It's Just this Little Chromium Switch Here

I've written several articles about the damage Verisign caused with their Site Finder product rollout. The current Verisign controversy is over a scam called "Wait List Service." Fed up yet? Go Daddy has started a petition to recall Verisign.

Tonight, I switched my RSS feed to include full article content instead of just an entry synopsis. I'd been ambivalent on the issue. I realize many people like full content, but I wish they'd come to my site to get it—for the comments if nothing else.

That, however, is imposing my preference on others. Probably the best thing is to give people the choice and let them pick whichever they want—and just be grateful somebody wants to read my crap.

Unfortunately, I have a lot of content that will not work in RSS. Many of my blog entries use relative links. Although the newer Atom standard allows for relative links, prior RSS versions do not.

Today I realized I don't need to worry about historical entries. I just need to be sure that from here on out I only use absolute links in my entries. The RSS feed contains only recent entries. The old ones don't matter.

There are some very good reasons to put full content in RSS. So, as of now, it's there.

Onward to day two of SXSW. Day one ended not with a bang, but a sloosh.

At the last minute I got pressed into service as a panelist for the Can You Build a Company From Free Code session. I was glad to help, although I have been more suited for a panel about not making money from open source software.

After that panel, the last of the day, I hooked up with a crew of local ruffians to find a happy hour. We headed out towards 5th Street. The gray skies started drizzling. The battle tank laptop on my shoulder started dragging. I thought it would be a good idea to split off, find my car, drop off the laptop, grab a jacket, and rejoin the group at the club.

An hour later I was wandering around Convention Center area in the rain, trying to remember where I'd parked that morning. By that time my clothes were soaked and my laptop weighed another twenty pounds. I was getting very cold, wet, and grumpy.

I ducked out of the rain and phoned my girlfriend at home. "Help!" She drove down and got me. We had a quick dinner and then set out to retrace my steps that morning. Naturally we found it almost immediately. I suppose I could have rejoined the evening activities, but by that point I just wanted to go home and crawl into bed.

I hope that doesn't happen again. Today I made good note of where I parked. I'm over at the corner of Third and....errrr....something.

Last month I wrote about stopping spam by placing a per-message charge on email. I think it's a bad idea. The proposal is getting a lot of serious attention, though, because Bill Gates is its most visible advocate. He points out people are willing to pay 37 cents to send a letter, so why not a penny for email?

I think there is ample evidence this just won't fly. John Levine has pointed out we've already been there and done that. There once were commercial email systems such as MCI Mail, which were supplanted by flat rate Internet email, and are now just a dim memory.

I don't think we need to reach into the distant past for a good example. How about celullar phone subscribers? At least for basic voice service, subscribers seem to demand a fixed rate subscription and will do anything to avoid per-minute charges. I think any Internet service that implements per-message charges will find themselves hemorrhaging subscribers.

This morning at SXSW, the "History and Lessons of the Cellular Industry" panel offered an opportunity to sanity check this theory. After the panel I approached Jeff Nelson of Verizon and asked him what he thought about switching from fixed rate to per-message charges as a spam solution. He discussed business models and was quite unapologetic that his goal was to get subscribers to pay as much as he could get them to. I was curious what he thought about this anti-spam proposal.

Like most people, just the mention of "spam" tripped his alarms. He said that spam is a huge concern for cellular providers. They careflly watch what happens on the net as a whole, which serves as a leading indicator for activity on the cellular networks. All the providers are worried and working to keep spam at bay.

I dragged him back to the question: what about switching from flat rate to per-message charges? He just rolled his eyes. He said under his breath, "If my Internet provider tried to charge me for email I wouldn't stand for it."

It was like he viewed per-message charges as a third rail issue. I think it shows that scheme isn't going to get very far.