Dan Romero

I just got done reading two great posts from Steve Karp on Publishing 2.0. Not only were they incredibly thoughtful and interesting, they were great examples of how tech/new media blogging should be done.

I read a fairly large number of blogs. Okay, maybe not as many as Robert Scoble, but still more than the average Joe. My Google Reader stats inform me that I am currently subscribed to 74 feeds and in the past month I have "read" a little over 2500 posts. That's a lot of information.

For quite a while I prided myself in keeping up with the nitty gritty - knowing about all the different popular memes, what new company was launching, who was raising a third round of financing from Sequoia, etc... I still do pay attention to such things, but I don't find them nearly as interesting. Long gone are the days where I would read the combined daily posts of Techcrunch, Engadget, Mashable, Read/Write Web, and GigaOm, with Scoble's Google Reader shared feed and Hacker News thrown in to pick up the things the big guys missed. Today the only one I read on a daily basis is Techcrunch (and I skim most posts). Engadget with its massive quantity of posts and Mashable's recent lack of quality (i.e. 200+ web 2.0 links for web designers) have been pruned from my feed list.

So what am I reading these days? Thoughtful analysis. According to my stats I have read 100% of the posts from the following blogs: Daring Fireball, kottke.org, Signal vs. Noise, Rough Type, Scripting News, PMarca, A VC and last but not least Publishing 2.0. These guys add stuff to the conversation. They don't regurgitate news, they offer perspective. Sure sometimes there will the occasional news post of which I am already aware, but these guys, with a witty one liner, can make the news worth hearing about again.

Analysis is what's interesting, especially in an age where we are increasingly connected to information streams. We need media to give us better perspective through interviews and investigative reporting.

Seth Godin's recent post on the Wikipedia gap was quite interesting. And it got me thinking.

In the real world, there are few, if any, times when a person has to do something completely from memory. If someone wants to know the date the Treaty of Versailles was signed, they will simply Google it, not try to recall it from the days of 10th grade Western Civ. I am not saying that learning how to commit things to memory is not important either.

I think Seth is right on when he says:

Here's what just about every exam ought to be: "Use Firefox to find the information you need to answer this question:" And as the internet gets smarter, the questions are going to have to get harder. Which is a good thing. Until teachers get unstuck, our kids are going to be stuck and so will we.

America's schools should be focused on empowering students to find information on the Web, not memorize soon forgotten facts from a history textbook. Function over form people.

Shooting straight up to the top of Techmeme, Google is slowly rolling out IMAP support for Gmail. Most of the coverage seems to be focused on how users will be able to use "advanced email clients like Outlook and Thunderbird." While this is good, it's not what I am the most excited about.

What is? Well, now I can actually use my iPhone's email feature. No more endless POP3 streams of already read messages. I feel so alive.

In case you're not a sports fan (or live under a rock), both the Red Sox and the Patriots are making me a very happy man right about now. The Red Sox came back from 3 games to 1 to defeat the Cleveland Indians in 7 games. That's pretty awesome considering they did something similar (and better) in 2004 against the New York Yankees. Now for the Rockies who have won an astounding 20 of 21 games since the middle of September. Should make for an interesting World Series.

As for the Patriots, well, they are a perfect 7-0. Tom Brady continues to show he is the epitome of a franchise player, throwing 6 touchdowns in Sunday's 49-28 rout of Miami. The only question is: do you want a baby goat with that?

And Duke Basketball 2007-2008 season officially started today with an open practice session. Life is good.

The New York Times is reporting that Mayor Michael Bloomberg is planning a new merit pay program for New York City teachers. Bonuses will be dependent on student test scores and will be targeted for teachers working in low-income, high poverty schools.

While I definitely see such a move as a positive for teachers working in poorer schools, I worry that the program could lead to a step backward in students' education. When compensation is linked directly to higher test scores, teachers have more incentive modify curriculum based on testing requirements. While not always a bad thing, such teaching for a test can definitely inhibit students' intellectual curiosity and excitement to learn.

Futhermore, the system doesn't necessarily reward an excellent teacher, but rather, one who has had the good fortune (whether through great teaching or sheer luck) to have his or her class earn high scores.

This case reminds me of the classic store salesman model: commission vs. salary . The commission-based salesman has more incentive to sell you the highest priced product and protection plan, even if it is not the best one. The salaried salesman, who gains nothing from pushing the inferior high-priced product, is much more willing to share his own opinions, leading the customer to better value. I know it's not exactly the same, but I think there is a connection.

At the end of the day, I hope the program works out for best, even though it has me a little bit wary. At least Bloomberg is engaging the issue instead of avoiding it.

I recently decided that it would be a good idea to actually give my blog a unique look and feel. So I redesigned it from scratch.

While the overall minimalist theme hasn't changed all that much, the design is somewhat different. Three columns rather than two, adding some navigation, using an actual grid-based layout - all of these are big improvements over the previous version.

I would like to thank a number of people for their help in making the design happen: Blueprint (grid), 37 Signals (link color), and most importantly Rob Goodlatte for lending me his copy of The Elements of Typographic Style (and all the other advice).

Today I finished the initial version of the official K-Ville Facebook application. Check it out and let me know what you think.

I was actually quite surprised by how easy it was to build it. It took me only a couple of hours. I guess FBML. for all its limitations, forces you to focus on content and functionality rather than design.

I would also like to thank the Pear PHP people as well as anyone who contributed to the Facebook Developers Wiki.