Category: Weblogging

Categories
Social Media Weblogging

I’d call you smart

AKMA asked what tag I would apply to him from Dan Gillmor’s HonorTags. I do grow tired of offending people with my plain speech, but to use less now would ruin a fine and longstanding streak, so I’ll go for broke.

I would if I could try to find something urbane and witty, not to mention delicously snarky about ‘HonorTags’, but just looking at the word makes me cringe. Three years ago if someone had derived something like an HonorTag, we all would have jumped on and had a fine old time, because it would have been a joke; just like Googlewhacking and all the other silly memes.

But this was real, and no joke. What pill did we swallow to take us here?

AKMA I would call you a man of honor, today, tomorrow and even into next week. However, I won’t tag you, like you’re a cow and I’m a cowboy holding a hot iron. I won’t even tag Wonderchicken, free spirit that he is though like Dave, I miss him and Jonathon.

(Life happens. Sometimes it just happens elsewhere.)

I wouldn’t tag my worst enemy, so why would I do something like that to a person I admire?

There’s a place for us, Somewhere a place for us… Damn, I just cannot get that song out of my head.

Categories
Weblogging

Points

Instead of working on my application this morning, I have been spending time reading various weblogs, as well as participating in a few; such as this one at Sam Ruby where Dare says syndication is being built into the operating system and I say I don’t care (with all due respect, because I have a lot of respect for Dare).

Oh, there’s a few quips by Mark Pilgrim in there if you’re all going through Dive Into Mark withdrawals.

I gather that Scoble’s comments are down, but he wants feedback, and someone is working on something that’s secret and only he knows about but it will eliminate the need for comments, and then we can continue the conversation.

I’m playing with some secret new technology that makes the tech blogging world even flatter. Not from Microsoft (the inventor asked me to keep it quiet until he’s ready to release it). But, it totally is going to change how I blog (and it really already has although I can’t change my style until you all get it too). It brought me Leslie’s blog, for instance.

It also will make comments unneccessary. Why? Because there are systems coming that’ll match up — in minutes — a main post and all the comments being made about that post.

I’ve always thought that alluding to ’secrets’ that others aren’t privileged to know is a conversation killer, but that’s beside the point.

Roger caught the point in a nice way in a post called Misunderstanding “Conversations”:

So when Scoble longs to turn off his comments, I understand. He’s found his limits, and wants to switch to a process that plays to his strengths… that’s a good thing. The problem is that he’s confusing his weaknesses with the technology itself.

No, I think the problem is that Scoble thinks he can have a conversation with 1000 people. If they all talk fast, and say the same thing, “I love podcasts gimme more”, I suppose you could have a conversation with this many folk.

Jeneane gets this point, which is why she wants a new style of aggregator that fits her many feeds and her limited time.

It’s called Blog(between-the)Lines(SM), a new aggregator/reader that serves up the three most important words from across all of the blogs you subscribe to each day! You can get your Blog(between-the)Lines WordPack 2005 delivered to you via email, via text message, or stamped on your head with a branding iron underneath the Free Download Code Number, 666.

You know Jeneane, if you ask nice, Microsoft might build Blog(between-the)Lines(SM) into Longhorn. Heck: it put everything else in there. But that’s beside the point.

What is the point is her sample feed. You have to check out her sample feed. I’m not going to repeat it, though: it’s a secret. So you’ll have to *guess what it is so we can continue having a conversation. Here’s a hint: Halley’s good natured response is based on it.

*Or I guess you could just go over to Jeneane’s and read the post. But that’s not the point.

Categories
Weblogging Writing

Wincing words

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

There are certain words and phrases popular among webloggers that I’ve grown to dislike over time. Well some I disliked from the start; others I’ve come to dislike only after many repetitions. Whether people continue to use these phrases or not, I don’t care–to each their own. But if we are ever to meet someday and you use one of these words and I wince, you’ll at least know it’s because of the word, not your bad breath or the spinach stuck in your teeth.

The first is blogosphere. What kind of word is blogosphere? Haven’t we done enough damage with ‘blog’ that we have to tag on ‘osphere’?

To me, blogosphere implies that those who weblog live within a bubble isolated from the rest of the known universe. Every time I hear the term, I get a mental image of a huge beach ball floating on the water at the beach: drifting without purpose and soon to be lost. Except that in my visualization, there are millions of tiny little faces looking out at me from within the ball.

