Monday, August 26, 2002 
(Via blogpopuli) Massive is worried about the influx of newbies at the influential community weblog metafilter breaking the culture there:
User numbers bloomed by over a thousand in less than two months. I shrugged my shoulders and thought, "What difference is 15,000 from 14,000? Little will change." I'm not so sure now. The thousand users who'd joined had been waiting for months to get in - they weren't a representative sample of Metafilter users, and clearly they wanted the priveleges that came with being registered, namely the ability to post and comment.
categories: metablog
8:07:21 PM 
say what []
Here's someone's idea of some good blogs to check out. What interests me is this assertion:
Further, the distinction between web diaries and web logs continues to become more blurred. Which, ultimately, makes for better reading.
categories: memewatch metablog
6:17:49 PM say what []
I should have known I'd get sucked in. I remember reading Jon's columns as he continually documented what he was learning about web servers, content managemenet, database-backed websites, and so on.
From the link mentioned in my previous entry I've now read Udell's review of Radio 8 and a three-part article on the writeable web, the uses of storytelling, and project weblogging.
From the latter article:
Weblogging, or blogging, has emerged as a genuinely new literary/journalistic form. The narrative structure of a weblog is that of a daily diary. The style is one of commentary — that is, a weblog refers to the readable Web, focuses attention on selected items, and tells a story about those items from a particular point of view."and
I'm convinced, more than ever, of the value of weblogging as an important new form of business communication.
categories: knowhow memewatch metablog radioactive syllabus
6:07:23 PM say what []
John Udell wrote a good overview of RSS Aggregators in a May 27 column in Byte, the seminal, now-online-only computer magazine (the only such magazine I ever paid to subscribe to):
No single person will be completely authoritative in any one area, but that won't matter ... in fact, it's better that way. In the interplay among several weblogs, the sum can be greater than the parts.
categories: knowhow metablog radioactive
5:53:15 PM say what []
Just added to my blogroll: The Vicarious Delusions of Malium's journal.
I think blogrolls need to be annotated, or at least that I should do more than just add people to a link and never explain why. Backfilling is always piling up, but at least from now on when I add someone I can note it.
Mal is a friend/mentor of mine, also a catalyst, instigator of antiweb and much more. I'm catching up on his new livejournal in my friends view there right now. He has some fiction, some personal stuff, he discusses Tara Sue Grubb (he lives in her district), and Lindows. He posts long, considered entries. He's experienced. Read him.
Say, blogstreet doesn't see my blogrolls because they come in via javascript using blogrolling.com. Those guys should work out the compatability issue for mutual benefit.
categories: metablog x-syndicate
1:35:33 PM say what []
A kuro5hin post I noticed in my aggregator (The future of blog: The scaling barrier) brings up an interesting point: will blogs scale?
Blogs have a scaling problem. Kinda like clubs. The good crowd moves in and they become these perfect little places for some time. And then too many people start coming in, and the magic disappears. Teenagers take over and after a couple of years place is converted into a bad fast food restaurant. I propose a few improvements to help k5 avoid that. [kuro5hin.org]I think there's a fallacy here, though, mistaking the coolness of the medium for the coolness of some perceived set of cool kids. If blogs scale, it will be because the blogocosm can spawn microcosms, or spin them off, or whatever metaphor you prefer. Within any circle of bloggers there will be some who are more influential, more widely read at any given moment. People's interest in blogging can wane, others gain skill and confidence and take over. There are lifecycles. None of that is the medium. It's the people using it. Blogs aren't inherently about good writing or good design or perspicacious websurfery or being popular or doing art or tracking knowledge or building community. Blogs work well for all of the above, but they are a format, a particularly liberating format to be sure, but simply a form, like the sonnet.
Will they scale? Maybe. Nothing grows forever. Has the wave crested? Probably not yet. Will blogs blanket the world? I have my doubts. Works for me.
categories: knowhow memewatch metablog
12:55:24 PM say what []
inessential.com says that RSS is where it's at:
I think I've seen the future, or a small part of it, regarding weblogs. Two things:This Pirate Kills Fascists disagrees with this news-is-all vision, seeing blogrolls and other blog content elements as equally compelling (in IE5.1/OSX right now, though, his design is overlapping, making some of the content illegible):
- If you're not syndicating your site as RSS it might as well not exist.
- If you don't include a <link...> tag in your home page that points to your RSS feed, then you might as well not be syndicating your site, and therefore it might as well not exist.
Again, I don't see it. While I do agree that the web browser is not the most efficent means to read a large number of weblogs, I don't think that RSS fits the bill as the best means to read them either. I've already voiced two complaints against how RSS is currently used, and I don't see any good solutions for these two issues.Here's my question. Where do I snag the correct syntax for the link tag in my head. I guess I can copy almost anyone and replace the URL?
