Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

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Thursday, July 31

[09:28AM EDT] Bill Kearney of Syndic8 notes that "RSS-2.0 is not an upgrade".

I'm beginning to wonder what the collective age of the participants in this entirely silly discussion is. No scratch that - I've seen five year olds have more responsible discussions than this.

As Joi mentioned yesterday, "Blogging standards are not nearly as important as AIDS, global warming, peace in the Middle East and poverty. " Pick up your heads folks, not nearly as many people care about the RSS question as you might think.

Look at us for instance. We support it because our customers want it. If and when they ask for different or more support for different or new things and they are willing to back that request up with a little bit of cash (or some other value exchange), then we'll probably support that too. Discourse like this doesn't influence that decision, it just makes us all think a little bit less about you.

A wise, wise man once told me "Never, EVER get into a mud fight with someone. A lot of shit gets thrown around and at the end of the day, the only thing that's guaranteed is that all of the participants end up with less land."

Don't sweat this - it really isnt' worth it. The blogosphere needs more land, not less. C | T (96) | #

[09:19AM EDT] A short era, but an era nonetheless. Roughly a year ago I registered Radio and started blogging earnestly. I'd played around with Blogger a few times and even paid Evan some money, but for numerous reasons, I couldn't really get into it.

But it was different with Radio. Radio gave me things to play with and learn. Things I was challenged by and ultimately frustrated with. Regardless, I came to view it as a rich experience, beyond my capabilities, but rich nonetheless.

It also pissed me off horribly. I don't think I've *ever* used an application with worse ergonomics. Well, that's not entirely true. I've used development tools that suffer from the same defect that Radio does - it expects that the user minimally possess a certain level of pre-existing knowledge and doesn't really provide the user with any serious bootstraps that a user can grab onto an kick-start their education. I also came to think of Radio as a development environment for my website. To this day I've not been able to recreate some of the public-facing features of my website that Radio enabled. Other tools just haven't evolved that far yet - and certainly, may never.

I got this in the email today;

"Greetings from the community server for Radio UserLand 8. This is a reminder that your Radio UserLand serial number will expire soon."

I won't be renewing. I've moved on. Initially to a tool that favored my headspace a little better, but now to a tool that reflects my headspace. I do miss it however.

The renewal message ended with thanks from the Userland team - "And thanks from all of us at UserLand for using Radio UserLand. We sincerely hope you like it and use it well."

I did like it and hopefully, I also used it well.

My sincere thanks to Userland. C | T (34) | #