Category Archives: Blogs and Blogging

A podcast about Flock

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Daryl Houston, a fellow Knoxvillian and a Flock community shepherd, has done his first podcast about the new social browser Flock.

I have been using Flock since around the end of October last year and have found it to be quite innovative, despite the fact that the version I am using is a “pre-alpha” version. That means that all the rough edges haven’t yet been smoothed out, but Daryl indicates that a new version will be coming out around the first of February. Designed primarily to make two-way communication with the Web easier, this browser makes it easy for a blogger to locate information on the Web that he wants to quote and add it in to a blog post, using a thing called the shelf that Daryl discusses in his podcast. There are lots of other neat features that you can learn about either from the podcast or from the link to the Flock homepage above.

Dublin calling

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I’ve mentioned Colm Smyth here before. Last night, he called from Dublin (via Skype) and we talked for about 30 minutes.

It was the first Skype call he had placed to anyone, and he noted that it felt a bit like having a blind date. I had to chuckle at that idea. Though we had previously exchanged comments on each other’s blog (his is S’Mythology) and communicated through a few emails, I had to admit that it was a bit strange getting to talk with him for the first time.

This conversation came about because he had offered to assist me, by exchanging instant messages, in learning to program using Java. I had suggested that we could talk instead, if he had Skype installed. Though he didn’t already have that program at the time, he promised to get it installed and get the necessary hardware (a headset and microphone) after the first of the year. True to his word, he fulfilled his promise on January 1, a fact that impressed me with his follow-through. There is nothing particularly remarkable about having a Skype conversation with someone on the other side of the world, except of course that it is free and incredibly clear, but this particular conversation impressed on me, yet again, the wonder of the Internet and how it permits establishing friendships with people you’d never meet or get to know otherwise.

I’ve been using Skype to talk with my friend Paul Moor in Berlin on an almost daily basis for just over a year now, and I’ve also met and spoken with Sean Wong in Sydney, Australia, who found me because of my blog. I’ve spoken with Hans-Christian Steinhoff, Paul’s Berlin computer guru, and with Anthony Morris, a British friend of Paul’s who lives in Bavaria. I’ve used Skype to communicate with James Prudente in Seattle and with Tom Simpson, of Webfeed Central, who lives in Jamestown, ND. And I have had many coonversations with old friends like Phil Petty who lives in the Atlanta area.  All of these contacts have come about through no special effort to expand my circle of friendships around the world but just through being online and actively adding content to my little corner of the Internet.

I find such things as “Dublin calling” make living in these times absolutely fascinating, and I look forward to future conversations with Colm, and others, throughout this and coming years. It’s an exciting time to be alive.

Jamestown ND fire of 2005

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03, originally uploaded by webfeed.

My friend, Tom Simpson who runs Webfeed Central and works nights at a hotel in Jamestown, captured some dramatic video of a fire that occurred last night at about 2:30 A.M. in his town. This photo from his Flickr site shows the fire in its early stages, and the video shows about 18 minutes and 30 seconds of its progress over a two-hour stretch. Judging from Tom’s comments as he was taking the footage, it was very cold as you would expect in ND at this time of the year. I also noticed that his coverage of this event made the Top Posts from around WordPress.com page.

del.icio.us news

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Today Yahoo acquired del.icio.us. That’s news, not just to me, but to you as well, I think. Previously, Yahoo had acquired Flickr, another site that employs tagging as a strategy. I’ve been using del.icio.us since I started this blog on WordPress.com back at the end of October, and of course, I have been using Flickr as my photo sharing site since back in November of 2004. You can see my del.icio.us tags here. To answer your questions about what del.icio.us is, let me quote this excerpt from the Wikipedia explanation …

“del.icio.us is a social bookmarks manager. It allows you to easily add sites you like to your personal collection of links, to categorize those sites with keywords, and to share your collection not only between your own browsers and machines, but also with others.”

Del.icio.us – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I had been planning to do a podcast to try to explain a bit about the nuances of using favorites or bookmarks and tags, and I may do that yet, but for the moment, let me point out that I think this is a big validation for the concept of tagging. Yahoo provides del.icio.us with some major funding from a big company and this move may well entice many who haven’t yet gotten on the bandwagon of tagging to do so. Here’s the link to their help page which explains a whole lot about using this service.

Here’s the announcement on the Yahoo Search blog. Check out this interview for a better understanding of what del.icio.us is and why it is significant.

A new look

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As is immediately obvious, I suppose, I’ve changed the template for my blog to a new theme, called Regulus 1 by Ben Gillbanks, that was recently made available to those of us who are using WordPress.com as our hosting site. I like many things about it and have a vew few concerns, not with the template itself, but with the fact that WordPress.com limits the edits that a blogger can make to the site.

The solution to those concerns is clear to me, and that is to register a domain name and pay for hosting my blog somewhere, but despite the fact that I’ve been blogging now for almost 4 years, I continue to think of it as an experiment and as perhaps temporary. That mind set coupled with inertia have so far prevented my implementing the obvious solution to the issues I have with the limitations imposed by free blogging services like WordPress.com and previously by Blogger.

In any event, I wanted to note the change of template, so you’d understand that I am experimenting and not be confused by the new look. I hope to do a catch up post later this morning to cover the events and discoveries of this past week or so.

Blogging lite lately

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As you may have noticed, I haven’t posted much to this blog lately. In part that is due to the fact that Carole is visiting from Georgia and I have been involved in doing some things with her and Mike’s family. In part, to be honest, it is due to my laziness. I could have posted more I suppose, but as I’ve said before, this isn’t a job, so I don’t feel obligated to post every day.

