Prompted by widespread buzz from many FeedBurner publishers who blogged about notable increases in feed subscribers over the weekend, we thought now was a good time to step back and talk about media consumption drivers, and how to accurately assess adoption of our increasingly feed-powered Webosphere (we did NOT just say "webosphere").

While it's always encouraging to see feed subscription numbers go up (Google's recent inclusion of subscription data for Google Reader and Google Homepage increased the number of feed subscriptions FeedBurner can report to publishers by 53% alone), these subscription numbers in a vacuum only tell part of the story. Equally important is the extent to which people are reading feeds and interacting with them. In today's post we'll take a look at one aspect of the feed aggregator market - the web-based aggregators - and draw some conclusions about how audiences are consuming content in new and different ways. There are obviously many other feed-reading clients we could discuss (e.g. email, widgets, desktop aggregators, etc.), and we'll tackle those in future posts.

Total Feed Subscriptions ≠ Market Share
With the feedometer now at 604,533 feeds on behalf of 347,000 bloggers, podcasters and commercial publishers, we've got a great sample size to gauge the impact of an aggregator's participation in the market. On any given day, FeedBurner sees more than 3,000 clients capable of reading all kinds of feeds, including podcasts and video feeds. Each of these feed readers reports data differently, so comparing subscriber market share alone can lead to several challenges:

• Not all subscribers are alike. Yahoo reports active subscribers over a rolling 30-day period. Most other web-based readers report the total number of individuals who've subscribed, regardless of whether they have actually logged in recently.
• Default feeds are popular. (Yes, this is an early frontrunner in 2007 "Painfully Obvious Bullet" balloting.) Said differently: many aggregators offer a set of default feeds for every new account, or provide "bundles" of feeds by category. These feeds will get disproportionately high subscriber numbers at specific aggregators.

This prelude sets up what we think is a better statistic for measuring market share: Engagement. Audience engagement, which is to say, people reading feeds and people clicking on feeds - is how we've increasingly been interpreting feed subscription numbers to better understand market penetration.

Follow the story link to read more...

I am pleased to announce the launching of Seodays, an intimate conference series on all aspects of search engine optimization & marketing, which I am partnered in, along with two well known industry personalities (and good friends of mine) Dave...

惊闻一位美女要到微软来做宣讲，招募志愿者，第一时间我抢到了沙发。来的这位美女叫做ISA（名字怎么这么亲切呢？好像哪里听过），这家组织叫做“国际青年成就”。美女说的真好“Let their success be your inspiration”。这让我想起，西方心理学大师马兹洛也说过，人一旦吃饱了，就会撑，接着呢，就应该做点让自己有安全感，有归属感，有荣耀感的事情，最后把自己给实现了。

10月23日，第一次参加国际青年成就的活动。

我对ISA说，活动很棒，但我不是很喜欢这个题目“成功技巧”。成功没有技巧。于是我请开复帮忙，用他的一些内容，在原有的课程上加了一章“成功是成为最好的你自己”（后来成了开复新书的书名）。这门课改名为“事业启航”。开复颇有感慨：我77年作为学生在美国参加国际青年成就课程时，学会了如何成为一个独立的思考者，对自己的命运负责。今天中国的学生有同样的机会真令人高兴。希望这样的课程可以像当年帮助了我的职业和生活一样，帮助今天中国的学生。

管多少人，赚多少钱，出多大名，算是成功？我似乎开始有一点慢慢明白，自己为什么没有去美国。是啊，成功是成为最好的你自己。

“嗨，我有一个想法。”半夜，我打电话给谢昉，激动地说，“我想做一个公益网站。当一个人受到上帝眷顾的时候，我们当分享这份幸运。我们可以捐献时间。”

接下来的五个月里，我和上百个人讨论这个“捐献时间”的想法。很多人委婉的说：

• “最大的公益就是干好自己的活”（画外音：做你自己的事吧，别整这些没用的）
• “我要是有你那么多时间可以捐献就好了”（画外音：你整一个就是闲得慌）
• “你找谁来捐点时间给我吧”（画外音：我帮自己还帮不过来呢，侬脑子瓦特了）

