New idea for RSS aggregators: Drama Filter (and code blogs)

by on July 7, 2006

Andy Brudtkuhl came up with an interesting idea. We need a blogosphere drama filter, he says. Too much “Scoble” and “Rocketboom.”

Oh, but we LOVE our dramas, don’t we? Did you hear that a new host has been picked for Rocketboom (not officially, but according to the Huffington Post)?

Oh, if you don’t want drama, why not come to the Lang.NET symposium, which is really just a compiler forum? No drama there. Your code either runs or it doesn’t. Lehman tells me that Miguel de Icaza of Mono will be there, along with speakers from Sun Microsystems and other smart coders. That’s July 31-August 2 at Microsoft in Redmond.

Or, why don’t you check out some code blogs like Albert Pascual’s. The problem with code blogs is it’s hard to find a single post that focused on a single problem. Let’s say you come up with a cool sorting algorithm. How will other people know you did?

What’s your favorite code blog? Or drama blog? Heheh.

  • Big mistake IMHO if Andrew selects just one new host and does it on his own.

    Why not involve the blogosphere? Run a Rocketboom Idol contest! I just sent the idea to Andrew in an email. You can read the email's contents at
    http://snipurl.com/rocketboomidol
  • Dave R
    http://codebetter.com/blogs/jeremy.miller/defau...

    just discovered this blog and I love it.
  • Code Blogs -- Subscribe to the ASP.Net Digest

    As far as drama filters -- In a sense it was a joke but in reality it is not. There's far more than drama that I would want filtered. The best aggregator I've used, RSS Searchfox, showed me specific articles from my entire feed library based on my reading preferences. If I don't read drama, they didn't automatically show it to me.
  • Manny Oscar
    Best code-blogs:
    1) Raymond Chen
    2) Larry Osterman
    3) Daily WTF

    All drama-filled. Code-drama.
  • Just use Tailrank's custom memetracker support.

    Create an account, upload your OPML, and Tailrank will only show items within the OPML file you uploaded (we also support additional mechanims like direct import from Newsgator or Bloglines).

    We can then use this list to recommend even more blogs we think you'd like...

    Kevin
  • Karim
    "No drama there." Huh??? You're putting guys from Microsoft, Novell and Sun in the same room, evangelizing the merits of various competing technologies, and there's not going to be any drama???

    Why don't you buy Anders Helsjberg and Paul Vick a few drinks, then ask them, "Which is better, C# or VB?" After the nervous laughter and the inevitable diplomatic "it depends" answers, go all serious and sincere and say, "No really. Which is better?"

    Just make sure you've taken all the beer bottles and sharp objects off the table beforehand.

    A language architect on his third Tanqueray and tonic yelling at you and spitting in your face about the mortal danger to the world posed by dynamic typing: now that's drama. Forget about Brad and Angelina. Forget about Amanda and Andrew. We're talking programming languages here. Do you know how much of the world runs on code? This is high drama. This is serious, world-changing stuff. This is stuff Ibsen would have written plays about, only there were no compilers back then, so he had to stick to infidelity and suicide.

    "No drama." Sheesh.

    Of course everyone thinks everyone else's drama is stupid. Clearly 82% of Planet Earth right now is focused on the outcome of the World Cup, but all I see is a bunch of sweaty guys trying to kick a ball into a net. Someone explain that to me....

    It's not that the web needs a drama filter. Drama just means someone is passionate about something. It needs a filter for stupid drama. The problem is that the definition of "stupid" varies per person.

    I like the fact that many news portals let me remove the "Sports" news. Maybe it just needs to be a slightly more granular filter, e.g. "I want to see International News, unless it involves the Middle East." See? Now your International News is 92% less stupid. LOL

    But I figure it's gotta be someone's job to care about whether the ball makes it into the net, just as it's gotta be someone's job to care passionately about programming languages, or the situation in the Middle East, or Brad and Angelina. Or Amanda and Andrew.

    Speaking of which, I just read some coverage of Andrew Baron's talk at CaseCamp. The blog post on Podonomics was interesting; the author spoke very highly of Andrew, said he "doesn't have an evil bone in him," that Andrew had a "child-like innocence," etc. But there was this quote:

    He said that Rocketboom was prepared to move the production team to Los Angeles, but that their newly acquired business partner advised them that due to costs, they should stay put in New York.

    Ok, to me that sounds like, yes, Andrew DID promise to move the show to LA, then reneged.

    Which would make sense given that Amanda is complaining about having moved out of her apartment in preparation for the move to LA.

    Maybe the mysterious "newly acquired business partner" realized, "Oh my God, we have to hire UNION people in LA." Members of SAG can't accept non-union work, and maybe Amanda wanted to join SAG...

    So then a summary would be:

    ---
    AMANDA: I want to move Rocketboom to LA. I've always wanted to move to LA, ever since I was a little girl. My whole life has been leading up to this move to Los Angeles.

