Monday, May 02, 2011

Monday music: "Shine," David Crowder Band

Thanks to a suggestion from reader Missy Reed, we have the most creative use of Lite-Brite I've ever seen. Fun, funny, touching.

14 comments:

RodeoClown said...

Hi Dan,
your RSS feed seems to have changed to being only partial-text.
Could you please set it back to full-content?

Many thanks.

Merrilee Stevenson said...

That was cool.

DJP said...

As I replied to a similar comment in HT thread:

So, ____, that means that it gives you a preview, which you then click to read the real thing?

IOW, in the previous way, people could read the entire post without visiting this site; but in the current way, they are notified that a post is up, and can then click through here to read the rest?

In the former, if I have this right, my traffic counter does not reflect who's reading my posts; in the latter, they do?

So what is the down-side of it showing as it does now?

David Regier said...

Was that the Stinky Cheese Man on the side?

Kirby said...

Dan,

thanks for that. I'd never heard the song, which is some good poetry. and the video was very touching - caught me off guard, made me cry.

but no doubt - the whole concept of the video was brilliant. there's some good minds at work, and, they're on our side. PTL.

RodeoClown said...

Hi Dan,
Sorry I didn't see the comment in the HT thread (because I didn't click through).

The benefit to you with a partial-text feed is you get to see how many people click through from your feed. The downside to you is that you don't know how many people stop reading (either because they don't want to click through, as it adds extra overhead to reading; or can't click through, due to work-filters, proxy servers and the like, or they download their feeds and read them offline (I spent many years reading blogs this way)), and you don't know how many people have stopped reading.

Also, there may be a case that full-text feeds increase click-throughs over partial-text feeds.

I would politely ask that you reconsider your decision - if the only benefit is you can count how many people are reading, there are very simple ways of getting that information about your feed without removing value from those of us who appreciate being able to read the full text in one place (and then click through if we are interested in the comments).

Thanks.

DJP said...

So, you're saying:

1. I go to the work (ranging from a few seconds to many hours) to create a post

2. The financial charge to readers stands at $00.00

3. Nonetheless, there are readers who won't go to the trouble to click on a link and contribute one tick to my traffic-count

4. And, for those people, I should make it still easier not to give the one zero-cost thing they could give which is of occasional use in increasing this blog's visibility or influence; and/or I should study up on and consider another service, in the interests of making it easier for them?

At the moment, I'm thinking no; if what I give here isn't worth one click of the mouse, then... well, that's sad.

Herding Grasshoppers said...

How cool is THAT?! Good message with a very creative presentation. Love it!

Rebekah said...

That was really cool. I cried - didn't expect to, but can't say you didn't warn us...touching. Very cool.

Missy said...

Thanks for posting it! I too cried when I first watched it (and have continued to cry on subsequent viewings). :)

RodeoClown said...

Hi Dan,

It's definitely your call to make, I was just asking if you could reconsider. Not everyone is able to click through (when I read feeds on my phone, reading on the website vs via the feed reader is terrible).

The other way to look at it is that you have taken the effort to write your post and you are not charging for the privilege of reading (thanks, by the way!), and using a full-text feed allows the post to be more easily read and disseminated.
The method used by Blogger to make the partial text feeds just dumps the first X characters, with no regard to images or videos or any further text (unless a word is chopped off half way, which hints at something missed), meaning your readers may not realise there is anything to click through to.

Anyway, I'm not going to try and convince you further - it's your site to do with as you please.

Thanks for the effort you put into writing it.

Kyle said...

I'm w/RodeoClown... it's your blog do as you like, but yours is a less common practice. If you're more concerned to see folks land on your web page, what's the point of having an RSS feed? In your former setup, I could scan a weeks worth of postings and click in if I wanted to follow the discussion or comment myself... maybe one out of four posts...

It's your football, so you get to make the rules, I just wanted to let you know that one user finds the change burdensome. Thanks for all you do!. Peace, bro.

Kirby said...

@RodeoClown, et al.

Call me old fashioned or out of touch with technology, but I have only used my.yahoo aggregator to view all my RSS feeds. I have only ever gotten the title of the article and when it was posted. I float over it and get the first 5 lines. Usually from that, I tell if I'm going to click through. Although usually the title is simply good enough. So that would be the simple reason to have an RSS feed. Granted, I don't use a phone to read blogs so I have no comment for that.

Anonymous said...

Not gonna lie: End of the workday I 1) have been singing this song all day long and 2) had to listen to it again, but without seeing the window...I tend to be dreadfully emotional.