Categories
Weblogging

Weblogging and Status

Recovered from the Wayback Machine. 

I made my first posting today at 1:47:09 pm, talking about weblogging buzz and the fact that I had more buzz from my WSP discussion than the recent one on open source associated with John Robb of Userland. I was surprised to see a comment attached at 2:09 — normally it takes longer than that to get responses.

In the comment, Userland’s Dave Winer from Scripting News wrote:

Your discussion on web standards got better when I gave it a prominent link.
You know, I just didn’t know how to respond to this for the longest time — I know that this comment bothered me a great deal. It still does.

To me, weblogging is a tool to communicate without having to go through any kind of authority or any kind of ruling mechanism in order to get that communication out to the world. Weblogging is the ultimate expression of the power of P2P (peer to peer) because webloggers discover each other primarily via links in other weblog posts rather than through one central weblogging server or through the random results of a search engine.

From my possibly warped viewpoint, weblogs are small circles of connectivity that communicate through links to other circles of connectivity and so on. Think of gears within a machine — gear one turns, causing gear two to turn, causing gears three and four to turn and so on.

Scenario:

Weblog A posts an item of interest in his or her weblog. Weblog A’s regular reader, Weblog B, reads the information and, if interested enough, posts a link back to Weblog A. Now, Weblog C is a regular reader of Weblog B, but not Weblog A; however C, in turn, also find A’s information interesting, and posts a reference to Weblog A (and possibly B) — thereby connecting C’s weblogging circle to A’s weblogging circle — all through the intervention of Weblog B. If you think about, that’s exactly how Freenet works. Pure P2P.

If we consider the human synapse as a valid cybernetic element in the equation, weblogging and weblogging circles are the closest thing we have to a Semantic Web today. Fascinating and extraordinary stuff.

Real Life: It’s New Year’s Eve and Sharon in North Carolina is wishing me Happy New Year and I’m wishing Chris in Korea Happy New Year and Julian in the UK is giving me some pretty good advice on the subject of weblogging buzz, and Justin in Dallas is paying me a nice compliment — and so the circles mix and meet and come together momentarily only to split apart again, connected through something ephemeral and powerful, a link. What a wonderous web of discovery! If this doesn’t excite you, than you need to put a mirror in front of your face, make sure you’re still breathing.

Into the midst of all this, drops the comment:

Your discussion on web standards got better when I gave it a prominent link.
Is this a carrot? Or a stick? Am I chastised? Or am I warned? Will I be perpetually banished from the dance of the circles if I don’t acknowledge the power of Scripting News and Userland? Is the dance of the circles dependent on one weblog?

I had thought that the discussion on web standards got better because of the participants.

Categories
Just Shelley

Big bang teapot

Damn! What is that horrible noise!

Throws computer off lap, runs to check it out…

Oh. It’s only my new teapot. I had put the water on to boil for afternoon tea and then promptly forgot about it. Unfortunately, I have boiled more than one teakettle dry when working on a new book, which is why I bought the new teakettle — complete with loud and obnoxious whistle.

Still, I didn’t know it was going to sound like that minuscule dot of matter that was the Universe just before it went Bang.

Categories
Weblogging

Weblogging buzz

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Well, hey, we made it into 2002. Pat yourselves on the backs.

In the comments attached to my weblog postings from this last week’s brouhaha over open source and P2P (primarily open source), readers mentioned that some people, who will remain nameless (“quack”), deliberately make controversial statements in order to generate weblogging buzz. What’s interesting is that I don’t necessarily see a lot of buzz from the open source discussion, at least not in page hits to my weblog.

I received a lot more buzz from the discussion regarding web standards and the WaSP then anything I’ve ever gotten into with (“quack”). And the WaSP debates were, for the most part, reasonable and cogent. In fact, I think some of the folks who pushed back could be said to have counted coup on me, with extremely reasonable and well thought out responses — dammit.

Still, the concept of “weblogging buzz” is intriguing. Worth more discussion at a later time I think.

Categories
Just Shelley

Happy New Year

She carefully raises her head above the hole of her shelter, ready to pull it in at a moment’s danger. Not sensing any immediate threat, she looks carefully to the left. No wasps. Relieved, and again, moving cautiously so as not to attract predators, she looks carefully to the right. Oh thank goodness! No ducks! She knows that now is the time when she can safely make a move.

Creeping out of the shelter, she puts her hands to her mouth and calls quietly to her faithful weblog readers:

Happy New Year!

Then runs like hell and dives back into her shelter, vowing to return only when the new year is safely underway.

Categories
Technology Weblogging

Winer joins Robb non-debate on open source

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Nothing like Dave Winer from Userland cashing in on the open source non-debate by twisting the whole thing back to how we shouldn’t pick on Manila, we shouldn’t pick on him, we can’t pick on “his” XML-RPC, and then goes on to talk about how open source developers never listen to the users. WTF!?!

I suppose that’s why Mozilla cared so little for getting comments from users that they created an entire open source bug reporting system (Bugzilla) just to manage user responses. I suppose that’s why the Apache organization wrote the following:


Not a software developer? Don’t worry, there are plenty of other ways you can contribute. Our customers, the users of our free software products, are part of the Apache community as well. Organizing local user groups, volunteering to work on user conferences, and helping less experienced users on the various on-line forums are all ways in which you can contribute to the ASF projects. Likewise, the Foundation project can often benefit from people with administrative experience or access to specialized communication facilities.

Not listen to users? Bullpuckey!

FYI — I’m not an open source groupie. Most of my work has been for companies that hide their code behind lock and key (though that is changing a bit now). However, I do believe in giving credit where credit’s due, and the open source community deserves more credit than they sure have been getting lately. A lot more credit, and a hell of a lot more respect.

As far as I’m concerned, there is no competition between closed or proprietary software organizations and the open source community. If anything, there’s a symbiotic relationship between the two. The proprietary software companies provide the salaries of the people who donate their time building much of the open source code. In turn, the proprietary software companies benefit from the innovation and creativity freely available as open source. Based on the benefits proprietary software companies have gained from the open source products, the concept of “open source” is a huge success.

I would even go so far as to say if there were no open source, you wouldn’t be reading this today. And if there were no closed, proprietary software companies, chances are you wouldn’t be reading this today, either.

-later-

Why am I getting into this BS? Arguing with the Userland Deus Ex Machina is like being nibbled to death by ducks — slow death by constant attacks by small, blunt toothless beaks. Chomp. heh Chomp. heh.

There’s this “tag, you’re it” type of thing that goes on — when one tires, another takes up the weblogging baton and it’s just you running against this big, bad remorseless Weblogging machine.

Anyone want to take the baton from me? I’m getting tired. All that “flailing” about open source, most likely.