Brrrr! Gives me the cauld grue.

If we sail, do we use sailosphere? If we volunteer to help at the library, do we use the term bookosphere in reference to our activities in this environment? Why, then, blogosphere?

The second word isn’t a word, it’s an acronym: MSM. In case you don’t know the term–and goodness sake, how can you not know this term, it litters our pages like candy-shelled chocolate spilled from a bag–it means mainstream media.

First, what is MSM? Seemingly it has to do with professional journalism, but I look around at the people who use it, disparagingly, and notice that many of them are professional journalists–a contradiction leaving me going, “Well, huh.” Do we differentiate between us and this MSM by whether we get paid or not for our efforts? If I remember correctly, some of the more popular webloggers make a great deal of money from their weblogs.

If MSM is specifically professional journalism done by people who don’t blog, do we include all forms of journalism in this classification? If so, then if a newspaper gets a blog, does it stop being MSM? Or is it now, MSM…but with a blog?

How about movies? Are these MSM? They are media. They are main stream. Since most people who use the term MSM do so with a sneer, we have to assume that the ultimate hope is to replace this MSM. Are we saying that today there are podcasts to replace radio; tomorrow there will be vidcasts to replace movies? Look out Tom Cruise, move aside Cameron Diaz: here comes Adam Curry and Dave Winer starring in that blogosphere favorite, “The Odd Couple”?

It’s an Us and Them word, and Us and Them words never lead to anything useful. Besides, every time I hear MSM, I get hungry for Chinese food.

Blogosphere makes me wince, MSM gives me gas, but the phrase I dislike most of all is citizen journalist. I’ll apologize upfront to all of you who love this phrase, but I think it’s the most pretentious piece of twaddle to ever spill out of our brains.

If we’re citizen journalists, does this mean that the reporters down at my local paper aren’t citizens? Do I need to call the Department of Homeland Security on them? Could be fun, true; but I think I’ll pass.

Additionally, how is having a weblog so different from a ‘journalistic’ perspective that we need to have such specialized terms? After all, in this country at least, there’s long been a tradition of personal publications: flyers, underground newspapers, letters exchanged between a network of writers, even Joe the Wacko giving out his mimeographed opinions, printed on bright pink paper. A weblog is just medium, really. Less finger cramping than writing; not as pretty, though, as the bright pink mimeographed sheets.

Some would say that this form of journalism is different, because weblogging gives us a much broader audience. As to this, anyone with a box and a street corner can broadcast. Writing a letter to an editor is broadcasting. Joe the Wacko standing out in front of City Hall is broadcasting. It’s the will to have an opinion and make it heard that’s essential to broadcasting. And who is to say which broadcasting approach has more and lasting influence?

Listen to the phrase, too: citizen journalist. It’s a spooky phrase, and should make your spine tingle in warning. Replace ‘journalist’ with ‘copjustice’ and you have vigilantes; replace ‘citizen’ with ‘patriot’ and you have fascism. Replace both with ‘weblogger’, and you have me.

Categories
Weblogging

Real world

I received an email yesterday telling me I was one of the 50 ‘honorable mentions’ in the AlwaysOn/Technorati Open Media 100. “Dear Open Media 100 Contender”, the email began. Open Media 100 Contender? I had no idea I was an Open Media 100 Contender. If I was nominated, it was probably as a joke.

Anyway, I didn’t get listed in Open Media 100 and now my life is ashes, and my hopes are dirt. Well, not really — but it sounds good.

There are folk I respect in the list, and I don’t want to rain on their parade. So for them, I send congratulations, with an added note that they deserve the recognition. But you know without looking who most of the people are in the list — categories carefully designed to ensure the proper (read that link popular) people are listed. My name being among the honorables is one of the few surprises in the list, if that isn’t pretentious of me for saying.

Dave Rogers, Mr. Cranky Pants (he is so going to get tired of this quip) had something to say about the list, and he isn’t even an honorable (neener neener, Dave, neener neener). He writes:

You know what I think? Well, you probably know what I think, but I’m going to tell you anyway. I think it’s all bullshit. I think the world needs this “framework” like a rooster needs socks. I think it’s all just a scam to get some high attention-earners to vector a little attention toward these attention-seeking entities. A little fancy, high-tech, brown-nosing. Invoke that whole reciprocity thing. I link you, you link me, we’re a happy family… Oh, sorry, just had a hideous flashback to a purple dinosaur that traumatized me as a parent.

