Single serving sites: Now unhip

Posted on March 7, 2008 by Chris Heisel

[Single](http://www.godsdamnit.com/) [serving](http://r33b.net/) [sites](http://www.instantrimshot.com/) — thanks [Kottke](http://www.kottke.org/) for [the name](http://www.kottke.org/08/02/single-serving-sites) — are all the rage.

But now, they must be considered un-hip, for I [have one](http://iwantopenid.com/).

From now until I decide to stop doing it [iwantopenid.com](http://iwantopenid.com/) will display the name of the site I’d like next to embrace [OpenID](http://openid.net/).

When the site I’ve chosen to direct my lack-of-OpenID scorn at succumbs to my single-serving petition I shall place a new name atop the list.

On a lark, if you’d like to nominate the next site, put it on [del.icio.us](http://del.icio.us) with a tag of [iwantopenid](http://del.icio.us/tag/iwantopenid/).

A **warning** to any site who considers providing [OpenID](http://openid.net/) **without consuming it as well** — there will be a special bit of shaming for you. Friends don’t let friends provide [OpenID](http://openid.net/) without consuming it.

Posted in Personal, Technology | Comments Off on Single serving sites: Now unhip

Recap of Fortune Interview with Steve Jobs

Posted on March 5, 2008 by Chris Heisel
  • Recap of Fortune Interview with Steve Jobs – Best quote: “People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully.”
Posted in Blogmarks | Comments Off on Recap of Fortune Interview with Steve Jobs

Online ads are priced right

Posted on February 25, 2008 by Chris Heisel

There’s a good interview with the [CEO of an online ad firm at Silicon Alley Insider](http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/2/24_7_real_media_ceo_david_moore) that raises a very good point about **Internet advertising rates**:

Moore: The fact of the matter is the Internet has been either dramatically underpriced or offline media is dramatically overpriced. Right now a reader of the Wall Street Journal might be worth a dollar, but for someone reading the online Journal you get a nickel. That’s 20 to 1 offline versus online pricing. You need 20 online readers to replace one offline reader. So when you talk about pricing overall I think the web is dramatically underpriced already.

(Via O’Reilly Radar.)

While I think most of us in the Internet publishing business would like to think ads are **underpriced**, my gut says **no**.

* Unlike print, very few folks go online specifically for advertising
* Those that do, go to a business’ Web site *directly*, or to a [free](http://www.craigslist.org/) [listing](http://www.kijiji.com/) [site](http://www.zillow.com/).
* Studies show that users are in a “seek” mode most of the time online, so they’re likely looking for the content that’s near the ads
* Eyetracking studies confirm that users very rarely look at the ads once they’ve found the content their looking for

Long term, the Internet is going to prove [disruptive](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disruptive_technology) to the traditional display advertising model — users can get to advertisers’ information directly without the middleman of a content provider.

What does this mean for content publishers on the Internet? What business model(s) will emerge to [reign supreme](http://money.cnn.com/2006/03/29/commentary/mediabiz/ironchef.jpg)?

I. Wish. I. Knew.

Posted in Business, Technology | 2 Comments

Quote of the day: NITF

Posted on February 21, 2008 by Chris Heisel

“OMG I can hear the clunking sounds coming from the [NITF website](http://www.nitf.org/)”
— IM conversation with [Zellyn](http://www.zellyn.com)

Posted in Journalism, Programming, Technology | Comments Off on Quote of the day: NITF

My first Django snippet: Another Memcache status view

Posted on February 14, 2008 by Chris Heisel

Hooray! I posted by first Django snippet today. It’s a [status view for your memcache server(s)](http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/597/).

I had originally used [this snippet](http://www.djangosnippets.org/snippets/54/), but the regex and socket thing never quite sat right with me.

Turns out that django.core.cache has a _cache object with a nice get_status() function. It returns a list of tuples — one for each server in your CACHE_BACKEND setting — the first item of each tuple is the server name/IP and port, the second item of the tuple is a dictionary with all the relevant stats you could need.

Posted in Django, Python, Technology | Comments Off on My first Django snippet: Another Memcache status view