Whenever I see the traffic to this page and this page quadruple, I know that Wikimetro has sent out another batch of spam to various bloggers, pitching their scam.

If Wikimetro contacts you, ignore them. Or, better yet, file a complaint. I was thinking of complaining here, but never got around to it. I don't think the FBI appreciates online scams very much.

The scammy scammers from WikiMetro, who take money to put ads on sites that don't accept them, have contacted me again. See here and here for my previous contact with them.

Hi Drupalcon,

Thanks for the email. Let's schedule a time to talk on the telephone about this. Please go to

http://list.wikimetro.org/contact.aspx

Choose 'Phone' (it requires you to create a username) and choose a time for us to call you back. We've been a bit busy, but we can usually call you back in 10 minutes.

Lisa Anderson
Customer Service
Wikimetro

They called me "Drupalcon" again. I know my custom site layout doesn't follow conventions (I didn't know this when I built it, and a redesign is in the works) so that automatic site parsers get confused. But starting a business relationship by scraping blogs for contact info is insane. I have never emailed them.

And listing my blog on their site as "participating" is an outright lie, as well. Your blog may be listed on their site, too - you can check here to see. Do NOT pay them $25 to have ads appear on this site. If you really want to put ads here, I'm happy to talk, but I'm not sure my traffic is really worth your time.

Anyway, I wasn't sure when they first contacted me, but there is no doubt in my mind that Wikimetro is a scam, and you should have nothing to do with them.

Wednesday's post got into The Express. For those not familiar, The Express is a free paper that gets handed out all over the city, most importantly on Metro - I'd guess that anywhere from 1/3 to 1/2 of all Metro riders as least browse The Express a couple times a week. I won't complain about being in the Express - I think it's awesome. I've occasionally seen blogs I know in there, but never mine.

Anyway, it figures that they'd notice me on a day when I'm being a bit of a jerk. I was in a bad mood because of my meeting later in the day (1:30 to 4! That's too long for any meeting) and, as I am prone to do, I mouthed off about something that wasn't really what was bothering me, but was sort of related and was handy at the time. So that's my complaint. Noticing me on a bad day.

Why couldn't they have noticed on a better day? Like January 24th, 2007? My mom and I agree that this is one of my best posts. Or maybe on July 8th, 2008, when I got hit by a friggin' truck?

In any event, they say there's no such thing as bad publicity, and my hits were up yesterday. So, those of you who came to see that post, hang out and read a few more and realize that Wednesday was not an accurate reflection of me as a human being. I may be a complainer, but I'm not a jerk.

I've started up a new blog. It's not meant to replace this one - I plan to continue posting to both. But it is a new direction. I'm trying something a little more professional rather than whatever you might categorize this blog as.

The new blog is about ebooks and ebook readers, and my intention is to see if I like writing something that's a little more journalistic and a little less whining about parking in DC.

So, go check it out. Let me know what you think.

Seriously, I'd love feedback. Is it mind-numbing? Do you want to punch me in the face? If you were in the market for an ebook reader, would you care what I had to say?

Originally uploaded by thetejon

I hate the "I'm sorry I haven't updated my blog" posts, but I'd like to point out that I actually do have a really good excuse (Pictured at left).

Anyway, my excuse loves to look at herself in the mirror while she's being changed. I'm not sure what she thinks she's looking at, because I don't think she really has that self-awareness. But any time she's awake, not eating, and not screaming, I'm happy, so at this point I don't care.

People keep telling me that the six week mark is where it all turns around and gets easier. We're almost at three weeks. I have to say that, while I love my daughter and still can't believe she's real, the first few weeks of parenting are hard. I wasn't really prepared for this. It's cool, though. At least I have a photo subject that doesn't (can't) run away.

I posted a little while ago about my attempts to optimize my blog for search engines. I think it's working.

Take this example. This morning, I linked to an article on Prince of Petworth about a new restaurant opening in Columbia Heights, CommonWealth Gastropub.

Now, PoP is a near-deity in the greater Columbia Heights/Petworth/Logan/Shaw area. It's a good blog. I read it regularly.

I, on the other hand, am a relative unknown who complains too much.

PoP went to an early preview at CommonWealth and took pictures, then wrote an article about the experience.

I linked to the article, and offered very limited commentary.

Now, go do a little Google search for commonwealth dc gastropub. you will notice that item seven is my post.

The first item from PoP is item 23, and it's not even a link to the most recent article.

So, on one hand, you have a good blog that did some real journalism. On the other, you have a blog, where half the readership was at the author's wedding, that just linked to the real journalism. But I show up first on Google.

I've been re-added to the DC Blogs Live Feed and Blog Directory. I suppose that means I have to write something about DC. If you're interested in DC blogs, they have an extensive list, so you should go check them out. Or ask them to add yours, if you have one.

My friend with the marketing background has a new blog, and he's weighed in with his side of the full- or partial-text RSS feed discussion.

It is possible that I will upgrade to Drupal 6 tomorrow. If so, there may be some changes and some downtime for the site.

Or maybe I won't get around to it, and there will be nothing. But I thought I'd warn everyone paying attention, just in case.

Edit to add: No upgrade today. Didn't get a chance. Maybe next weekend.

I have a friend with a background in marketing. He's the one who sent me the Comcast complaining article. We've been talking about marketing and the internet.

The two of us come from completely different perspectives on how we consume content online. I've just introduced him to Google Reader and the concept of subscribing to an RSS feed. He seems to be enjoying it, and even shared an article with other people on his GTalk buddy list.

I complained to him that he shared a link to a NYTimes article that didn't have the full text in the RSS feed. This is a pet peeve of mine - I read almost no websites that don't offer full-text RSS feeds.

Techdirt talks about how full-text feeds are better. Feedburner does, too. But NYTimes.com doesn't do it. Are they stupid? I don't know.

A little Googling suggests that there's a lot of disagreement on whether or not a partial-text feed drives more traffic to the site. That is, if you have a feed that doesn't show the full article, do more people actually click through and come to your site, where you probably have ads? Or do most people (Like me) just skip it?

Techdirt makes the point that the real bulk of your traffic comes not from your regular feed subscribers, but from them sharing it with their friends or on their blogs. Things get passed around on the popular sites - when something hits the front page of Digg, it's probably going to show up on a lot of other popular sites. That can generate way more traffic than you'd ever get from your subscribers themselves, even if they clickthrough on every RSS item.

My friend says that NYTimes is not dumb, and they've probably researched where they make their money, and decided that partial feeds are the way to go. I'm less inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt, but I realize that the way I consume content is not the way everyone does, and I'm probably in the minority. We may be a growing minority, but NYTimes doesn't make its money on what people will be doing in 10 years.

I will always provide a full-text feed. But I don't make my living with this blog, so I have the luxury of doing what I want rather than what might drive more clicks.

I can't bring him around to my way of thinking, though. But I'm still working on it.