My high school’s new grading system makes it trivial to view other students’ info (read: grades). Implications?. Fascinating Reddit thread with advice to a student who found a major vulnerability in the school’s online grades system. Reminds of what Daniel found a couple years ago. (via Ian Stewart)
Month: April 2011
Status
I wonder if Kickstarter would allow someone to raise funds for an open source version of Kickstarter.
Failing at a business model for news
There was hubbub a couple of days ago when Zite, the new personalized magazine app for iPads, was sent a cease and desist letter by a who’s who of media companies.
Techdirt published a strongly worded condemnation, including this gem:
And, honestly, if creating an app that makes it easier to read your content is a threat to your business, you’re doing business wrong. 1
Part of the problem for the media companies was that Zite was making content readable removing ads and, thus, cutting off a revenue stream for the content producers.
It’s too bad media companies viewed this as a reason to send a cease and desist letter. Instead they could have read it for what it was: a statement that people hate the ads on news sites. It could have given media some data for improving advertising. Oh well, opportunity lost.
News advertising should take a hint from software developers. Include ads that your users want enabled and will miss when they are gone.
Don’t think that possible? Check out the response when Tweetie/Twitter for Mac dropped Fusion ads last year.
Notes:
- via @ryanpitts ↩
Heading back to Twitter
November 1st was the last time I posted anything on Twitter. Since then this blog has been my home online.
A couple of days ago Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote a thank you letter to Evan Williams. It was a powerful piece and got me thinking. While Twitter still frustrates me in many ways it nonetheless remains an incredible community and a remarkable publishing tool. 1 It’s simple, fast, and available everywhere.
Recently I kept a Twitter folder in my RSS reader of a group of people who I wanted to follow. This felt like a total hack. Similarly, while some people have taken to blogging more, the reality is that a ton (the majority?) of conversation still happens on Twitter. I want to be a part of that again. Conversation is integral to keeping the mind fresh and churning.
I’m setting some ground rules to keep things sane. I plan to follow fewer people. Nothing against the 100 or so people I unfollowed last night. It’s just that I only have so many brain cycles in a day. I’m currently at about 150. That feels like a good number to me for now. Maybe it’ll go up a bit but probably not too much.
Most importantly, anything I post on Twitter will be published here. My blog is my home online. When I publish content I want to bring it into that home, not relegate it to a rented storage locker out back.
I’ll also get my tweet archive back up and running. Even with Twitter, though, if it’s important enough to post then I should be blogging about it. As Anil Dash said, if you didn’t blog it, it didn’t happen.
Notes:
- I still dream of the loosely coupled network Dave Winer talks about ↩