Images, blogrolls, discussion links, all of these are key components of many weblogs. I've often hit up the "say what" link on Radio Free Blogistan alone. RSS syndication hides all that.
Maybe the best solution is RDF. You can define custom predicates to link your object with resources. So an item could be given a discussion link, or a channel could have a blogroll list, and a smart RDF reader could show all that.
categories: metablog
12:34:27 PM say what []
Posting Experiment via LiveJournal Client
I'm tired of having to generate a new editing window every time I want to link to someone, write something, or edit something. I just made RadioExpress! pop up its editing window in a new window because I want to link to several URI's in one entry and otherwise RE! takes over the window I was just in. But I'd rather just have one import sitting somewhere on my desktop when I need it, and then if necessary I could add the metadata I want.So this time I'm actually writing this post in my LiveJournal client for OS X (iJournal).
[Digression: I'm getting a lot of flow right now from Scot Hacker's article at O'ReillyNet about choosing blogging software for UCBerkeleyJ-School's IP Weblog class. Since Dave linked to Scot this morning and suggested he look at Manila, that flow has more than doubled. It was Scot who first turned me on to LiveJournal. Scot heard about LiveJournal because there was a BeOS client developed for it and Scot wrote the BeOS Bible (I am oversimplifying, but hey! this is a digression). LiveJournal is open source and there seems to be a lot of voluntary effort going at least into developing client's for multiple platforms. I know the Blogger API is being used as a lingua franca right now, but it doesn't support entry titles, which I use 99.99% of the time. I can't use w.bloggar because I'm based on a Mac, and it uses the Blogger API anyway, right? MovableType and Radio (/Manila/Frontier) also both have vigorous communities contributing a lot of volunteer efforts to extend their basic feature sets. OK, end of digression.]
So the Radio Multi-Author Weblog tool is going to pick up this message (including, I've noticed, the Tune and Mood choices if I've used them, but not the picture I've assigned to the entry, which is just as well) and add it to the x-pollen category.
Then, I'll go in to edit and check the box to include this entry on the home page. By now, if you're reading this from Radio Free Blogistan, I'll have already done that.
If I wanted to use the iJournal client just for RFB and not for bodega or artsflow (my livejournal blogs — I also belong to a community weblog at LiveJournal called celticmyths). I could delete the message or make it private after Radio's RSS feed aggregator picks it up. Or I could set up a new livejournal in obscurity and use it just as a way-station for posts from this client.
One curious thing, when I was adding the links above (it's too distracting to fuss with HTML or even gui widgets when trying to form prose), at one point I repeatedly pasted in the link to Scot's article instead of to Dave's permalink, dyslexically grabbing the intro link instead of the octothorpe
x
One last total non sequitur (more in the spirit of bodega): Did anyone get the setlist for Camper Van Beethoven Saturday at the Great American Music Hall or Sunday at Slim's? I'd like to write a little review of Saturday's show but it would be nice to have a setlist to check my memory.
Some memorable highlights off the top of me head, no particular order: Eye of Fatima (Parts 1 and 2), Sweethearts, Sad Lover's Waltz, Tusk (the Fleetwood Mac song), Interstellar Overdrive, I Was So Wasted, We're a Bad Trip, Tania, All Her Favorite Fruit, She Divines Water, History of Utah (my unfinished—okay, unstarted—novel about the late '80s in San Francisco is called History of Utah), Take the Skinheads Bowling, Pictures of Matchstick Men, Waka, Turquoise Jewelry, hey, it's all coming back, almost, Good Guys and Bad Guys, One of These Days. That's not all, but my brain is now dry.
Wished they'd played: Life is Grand, Seven Languages.
postscript: Ironically, I forgot to close a link tag and now have to edit the post on two servers.
Current Music: The Fire::Television::Adventure
categories: metablog radioactive x-syndicate
12:17:29 PM say what []
Wired News discusses ambiguous or unavailable installed-base figures for blogs. Surprisingly, they spell blogosphere with a hyphen as well, following Newsweek style? Meanwhile, the VC-oriented world looks elsewhere:
Industry research powerhouses are likely to stay away from the blog-osphere until it reaches profitability. Gartner, Neilsen//NetRatings, Forrester Research and International Data Corporation don't have a single analyst involved in gathering blogging data.
categories: memewatch metablog
8:48:23 AM say what []
Mena posted at Movable Type about a new threaded version of TrackBack and alluded to a standalone version of TrackBack (that is, one that does not require MT) to be released soon. Keep them innovations coming!
categories: memewatch metablog
12:06:19 AM say what []
