Wow that's weird.

<http://theweb.startshere.net/index.phtml?channel=199>

Let me start at the begining. 10 days ago, Jorn at Robotwisdom started ripping on me in his weblog. This exhange was noted by the guy at Internet Alchemy <http://alchemy.openjava.org/> (I saw IA's URL in my referer logs.) Going there, I found some commentary on the the whole mess, plus links to me and RW.

Hmm, that's cool. So it's a publicly heald opinion that the RW guy is a real loose cannon. (Who never replied to my e-mail, BTW.) Good to know I'm not being singled out for his abuse.

Anyway, I'm looking through the rest of the entries at iAlchemy and come across a number of blurbs about RSS, content syndication and such, with most of the traffic being directed to this <http://theweb.startshere.net/> which seems to be a portal agrigator, like Netscape's Netcenter, or Userland's service, both of which I'm registered with. (Dwelling is one of the oldest channels at Userland, might I add.)

So I think, 'Hey, I'll add Dwelling to this new service too.' I get through the whole submission form and the site comes back saying 'Sorry, this channel has already been added'.

Huh?!?!?!?!!!!!

Well it seems that they took the very open records at Userland and added most if not all of the channels that had signed up to their new service. I'm a bit flattered, a bit surprised, and perhaps a bit upset.

My name and e-mail address are attached to the entry at Userland. Would it have been that difficult to let me know what was going on? I'd rather not IP protect my RSS file (which provides all the syndication). I'm more than happy to let people experiment with the content that I'm putting online, but I would like to know when it happens.

Simply finding the links in my referer log isn't the most pleasent way to find out. I guess it's the age old problems of recognizing that there are people behind those annonymous files, behind that phosphor-laced screen. Having those faces there, means that you should communicate with them. Be up front. Make contact.

But overall, I'm happy to be part of this aggrigator, and will even include a link to it below.

Ross : Link : Discussion Board