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A ReviewMe review of CardroomSupply.com, an online store supplying poker tables and poker chip sets to the US and Canada.

Update: I have finally managed to find the time to add a full feed option to the main feed used here (the "Everything" feed). This is now available in either full or partial, at your discretion. No advertising in either feed. Thanks for all the feedback!

A short while ago, the Freakonomics blog moved to a new home at the New York Times. The responses to post announcing the change were almost exclusively complaints about the feed having changed to a partial feed.

The anger of some of the commenters was (is) astounding. A quick example - one comment ended simply "It was fun. Goodbye.". The overwhelming sentiment appears to be that partial feeds are the work of the internet devil, to be tossed aside as quickly as possible in favour of full-text feeds.

Are full feeds really better? Personally, I like partial feeds - I keep up with a lot of sites and the title and description of a post are what I use to decide if I'll read more. As I go through each folder in Bloglines, I'll open tabs in the background with items I'm interested in and read them afterwards. I click through even if the post is full-feed, and not out of some mis-placed desire to ensure the site gets every advertising impression, but because I'm not at the consumption stage of my reading yet - I'm still just deciding what to read when I'm using my feed reader.

Other people appear to only use the feed reader, never really clicking through. Mobile users, especially, appear to much prefer full feeds.

From a purely selfish perspective, the feed on this site includes no advertising so I serve a partial feed for articles (blog is usually full feed except for large posts). Readership is more important than revenue though, so if full feeds are more likely to attract and keep readers, I'm more than happy to change.

So I have a few questions:

1. Do you prefer full or partial feeds, and to what extent? Or do you prefer feeds that include both and give you the option of viewing either?
2. Do you usually click through to a site if you're reading a post? And do you comment more, less or the same on links from partial feeds than full feeds?
3. Would you be more likely to ubsubscribe from a feed with advertising in it?
4. Are full feeds more likely to encourage plagiarism? Never mind - this is a topic for another day.
5. And finally, would you like full feeds for everything here?

I've almost finished ("almost", because I'm sure there are still a few bugs to iron out - there always are) the 6th incarnation of this site. This is mostly a visual/layout overhaul, with basic functionality remaining the same as previously (because I think that I'm finally happy with it).

Yes, the reds of version 5 and before have been put back into the closet, for now (though as ever you can access older versions of the design through the footer). They may make a reappearance in the future. The aim of this redesign was to make the actual design visually less distracting. The focus is on the content, not the denim wallpaper.

To that end, I've made a few other changes to the layout. Extra information, not as important (in my eyes) as the rest of the content, is now all in the footer. Yes, I've gone with the bigfoot approach. Comments are on the same page as the rest of the content now, and articles are all on one page rather than spread out over several as some were.

The archive page has gone missing (actually, it's still there, but it seemed nobody was using it and it was taking up valuable primary menu space, now occupied by a quick link to those infernal cheat sheets. The "About" page is also due to be changed and expanded, but for now remains the same.

Finally, the home page now inludes some useful links to the most read, more commented-on, and most recent posts on the site, as well as links to a few of those posts I feel are some of the most useful ones here.

A busy week this week at work is currently not looking like it will improve much, and primarily that is because I can't find a piece of software that can do what I want it to (and doesn't cost a fortune). Our contract with our previous PPC software supplier is about to expire and, because of their abysmal service and support, will not be renewed. So I am shortly to find myself without software to manage our PPC, and far too many keywords to do so manually.

So I need to find something to help manage our PPC campaigns at work. While I can live with simple maintenance functionality, a degree of automated bid adjustment wouldn't be a bad thing if at all possible. Can you help?

While working with our previous supplier, I have developed an internal PPC management system that allows us to set up keywords and adverts for products through our own CMS. This system regularly builds a text file with all of our PPC data in and sends it via FTP to said company. I would like to work with a company (or piece of software) where this system would not go to waste, if at all possible.

So what is your software of choice? All reccommendations very much appreciated!

It seems that for some people, the A4 one-sided format of the cheat sheets isn't quite suitable. Many prefer a pocket-sized guide they can refer to but keep out of sight (or on their person) unless needed. NoteBind.com have put together a post on compiling a pocket reference, in which they simply print and combine a variety of different cheat sheets and references into one handy, and most importantly pocket-sized, "NotePack" (PDF available from the site).

I thought those tech support humour sites were full of stories that just happened to other people. I was wrong. This was the contents of a recent email from someone (who shall remain nameless) who wasn't sure why a file was refusing to open.

OOOOOOH- I didn't like them all ending in doc. so took it off all the documents!

It seems that every time I open my email, some generous chap or chapess is offering to translate an article from here. Either that or letting me know they've already translated something. I've long felt that someone taking the time to translate my work is pretty much the ultimate compliment, and always very much appreciated.

