RSS Pad - Really Simple Syndication ... Really!

Fotothing to the Rescue

If you are a fotoblogger who has used Flikr and not been satisfied you now have a new option in Fotothing.  Fotothing (www.fotothing.com) is a free photo sharing and blogging site. It is like a standard blogging Website, except with photos as the focus. Users can:

*    Share their latest and greatest snaps with their friends, family and online communities
*    Tag their own pictures and add groups and friends to their personal blogging network
*    Post comments/receive comments from other users on their snaps
*    Upload up to 15 photos per day
*    Receive up to 100 comments per photo
*    Upload photos of up to 2Mb in size
*    Add up to 200 friends 
*    Eliminate banner ads or Google ads on the site
*    Have their name highlighted in the member directory and 'online' list.
*    Have improved JPEG quality for their photos

The really cool thing is that they offer a free side to their service.  This should speed up the adoption of the service.  They also offer a premium service level that quite simply adds more benefits to the basic offering which is not basic at all.

Wow!  Everywhere you look people are improving on the many uses of blogging technologies.  No doubt movie making version may be in the not so distant future.

High Altitude Blogging with Boeing, Broback, Pirillo and Scoble

Blogger Robert Scoble of Microsoft, Steve Broback of the Blog Business Summit, Chris Pirillo  and others put Boeing's new Connexion high speed HIGH ALTITUDE Internet connection to the test.   They flew from Seattle  to Walla Walla, Washington  for a conference and were able to blog, check emails, stay up to date with news and anything else that they wished to do on-line while flying.

That is cool!  No doubt about it.  While it may be considered a luxury today, this is the first step toward making it a necessity tomorrow.  In the future bloggers and business travelers will expect this type of service automatically.   They may even decide to stream music, videos and movies instead of suffering through some of the airlines entertainment offerings.

The question is how far in the future is that?  By Internet standards it may already be here.

Apple's Jobs Announces iTunes Podcast Support

According to a report at eweek.com iTunes will be a user friendly place for poscasts.  I have wondered on more than one occasion why this was not part of the Mac Tiger OS 10.4 release.  In my opinion it was one of the few things missing from the release.  Glad to see poscast support now.

Brand with Blogs

A primer for branding your company / persona with blogs is available here.   

Excerpt from the article,

    "The whole phenomenon -- it's fast moving. It's going to keep evolving quickly and it's not going away," said Shelley Ballarino, director of the Syndicate Conference for IDG World Expo Corp., of Framingham, one of the event organizers. "Businesses need to get involved now so they're not left behind by the other businesses that adopt (blogging, RSS and other emerging technologies)." IDG World Expo is known largely for its organization of the MacWorld and LinuxWorld conferences and exhibitions.
     The Syndicate Conference, which will take place at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York Tuesday and Wednesday, will be divided into two sections, one for publishers and one for corporate marketers, said Tom Maher, conference manager for FuelDog Inc., of Needham, another organizer of the event. FuelDog, a developer of event concepts, also develops blogs, Web sites and newsletters for markets that are underserved. "

Feedster to RSS Advertise

Feedster Introduces RSS Advertising but provides no details.  OK, I admit it.  Advertising does serve me at some level.  Advertising has improved my quality of life in many ways.  I just don't think I need them in my RSS feeds. 

It presents a host of problems for the blog owner and/or webmaster as well as the advertiser.  One for example is inclusion of RSS feeds in blogs and on Web sites.  Am I going to be required to maintain the ads in place when including the RSS feed?  It would concern me as a PPC advertiser too.  RSS feeds included in blogs and sites are generally not updated  each time a  page is pulled.   They are usually cached.  As a site owner am I expected to cache the ads too?  As an advertiser am I expected to continue to pay on cached ads.  How does Feedster, for example, limit my impressions?