也有很多人比我更加激动：“太棒了，这就是我一直想做的”，“时间本身无所谓意义。做有意义的事情，时间才有意义”，“被需要的感觉真好”。我们的网站logo是志愿者设计的，网站是志愿者开发的，首页的美女代言人是志愿者，照片也是志愿者拍摄的。“捐献时间，分享快乐”这个标题，也是志愿者决定的……

10月23日，“捐献时间，分享快乐”正式发布。我从来没有在这么短短的时间里，不为功利的认识这么多人。

我一边在微软尽心尽力管理我的几摊区域业务和二三十个人，一边在复旦刻刻苦苦读着工商管理硕士提升教育背景，一边在上海商学院偶尔履行特聘讲师的职责抽空授课，一边利用周末在国际青年成就承担志愿者委员会委员工作，一边细心经营捐献时间和二十位志同道合者实现梦想，一边要保留一些宝贵的时间给自己的亲人朋友。

忙，非常。但是充实。可那句话“……一生……改变，我希望……30岁之前……”一直回响，不能拭去。直到那一天，我再次接到了一个意想不到的电话……

"说出 10 个 Linux 基本命令?"

这是当年我在毕业求职的时候遇到的一个面试题。没有难度。如果说法换一下，"说出 10 个 GNU 核心命令"，即使我能蒙出来 10 个，怕也会有错误。

GNU 核心工具(GNU Core Utilities)指的是 GNU 操作系统基本的文件、Shell、文本维护工具。

The GNU Core Utilities are the basic file, shell and text manipulation utilities of the GNU operating system. These are the core utilities which are expected to exist on every operating system.

GNU 核心工具 包括 fileutils、Shellutils、textutils 三个部分。其中 fileutils 只有 22 个命令，有三个命令我居然从来没有用到过，分别是 mkfifo(Creates FIFOs)、shred(Destroy data in files)、vdir(Long directory listing)。Shellutils 有 35 条命令，其中也有我从来没有注意过的命令，比如 pinky(Lightweight finger)；textutils 工具中也有用的极少的工具，而且用的时候也往往有一些坏习惯，textutils 有 26 条命令，注意 VI/VIM 并不在其中。

初学 Unix/GNU Linux 的时候往往觉得老虎吃天，无从下口。这里有个小小的建议：从这个 GNU 核心工具开始，逐步掌握包含的三类几十条命令。对于类 Unix 操作系统你就可以拿出去蒙人了，呵呵，象 Unix 操作系统速成? 这有点像《天龙八部》中鸠摩智学会了小无相功，就能把少林 72 绝技耍的像模像样有些类似。当然，仅靠这一点还不足以行走江湖，有时间咱再继续说。

--EOF--

Posted by Anita Yuen, Senior Product Marketing Manager

When people share their stories about how Google search has made a difference in their lives, we know we're doing our job. It's also given us an opportunity to learn about the breadth of information that you can find on Google. Such as how to find a lost tortoise -- as Jim Lyness did. Here's his story:
If you have a story about how Google search has made an impact on you, we'd love to hear it. Tell us here or post a video (be sure to tag it "google testimonial"). You never know when you'll need to search for a lost pet.

p.s. While our lawyers may not be happy with Jim's use of 'googled' and 'googling', we are very pleased that Jim and Susan were able to find what they needed by searching on Google.

Posted by Derek Parham, Lead Software Engineer, Google Apps

Back in 2005, Google Apps was conceived in a few lines of code, and then it was born in February 2006. Our team has had such a close relationship with it, you might understand how we have nurtured it as we would a child.

So first there was Gmail for your domain -- a limited service that helped organizations like San Jose City College offer personalized Gmail inboxes to all their users. As our little guy picked up new skills (Calendar, Talk, and Page Creator) it grew out of its old name and into Google Apps for Your Domain.

A quick learner, by October Google Apps had perfected 17 more languages, so we could help bring our communication tools all around the globe. Later in the fall, we improved our organizational skills with the Start Page, which brought all the Apps together into a centralized place. Then it was time to start school. Google Apps entered Arizona State University and stood out as one of those high achievers. Today, students and administrators at large universities like ASU and Lakehead are raving about Apps -- how it saves money and IT resources, plus make students lives easier with bigger spam-free mailboxes and a set of tools for working together.

