FeedBurner’s this great, free service that lets you dramatically improve the power of your site’s news feed, with everything from promotional tools to customizing tweaks to a very handy statistics package. (Still waiting to see it integrated with Google Analytics, mind you.)

If you’re using it, though, you may have noticed an anomaly: few or no visitors on Sunday, and none today. Maybe you panicked, and started checking to see if your site is down… or is only visible to logged-in users… or, or, or…

Well, good news. At least, relatively good news. It seems that FeedBurner stats are down for more than just you. The FeedBurner help group has at least four reports of outages, and those are probably just the tip of the iceberg. (In my case, I was able to quickly confirm that all was well by checking Google Analytics, and by looking at the raw feed.)

So relax – people can still read your feed. You just may not ever know they did it between June 28 and June 30.

What FeedBurner needs to do, and very soon, is acknowledge publicly and (updated) more prominently that there’s an issue, so users can stop tearing their hair out and put down the virtual monkey wrenches; they don’t need to tinker with their blogs.

(updated) You won’t find it on the main FeedBurner site, but the service maintains a list of known issues and outages at the help group. And the outage is listed there.

And by the way, a quick tip: if you’re ever wondering if others can see your site (or, conversely, if you’re the only one who can’t load a site), just drop by Down For Everyone or Just Me? – really, really simple service that can take a load off your mind.

I’m having a little surgery tomorrow (highlight this text if you want to know the gory details: it’s a laproscopic procedure to correct a double hernia), so there probably won’t be a lot coming out of this blog for the next day or two.

Thanks, and see you soon!

Mi amigo Kris Krug is one of the five artists featured in The Art of Giving, an exhibition and silent auction on the theme of charitable giving. 20 per cent of any purchases you make go to the charity of your choice, which means you get a) some lovely art, and b) some good karma.

It all goes down on Thursday, June 26th at 6:30 p.m. at the Orb gallery, 2028 West Fourth Avenue [map].

As if you didn’t already know, Kris’s photography is nothing short of astonishing – you’re sure to find something you like. Or even love.

• Firefox 3 optimized builds for Mac processors
  Soup up your copy of Firefox with builds optimized to your Mac’s processor – provided it’s an Intel or G5-based machine.
  (tags: app mac osx firefox intel g5 browser)
• I Am Aware of All Internet Traditions: The Genesis of a New Meme
  And a meme is born!
  (tags: internet_culture memes)
• Home – Collaboration Project - Collaboration Project
  A site that shares info about Web 2.0 and public governance. Wow.
  (tags: web2.0 government case_studies reference collaboration)

• How much would it cost to build DCF? – Duke City Fix
  A terrific post: Chantal Foster sets out the costs for creating a hyper-local online community like the one she runs based in Albuquerque. It’s an important reality check for anyone who still believes that “if you build it, they will come.”
  (tags: online_community cost web2.0 blogging hyperlocal place-based estimating business development community_animation)
• Duke City Fix
  A great, thriving online community focused on Albuquerque, New Mexico.
  (tags: blogging city albuquerque hyperlocal online_community)

• Stewart Butterfield’s resignation letter to Yahoo
  VWag is way too snarky in their assessment (as are most of their commenters): this is simply the funniest, most Onionesque resignation letter I’ve ever read.
  (tags: funny internet work business resignation yahoo hr flickr stewart_butterfield letter writing)
• Cheque-cashing loophole hooks consumers in fraud
  NDP MP Libby Davies aims to close the legal loophole that lets Money Mart go after victims of fraud who do the sensible thing and cancel the cheques they’ve written to alleged perpetrators. Great idea: now if we could just close the whole industry down.
  (tags: consumers canada ndp libby_davies politics payday_loan money_mart)

Just a heads-up: there's a great interview over on the NetSquared web site, where Jed Sundwall (that's him on the right) talks to Alex about the work we do, and how social media can help organizations join the big conversations that can lead us to a sustainable, socially just world:

I used to do a lot of policy consultation online and I moved away from that because I felt like I was more called to do direct social change work. I've since come full circle because I've concluded that, at the end of the day, meaningful change only comes from conversation. Conversation is the agent of change. What social media does beautifully is enable large scale conversations across many dimensions—across huge distances, across gaps in time (through asynchronous communication), across personal differences. Those conversations are really key to enabling change. Our challenge is fostering conversations that build social capital.