Random Bytes...by Ross Rader

Wednesday, September 27

[06:57PM EDT]

I’ve received the odd mention in the press – usually some obscure point about an irrelevant Internet governance or technical policy issue. I never expected to get any attention from the hardcore IT press for anything of technical substance – good, bad or otherwise. Having recently assumed responsibility for managing the retail aspects of the Mailbank business portfolio, I guess all bets are off now…

Based on messages being sent out from Tucows, the migration process has hit several speedbumps.

- via ITworld.com.

Joel Shore, the author of the article, goes on to nail the source of of our problems square on the head. My planning process was rushed, which lead to corner cutting, which lead to mistakes and problems and a decreased focus on getting the quality equation just right. This lead to avoidable mea culpa’s on the retail network status page and our customer bulletins – which eventually lead to Joel’s article.

The good news is that the fixes are well underway and ahead of schedule. The bad news is that we could have used the time spent fixing these issues on more productive activities – not to mention completely avoided invoking the wrath of our customers and Joel’s unflattering attention.

Take the time to dot your i’s and cross your t’s. Your customers will thank you for it.

For some more detail on the issues we’ve run ourselves into, you can check out our customer blog where I’ll be posting some more information the steps we’re taking to improve our quality control processes over the coming days.

(speaking of QA, when I clicked on the link on the ITworld website to send a copy of the article to the folks here at Tucows, here’s the response I got from their webserver – click the thumbnail for a full view)

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Tuesday, March 29

[03:14PM EST] I think I've read the RSS 2.0 specification a thousand times. Which is a good thing. I can't count the number of times that I've found something "new" that I hadn't quite grokked in prior readings.

Today, this little gem jumped out at me.

"The purpose of the (textInput) element is something of a mystery. You can use it to specify a search engine box. Or to allow a reader to provide feedback. Most aggregators ignore it."

Its a shame that most aggregators are ignoring this element currently. I can think of a dozen nifty things that I'd like to try out with this. Rating systems, authentication (?), commenting, voting...

Of course, it wasn't too long ago that most aggregators were ignoring the enclosure element. Now look at them - everyone is rushing to support enclosures so that they can ride the Podcasting train.

Maybe the agg-dev guys will pick up on this nugget of coolness as well. Wait a second. I *am* an agg-dev guy. Okay RSS generator folks - enable me! I'd love to implement some of the interactivity that this makes possible.
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Monday, March 14

[06:09PM EST]

Very cool stuff. Its good to see companies picking up on podcasting - it is *very* powerful mojo and should definitely be a part of your marketing mix if egocasters are important to your business. What's an egocaster? Listen to my last podcast! (or wait for an explanation when I get a few moments :)

Qumana podcast: On Qumana, from thinking to posting.

[via PubSub: Podcast]

In case you were wondering, Tucows *is* doing some podcasting. We launched an internal podcast last week that syndicates various internal presentations and so that we used to push around using email and other not-quite-so elegant means. There's actually quite a bit of interest in podcasting over here - you might even see some public stuff sooner or later.

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Wednesday, March 9

[05:34PM EST]

Tell Me About It: "I'll tell you how remote we are, the nearest Wal-Mart is 150 miles away,"

Todd Jagger on Blogware...

Great piece. Quotes from Susannah Gardner, some of our customers and Kim Phelan, the dynamo behind the whole thing.

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Tuesday, February 15

[02:24AM EST] Melinda Shore: "...it's one thing to have a layering model and another to use it. I think the serious layering violations in SS7 speak for themselves."

Spot on comment made in response to a piece that I wrote about the ITU's grab for management of the internet. Great insight.

Speaking of layers, have I ever showed you the two layer model that Rich Shockey and I worked up during IETF-49? I was supposed to be working on EPP and IDN stuff.

(p.s. - this joke is not compatible with Mozilla - sort of like the IDN stuff :) See the theme here yet? Keep me away from IETF meetings.)
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Monday, February 14

[09:47PM EST]

Jeremy Wright: “I’ve been an avid BlogLines user and evangelist for more than a year. … The only thing I care about is that they don’t pull a BlogRolling and screw the service up.”

I realize that we’ve had some ups and downs over the last year, but screwed up? Jeremy makes this sound so…permanent…terminal even.

Ouch.

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Saturday, February 12

[11:52PM EST] Steve Gillmor: "Ross Rader, what are you smoking and where can I get some?"

Pure RSS Steve - with a little bit of OPML and a smattering of Attention to round out the weekends. Sometimes casual XML use does lead to harder habits that just can't be kicked - but really, none of this is harmful, is it?

At worse, it makes me an RSSnik.

Doc Kerouac, Adam Ginsberg and Larry Ferlinghetti? #

Just stay away from the brown stuff... C | T (32) | #