Now, I'm excited to tell you that our baby has finally graduated and is entering the business world. Google Apps Premier Edition is a new version designed to take on all the challenges presented by businesses with complex IT needs. For $50 per account per year, you get the whole Google Apps package plus many new business-oriented features, including access to our APIs and partner solutions (so it’s easy to integrate with existing systems), conference room scheduling for Calendar, 10GB of inbox storage, extended business hours phone support, and mobile access to your email on BlackBerry devices (just in case you can't get enough at the office).

Already, companies big and small, like Procter & Gamble, General Electric Corporation, Prudential, and SF Bay Pediatrics, are talking about how this new version of Google Apps makes it easy to offer low-cost communication and collaboration tools to all their employees so they can get on with what they do best.

Google Apps also won't forget its roots anytime soon. The Standard and Education Editions will continue to be offered for free, and we'll keep working on all three flavors of Google Apps with the help of feedback from all of you. As a start, we’ve just integrated Google Docs & Spreadsheets in all three editions so that everyone can share and edit documents online. Since August, we’ve also added five more major features you've requested, including customized service URLs (mail.yourcompany.com) and domain registration for organizations that don’t yet have a custom domain. Our appearance has matured too, with updates to the administrator control panel that make it easier to setup and manage your services.

a new application that allows the visualization of any sort of data (e.g. website usage or offline data from external sources) on a 3D globe. this visualization can be shown on websites, or displayed onto large screen in a lobby, waiting room, conference room or CEO's room.

see also 3D data world globe & 3D world blogosphere viz.

[link: 3dlivestats.com|thnkx Sanvito]

a real-time rendering of blog posts on an animated 3D representation of the Earth. blog posts are represented as bars standing on top of continents. the height of a bar represents the number of posts written at that location. the ring around the globe shows statistics over in what country blog posts come from.

[link: twingly.se & youtube.com|thnkx Guillaume]

© 桑葚，来自桑林志 | 误导的科技新闻发布 写科技论文时一条重要原则是，不要误导读者。大部分论文都能做到这一点，因为存在比较严格的审稿机制。不过我发现，很多科技新闻...

Last night, we pushed an upgrade to our Firefox extension via addons.mozilla.org. Because we tweaked and improved lots of things, upgrading triggers a full download of your bookmarks from del.icio.us. Normally this process takes seconds and is practically invisible but...

Debian用户专用了。dfsg-2时还没有的毛病，到3给改出来了：

1, 不认原来的.mozilla/firefox目录，导致不能发现原有的Profile，第一次运行会弹出一个导入设置的窗口，并且会新建.mozilla/iceweasel的目录。

这个比较好解决，如果还没有运行，就ln -s firefox iceweasel连接一下，就没有问题了。

今后会用怎样的profile目录，还不知道。

2, 好像是名字写错了，于是不认已经在运行的进程，当从外部打开链接时会出现“already running。。。”那个错误，这个也很好改：

找到/usr/lib/iceweasel/下的iceweasel文件，161行，原来是APPLICATION_ID=firefox，把Firefox改iceweasel就可以了。

［更新］今天又有升级，dfsg-4，没有问题了。

似乎电视上都报道过涂鸦及其作者了，不过见的并不多，只在五道口城铁站往北的几块墙上见过。这次这个比较就在三环上，大钟寺城铁站下面、三环路南侧的公共汽车站的广告牌后面。刚看到时只有一米长，现在可能超过10米了：


内容就看不懂了，反正是画出来的。最后一张上面可以看到：中请合作。。。给你点颜色：


中间两张颜色更加浓烈一些。自从有这个画，我发现那里的卫生状况大有改善 要知道，这个地方在立交桥下方，前面又有两个大广告牌挡着。

这几张图我在zooomr上加了geotag，就是配合Googlemaps找照片地点的功能，找这个地方就容易多了（北京没有map，开satellite可以看到）。

我倒想，北京那么多高架路、立交桥，都是青灰色的水泥，还不如公开给颜色爱好者，随便画呗，总要好看得多。