If you get the appearance of asides in feeds changed please post about it as I would be very interested. I usually come through your feed, but still I may miss it ;-)

As for your email — yes, I got it and yes, I will be happy to participate. You did give me some homework to do, though, and I am tardy on that. ;)

Strangely enough I recently implemented asides myself. I tend to write rather lengthy article kind of stuff and needed a format to post site news and shorter notes about stuff relating to the blog or it’s subject without having to read a whole article about it. If it was completely unrelated would I rather post it on another blog I think.

Using the Sideblog plugin I implemented them in the sidebar instead of in the actual body of the page as that is how I see them. They are side notes that you can ignore or read depending on your preferences. That way people know what is what I think. Your implementation works as well, but I still find is less clean cut.

Speaking about asides you can consider this one (rules from above applying here as well): Did you ever get my mail about listing your own favorite articles and those of others with comments and send them to me? I appreciate you are a busy guy, but adding you to the list already including Valeria Maltoni, Chris Garrett and Daniel Scocco would be a treat I am sure. Lorelle will also be participating as soon as she finds the time. Perhaps you would too? :-)

As for measuring things to death — that’s something that can be done, and is happily done by metrics guru’s. There’s something to be said for understanding what people are doing to improve their experiences and your outcomes.

But as I say — I’m just too lazy to do it most of the time. Or, put another way, judiciously use the time I have in the day to focus on high-yield activities.

Like “asides”. ;)

I have no idea whether people use my “related links” or click through the navigation or something third to come from one page to another.

Still I offer all the opportunities for interaction that I can which doesn’t get in the way or annoy anyone. My discrete implementation can’t possibly do that I think.

The more opportunities people have the more they will use them or not? We will never have complete knowledge of how people use our blogs so we may as well learn how to fly blindfolded at least on one eye.

Perhaps one day, sites like Madkast could aggregate their data (a la “2.0″, or say, Freshbooks) and actually provide this information … if it was beneficial to do so.

I can imagine how it wouldn’t be if their stats said, for example, that 0.01% of users share blog posts, and that their attrition rate was in the 90th percentile or there ’bouts.