vanderwal.net

Off the Top Blog Turned Five

I forgot that 31 December 2005 was my 5 year anniversary blogging. A lot has changed on this blog and the whole blogging arena. Many of my short posts along the lines of, "I found this cool thing... " are now in my del.icio.us feed, which for those of you with JavaScript turned on is over on the right as the new incarnation of Quick Links. The same items and more I also post over on Yahoo! MyWeb, but because I can post to just myself or to a community of people I know with similar interests. (I really really hope their community functionality of MyWeb gets fixed soon in 2006 to better filter feeds from the community coming to me and allow something other than, "you can see all of my links and I will see all of your links". Life and real people's interests are not like that and Yahoo! is the people understanding people products on the web for people's lives. So, lets get to it shall we?)

Blogging seems to be more than the relative handful of people I followed in 1999 through 2001. It really exploded following that, partly because there were more options that were easy to use and options that became more stable. In 2000 I had been running this site (under a few different URLs) for five years and when I added Blogger as my tool to add content more easily it was a wonderful change for me. Not long after that Pyra (the company that started Blogger) imploded and we were left with just Ev and when Ev was away Blogger had separation anxiety. Not long after I turned to blogging by hand for a few months. I then put my own blogging tool in place that eased my workflow (Movable Type did not have the features that I wanted for my multiple categories and three entry types (essay, journal, and weblog). I had built my tool as a means to post information while traveling from any web browser when I was doing it by hand and needed FTP to regularly post. I have been running the same blogging tool with modifications since it launched 31 October 2001 (I had a post on my hand built page from October 2001 announcing it.

The look of the site has changed from the bright blue and bright green on black the blog launched with (this had been used for two years or so, and blogging with that use of the color palette was hard on the eyes). I moved to a less hard on the eyes color scheme not long after the blog launched. The current look was put in place 20 November 2002. Other than turning off comments (which I hope to bring back some day) and modifying the right-hand bar I have not made many changes since then. Life has been a bit busy since then.

I am still hoping that I will move this blog to a commercial blogging tool as my time is pulled elsewhere and I do not have the time or energy to tweak the underlying code that creates this blog. I have been quite happy with my use of TypePad since they launched and I keep my more professional blog, Personal InfoCloud over there. My happiness with TypePad and the full company of six apart there to support Movable Type will likely make it my choice. I have some other uses for the Movable Type software, other than this blog that is helping my choice. I am also a fan of WordPress and Drupal (Drupal has the capabilities under it to do what I want and need too and a large developer community). These changes come down to time available, so I could be a while.

Letting People Express What They Know

At the Euro IA Summit Euan Semple of BBC made a response to how you give people time to blog on their internal sites, "How you run an organization with out letting people express what they know, that I do not know.". This I think is an incredible frame for any organization to capture information to better its self.

Blogs for Select Audiences

Mena posed a clarification as a way to echo what Andre stated about closed blogging in Live Journal.

I can relate as I have been using Yahoo! 360 for much the same as what others post to Live Journal, it is closed and I have a decent idea who is reading what I post. For the last couple years I have been self-filtering and needed a venue to get about posting 50 percent of what was going on with me. Getting to 60 or 65 percent helped (the other 35 to 40 I save for face-to-face with people I know and trust, maybe it is LJ).

I am not a huge fan of Yahoo! 360, but it is decent and has serviced its purpose. It really needs a lot of social network filtering work (see granular social networking for a hint at the idea). Everybody I know has three or more lives and distinct and diverse social groups that they would like to keep separated for one reason or another (the poker night with the guys and your knitting group may not, well see eye to eye or you may not want them to). Providing a means to use one blog-space to write for more than one social group is a dire need. I know a few people who have more than one LJ persona they maintain.

We each have diverse lives, why are our tools not as malleable and diverse. We and our tools will get there. We have to.

By-the-way, I loved Andre's line, "The best weblogs are the ones in everyone's 'drafts' folder. So much of what I used to write and like to write about won't work today." I am hoping to get some of those things out, as I have time and/or I do not need to have a filter on some of those things any longer.

