Tag Archives: content

Blame Cyrozap

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Cyrozap‘s recent vociferous comments about truncated feeds were basically on point.

He noticed that I had recently changed my RSS feed settings to serve up truncated posts, rather than full content.  I made this change in mostly because I was tired of dealing with content theft.  However, I’m reasonably sure this will probably not be an issue any longer. While the points made by those articles are certainly valid, I would point out that it is far easier to steal content from an RSS feed than it is to write a content scraper.  Having written both, once upon a time, I can attest to this from experience.  Truncated feeds may not be a deterrent to all – but it will deter those who are just using a WordPress plugin to suck down RSS content.

In any case, I left the RSS feed settings as they were – due to inertia and because I assumed no one would really notice.  But, since I haven’t had to deal with stolen content in a little while and at least one person prefers un-truncated feeds…  the long rambling RSS posts are back!

If you find my rambling babbling showing up in your RSS feed, well, you have Cryozap Cyrozap to thank.  :)

Update:  Cyrozap – sory fore mispellnig yoru mane.

Botmill.com – NOT COOL

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Okay, you had a robo-blog.  That’s fine.  Nothing wrong with that.  In fact, I’m appreciative for some of those posts and blogs you pointed out to me.  You apologized profusely, though I don’t there’s a need to apologize for a robo-blog per se.

However, since then your robo-blogs have gotten worse.  The one associated with 3D-Printer-Parts.com, which links back to your site, is collecting anything and everything with the words “made, make, printer, 3d, 3-d” et cetera.  Oh, but that’s not the worst part.

Botmill is stealing the entire content of other people’s works and not providing any attribution.  That link is to one of my own posts (and not a particularly interesting one) copied whole cloth and posted in your own blog.

Make up your mind – do you want to be a blog aggregator or sell robot parts? There are tons of aggregators out there.  Not many are very good.  The ones that are have a real person picking and choosing.  The robo-blogs are basically packed with irrelevant or useless content.  Turn off the robo-blog and drop the fake secondary sites.  Rather than stealing the content of potential customers, why not write some of your own content.  How about posting some information about your own products?  Or some innovations of your own?  Stolen content doesn’t help you with customers, hurts your Google PageRank, and actually causes ill will.

Why not take a page from MakerBot and MakerGear?  Have a contest, give some stuff away, write some interesting things, ask them for help, show them you care, involve your customers, and form a community.

Christmas, Birthday, etc

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It’s not that I’m not materialistic or a complete stoic.  It’s just that my interests are so simple, narrow, and specific there just isn’t a whole lot I require out of life.  But for other happy and fortunate life complications1 I’d live in a studio apartment almost completely devoid of furniture except for a futon, small table, one (perhaps two) and book shelf.  Give me a library card and a laptop and I’ll show you a content man.  For example – one of my hobbies is origami.  Which boils down to basically a lot of paper. 2

While this means I’m easily content, it means those family and friends are frustrated at the thought of having to find me a gift. 3  So, for basically the first time ever I’ve put together a wish list with stuff I would love to get (in rough order):

  1. aka family [↩]
  2. A hobby which, hundreds of years ago could only be practiced by those precious few who had access to a luxury such as paper, can now be practiced by anyone in reach of a paper recycling bin. [↩]
  3. 500 sheets of A4 bright white multipurpose paper???  Score! [↩]
  4. Since I have none of the equipment or skills to perform SMT soldering [↩]
  5. Someone mentioned the modular thermistor set ups don’t detect temperatures properly – about 10 degrees too low?! Update:  Rick of MakerGear clarifies this was the result of a ring terminal mounted thermistor.  His modular thermistor kit pictured at the bottom of the this page shows that this kit allows you to make the entire thermistor attachment far more modular by covering it’s terminals in PTFE sleeves and then adding a connector.  This only makes me want this kit more.  Thanks Rick! [↩]
  6. Preferably one with George Plimpton’s face [↩]
  7. That’s a Simpson’s reference, FYI [↩]