Nik's Blog

Geekery, witty insights, software (of dubious quality) and more!

Why wouldn't you want to be delievered to your customers?

I got the following message in my RSS feeds this morning:

>Thanks for your interest in the Bastard Operator from Hell. Simon Travaglia, the author of BOFH, has asked us to remove links to his articles from our RSS feeds. We will not restore the BOFH RSS feeds without his permission.

BOFH (short for Bastard Operator From Hell) is one of many columns in The Register, an IT-related news site. I was a subscriber to a feed that only gave me the hilarious stories of the Bastard, and I enjoyed reading them.

My question is this: Why would Mr. Travaglia not want to appear in feeds? The feeds didn’t contain the full text of his columns, but really only served to send me to The Reg’s website so that I could read the latest adventure.

This is more or less like asking that clothing you design not appear in the latest Macy’s catalog!

I can only assume that Travaglia, for all his supposed technical brilliance, isn’t much of a marketer and quite possibly isn’t that interested in reaching readers. And, personally, I lament that I probably won’t think to check The Reg any longer for new articles. My news is in RSS, and I rarely venture out to visit other sites, especially ones updated as haphazardly as BOFH.

@inik

inik: I love Dropbox because it's indispensible on an iPhone. Was the top of the list of things I recommended to my bro. http://t.co/AnMAp1K4 >
inik: RT @alexismadrigal: Yup, @Salon cut the number of stories they post, increased their quality, and got a 40% traffic boost. http://t.co/X ... >
inik: RT @mikememoli: "The NFL: We're working on that whole brain injury thing." >
inik: I am a sucker for dog ads. Add Ponda Baba and it's like bliss. >
inik: Live stream only available to Verizon customers. Wonder how much that cost them. Anyone know? #superbowl >

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I love Seth's quote at the top. I think that's my new motto.. ; )

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Griping about OS X Lion? Here's two nifty tools that replace a variety of poorly supported third party tools: Command-line and Automator access to video and audio conversion. Super easy to use, and very flexible and supports any format that Quicktime can encode/decode. (So Perian is a must-install if you want to handle DivX/3viX, etc.)

Yes, ffmpeg, Handbrake and...
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Fix Google Reader's horrible new interface with this user script! Now it fits nicely on my MacBook's small screen. >
Happy 11/11/11 11:11:11! >
What makes this ad awesome is not the true-to-life irony, because the idea is hardly innovative, but rather the excellent execution. Reminds me a bit of that excellent Nutri-Grain spec commercial. Quick delivery, good actors, hit all the high notes. Love it. >