Focussing on Personal InfoCloud More

Things have been too quiet over at my Personal InfoCloud site lately. It is not for lack of things to write about, but more of the too much going on syndrome. A few things are happening that made me realize that is one of the more important things I need to be doing for now. It will also help me focus on the WebVisions presentation. In the last six months there have been a lot of very positive things transpiring around the Personal InfoCloud work I have been doing, which has greatly helped more my ideas around it move forward.

Aside from my having more serious allergy problems this Spring than I have had in many years, trying to stay on top of all that is going on outside of work lately has been nuts. I am not at a point where I could give up my day-time job to get 10 hours of productive time back to move all of the other things forward far more quickly. Currently I am balancing four different camps, not including family and sleep for this "free time" and nearly all of these things drawing my attention revolve around the Personal InfoCloud.

Academic Cites for Interested Parties

One of the things that I am still mulling over that came out of the Social Software in the Academy Workshop is the relationship between academic cites and interested parties (non-academics researching, thinking deeply, and writing about a subject). Over the past year I have had some of the work I have posted on my web sites cited in academic papers. These papers have been for general coursework to graduate thesis.

In the academic realm these cites in other's works give credibility and ranking. In the realm of the professional or "interested party" these cites mean little (other than stroking one's ego). These cites do not translate to higher salary, but they may have some relationship to credibility in a subject area.

Another aspect is finding a way to tie into academic work around these subjects. There are often wonderful academic related gatherings (conferences, symposia, etc.) around these subject matters, but these are foreign to the "interested party". There is a chasm between academic and professional world that should be narrowed or at a minimum bridged in a better way. At SSAW there were some projects I found out about that I would love to follow, or even contribute to in some form (advisement, contributor, etc.).

I have a feeling I will be mulling this for some while, and will be writing about it again.

O'Reilly Radar

I am adding the new O'Reilly Radar to my RSS aggregator to follow for a while to see if it is worth adding to my regular links page, which needs some pruning and planting. The Radar is a blog focussing on what four people at O'Reilly believe is new and interesting to them.

I found the link through a folksonomy feed, but found the developer mistook categories and general tagging for folksonomy and weighted tag use visualization for folksonomy. Both categories and tagging are very helpful tools, while weighted visualizations are already seeming passé due to over and improper use (sparklines are far more useful as are just having a numeric value). Folksonomy is not a tag applied by the content generator is is applied by the content consumer so the consumer can come back to find the information more easily. I like the irony that O'Reilly did not think a book on folksonomy would be needed, but they can not get it right on their own site (or their developer liked the buzz word and nobody knew any better).

What the do have is worth watching.

SXSW Mini-Redux Part 2

It is 1am and I am home safely, my laptop is recharging, and I will soon do the same. I had a great time at SXSW Interactive as I had many, many wonderful conversations. I am still digesting many of them, (as well as still digesting those from the previous weekend at the Information Architecture Summit in Montreal.

The end of SXSW (I really wish I could have stayed to the end of the Interactive Festival to continue soaking in a realm people who "get it") was fitting as I snagged a ride and good conversation from Robert Scoble, which I am thankful for both.

More to follow, once I get some sleep.

Blog as Personal Knowledge Managment

Last night I gave a presentation to the ASIST Potomac Valley chapter. The topic for the evening was blogging and I was joined by James Melzer and Christina Pikas.

I presented The Blog as Personal Knowledge Management (695kb PDF download). The presentation may not make much sense with out speaker's notes, which I can rebuild when I have a little more time.

All the Blog that is Fit To...

From the blog realm. Elise Bauer provides an excellent overview of available blog tools. This is a very good article on the business of weblog tool development and what the tools offer.

The fine folks at Six Apart launched their redesign today. Not only is there a new look, but the navigation is improved and is now consistent. All of the Six Apart properties are now united, which is also very helpful. Their site is looking less like a blog and more like a professional software company, but the secret it is their sites are run by their blogging tools. Great job 6A and Mule who did much of the work!

Personal InfoCloud has a Real Home

We finally (yes, finally) have Personal InfoCloud ( http://www.personalinfocloud.com ) up and running. This has been a long time coming. Items posted there will most likely be cross-posted here as well. The Personal InfoCloud will takes its place with some other things that are on their way in the next few months.