If Dave is a cranky writer, at least he’s a cranky, good writer. But he’s not an honorable. Neener.

Mitchelaneous writes, You can only milk that cow so long before it runs dry. Lots of farm metaphors in relation to this list. Rooster with socks, milking cows and all.

John Wagner writes, The AO/Technorati list seems a step in the wrong direction. You step in the wrong direction at a farm, you’ll know it.

Anyway, I want to know if this “honorable mention” I got is worth something. Both the Yahoo and Microsoft jobs I had interviewed for didn’t come through (which didn’t necessarily surprise me, but did disappoint me) and I just applied for a job as a check out clerk at Dierberg’s, a local grocery store. If this honorable mention can’t help me get a job at Yahoo or Microsoft, or a new book at O’Reilly or some other publisher, will it at least help me get that cashier job at Dierberg’s?

Categories
Weather Weblogging

Weather junkies rejoice

I’ve been a subscriber to the Weather Underground for a few years now. For the cost of 5.00 a year, you can access all the functionality at the site, without ads and including radar pictures during peak times. The weather forecasting is superior to Weather channel’s site, and the maps and graphics much cleaner and easier to read. For a weather junkie, Weather Underground is candy.

Recently the site has added weblogs as a component of its interactive services. Now, in addition to sharing photos and personal weather station information, you can now share your intimate thoughts and deep corporate secrets. Well, as long as neither are obscene, because the company has put censorship control in the hands of the customers — allowing each of us to ‘flag’ whether a post is obscene or not.

My weblog, with it’s first innocuous entry is here. The left side of the blog page contains page controls, including options controlling whether to display the top photo banner and a login. For members, the left side also has a link to member settings, Weather Email and Mail Box, My Photos, My Blog, and the Forecast Fliers.

The right side displays thumbnails of recent photos I’ve uploaded. By uploading them, I give Weather Underground explicit permission to use the photos for the company’s own purpose, though I retain full copyright. Following the photos are links I’ve added to the weblog, and the weather stations I monitor . These stations are maintained by a network of people who run their own personal weather stations and then use software to upload the data to the site.

Before I started uploaded photos and creating WunderBlog entries, I could add weather forecasts as favorites and email alerts. This is in addition to the click and zoom radar and subscribing to weather casts through Bloglines, based on the RSS feeds associated with each individual community. (I’ve even thought about trying something a little interesting with the feeds and my comments, because lord knows, we need more toys.) I also use the Trip Planner to check out typical weather conditions when I’m planning a cross-country drive.

Now the site has weblogs and cross-member communication. I’ve already had my first email message, with kind words on one of my photos–the bee on the water lily. Kind considering the great photo the sender had just posted–take a look at that critter’s face. (Want more critter closeups, then check out this damselfly.)

About the only thing missing at Weather Underground from a social network perspective is tags. They do have categories for the photos, though, so don’t despair.

Though all of the tech is fun to play with, there’s a great deal of usefulness about all of this interactivity. The personal weather stations not only provide in-depth current weather information, they also provide history, which can then be used to help out with other technology such as the trip planner. In his weblog, the Weather Underground’s top meteorologist provides a more in-depth look at weather patterns and what they mean, such as the exceedingly calm spring we’ve had this year (Oklahoma had no tornadoes in May — a record). He was also able to issue an alert about a pending bill in Congress that would close the NWS (National Weather Service) data from small, independent companies if the data is provided by ‘commercial providers’–a direct violation of federally funded data being made available to the people without prejudice (and a bill instigated by a couple of larger, commercial weather data providers.)

(He also provided pointers to a graph of the drought that’s hitting us and surrounding states. From the look of it, I think one reason we may be seeing more bear in Missouri now is a severe drought in northern Arkansas, where most of these bear live.)

In the Weather Station discussion, how the stations tracked Arlene is mapped, and how the new weblogging system is put together is discussed in the developer’s weblog.

I don’t plan on posting frequently to my WunderBlog weblog. I’ll most likely leave it for weather-related writings that might bore most of you. (Though they do make a nice break from the ‘women in weblogging’, blasting the Illuminati, and other too-typical fare, eh?) It has been interesting to watch this site evolve from being ‘just’ a weather web page to being the center of a rather thriving little community. A nice next step would be an API that allows integrated access from other sites, though this might overwhelm the services if too successful. Besides, at 5.00 a year, mustn’t get too greedy.