    ANDREW: Ok, sounds good.

    [Rocketboom starts to make money]

    ANDREW: We're actually making money now. I don't know about business, so let's hire someone to run the business.

    AMANDA: Ok, sounds good.

    [time passes]

    [Amanda picks out curtains for new LA apartment]

    ANDREW: The Business Manager says it would be too expensive to move to LA. Apparently we would have to, like, hire professionals or something, and that would eat into our liquid assets, or something.

    AMANDA: But I already picked out curtains.

    ANDREW: Sorry, we can't move.

    AMANDA: You don't understand, I already have the curtains for my new LA apartment.

    ANDREW: I'm sure they're very nice.

    AMANDA: I have to go put up the curtains. In LA.

    ANDREW: Those curtains would look great in New York.

    AMANDA: You think I'm joking? I'm already packed and halfway out the door. I just dropped off my change-of-address forms. And I'm supposed to audition for a role next week.

    ANDREW: You know, that's a shame, because the show is in New York.

    AMANDA: You promised. You can't back out of the deal like that.

    ANDREW: It sounds like you're saying it's curtains.

    AMANDA: Yes, Andrew, it's curtains.
    ---

    I intentionally left out the cliched part where Amanda asks how the show can go on without her, she's the STAR, and Andrew says she's just a face, she can be replaced, Rocketboom belongs to HIM, etc. because I mean, come on, it's been DONE, people. Euripedes did this stuff 2500 years ago.

    Besides, you have to have some really dramatic music behind that, Wagner, John Williams, something.

    Will Andrew continue to take the "high road?" Will his new hostess be accepted by Rocketboom viewers? Will Amanda accept Jason's offer? And what about... Naomi? Tune in next week...
  • Are bloggers being manipulated?

    Eventually the truth comes out, but blogging is so immediate that by then we will have all moved on.
  • George
    Favourite code blog: http://www.pagetable.com
    Not for everyone, that's for sure.
  • Yeah, lots of us have been telling him the advice Buzz Bruggeman gave me when going through my divorce: "take the high road." It's really hard to do, I'm sure.
  • oh rocketboom is going live on monday. andrew announced it tonight but he wouldn't say what was going to happen... link

    she won't be there but this could be rocketboom's most watched episode yet. As for the drama the poor guy was fit to bursting for the chance to tell his side of the story but his family and peers have been holding him back for his own sake. It's been pretty ugly though all the dirty linnen that's been aired so far.
  • FILTERS are indeed what we all need - in so many ways.
  • Sarah
    omg, i am now seeing this site in arial and it is amazing.
  • Just don't tell my wife about Pink! She'll be contending with me for PC time ;-)
  • Sarah
    favourite drama blog: Pink is the new blog (trent.blogspot.com).

    Am I the only tech geek who also loves celeb gossip!?!?
  • Yeah, I assumed Robert was using the lovely Helvetica font, but that's just my default.
  • In all seriousness I met with some folks from Factiva today and, while theirs are paid products, they have some very cool applications and interfaces that can do a lot of the either auto-pulling/aggregating or filtering like was discussed here. They are really more focused on the enterprise space though (Intranet, desktop applications for deliver of the info.). I am really suprised that google hasn't popped up with something like this given their expertise in the search field and search algorythms.
  • Richard: I don't use ANY font. You just have to change the default font in your browser to whatever you'd like it to be.
  • Robert, please could you get rid of Times New Roman and use something like Verdana or Arial? It's just that TNR really puts a hurt on my eyes. Here's hoping...
  • In all seriousness, I'd be curious to see if there was some grammatical difference in drama posts vs non-drama posts. Maybe drama posts have more quotes, more exclamations, shorter sentences, etc.

    Paging NLP geeks...
  • Seriously, wouldn't some of the "attention" concepts solve this. If you had interest in the Rocketboom story or it was important it would bring it to your attention, but not every link/thought/comment/repost would have to be displayed. If "attention" wouldn't solve this, the concept would really be quite limited and not very useful.
  • LJ Leery
    Coding Horror (http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/) is my favorite coding blog.
    Regarding your "problem with coding blogs": If it's a good read like Coding Horror, I subscribe to the blog and read it daily. But there are coding blogs I don't subscribe to, that I find when I search for a problem I need solved. Doesn't matter to me that the post is a couple years old ... I'm glad it's there if it solves my problem.
  • Michael: I think I got Amanda off my mind. Sorry.
  • How about a drama filter that brings back nothing but drama. Kind of like the blogosphere version of Soap Operas. Maybe my wife might get interested then instead of calling them those "boring geeky things my husband like." ;-)
  • If you want to get some drama from OLD-style journalism, then try all the scuttlebutt about what happened at the Santa Barbara NewsPress yesterday. (I've a blog post which points to all the main sources of the story)
  • Christ almighty, enough about Rocketboom. If this is what post-Microsoft Scoble is like, I'm about two more entries like this away from pulling your feed.
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