| Is My Classic Blogging Dead? |
[Dec. 11th, 2008|01:26 am] |
I said a while back that I would start blogging again. And I did for a little while, then I discovered the joys of microblogging, particularly on FriendFeed. The barrier to entry is so much smaller and I don't have to come up with detailed topics as often, I just share snippets of interest. I recommend everyone giving it a try, I'd be happy to walk any of you through grokking the tao of FriendFeed.
So, is my classic blogging dead? No. I have a growing backlog of topics that I just haven't found the time to explore and finalize. I have several entries in first draft, but haven't had time to finalize them either. You're in store for articles on Vista, usability, a Facebook advertising case study, the history of Israel, antisemitism, green technologies, game programming, and several other topics.
The catch is that I've found LJ has been limiting my exposure and dynamic greatly. My topics are getting more serious while my LJ participation has dropped to checking my friends page once a month. And my topics are too varied to not have a UI that helps visitors find information. That formula is self-defeating and will not generate the participation levels I seek in my upcoming topics. What this means for you is that I will finally be installing a proper blog on xerotopia and posting there. I will of course be feeding that back into this journal so you don't have to visit it separate.
But all of this takes time that I can't seem to find. I have set aside a dedicated block of time to work on any "personal software projects" every Monday. Lately that slot has been filled with extras at the day job, but that is calming down again (hopefully). I suggest doing something like this for all of you information workers. It's dedicated geek playtime that also hones your skills. Plus you might make something popular or useful during that time.
Obviously, that's only one day of the week, so where is the rest of my free time going lately? I have been house hunting, working late at the office, and traveling for the past few weeks. I had a Belegarth event, followed by massive house hunting, followed by Thanksgiving, followed by more house hunting, going through backed up chores and mail, hunting Christmas presents, and ring shopping (you didn't read that). I have four swords to finish for Russell that are two (three?) weeks overdue now whose construction has been set back over and over between the aforementioned tasks and poor weather. I have decided to rig my storage closet with a space heater this week so I can finish them in the cold/rain without the glue setting wrong. That should be fun...
So be on the lookout for the site redesign and come join me on FriendFeed. I'm projecting the site will be up around the end of February but it all depends on how much I can get done during the holidays.
PS - For those wondering, I have been keeping up with your LJs via a FF import, at those of you with public journals. |
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| Added FriendFeed to xerotopia -- About FriendFeed; |
[Jul. 9th, 2008|03:18 am] |
I did a slight revamp of xerotopia.net tonight. I've embedded both my recent LJ entries and my recent FriendFeed activity.
If you haven't heard about FriendFeed yet then let me inform you...
FriendFeed is an excellent service that enables you in two main ways:
1) Collect all of your RSS feeds into a single place accessible anywhere.
2) Collect your entire web activity into a single place for others to read.
So, say you have accounts on Flickr, Digg, Twitter, LJ, Google Reader, Reddit, Disqus, Linked In, Pownce, Google Talk, del.icio.us and Facebook (a fairly common set for the current early adopter). Instead of having all of your friends have to check each of those to see what you're doing, you can import all of those services directly into FriendFeed and then your friends have a single place to see what you're up to. In many instances they can even post information directly back to the source service from the FF interface.
But that is just the vanity aspect, what about a tool for you?
That's where point #1 above comes in, you can take the RSS feeds (aka, Live Bookmarks, Atom Feeds, etc.) for all of your online comics, certain LJ friends, blogs you read, and anything else you keep up with and add them as "imaginary friends". They will then be imported into your feed in real time. Think of it as a LiveJournal Friends page that is completely open, and where you don't have to be a paid member to add a syndication journal.
A nice bonus is that there has been a great community building up on FriendFeed lately. Yes it aggregates all of these other services, but it also has its own system of posting, including liking and commenting on any post from any service. It gives you many more characters to work with than Twitter and less overhead than LJ or Tumblr. The system of Likes and Comments is very simple but increasingly powerful for finding new content and distributing your own.
If you and your friends live on Facebook now, you'll be pleased to know you can setup your feeds and import them directly into Facebook via their app. There's supposed to be a way to get your Facebook activity back out into FF as well.
So, check out the new xerotopia, and then sign up for FriendFeed to make your life easier. I'm jokeyxero on FriendFeed, from there you can get linked directly to any other services I join so we can stay connected.
#1 new user tip: the Hide button is your friend. |
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