Last Saturday we (Carole, Mike’s family and I) went to the Biltmore Estate for a visit to see their Christmas decorations. It was an expensive and tiring visit, but I’m glad we had a chance to do something together. If you have a broadband connection, you might enjoy the virtual tour of the Biltmore House.

Bear with me for a few more days, and then I’ll get back to blogging on a more regular basis.

An interesting blogging experiment

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Shel Israel, to whom I’ve linked before, has decided to reverse the flow of ideas at his blog. Instead of his pontificating about what he thinks, he’s listening, which is to say he has begun posting a series of open-ended questions that he hopes to get people to comment on. Since he is seeking diversity in points of view, this is one of those opportunities to speak your mind in which you can’t be wrong.

So far Shel has posted 4 questions, the last one being yesterday. They are:

  1. From where you are, what do you think the world will look like ten years from today?
  2. What are you or are you not thankful for?
  3. What scares you?
  4. What or who do you trust?

If you are interested in being heard, go over and speak your mind.

Revisiting why I blog

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Yesterday I tried to enter this post but for some reason it wasn’t saved, so I am trying again.

As I was visiting some of the sites that I visit frequently, I noticed a post by Shel Israel over at It Seems to Me in which he was doing his best imitation of that Danish prince of indecision as he pondered whether this blog of his was meant to be. Here are a couple of his comments that caught my attention.

He said …

Sometimes I get a good deal of feedback–pro or con. Usually I’m deafened by the silence the blogosphere gives me.

ItSeemstoMe: Repositioning ItSeemstoMe Yet Again

And then he added …

I angst that over on Naked, Robert and I have given specific advice about how blog successfully: Do it often, be brief and stay focused. Here, I skip entire weeks, then blog in binges. I climb soap boxes, am occassionally as long-winded as a marathon runner and the dirty little secret is I love it.

ItSeemstoMe: Repositioning ItSeemstoMe Yet Again

I posted a comment there that I’ll repeat here, because it points out again some of my own thoughts about blogging. I said …

“When I came here to “catch up” on you and what you were saying, I did so via a newsreader, which is how I usually read you. I’m not sure how that behavior affects your rankings.

This post led me to actually open your site, in my newsreader (FeedDemon), to make a comment, because my blog is also all over the place, mostly focused on technology, but frequently about whatever is in my consciousness at that time. I post to “share myself” with those who care to read what I write. Like a lot of writers, I write to “get it out of me” more than because the world needs to hear it. I’m always surprised, though pleased I confess, when I learn that someone has read it.

In reading this blog of yours, I feel I’ve gotten to know you personally, and I think that is reason enough to blog, even if it doesn’t meet the criteria for becoming a highly ranked blogger. So from my perspective, I hope you’ll continue to write about your travels, your point of view, and yes, even about your dogs and cats.”

I think we bloggers sometimes get caught up in the competitiveness that is all around us and is exemplified in the so-called blogosphere by where we rank according to Technorati or some other tool that measures our popularity. I, for one, really don’t care about that. I’m resigned to writing, as I said above, “to get it out of me” and to make it available to whomever (or should that be “whoever”?) chooses to read it. That doesn’t mean that I don’t enjoy it when people leave comments or send me email saying that they’ve read a piece or maybe even enjoyed it. It just means that I don’t have any delusions of grandeur about being an “A-List” blogger. There are far more people like me who have a blog for family and friends and who may be discovered by a small circle of others than there are those, like Robert Scoble or even Shel Israel, who are read by everybody. Frankly, I think that’s okay. I enjoy doing it, and that is enough for me.

Blogger adds comment moderation — finally

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It seems that Blogger has finally added a much-needed feature as noted below. Perhaps if they had been more responsive sooner, I would still be over there blogging, but having experienced the other features that WordPress in combination with Flock provide, I’m afraid there is no turning back for me.

Here’s the notice from Blogger about their new feature:

The ability to moderate comments as they are added to your blog can be very handy in certain situations. Perhaps you have very spirited discussions where tempers are prone to running a little high, or perhaps you just want to catch any comment spam before it reaches your page. Whatever your reasons, the comment moderation feature will let you view all comments before they appear on your blog, giving you a chance to approve or reject them as desired.

Blogger Help : How do I moderate comments on my blog?

Colm Smyth on Blogging

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Not long ago, when I was still publishing my blog on Blogger, I had a visitor to my site by the name of Colm Smyth, an Irish software developer and blogger, who was randomly making the rounds of blogs by clicking on the “Next Blog” button on Blogger. Using that button is an excellent way to discover blogs that you’d never find otherwise. But Colm was doing it as a kind of self-imposed penance obligation (word changed based on Colm’s feedback). His comment on one of my entries mentioned that “… because I’ve had the chance to experience the lack of any real response to my blog, I’ve made a pact with myself – I will read and leave comments on two new blogs for every time I post.” That personal commitment on his part impressed me, so I visited his blog to find out who he was and, because the blog was relatively new, I went back to the beginning of it and read forward to the most recent post as of that point. I was impressed! Impressed enough to bookmark his blog for exploration periodically.

This morning I made another of those periodic visits to Colm’s blog and read his entry titled, “Blogging, Egos and the Search for Self-Esteem,” posted on October 31, 2005. Once again, I was impressed both by his writing style and his thoughtfulness. If you are interested in discovering another blogger whom you might enjoy reading, I’d commend Colm to you. You may discover, as I did, that his blog is worth a periodic visit.