainly read any article that seriously investigated those questions. How about you?

My 2006 Favorites

Yep, I'm joining the ranks of bloggers who write about their favorite pop culture releases of the past year. Sad, isn't it?

Music

This one's easy: Stadium Arcadium is hands-down my favorite album of the year. I agree with Fred Wilson that this double album would've been better if it was pared down to a single CD, but figuring out which songs to remove would've been tricky because even the weakest tracks are enjoyable. I've witnessed many of my favorite bands disintegrate or turn into caricatures of themselves in the 15 years since I graduated from college. Not so with the Chili Peppers - this album shows them getting better with age.

Honorable mention: The Beatles Love. The mashups are hit-and-miss, but the CD is worth its weight in gold for the digitally remastered versions of "A Day in the Life," "Revolution" and "I Am the Walrus" (three of my all-time favorite songs).

Movies

United 93 was the film that had the biggest impact on me this year. I initially avoided this movie because I mistakenly thought it was a cheap attempt to cash in on 9/11, but now I wish I would've seen it while it was still in theaters. United 93 is more respectful to history than any film I can remember, and it moved me much more than I expected it to.

Honorable mention: An Inconvenient Truth. I watched Al Gore's presentation on global warming two weeks ago, and it was an eye-opener - especially since I stepped outside after viewing it and discovered it was 70°F (definitely not the norm here for the middle of December). That's like hearing a banjo right after watching Deliverance.

And I'll give a second honorable mention to Monster Road, a documentary released on DVD this year about the bizarre world of animator Bruce Bickford. If you like weird movies, this will be right up your alley.

Video Games

It's rare that I have time for video games these days, and when I do play it's usually something like Unreal Tournament. But this year my favorite game was a little different: Lego Star Wars II. My son saved up for this game over the summer, and the day he bought it we played it together for six hours straight. I doubt I'd enjoy playing Lego Star Wars II by myself, but playing it with a seven-year-old was an absolute blast.

Honorable mention: GameTap. Alright, so it's not actually a video game - it's a video game service. After signing up for GameTap, I downloaded a ton of classic games like Zaxxon and Joust. It was fun to wax nostalgic over the quarter-munchers I played in the arcade when I was a kid.

Blogs

I read a lot of blogs, but Creating Passionate Users is one of the few that causes me to drop everything when it has a new post. I can't say I'm always happy to read what Kathy Sierra has to say, though - all too often she points out mistakes in software design and usability that I've been guilty of :)

Honorable mention: The Dilbert Blog. I'm not a huge fan of Scott Adams' comic strip (I've worked at a few Dilbertesque companies, so I find the strip too realistic for my tastes), but his blog has caused more coffee to be spilled (or spurted) onto my keyboard than anything else I've read this year.

NewsGator Support Blog

If you use FeedDemon or any other NewsGator product or service, be sure to subscribe to the new NewsGator Support Announcements blog.  Our support team uses this blog for general support-related announcements, including new product releases.

Post to Live Writer from FeedDemon

Glenn Slaven has written a handy tool which enables posting to Windows Live Writer from FeedDemon.  Glenn, thanks for sharing this!

PS: I'm planning to add native Live Writer support to the next version of FeedDemon.

Playing with Vox

Earlier this week I received an invitation to try Vox, Six Apart's new "personal blogging service" (currently in beta). I haven't delved into all the nooks and crannies, but so far I've been very impressed with it. I've heard some folks call it "MySpace for grownups," but I think it goes beyond that and will appeal to all age groups (and besides, it's a lot easier to use and explore than MySpace).

Here's my Vox blog if you want to check it out, but you should stick with my Feedburner feed rather than subscribe to my Vox feed since I'm just kicking the tires. And I should add that there are some display problems when viewed in the Internet Explorer 7 beta, so use another browser to check out Vox if you've got IE7 installed.

I like how Vox ties into other services such as YouTube, Amazon, Flickr and (no surprise) TypePad. I also like how it enables building a "neighborhood" by connecting with other Vox users, especially since there's a single page which shows new posts from friends and family. The ability to explore through feeds is also great, and they've certainly made it easy to edit existing content.

Of course, Vox isn't perfect - for one thing, there's not enough control over design to make it attractive to someone like myself. Now, I realize I'm not the target user, and I certainly understand why Six Apart doesn't want the support headaches of something like the advanced template feature offered by TypePad. But right now I'm not sure how to brand my Vox blog with my personal style, and while the built-in themes are decent, they're devoid of any real personality. I'm sure I'm not the only one who would be willing to pay for more customization features, so most likely this is an area they'll improve upon during the beta cycle.

One other thing I don't like is how awkward it is to post pre-formatted HTML. I use TopStyle to write new blog posts, and I copy-and-paste the finished post into my blog's composition page. Unlike TypePad, Vox doesn't appear to allow posting HTML directly - so if you hand-code an image tag, for example, Vox will escape the angle brackets and show <img> instead of the image itself. As a workaround, I discovered that I can retain the HTML by previewing the post in TopStyle, and then copying-and-pasting directly from TopStyle's preview into Vox's composition page. Yeah, I know bloggers who hand-code their HTML are in the minority, and Vox is designed for non-technical users (as it should be), but it would still be nice if Vox made this easier.

All in all, though, Vox is an exciting effort, and I'm looking forward to seeing it grow over the next few months. The best thing about it is that it's easier to use than other blogging packages I've tried (an impressive feat given the extra social features it offers). I'd say Six Apart has another winner on their hands with Vox.

Freedbacking?

At the "Users in Charge" session at last week's BloggerCon, Chris Pirillo defined the word "freedbacking" to mean "free feedback from software users to developers." Later in his blog, Chris asked users (better known as "customers") to use the word (or tag) "freedbacking" in any blog posts which give feedback to developers.

Chris, you know I respect you, but beyond self-promotion, what's the goal here? If it's to make developers listen, then I don't get it. Any developer worth his salt is already subscribed to keyword search feeds about his or her software, and any developer who isn't already listening isn't likely to hear users just because they use the word "freedbacking." So using the word "freedbacking" strikes me as superfluous.

What am I missing?

PS: Ironically enough, by using the word "freedbacking" here, I've made sure that Chris will hear this :)

BloggerCon IV Wrap-up (Thanks Dave and Niall)

BloggerCon IV concluded today, and the (un)conference exceeded my expectations. My thanks to Dave Winer for the time and effort he put into this event. I learned a lot and shared a lot at this BloggerCon - I leave knowing and feeling more than when I came.

I also want to thank Niall Kennedy for being an excellent tour guide and friend during my short visit to San Francisco. Niall showed me around the place, introduced me to people, and basically made my brief stay here a better one. Even if we end up competitors in this whole RSS thing-a-ma-jig, I think we can still bounce ideas off each other since we're both motivated more by the possibilities than by the competition.