blog (category: blogging)
persona aggregation based on viewer's preference
This week I stopped letting Twitter update my Facebook status. First, because it prepends "... is twittering", which Facebook folks not familiar with Twitter misconstrue as me being flamboyantly gleeful, and second, because it is a different medium, which means a different audience and, (to misconstrue McLuhan,) a different message.
Chris Herbert just wrote in Aggregating My Online Presences about both consolidating [and cascading updates through] his various online personas, as well as aggregating them using FriendFeed.
I think of jeffschuler.net as a hub for my various web tendrils: my locally-hosted blog and an increasing number of off-shore services: Last.fm, Upcoming, Twitter, Flickr, del.icio.us, social networks, etc.
(Last week a professional acquaintance noticed that I've got "a lot of kooky stuff on there.")
I present many of these facets as widgets. While I appreciate that the widgets allow for content that isn't flat or normalized (like FriendFeed) -- each service shouldn't have equal footing or the same "shape" -- the page gets awfully busy as more info-sections are added. So I simply link to, rather than embed, certain services.
But what if these models (both the hub-of-widgets, which Facebook Apps also supports in building profiles, and the aggregation stream) would take into account the viewer's preferences?
For example: I, viewing your homepage (or "profile" or "personal hub") like to use Last.fm, so my browser expands your Last.fm widget. Likewise, it hides or collapses a side of you in which I'm not as interested.
Keep the distinct shape and texture of different services, and allow for dissemination from a single place without overloading the viewer.
quotes: db dabbling; meta-work
Like cleaning the house when there's a more important task to be done.
I'm moving my many masses of quotations into a database I used Dabble DB to create.
I like to capture and stash away quotes from books, blogs, essays, lectures -- to enjoy, refer to, and write about later. My old, long-growing quotes page currently stores the majority, .txt-style, on this server. Many more are on strewn about: in other files, on various pages on my personal wiki, in Google Notebook, elsewhere.
A few years ago I began blueprinting plans for a Mac software app called iQuote, (clever, eh?) outlining how it would begin as a personal, searchable quote catalog, and eventually grow into a net-aware, community-oriented (del.icio.us-like) quote-sharing system. My revenue stream would be in Amazon referral dough from click-throughs on sources.
I never got around to it. I give it to you, lazyweb... go for it. Open-source it, and I promise to maybe help out, (or at least report bugs and criticize your implementation.)
So, though a cosmic-sized, crowd-wise, social-ized, (lowercase-i'd,) quote-sharing system hasn't proved a pressing need for me -- Perfect is the enemy of good enough -- a bit more organization and efficiency has.
"Dabble DB helps you build an online database on the web." The interface is quick and slick, and it's free if you agree to share all of the data you stuff into it. Adding and editing entries, playing with columns, and creating views... all cake. It's responsive and so-far solid. I haven't played with relating tables yet, or querying from externally.
Here's the public page for my new Quotes database. I've already fed it a bunch of blog fodder (that I've been not blogging about.) Next up is my quotes page, for which I'll try out Dabble's Import functionality. Then, to make that page db-driven and searchable.
At a Christmas party, my mom was relating to someone the traits I earned from her and my father. She neglected to mention that I, too, am constantly "trying to get organized." I tend not to use her phrase, or I'd have to choke on all of the times I've buddhisty-boasted ~ emptier-than-thou ~ that it can't be achieved; her seeking precludes its own satisfaction.
We both know that sometimes it's just fun to sort stuff out.
conspicuous consumption
I said yesterday that Miles probably never watched a documentary. I wonder about the lives of persistent creators; whether they are too busy producing to pay much attention to what others are doing. Miles obviously listened to (-- at least while playing with --) other jazz musicians, and I remember reading in his autobiography that he listened to contemporary "classical" music at home: Bartok, Khachaturian, Ravel. But how many CTO's read Slashdot? How many high profile actors go out to the movies, or sports stars watch Monday-night football?
I've cut back writing here quite a bit, somewhat because I don't feel like saying much right now. At the same time, though, my consumption of blogs has risen. This latter fact is partly due to the ease that RSS & newsreader aggregation provides, but I wonder if there is some inverse proportionality in my consuming and producing.
This medium, like jazz, is collaborative, though -- I'd say "A-List Bloggers" consume quite a bit, as well as produce. Nevertheless, I'm going to cut back on my blogreading somewhat, and keep an eye on the effects. I've always prided myself on having no attractions or entanglements in things like TV series and professional sports. Even though I can justify positives of net surfing and newsreading, it's, all the same, a similar vice, and I regret the vicariousness of reading about what other people are doing instead of doing, myself.
new syndication options
Attempting to resolve my syndications deliberations from a few days ago, I've revamped the RSS provisions for my blog. On the new syndication page, I'm offering a number of different feed formats.
If you are using a newsreader, feel free to choose a format that suits you, and even if you aren't particular about these things, please change the feed address: I've changed the location of the default rss file. Apologies to anyone subscribed who has suffered the constant format changes of the feed.
Hopefully, I can get back to some regular programming, (let's go bowling,) now.
Running-Blog.com
I've been wondering for some time now how Branton's Running-Log site fits in with the blog world. I journal here, and I journal there, but for different reasons and with different formats and usages. Yet, I'd still like to be able to automatically incorporate a daily mileage entry in my running log as a short one-liner in my blog, linking to the workout entry for further info.
Most people will still do plain old blogging, lucky if they use a title or main link.
Many will occasionally use a structure. Especially as Blog This buttons proliferate. So you can post an SAP invoice to your intranet blog, for example.
Others will find a few formats that tie in closely with a deep interest or passion, or their jobs. A runner's diary. A movie review. A project status report.
-- Phil Wolff
Phil Wolff's entry on semantic blogging holds some insights on how specialized journals, reviews, recipes, invoices, etc. can exist as different forms of the same foundation. Qlogger is doing this, and even has a working Running Log template.
Part of what makes Running-Log.com great, to me, are the team and coaching features. But maybe those can be duplicated in a similar manner with specialization in aggregation.
Another team just signed up for the meet, B -- time to buy a new set of racing spikes ;-)
RSS & TrackBacking
Some time ago, I jumped onto the RSS aggregation bandwagon (what's RSS?) to facilitate blog and news source consumption. Shrook is an excellent RSS newsreader for Mac OS X, with features and design that suit me more than NetNewsWire. I'm waiting on a just a few of the blogs I read to provide feeds.
Tonight I did a little work on my own blog. I've updated the RSS index to include full entries and photos, instead of just excerpts; something I like to see in other feeds I read. Thanks here to etc.'s MT RSS template. I've also opened up my entries to TrackBack pings, (what's TrackBack?) Thanks goes to Jeff from Beans for Breakfast for his lightweight TrackBacking method that I borrowed.
I'm more excited every day about how much this new medium is moving. I love watching how quickly the ripples not only move across the pond, but continually feed back into eachother.
Unlike traditional journalism, which seeks to provide complete information in a working final form, blogging is often exploratory. It's about what we are trying to learn, rather than about what I (or my journal) already know.
-- Doc Searls, Entrevue de Doc Searls by Michel Dumais