Dave Naffziger's Blog

The Seattle tech news scene has long been dominated by two bloggers: John Cook and Todd Bishop. Both were formerly writers/bloggers at the Seattle PI, and both left at the same time to launch TechFlash with/for The Puget Sound Business Journal.

Although the site launched on 10/21, it seems that they’ve both been writing for a while and are in the process of publishing back posts (either that or they soft-launched back in September).

There were a number of things that disappointed me about their prior coverage, and I hope now that they are free from the restrictions of a big media news organization like the PI they’ll become better bloggers. Anyway, here are my suggestions for making TechFlash even better:

1. Full feeds. No respectable tech news source sends out partial RSS feeds. Attention is way more valuable than the incremental page views. I spend way more time reading the other publications on John Cook’s Feeds list than I have on his blog at the PI. Full-length feeds are a big part of that. If partial-feeds are a must, then at least write a paragraph feed summary - don’t just take the first 30 words…
2. Opinion. Please provide some. If all we wanted to know was what a company did, we could visit their website. Tell us if they will be successful or if they’ll flop or what you think of their offering.
3. Unique. Guest bloggers are great, but don’t just reprint their content. I subscribe to Andy Sack’s blog. I read his original post on venture over the holidays last week. I really don’t need to see the same thing twice in my feeds (yes, even though it was a good post).

Regardless of whether or not they implement these feeds, I’m definitely excited for the increased depth that Techflash can provide.