Category: Weblogging

Recovered from the Wayback Machine

Now that you’re all thirsting for more after my little ode to the car wash, I thought I would move in for the kill with podcasting.

Eric wrote a great comment in the post associated with the Web 2.0 post:

Something’s been bothering me about this fuss over “podcasting”, and I think I’m figuring out what it is. The term “clever” is what did it for me. It’s really nothing to do with “timeshifting” your audio or anything like that – it’s just a “clever” way to use a sexy consumer gadget. It’s a rationalization for the iPod and for doing things the Apple Way.

Because, after all, when you strip it down and figure out what the meat is, it all actually gets easier when you’re dealing with things other than iPods. “Podcasting” would be a matter of hacking some batch files for my Archos; with an iPod and iTunes, you have to actually code to an API…

Podcasting is now the ‘hip’ thing, the stuff that tingles all the toes. Scoble is ga ga over it (note to self, tell Scoble about car washes), and Adam Curry is determined to become the Howard Stern of the garage waves. We are probably on the verge of a mass saturation of the Internet to bring down the routers.

i.m. orchard says he’s falling for the podcast hype. He writes:

With this switch of perspective, I think I’m falling for the hype. The key is to get out of the way: aggregate, queue, and play in the background. Yeah, there’s going to be a lot of awful crap out there, and lots of dorks eating breakfast and lipsmacking into the microphone as they blab (this is me, shuddering)—but as the number of podcasters expand, we will start to hear some blissful hams showing up with things worth listening to.

The key is to get out of the way. More good writing.

People talk about why they started a weblog, and say they were attracted to its unique characteristics. They then seem to spend an inordinate about of time trying to push it and pummel it into formats that we’ve had for hundreds of years. But you know, if it’s fun for folks and they get a kick out of it, more power to them.

But will it take off? Unlikely.

I can chuckle through a bit of twisted writing and mangled grammar and it can have appeal that goes beyond style and mechanics. That appeal could be because I like the person; or it could be because there’s bright specks in the writing and that makes the rest palatable. Heck, I wince to think of my own twisted writing and mangled grammer over the years, but I haven’t chased everyone away. Just most of the conservative Republicans.

However, I cannot handle a screechy voice, or excessive use of pauses (’uhm’, ‘ah’, ‘urh’), not to mention dead, pedantic tones and fake playfulness. Broadcasting, both visual and audio, is a skilled task that usually requires a great deal of training in addition to having a decent voice. Unlike writing, it’s much more difficult to ‘tune’ out the bad. I notice this about my own recordings, which is why I’ve only subjected you to these twice.

Additionally, as has been said elsewhere, audio files can’t be searched, or easily annotated with meta data, and can become significant drains on resources. As Scoble later wrote, because of Podcasting I need to be able to email around large files. Many email systems won’t accept files that are bigger than 2MB’s in size.

Omigod, I am visualizing being inundated with 10MB sound files. It’s enough to make you want to unplug. Viagra spam done vocally – there is a hell.

Still, teaching people proper podcasting behavior (think static location and ‘broadcasting’ the URI, as well as text translations of the audio, and never, even emailing podcasts to your friends) should take care of most of the concerns. And I for one wouldn’t mind hearing what some people I read sound like (and many of you who I’ve heard have very nice voices). As i.m. said, The key is to get out of the way: aggregate, queue, and play in the background.

But I think about spending time in the mornings or during the day reading weblogs, and I’m reminded of those who say they get all their news through blogging, and now we’re talking about loading blogger podcasts into our audio devices to take with us while we drive or walk or hike and I wonder where this particular world will end.

Will it even invade my car wash? Pink and blue and yellow prose competing with pink and blue and yellow foam? Seems a shame somehow. But what do I know? I think car washes are cool.

I just created the IT Kitchen Wiki and the first of the IT Kitchen’s weblogs. The Wiki is built using MediaWiki the same software as used for Wikipedia. The weblog is WordPress 1.3.

Elaine is helping with CSS and design, though all input and help is welcome. At this time, I’m using the default style of the Wiki, including the default image. We’ll probably continue with the default style, though I might change the image. Might not, too, because I rather like the sunflower.

(I think the sunflower should be designated the official weblogger flower, we all seem to like it so much. Besides, like the sunflower, we tend to face that which burns brightest.)

I’m using the new WordPress 1.3 theme switcher, and downloaded the Odyssey theme pack created by Root. His was the first working installation of a 1.3 theme I found, and it’s a good solid design on which to base further design modifications. At this time, I think we’re looking at going with a basic two column design, with header, footer, and background. I’m currently using Joni Mueller’s Arthurium Mix variation of root’s Gemini because it has a nice warm kitchen feel to it.

We’ll be having different color schemes and images for different categories, and apply the same across all of the different language versions. Each language version will have it’s own separate weblog, and it’s own domain, such as italian.itkitchen.info and so on.

My hope is that not only will we get help translating the English language essays to the other languages, but that non-English speaking people will write original essays in the non-English weblogs, and that we’ll get help translating from those languages back to English for the English weblog. (Did you all understand that? Care to translate for me?)

At this time the default page points to the English weblog, but I may add an english.itkitchen.info domain, and then have the main page point to the different language versions as well as the wiki. This prevents this whole site from being English centric, even if the dominate language of the site will most likely still be English.

As for the wiki, it is going to be English, but I believe we can either create variations of the wiki for the different languages, or people can just generate different language pages as branches. I wouldn’t mind advice from wiki experienced folks about best direction for this.

The wiki and the weblog are brand new and don’t have anything in them, but we’ll be adding material to the wiki this weekend. And this is an open environment – you’re all invited to dig in and help once I get that first page up and running to set the purpose of the site. Or if you don’t want to wait, you can get a feel for the purpose by reading the original IT Kitchen announcement.

The wiki will also have a signup page for people volunteering to translate and/or write essays for the weblog, as well as wiki topic and sub-topic headings. I’ll be generating weblogs and weblog users based on these sign-up pages.

(Those who have already volunteered, I’ll be sending you usernames and passwords as soon as we have the weblog look and feel finalized. Feel free to do the wiki thing now, though. A how-to on editing the wiki can be found here.)

As for weblogging softare, I decided to stay with WordPress primarily because it’s the one I’m most familiar with, and it’s GPL licensed, which means I can package the data and the delivery mechanism without worry about license. If other folks want to install other weblogs, we’ll find a way to tie them in, but you’ll have to do the installation work and manage the style settings to match the other site’s contents.

Well, finally off to a start, and a fast start too, as we’re heading into this a bit late. I think this is going to be a great deal of fun, as well as a fascinating look at how this open site will grow and mature. Just a note that we still need help in addition to those willing to write and translate, including graphics that we can provide to people to put on their weblogs and sites to promote IT Kitchen.

And we need help promoting the site –the success of IT Kitchen is going to be dependent on people wanting to become involved. People is the operative word, here. That’s people like you.

…in WordPress is that if you end up changing the focus of the post and, consequently, the title after having saved it originally as a draft, it still reflects the original title in the file name. This can be confusing to people who actually look at the file name.

(Note to self: Must remember to change the post slug when changing the title before publishing a post.)