Recently, I enrolled this blog in BlogBurst, a service which opts in your posts to traditional media, including Reuters, Fox News, and USA Today. It only took a few minutes to configure, and was worth taking a look at. Now, as of this morning, my first post, as far as I know, has been added to the Reuters news services, sitting alongside other wire stories from Reuters journalists.

See: Apple Finally Getting Around to iTunes Movie Rentals

This is both a positive development, and a negative one. It's good to gain the blog additional exposure, and have my content read by a new audience, but it also puts my posts on par with those from professional journalists with real-world fact checkers, editors and sources. Additionally, ads sold alongside the wire story will be gaining Reuters revenue, and not me.

I don't expect significant traffic to be referred my way from this service. It's just another distribution medium, like Digg, TechMeme or StumbleUpon. But this one comes with an old media brand.

I've watched many a blogger follow the TechMeme feed, commenting on new, popular, stories as they happen, hoping to get captured as part of the ensuing "Discussion". There's not much mystery to it, and if you watch TechMeme for any amount of time, you can see who does it, versus who is actually adding new material.

I won't name names, as that's petty, but we have a good idea who they are, and so do they.

As I see this behavior, I have a natural tendency to actually avoid the more popular topics, so I'm not seen doing the same thing. In fact, had I not already talked ad nauseum about Google Reader and Apple TV, two of the most favored topics on this blog, I'd almost have skipped tonight's news on both. But, having written about both announcements, it's interesting to see that TechMeme's algorithm is keeping my comments out, and letting others in, while the New York Times' similar service, Blogrunner, found my post worth including.

Take a look at the below screen captures, taken around 11 p.m. Pacific tonight:

1. TechMeme's coverage of Google Reader's "Managing your shared items"


2. Blogrunner's coverage of Google Reader's "Managing your shared items"


In the first, I don't exist, whereas in the second, the post is prominent, though it will drop as new ones are added.

In June, we discussed, "What Should Drive TechMeme's Content?", as the powerful blog news aggregator is one of the very best of the Web, but often keeps people guessing and the non A-listers whining. Tonight's example, contrasting the two services, is quite interesting to see.

I'm hoping it's not in the "too little, too late" category for Apple TV, but it looks like Apple is finally making headway in negotiations with the major movie studios to offer customers the ability to rent films through iTunes, in addition to purchasing them outright. According to the Financial Times, Apple will likely announce a deal with 20th Century Fox at Macworld San Francisco next month kicking off a deal that would not only bring movie rentals to iTunes, but also DVDs rippable to iPods.

I've long said the Apple TV is on fumes without a rental option, and that if Apple could successfully roll out a movie rental service through iTunes, it could spell the death knell for services we enjoy today, from Netflix to Amazon Unbox and even Blockbuster.

While 20th Century Fox is said to be furthest along, the article also mentions Cupertino is working on also getting Sony Pictures Entertainment, Paramount and Warner Bros queued up. Here's to hoping Steve Jobs can pull out a big rabbit from his hat and make our early investment in the Apple TV a good one.

Also See:
Amazon Gets $11.97 of My Apple Money
Eight Reasons the Apple TV is Failing, and How It Can be Saved
Adding Movie Rentals to iTunes Would Save the Apple TV
Apple Entering Video Rental Download Market?
How Apple Could Crush Netflix Now

As Google's features become more widely adopted, the company will have to transition from developing products an engineer would love to developing products that more mainstream, less geeky users can understand right away.

At times, it seems the company's high and mighty approach to software development can leave many guessing to their intentions, and the motto of "Don't Be Evil" just doesn't cut it any more.

As noted earlier today in my post "Forget About Privacy. Embrace Openness.", the blogosphere seemed up in arms over a recent innovation by the company's Google Reader team to tie in your "friends" list within GMail and GTalk with your shared items in Google Reader. While on its face, this innovation would more easily bring those things you find interesting to your friends, it instead raised holy Hell with those who never considered just who could gain access to a list of items they had made public. It had people screaming about privacy, saying Google had ruined Christmas, and had others demanding to know why someone they had a casual conversation with was somehow called their "friend".

While I believe the revolt was seriously overblown, and that those decrying the sharing need to wake up to the transparency of the Web, it looks like Google had enough bad press for one holiday, and cried Uncle. Tonight, the Google Reader team offered a new blog post, lightly titled "Managing your shared items", that enables you to make some of your "shared" items private. As they write, "Thanks to all our users for helping to make Google Reader better, so please keep your feedback coming!"

"Thanks for all the feedback" in Geek world is a euphemism for "Stop complaining and pointing out our problems!", slightly mixed with the angel dust of PR. And Google isn't a huge fan of bad PR, so they got this one fixed right away. For now... until their next innovation gets voted out by the TechMeme mob and non-expert netizens.