Michael Leander Nielsen’s Neighborhood

OK, this is my first blog entry in Vox.

I am surfing around to find new social services on the web. Mostly to investigate the opportunities to use them professionally in companies and organisations.

Marketing Canapes was developed as an evolution of an emailed newsletter, I've always been an advocate of being able to communicate in two directions. One of the limitations in placing Marketing Canapes here was that people would have to join VOX to be able to reply to a post. Fortunately, that is a freebie. Not an ideal situation, but doable. I have posted before about moving Marketing Canapes elsewhere so anyone can access it and make comments. That is still on the table.

In looking over the short Black PR post and reply, I have noticed that there are those on VOX who have no problem going to a blog and posting while restricting that blogger from being able to view their blog and posts (if there are any at all). I'm not picking on Ivana - I think her comment was a good one - but if you are going to make comments on my blog, then afford me the courtesy of opening your blog to me so I have the same privilege. Otherwise it can degenerate into a blind where someone can take potshots at other bloggers and hide behind privacy settings.

Another similar situation arises when a commentator comes in and and all you reach on the other side is a commercially-oriented blog with token or non-existent public postings. They are designed for one-way communications.

Consequently, I am considering removing all these one-way VOX sites from my neighborhood.

If you want to talk to me and my neighborhood and post on my blog, then open yours up to me.

I am wondering how the rest of my neighborhood feels about this matter.

Well, I am still not posting regularly because I am bouncing back and forth between using Bloglines and Newsgator. Well, this is my analysis.

I started with one aggregator a long time ago. It was unusable under any circumstance. I switched to Bloglines until some minor annoyances - like feeds I have marked keep on loading in the background until they finsh. Bloglines shouild terminate that feed to the user when they tell Bloglines to mark it read. Period. There is no, NO excuse for their not being able to do so. Specifically, Lifehacker and a couple of others, but Lifehacker was singularly the most annoying.

Then I switched to Newsgator based upon a lot of recommendations running around the web. It was given a number one position by more than a few reviewers. BALDERDASH! It is SLOOOOOOOOOOOOW, so slow, it makes maple syrup creeping down a maple tree trunk on a cold winter's day look like an Olympic sprint champion. I can load a text only blog's full text postings faster with Bloglines than I could load the same blog's capsules on Newsgator.

I also like Bloglines ability to open another feed in another tab or window - something you cannot do with Newsgator. This may be in the works of the new beta, but that loaded so slooooow it made regular Newsgator look like that same sprinter.

Well, I am back with Bloglines for the interim. The search continues.

Maybe I can download enough stuff so I can find something interesting to post although there were so many posts in the 178 I am monitoring, I just marked them all read. Onward!

For quite awhile, I have been involved with an inventor whose product should make our shores in late August. I can hardly wait to get one of the units to use. Anyway, about a week back, I contacted the gentleman to see how things were going. He told me he was under the gun to get the user's manual/instructions to the manufacturing plant. I guess they will do the printing right there.

In any event, he had forgotten that I offered my help in working the document over and I asked him to forward the file. Thank heavens the bulk of it was graphics. It was 6.5 megs in size. I spent a real solid night working it over and sending it back. It should be in China.

I'll have more on the Behmore 1600 home coffee roaster when it arrives. My small flid bed roaster is starting to make noises and I've done what hacking I can to keep it going. That reminds me, time to do a few small batches in the am - perhaps some Kenyan.  

A few posts below I wrote about Fiji water and the transportation and costs of getting that bottled water to you the consumer. I also have mentioned that in taste test after taste test, New York City tap water beats out bottled water again and again and again.

Now we can add to all that, the enormous costs involved in bottled water. Go to Buzz Feed and take a look at the links and those links links. If you are green at heart, you will no longer purchase bottled water. I know I will not. I use a local water store, previously mentioned where I cna get water at 30 cents a gallon folks, and I bet it will beat out every bottled water you can find on the shelf. I use it only for making coffee, oatmeal and rice. pasta is plain old filtered tap water.

Get greener, quit buying bottled water or have the bottled water companies got you on the hook and following them around mindlessly?