Personal InfoCloud (PIC) will be home to discussions around the PIC and related topics. More than likely folksonomy discussions will move there as they are a subset of the Personal InfoCloud. This will become clearer in relatively short order, but folksonomy allows people to track information they have previously found using their own organization and vocabulary. Personal organization of information using one's own vocabulary is central to the Personal InfoCloud. Nearly a year ago I started using Flickr as an example of a site building for the PIC.

Enjoy the new site. Yes, now that the domain is attached we will be posting to it more often.

Jerks

Comments here are closed for the time being. All past comments are still online, but posting new comments is closed.

Yes, some jerk (far less caustic term than what these people really are, as there are kids around) decided to flood the comments with porn spam and other garbage. We have the IP address of the fool (who most likely had their computer hacked, at least this time it is not a military related IP, which is what many have been in the last three months that have been dumping the porn spam referals).

One thing about writing ones own blog software has been missing out on the flood of this garbage that those using the "off-the-shelf" tools have been dealing with the past year or so. This type of thing is one reason I have not moved this site to an already made blog tool, the other is I have features I have been working for this site that I have not found in other tools and they are things that I want. I know I am not greatly adding back to the community, but my time is horribly sporadic and I fit in work on the site tools when I can.

It looks like I may move to Typekey as a means to stop the comment spam. I may also upgrade the comment area when the comments return, so that HTML is not needed. It will take time, which is one thing I am very short on right now.

Quick Links in the Side Bar is not Optimal

Paul wants to "set up one of those link-sidebar thingies again" for his quick link list. Actually I am finding those the side link lists, like mine cause problems for folks tracking referrer links back and for search engines. Context of the links is helpful, but so is being able to find the date and page where these links came from. The way Paul is doing his quick links now works well. I was able to point directly to these links, the links he make have context, even if it is only a list of links.

Quite similar to the Fixing Permalink to Mean Something post the other day, the links in the side bar are temporary. I find links from Technorati back to my site from some poor soul looking for what comment and link vanderwal.net had placed. These links do not have a permalink as they are ever rotating. I have received a few e-mails asking where the link was from and if I was spamming in some way.

Why do I have the quick links? I don't have the time to do a full or even short write-up. I clear my tabbed browser windows and put the items I have not read in full in the Quick Links. Some things I want access to from my mobile device or work to read the info in full or make use of the information. Other things I want to keep track of and include in a write-up.

The other advantage of moving the quick links into the main content area is they would be easier to include in one aggregated feed. I know I can join my current feeds, but I like the sites that provide the feeds in the same context as they appear on the site as it eases the ability to find the information. This change will take a more than a five or ten minute fix for my site, but it is on my to do list.

A Wonderful Redesign

I need to give a pointer to one of the wonderful redesigns of late, Jeff Gates' Life Outtacontext is something I find wonderful. I have been enjoying it for a couple weeks now. I particularly like when I scroll to the bottom of the page. Jeff does not update his wonderful content frequently, but the design has me going back often.

Blogs highlighted on Meet the Press

While I am not a huge blog-for-blog-sake person, Meet the Press has a relatively long roundtable discussion on blog and the Democratic presidential campaigns. The talk about how Joe Trippi not only uses the blog to communicate with potential Dean supporters, but how he and others cull ideas from the blogs.

This highlight how new innovative ideas can quickly get posted by individuals, culled, and directly or with modification get implemented to better an endeavor. One clever idea that was culled from a weblog was the ability to have individuals share their unused weekend cell phone minutes and have the campaign use these minutes to call voters in Iowa. A rather clever idea and even smarter use of culling the Internet's vast cacophony of voices to find good helpful ideas to run a business/organization better and smarter.

InfoDesign is Now InformationDesign

Bogieland's InfoDesign has redesigned, restructured and moved to InformationDesign. The new site still has the great daily content and gems, but now includes sections for events, people, and others that have been part of the site, but not as easy to find. I also like the new XML feed, which will make seeing the updates more easily.

The new structure and design may make this site more than just my must read every morning before work, but also a resource to come return to regularly when I have more time. Peter and conspirators have done a great job with the new site.