Kinja
For those of you who pay attention to such things, I've created a Kinja
digest and added the appropriate links to my page (under Syndication).
I'm not certain how much I'll use Kinja myself; as one of its principals, Nick Denton, himself
notes, "Kinja is an RSS reader for those who don't know what RSS is", and since I do know what it is, it's probably not really meant for me.
However, I've been wanting to check it out. I've long thought that blogging and Web publishing in general are needlessly complex for the casual user, who doesn't care to know what trackback pings, RSS, XML, readers, or permalinks are, but who would nonetheless happily use those features if they were de-geeked, simple to understand, and simple to use. Kinja seems like a step in that direction.
The other reason I wanted to try Kinja is simpler: all the cool kids are doing it, and I'm nothing if not a crowd-following, slack-jawing, tech-geeking, sushi-eating, latte-sipping bandwagon jumper. I checked out
A9 the day it went public, and hell, I'd try
Gmail if they'd let me.
April 22, 2004 01:26 PM
Weblog administrivia
I'm still waiting for my gmail invite, but a coworker got his today and I must say that I was fairly impressed by the glimpse I saw.
I set up a Kinja thing as well, some time ago -- but as I'm not a blogger myself (yet) and I tend to check my blogs regularly but whimsically, it didn't help me much -- but I could see the use for non-tech-savvy folks.
If you get the gmail invite and there's a way of finagling me one, please do; I'd appreciate it. I think the privacy concerns, while somewhat valid, are overblown.
(Yahoo Mail and Hotmail already scan the contents of your messages to determine which are spam, and although Gmail scans to target you with ads, by all accounts Gmail's ads are less intrusive than Yahoo's or Hotmail's.)
I just got this damned Orkut thing to work, too, as you now know. When I tried before, I kept getting error messages every time I tried to sign up. It was so frustrating I gave up.
Sadly, no gmail invite for me yet. And my coworker's invite did not allow the sharing of the love. If I manage to find a way, I shall do so!
I'm not too concerned about the privacy issue either; reminds me of the people who are afraid to use their credit card online but have no problem handing the physical card to a restaurant or retail employee who may have to leave their line of sight to run the card.
Orkut's interesting -- I joined a gazillion communities but still have only a handful of "friends". There seem to be some neat little tools in there though that make it better than tribe.net, friendster, myspace and so on.
Very interesting stuff. I miss getting my physical copy of eWeek.
Sounds like it'll be one heck of a service. Now if only I could get an account...
(At least I'm not as desperate as this guy:
http://givemegmail.blogspot.com )
Okay, that's pretty funny.
My cousin Ryan mentioned in his latest Wired News piece that Google reps were at the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy conference in Berkeley last week, giving out Gmail accounts.
Sigh. If I were a writer on the privacy beat, like Ryan, I'd have been at CFP and been able to get a Gmail account. I should have beaten him up more when we were kids.
Some people have all the luck. My coworker, for example, wasn't even really using his blogger account -- but logged in when one of his friends noticed the signup thing.
And he got the ad, got the account. No fair.
I've had a blogger account forever, but wasn't using it. I am now though, we'll see if it works out.
What, you can't beat him up more now and take over?
Dan: I know how you feel. I signed up for blogger.com in 2001 just to see what it was like, but when I logged in to get a GMail invite, there wasn't one.
I have now posted at least once a day to the account to prove my activity, but I have received no love from the GMail invite gods.
If you figure out another way to get a GMail invite, would you mind sharing?
Best of luck.
I would like to try gmail, but nobody I know can send me an invitation. Can you spare me one?
My email is windyswonderland@yahoo.com
Thanks a lot.
Windy,
I can't right now. Gmail sometimes provides a link to allow you to invite people, but only during periods when Google feels ready to grow its Gmail user base.
If I get an invite link, I'll keep you in mind.