Shameless self-promotion: I figured when they got around to tweaking the Feedster 500, they’d discover no one subscribes to this blog. Geez. It’s now #390. Also, the rexblog map has broken the 50 person barrier. I know I’m forgetting something. Oh, yes: a magazine that has me as its editor won the top award for editorial excellence from the Custom Publishing Council. (By the way, we editors call that “burying the lead.”) Kudos to several very talented people who enable me to accept awards they win.

Delicious new feature: (from del.icio.us/blog) “PlayTagger is a simple javascript you include on your site that automatically makes any mp3 link playable on your page. It also includes a link that allows visitors to easily post the mp3 to del.icio.us.”

Technorati Tags: puppy

Update: That tag “puppy” is funny only to ecto users. When you add a new tag to a list of default tags, it populates the field with the word “puppy” — You can then type over the word puppy to create your new tag. I guess this puppy got away from me.

Cluetrain incarnate: Amazon.com is about to educate marketers on what wikis are and how their lives will never be the same. The addition of a “product wiki” on every Amazon product page will prove once and for all, markets are conversations. For the record, this isn’t Web 2.0. This is Cluetrain Manifesto, 1999. What a great time to be alive — if you make great products.

Ironically, I can’t get the product wikis to work (heaven help them if it doesn’t work for Mac users — surely that’s not the problem) and they don’t show up on every browser I’ve tested them on. I’ll be updating this post as I learn more about them. In addition to the screen shot on the left, here is a screen shot of the product wiki explanation on Amazon.com.

Update: By the way, for those who have been asking if wikis have a business model, here’s your answer. And, they also have a business disruption model, as well.

(via: Church of the Consumer Weblog and Micropersuasion)

Technorati Tags: cluetrain, marketing, amazon.com

Shawn Lea can’t go home again: Shawn’s returning home for Thanksgiving, but the house she grew up in is no longer there. She reminds us what to remember when we sit down for Thanksgiving dinner in a couple of days.

Karlgaard’s freakonomic observation: Forbes magazine publisher (and now blogger) Rich Karlgaard points out that every week, the U.S. economy creates 30,000 jobs. Why, then, does mainstream media (except, I guess, for Forbes) think it’s news only when 30,000 jobs are lost?Karlgaard believes that mainstream media (and, for that matter, politicians and academics) tend to view the world in terms of zero-sum: where there’s a winner, there’s a corresponding loser. That’s because in the world of politics, traditional media and academia, that’s true: there is a finite number of editor positions, governorships and professorships.

However, what happens when something like the blogosphere allows unlimited “winners”?

Karlgaard suggests:

“Meanwhile, the most energetic, original and positive writing has been migrating to the Web and to blogs. No surprise here. Anybody who creates a blog is: (a) an entrepreneur and thus probably NOT a zero-sum thinker; (b) a producer first and a consumer second. These two attributes alone guarantee that the blogger probably has a more accurate view of the world, and how it really works, than does the zero-sum thinker toiling away at his MSM position.”

Again, that’s the publisher of Forbes magazine writing. That’s a long way from the whole ” attack of the blogs” zero-sum cover-story of three weeks ago.

Technorati Tags: blogging, magazines, media, msm

Surely there’s a german word for this: Matt McAlister on the “science of spontaneity“:

Quote:

“I find it bizarre yet not necessarily surprising that people process the same ideas at nearly the same time. What surprises me is that there isn’t more scientific understanding of why this occurs.”

Technorati Tags: blogging, folksonomy, meme

Linda’s blogging again: Nashville blogger Linda stopped blogging when she got married a couple of months ago. While she’s still married, she has started blogging again (but without the double-you). (I’ll skip my typical weak attempt at humor.)

I learned this from another Nashville blogger and soon-to-be-famous song writer, BB Logan, who I sat next to on a flight from Baltimore to Nashville last week. I “entertained” her by showing her how I have my RSS feeds organized and by showing her some of the gadgets in my backpack.

I guess you had to be there. And be a blogger.

Odd thing for a fan to cheer: As a fan of the Tennessee Titans, at this point in the season, I’m usually trying to figure out what teams have to win or lose for Titans to have a shot at the play-offs. This is the first year I’ve ever watched teams’ win-loss records for the purpose of tracking if the Titans have a shot at the first choice in the draft. Fortunately (or unfortunately), it’s looking good (or bad).

Technorati Tags: nashville, nfl, titans

Oops: Sorry to those of you who are reading this on a newsreader. I’m trying out the desktop blogging tool ecto this morning (I’m just now working my way through some of Steve Rubel’s hack suggestions) and hit the wrong button. As much as I like MarsEdit, ecto has some very compelling features.

Houston Chronicle, I salute you: I would like to send a sincere thank you to the newspaper for dropping its registration requirement.

Quote:

In response to passionate pleas from many readers, we no longer require you to register to read stories or access most of the site’s content.

You still have to register for some features, but this is an enlightened step in the right direction.

(via: Romenesko)