• Introducing HTML in Hebrew (original)
• DTDs Explained in Hebrew (original)
• Email Address Validation in Spanish (original)
• Regular Expression Cheat Sheet in Italian (original)

Several people have also taken the time to send me translations of cheat sheets for me to release here, and these are on the way (German and French versions of several are first, with hopefully more to come).

Update: Benjamin Wilger came up with an even better solution.

Maybe this will come in handy for someone else. I have a table of products in a database and I want to select from it with the products in such an order that products that are out of stock are last. However, I don't want the in stock products to be ordered by how much stock is available (i.e. I can't just order by stock descending). I don't want to add another column with a bit to indicate whether or not a product is in stock, because ... well, I just don't want to.

You can't do this, which is what I wanted:

1. SELECT CAST((Stock > 0) AS BIT) AS InStock FROM table

But you can do this, which is the same (as long as you have under ten million of everything in stock):

1. SELECT CAST(CEILING(CAST(Stock AS FLOAT) / 10000000) AS BIT) AS InStock FROM table

Today's comment spam review process:

1. delete FROM comments WHERE moderation_required = 1;
2. Deleted rows: 9699 (Query took 2.0489 sec)

Apologies to anyone whose comment ended up in the moderation queue. I normally keep on top of it, but a couple of weeks of putting it off and what started as a small pile of comments to manage has quickly ballooned into a 10,000 comment monster. Time for a comment spam prevention rethink, I reckon.

I've been having some issues with a hard drive that seems to have packed up. The machine would start fine - no problems in post etc - but just wouldn't boot to an OS. The problem appears to be with a drive, so last night I set SpinRite to work its magic, and was presented with this when I checked the progress this morning:

Darn. 151 hours. What's really annoying is that I was in the process of finally sorting out a proper backup system with CrashPlan.

Update: I am informed by the wife, who is at home watching the progress of this recovery operation with interest, that the estimated time remaining has increased to 842 hours. 35 days. That's more than I'd planned on.

I found a small bug.
It is fixed now, thankfully.
It bugs us no more.

Dear Blogger,

Please accept this letter as formal notification that I am leaving my position as Reader of Your Blog, effective immediately.

Thank you for the opportunities and support you have provided during my time with Your Blog.

Unfortunately, it has become clear to me over recent months that your goals and mine are drifting apart. I thought I would take this opportunity to offer some constructive criticism, to help you avoid a repetition of this situation in future.

Feed Contents

I, like many Readers in the field, use feeds to keep up to date with websites, including yours. I personally am subscribed to over 200 of these feeds, and I have only a limited amount of time to look through them for interesting updates. You have recently chosen to include your new photos, links and several other items to your feeds, and this has meant that the signal to noise ratio of your feed has swung strongly, in my opinion, towards noise.

I appreciate that many readers may be interested in your personal photos, and others may be interested in more specific areas of your content than I. May I suggest you change your feed structure to allow for several feeds, each with different sections of your content, to allow your Readers to select whichever feeds are most interesting to them?

Author Information

There are literally millions of blogs out there and although I only read a small cross-section of those, there are still so many clamouring for attention that it is difficult to remember a specific blog from one week to the next. Adding a personal touch, for example a profile or biography, may give your blog a more personal identity.

Post Titles

You may not be aware of this, but with so much content out there, many Readers will use your post titles to decide whether or not your post deserves their attention. Post titles like "Dear Blogger", while fine on rare occasions, are not descriptive and offer little clue to the content of a post. Better titles will increase the usability of Your Blog, and that in turn will attract more Readers.

Greed

I have noticed an increase in the advertising on your site over recent months. While I understand that you wish to cover the costs of your site, and even make an income, adding interstitial adverts and those horrific double-underlined inline green popup link things is, in my opinion, a step too far. Text adverts and sponsor links are less intrusive. I have yet to form an opinion on paid posts, however I would expect some Readers to take issue with them.

Originality

Some of your posts have simply been links to other sites with a line of commentary. While I enjoy following recommended links, I am of the opinion that this quantity of content does not quite constitute a "post" in the traditional sense. Is there a way that links could be incorporated into your site in a different way? If not, please take a moment to add to what you are linking to - I read your blog because your opinion on the subjects on which you write is of interest to me.

Communication

I have, on occasion, commented on Your Blog. I appreciate that you are probably a busy person, and that you have a lot of comments to respond to, so I would not expect a reply to each of my comments. However, I have yet to see any replies to comments I and others have left. You are under no obligation to reply, of course, however many of your Readers comment because they want to discuss your content or to add to it. More replies will in turn encourage more comments and that in turn will attract more Readers.

I am certain you will find a replacement Reader quickly. If I can be of any assistance during this upcoming transition period, please let me know.

Sincerely,
David Child

P.S. These are not the only issues I have found irksome with your blog. Rather than expand on them here, I would suggest you read Aaron Bassett's thoughts on the subject in his excellent article: Common Blog Problems (link now goes to the Wayback Machine as Aaron's blog is no longer active).