Radio Crankypants #1: Let it never be said that I have a problem with aggregating data.
But I've been watching the growth of Radio Userland weblogs with their handy-dandy blog yer newsfeeds feature and I don't like what I'm seeing. It seems sort of unfair to "beat up" on Userland on what looks to be their big shipping day but it is important to make the distinction that this is not an issue with the technology, per se, but with the way people are using it. (Yeah yeah, don't say it. The medium is the message. I know; I'm from Canada.) Not to make too fine a point of it: too many of the Radio weblogs I see are just plain boring. Boring not because the people running them are boring but because the constant recycling of rss feed data just reeks of laziness and group-think. It's the same thing, website after website without so much as a peep of personal reaction. The only thing that seems to change is the position of the post on a given webpage. Again, it is important to recognize that this is not a new thing. However, the technology at hand -- when you stop and step away from the whiz-banginess of it all -- seems poised to only exacerbate the problem. Which is too bad.