Rick Ralston of Real Metrics dropped me a line the other day:

We’re thinking of adding a new category to our RealMetrics website for Blogging software. It would be similar to our shared web hosting category at http://www.realmetrics.com/a/shared-hosting. Any thoughts or ideas would be appreciated.

Interesting question. It’s a lot easier to compare the performance of 2 standard web hosts, since you can create a reference page, upload it to each host, and sample the performance of identical pages at different hosts. But for managed blogging, such as BlogHarbor or Typepad or Blogger or WordPress.com or Squarespace, it’s simply not possible to create identical pages. Measuring the performance of an image download or a file download doesn’t measure the true performance of the system. Managed blogging platforms typically generate pages out of a database, so while it’s not possible to create identical pages it’s important to create similar pages on each platform so you can make a valid comparison about the performance of each platform.

Here’s my reply to Rick:

Here’s what I’ve come up with… Most of the things you are measuring with shared hosting apply to blog hosting… The only thing that’s going to be an issue is measuring performance. Why? In measuring standard web hosting, you can measure apples to apples because you are able to upload a standard page or site containing the same number and size of objects to each host. So you are able to compare the retrieval of -identical- 100K of html page and 250K of image downloads for example…

With blog hosting, at least managed blog hosting, you won’t be able to upload a standard page to measure. Well you could, but you really want to measure the speed of let’s say the home page of a blog rather than some static files. Since blogs are typically database driven applications, the real key here is that although you won’t be able to measure oranges to oranges since each blog application will generate a slightly different page, you still want to at least measure oranges to tangerines (OK, I have stretched this analogy way too thin!)…

By that I mean that you’ll want to make sure that each blog contains a set number of identical posts. Create 10 posts of varying length, some with images and some without, and post them to each blog platform. Use the default template supplied with the blogging platform. Take a look at 4 or 5 platforms and see what the page weight comes out to be for a blog containing 5 identical posts and whatever is on the default template. I suspect they will all differ by less than 10%, and if not then I think it should not be of much of a concern but the page weight should be listed in your results so your visitors can take that into consideration…

Anyone out there have any thoughts for metrics to measure performance of managed blogging services?

Don Norman has a great article titled Simplicity Is Highly Overrated where he talks about how customers aren’t really looking for products to be simpler, they really are looking for more features. He notes

…people are not willing to pay for a system that looks simpler because it looks less capable… I am not advocating bad design. I am simply pointing out a fact of life: purchasers, on the whole, prefer more powerful devices to less powerful ones. They equate the apparent simplicity of the controls with lack of power: coplexity with power.  This doesn’t mean everyone. it does mean the  majority, however, and this is who the marketing specialists of a company target. Quite apporpriately, in my opinion.

Joel Spolsky of Fog Creek Software picked up on Don’s article and wrote in Simplicity:

I think it is a misattribution to say, for example, that the iPod is successful because it lacks features. If you start to believe that, you’ll believe, among other things, that you should take out features to increase your product’s success. With six years of experience running my own software company I can tell you that nothing we have ever done at Fog Creek has increased our revenue more than releasing a new version with more features. Nothing. The flow to our bottom line from new versions with new features is absolutely undeniable. It’s like gravity. When we tried Google ads, when we implemented various affiliate schemes, or when an article about FogBugz appears in the press, we could barely see the effect on the bottom line. When a new version comes out with new features, we see a sudden, undeniable, substantial, and permanent increase in revenue.

Both of these articles are required reading…

Wild story: Doctors Say Man Survived Extreme Weather by ‘Hibernating’…

A man who went missing in western Japan survived in near-freezing weather without food and water for over three weeks by falling into a state similar to hibernation, doctors said.

Mitsutaka Uchikoshi had almost no pulse, his organs had all but shut down and his body temperature was 71 degrees Fahrenheit when he was discovered on Rokko mountain in late October, said doctors who treated him at the nearby Kobe City General Hospital. He had been missing for 24 days.

The guy fell asleep after the second day and doesn’t remember a thing after that…

Stowe Boyd wrote the following when some people responded to criticism of a conference by saying that the organizers “tried really, really hard”:

Everything worth doing is difficult to do well. Conferences, playing the bongos, tap dancing, sex, whatever. Developing software is hard. Should we start buying bad music because the performers tried real hard? I guess I should go easier on the companies launching new Web apps, because it’s so hard to get it right?

Yoda said: Do, or do not. There is no ‘try.’

Of course I want to teach my child that without trying, there can be no accomplishment. And I want her to know that the journey can be more important that the destination. And I want her to understand that even if she fails to accomplish an objective or reach a goal, if she gave her best she should be proud.

But if your product or service has problems, don’t expect your customers to buy from you because you tried really hard. Business is not about trying. It is all about results. Your customers buy your service because of the results of your efforts, not because of the fact that you made an effort.

