It would be nice to have temporary RSS subscriptions in Bloglines, or another RSS aggregator. You know, for those feeds that you know are only going to be around for a limited period of time, like an event feed, or comments on a post like this one on alexh’s blog.
I’m subscribed to the comments feed of that post, so I can make sure to see any new comments posted after mine, but after a short period of time, that feed isn’t going to have anything new in it. Wish I could tell Bloglines to “subscribe for n days” or something, so I don’t end up with a bunch of these stale feeds that I have to clean out after a while.
Anyone know of an aggregator that can do this? Any Bloglines folks reading want to put this on the wish list?
I’ve been asked to participate in a technology radio show called “Get Connected” on the national Chorus Radio Network (CKNW News Talk 980 in Vancouver, B.C.) in Canada. The topic: podcasting. Other guests include fellow Portland podcaster Paul Colligan from PodcastTools.com and some folks from FeedBurner.
The show will air live at 2:00 PM Pacific Time on Saturday, October 22. If you’re in the broadcast area, you can listen on CKNW 980 AM in Vancouver, or no matter where you are, you can listen to the live stream from the CKNW site (click “Listen Live”, Windows Media Player required). The show will also be released as a podcast, since that’s the topic. Once all the details of that get figured out, I’ll post a link here.
I’m excited - hope some of you will be able to tune in! 
OK, these are silly. But fun. I’m Yoda:
A venerated sage with vast power and knowledge, you gently guide forces around you while serving as a champion of the light.
Judge me by my size, do you? And well you should not - for my ally is the Force. And a powerful ally it is. Life greets it, makes it grow. Its energy surrounds us, and binds us. Luminescent beings are we, not this crude matter! You must feel the Force around you, everywhere.
On the recommendation of some friends, and due to the fact that Google inexplicably stopped serving AdSense ads on my site about 12 days ago and hasn’t answered any of my emails requesting an explanation, I’m testing out some ads from Chitika (not to be confused with Chiquita.
You’ll see the ads after each post, and they should be showing a gadget or something else geeky cool and interesting.
Mostly, I’d like to see how they perform. Since Google cut me off for no given reason, at this point anything is better than nothing.
I’ve been wanting to put together a fun little app using Ning ever since it launched. I finally did, and here it is - Gadget Fight.
How does it work? Simple. Go to Gadget Fight. Click the image of the gadget that makes your geeky parts feel most tingly. Rinse. Repeat.
You can add your own photos of gadgets if you want to throw a hat into the ring.
Check it out, tell your friends, and have fun!
Technorati tags: ning, gadgetfight
Here’s a handy tip for Bloglines users that I recently stumbled across. By default, Bloglines Mobile shows you a flat list of all of your subscribed feeds. I have my feeds organized into categorical folders. On the desktop, this makes my 600+ subscriptions easy to manage - I can expand an colapse the folders, depending on what I want to see. When browsing mobile, though, to keep the HTML simple and compatible, there’s no way to collapse folders, so I end up getting a long list of all 600+ of my feeds every time I hit the main page to read something. This problem is exacerbated by the fact that on the small screen, it takes a lot of scrolling to get to something further down the list, and on a slow wireless connection (before EVDO ;-), it’s got to load that whole long list every time you go to the main page.
So, go into your Account settings, under Feed Options, and turn on “Show Only Updated Feeds”. This will simply turn off rendering of any feed that doesn’t have any new items, making the feed list much smaller and more manageable. Less scrolling, smaller and faster page loads, and easier to see only the (new) stuff you’re interested in. The change will also apply to the full/desktop version of Bloglines.
I’ve only been using this for about a day, but it makes using Bloglines Mobile SO much more efficient it’s hard to believe. I feel like I can browse through and catch up on my feeds on my EVDO Pocket PC almost as fast as I can on the desktop. Give it a try, and see what you think!
EDIT: The folks over at LifeHacker apparently discovered the usefulness of this tip, too (though no mention of how much it improves mobile usage). The tips in article they link to are good ones.
My Bloglines experience is really only complete when I’m using Firefox and a few extensions - LiveLines (hijacks the Firefox “Live Bookmark” button. I configure to autodetect feeds, and let me sub in one click) and the Bloglines Toolkit, which gives me Bloglines options in the right-click context menu. You can find these most useful tools at the Bloglines Firefox Center.
It’s offical - I no longer own any iPods. Well, that’s not strictly true - we still have my Shuffle that I gave to my wife. But I just sold my 40GB 3G and 20GB Color white iPods to a friend at work.
The good news is that now I have funds to hunt down and obtain the first 60GB iPod video (in black) that I can get my hands on. It will be mine! 
EDIT: Well, the Apple Store at Washington Square Mall was determined to be unhelpful. They refused to even guess when they’d be getting them in, sticking to the company line of “with a new product, we get them when we get them”. Come on. At least provide me some kind of guess - later this week, etc. Make me want to buy it from you! I guess they know they’ll sell out of them no matter what, so no need to worry about customer service.
However, the Mac Store in Beaverton was quite helpful. They said they expect an overnight shipment later this week, and would take a 50% deposit to hold one. I plunked down for a black 60GB.
The moral of the story - support your local small business shops! Dan and Mike were very polite and helpful on the phone - unlike the guy at the offical Apple store, once I finally got through 10 minutes of voice menus to speak to him. Beyond that, the Beaverton Mac Store used to sponsor the Portland Podcasting meetup group by paying for the use of the “community room” at Cedar Hills Crossing mall, where we used to have our meetups. Thanks guys! I’ll be waiting for that call to come pick up my new toy!
Blogging Academy: Blogging Academy Podcast #6 - “Why Blog?”
I’ve just posted the audio of today’s Blogging Academy session as a podcast. The topic was “Why Blog?” Go check it out - don’t miss the notes on the wiki.
Blogarithms - Podcast Academy Curriculum
The Portable Media Expo and Podcasting Conference is happening November 11-12 in Ontario, California. Many big names in podcasting will be there, and it’s the first big geeky podcast event in the U.S.
Doug Kaye, from IT Conversations, is putting on the Podcast Academy on November 10, the day before. As part of the curriculum, Doug has asked me to present/teach a session on Podcasting from Mobile Devices.
I guess that means I have to finalize my travel plans and registration. I’ve been to so many conferences this year I was going to have to skip this one, but I can’t very well do that if they’ve asked me to present, now, can I?
Check out the sites above for info on the conference and Podcast Academy, and register if you’re intersted. Drop me a line if you’re going to be there, so we can get together!
TinyScreenfuls Feed (this blog)
