Maybe rather than a feed aggregator, you could *somehow* encourage people to put up occasional blog posts when they come across something of interest to the group. Dave Henn has been great about doing this, but we all have our own individual sources for cool and interesting stuff. How do we get others to do what Dave has been doing? Is it possible to send invitations individually to R-Speckers with login information? Maybe people don't know that they can post to the site, or they don't know how to do it.
We've got a broad range of spec interests within the group. Dave posts a lot of tech/science/space stuff. Steve frequently posts to the email list about the business/publishing stuff. Sarah is very involved in VR. What are the fantasy people up to? Can we get people to use the blogging component of the site? An aggregator would pull in headlines, but I think there is more value in having people write a paragraph or two about why a link is interesting. A link by itself doesn't draw me in - I need to be told why I should take the time to go look at something. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric Scoles Sent: Tuesday, April 13, 2010 7:40 AM To: r-spec Subject: Re: "Industry" News? (And: new R-SPEC.org home page) I like the idea of having that other kind of stuff (the more primary-source or inspirational stuff like Science News & Technovelgy) available through the site, but I'm struggling with the information architecture. Also, I don't want to replace people's RSS readers. That said, I think a page that judiciously blended (and perhaps re-feeded) some of the best inspirational stuff would be great. I forget about it; I never run my RSS reader anymore, personally, because I have no discipline with it. I'd totally forgotten about the Long Now podcasts, e.g., until Frank posted that one the other day. (Those can be fantastic sources of both inspiration and creative frustration.) Also have been toying with the idea of aggregating feeds from online fiction sources -- having a one-stop place where you could get pointed to what's new -- but not sure that's something R-SPEC should be doing (and also replacing people's RSS readers, see above). It wouldn't be technically difficult, but it would have to get added onto the long list of things that are not individually difficult, but add up. On Tue, Apr 13, 2010 at 7:18 AM, Alicia Henn <[email protected]> wrote: I get feeds from technovelgy, Science News, ScienceDaily, Science@ NASA, and Free Speculative Fiction Online that I enjoy. Alicia On Apr 12, 2010, at 11:12 PM, Eric Scoles wrote: Those are actually comments on posts. I switched around blocks a bit and that one lost its title at some point. If you're talking about the "E-Book Queen" search engine, that just looked like spamming, to me, though there was one above it where the user's site URL was what looked like a file-sharing site. Those were both posted before we added a third-party filter to scan comment posts for that sort of thing. I deleted both of them in any case. So, any ideas on good feeds for news? I'd love to be able to think of a way to bring together inspiring stuff -- Frank's post from a few days ago reminded me that I'd forgotten about Long Now, which often has interesting speakers and always makes the talk available for podcast aggregation. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 10:28 PM, Pat Rapp <[email protected]> wrote: Oops - I meant to send that to Eric only, not the whole group. Sorry. From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Pat Rapp Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 10:23 PM To: [email protected] Subject: RE: "Industry" News? (And: new R-SPEC.org home page) Hey, Eric. I just want to point out a message that needs to be removed. In the right hand column of the r-spec page, there are blurbs that are presumably from the google group. The one at the bottom, from eDave, caught my eye because it starts out, "Pat, I share your fondness for reading." Since I'm the only Pat in the group (that I know of) I took a look to see what the conversation was about. Someone named Pat posted a link to an ebook search engine and Dave responded to it. The site listed is a porn site. So, not only do I want to suggest you remove it, but I also want to be sure you don't think it was from me! Egads!! : ) thanks From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric Scoles Sent: Monday, April 12, 2010 9:21 PM To: r-spec Subject: Re: "Industry" News? (And: new R-SPEC.org home page) Actually, I've had to remove all the Locus feeds from aggregation for the time being. They're displaying with the same URL. I'll get them back into the list when I figure out why they're not working, but until then the home page is only showing SFWA and BSFA. On Mon, Apr 12, 2010 at 8:48 PM, Eric Scoles <[email protected]> wrote: Jonathan, Dave Henn & I have agreed that it would be nice to have a summary of "industry news" on the R-SPEC.org home page. What kinds of places do you look for news about speculative fiction, SF, fantasy, etc.? Of those, which ones do you think would provide value if they were aggregated into a single listing? To get started, I've created a listing on the R-SPEC.org home page that rolls up recent posts from several "industry" sources: Locus magazine, SFWA, and the BSFA [British Science Fiction Association]. See them, along with a minor reorganization of our home page, here: http://r-spec.org/ (Note: this is part of a stepwise progression to a new site design. Since the design itself has been going slowly, I felt it was a good idea to roll out some of the new easy-to-launch features we're planning, rather than wait for them.) -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] <mailto:r-spec%[email protected]> . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] <mailto:r-spec%[email protected]> . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] <mailto:r-spec%[email protected]> . For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. 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For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en.