Just had to link to World’s Tallest Man Uses Long Arms to Save 2 Dolphins in China:

The long arms of the world’s tallest man reached in and saved two dolphins by pulling out plastic from their stomachs, state media and an aquarium official said Thursday. The dolphins got sick after nibbling on plastic from the edge of their pool at an aquarium in Liaoning province. Attempts to use surgical instruments to remove the plastic failed because the dolphins’ stomachs contracted in response to the instruments, the China Daily newspaper reported.

Unfortunately the Baiji dolphins weren’t so lucky…

Great article at Scientific American on the 10 Promising Treatments for World’s Biggest Health Threats.

Treatments for diabetes, smoking, Alzheimer’s disease and lung cancer are just a few of the potentially lifesaving cures Scientific American has chosen to highlight in this year’s roundup of drugs you’ve never heard of, despite their potentially huge impact on global health.

These 10 treatments, all of which could significantly impact global health and wellness, are currently running the last gauntlet a pharmaceutical must run before it becomes available to the public–the clinical trial. During this trial researchers test the drug on humans, carefully observing its side effects as well as its overall effectiveness.

Check out this story for information on promising treatments for these diseases:

• Alzheimer’s Disease–Alzhemed
• Dengue–Live attenuated 17D yellow fever and dengue chimera
• Diabetes–Technosphere Insulin System
• Hepatitis C–E1E2/MF59
• Arthritis–Naproxcinod
• Lung Cancer–Stimuvax
• Malaria–RTS,S/AS02A
• Smoking–NicVAX
• Vision Loss–Bevasiranib
• HIV–HPTN 046 and Nevirapine

EarthLink Is Losing a Lot of Email: LandGator writes “Robert X. Cringely, doyen compu-columnist for PBS, reports on a hidden e-mail problem at Earthlink: They’re losing up to 9 messages out of 10, found as a result of a friend’s testing.” From the article: “He sent messages from other accounts to his Earthlink address, to his aliased Blackberry address, and to his Gmail account. For every 10 messages sent, 1-2 arrived in his Earthlink mailbox, 1-2 (not necessarily the SAME 1-2) on his Blackberry, and all 10 arrived with Gmail. Swimming upstream through Earthlink customer support, my buddy finally found a technical contact who freely acknowledged the problem. Since June, he was told, Earthlink’s mail system has been so overloaded that some users have been missing up to 90 percent of their incoming e-mail. It isn’t bounced back to senders; it just disappears. And Earthlink hasn’t mentioned the problem to these affected customers unless they complain.”

Wow… Can you imagine if you were losing 90% of your email and didn’t know it?

On the other hand, Postini announced Wednesday that 93% of all email transmitted over the Internet is spam. So if Earthlink is actually dropping the right 9 out of 10 messages, then maybe they’re doing their customers a favor. 😉

Rajesh Setty has a great article today titled Making the most of your time. He offers 9 tips:

1. Executing on your current projects flawlessly
2. Strengthening your personal brand
3. Building long-term relationships
4. Increasing your capacity to deliver
5. Making a difference to the world
6. Increasing others’ capacity to make a difference
7. Spending time with friends and family
8. Become a valued member in multiple networks
9. Learning and learning to unlearn

Read his post!

Jason Calacanis writes in Black hat and White hat SEO (or “Is SEO B.S. or not?”):

My belief has always been that:

a) if you do a great site and you take your time you will rise in the Google rankings

b) I have faith in Google’s ability to sort the good from the bad

c) all the SEO folks I’ve ever talked to–and I’ve talked to many over the past decade or so–have pitched me on expensive contracts that you can’t cancel for two years with them to do all kinds of shady things to move up in the rankings

d) the best way to do SEO is make better content, more consistently

That last line bears repeating: the best way to do SEO is make better content, more consistently. I think there are a lot of bloggers who spend a lot of time worrying about SEO when their time would be better spent writing another great piece on a unique topic…

Dave Winer wrote today:

Alan Kay once said the Macintosh was the first computer worth criticizing. Jean-Louis Gassee said that as the monkey climbs the tree, the more people can see his derriere.

The first quote especially is something to think about when your customers criticize your service or product. They are telling you your product is worth criticizing. Your customers believe it is worth their time to provide you with feedback. That’s a gift, take it and be thankful…

Trying to find out if BlogHarbor blogs are being blocked in mainland China…

If you know anyone in mainland China, can you ask them to try accessing this blog or any of the blogs on our list of Recently Updated BlogHarbor Weblogs?

We had reports of being blocked sometime in spring 2005, but later in the year and up until recently we’ve had users in mainland China as well as Hong Kong… But one of our bloggers is now reporting being unable to access any BlogHarbor site…

Any information would be appreciated! If you can help us determine if we’ve just been blocked and if the block is by domain name or IP address (do any of the blogs on our recently updated list which use their own domains get blocked?), I’d be most grateful and appreciative.