www.josschuurmans.com

Reading and sharing; the mobile saga continues

[NEXT DAY:  I need to improve the shared reading feed!]

In my continued struggle to set up a system which would allow me to bookmark, save, tag, annotate, aggregate, integrate and/or share anything I read online (on machines with various degrees of mobility), I am now using Google Reader as my main reading tool.

(I have been complaining before about the lack of social awareness of the mobile environment)

What I read and what I can do with it next is important to me. I like Google Reader's "Note in Reader" browser plug-in, for it allows me to "keep" content on the web which I browse but haven't (yet) subscribed to.

Problem is, when browsing Google Reader on my S60 mobile phone I can only "star" or "share" the items in the feeds I have already subscribed to. Even the outbound links in those Google Reader feeds I cannot mark.

The best workaround I know for this is to bookmark links outside of Google Reader within the Opera Mini browser, then synchronize those bookmarks with Opera Link, view them in a browser on a PC or Mac sometime later at home or at the office, and add them to Google Reader manually, using the "Note in Reader" plug-in.

That's not a very smooth workaround! Please, tell me you know a better way!

While most of the above concerns the capturing of my reading, I would also very much like to share my reading (and annotations), e.g. on my blog, in the most integrated fashion. That means, I would like that reading to be published on my blog, just like any other blog posts.

I am already using a few services which call Typepad's API to post stuff, notably Delicious' daily links and Ping.fm. I wish I could have Google Reader automagically post my shared reading straight onto my blog (not as a sidebar).

Now I just looked at notify.me's relatively new Ping.fm feature. So I added my Google Reader's shared reading feed as a source to notify.me, then selected Ping.fm as a destination for this feed.

I set up Ping.fm to post stuff to my various accounts on social media and social networking sites, including my blog at www.josschuurmans.com.

Curious to see what will happen with this scenario:

Opera Mini -> bookmark -> synchronize -> Opera Link -> "Note in Reader" -> Google Reader shared reading -> notify.me -> Ping.fm -> www.josschuurmans.com / Twitter / Facebook / etc.

Never mind the 140 chars limitations. Or actually: mind!

[In the meantime:] WOW! I just had a look and something did happen while I was writing this post. Interesting; to be continued..

P.S.: In an attempt to edit RSS feeds before subscribing to them in Google Reader, I was using Yahoo! Pipes earlier today. My goal was to follow (only) Marshall Kirkpatrick's produce on ReadWriteWeb, so I fetched the RSS feed from RWW into Yahoo! Pipes, then filtered its contents by author, to output a modified RSS feed.

Here is the pipe:
http://pipes.yahoo.com/josschuurmans/rww_marshall_kirkpatrick

and this is the feed: http://pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/pipe.run?_id=3MwoDOBS3hGSVPSx8cv2rw&_render=rss

I was able to add this new feed to my "myYahoo!" page but, to my surprise, I couldn't get Google Reader to subscribe to it. So, what's that about?

P.P.S: Do I hear you saying that all this can be fixed with an iPhone or a Nokia N97? How?

Fortune 500 blog more than expected

As social media becomes more integral to the business function, one should expect evidence of it in the use of blogs, podcasts, Twitter or other tools.

Today I found part of the answer to my post from April 9, 2009: Have blogs become an essential business tool?

A new study titled 'The Fortune 500 and Blogging: Slow and steady and farther along than expected', by Dr. Nora Ganim Barnes, Research Chair of the Society for New Communications (SNCR) and Eric Mattson, CEO of research firm Financial Insite, indicates that the Fortune 500 are farther along in their adoption of public-facing corporate blogs than previous data has suggested.

“It appears that those companies that have made the decision to blog have utilized the tool well. There is frequent posting, ongoing discussion and the ability to follow the conversation easily through RSS or subscriptions,” Barnes states in an email distributed by the Society for New Communications Research.

“Those F500 companies that have taken the leap into the blogosphere represent all the things that make social media great. They’re diverse in both size and industry, thereby adding a range of new perspectives to the online conversation. They’re enabling their readers to better control and participate in that conversation. And they’re exploring other ways – like videoblogging and podcasting – to communicate with their community.”

“Given that the Fortune 500 stand as a model for business success, it is interesting to examine their involvement in the social media arena," Mattson added.

Have blogs become an essential business tool?

[UPDATE, April 24, 2009: Here is part of the answer: Fortune 500 blog more than expected.]

The abstract of Jeffrey Hill's MBA dissertation from November 2005 reads:

"(...) Although weblogs are being promoted as a potentially valuable business tool in the trade press and mass-market business literature, informal surveys suggest that only a small number of companies are actually using weblogs.

Reliable academic studies about the use of weblogs in business have yet to appear. This study aims to contribute to filling this research gap by investigating the attitudes and experiences of small business bloggers using weblogs as a marketing and communications tool. Qualitative interviews were carried out with fifteen small business bloggers representing a wide range of business activities.

The results indicate that weblogs are being used for many different purposes and that the bloggers believe them to be an effective marketing tool. However, this perception is based more on the bloggers' trust in the benefits of the medium than on any measurable ROI (return on investment).

Moreover, there is little evidence that dialogue is taking place with customers, although the literature tends to advance this dialogue as one of the main advantages of using weblogs. More research needs to be done to determine who is reading company weblogs and what their effect on consumer behaviour is. (...)"

I wonder if anything has changed since? The ROI debate is still very problematic. Then again, if we view blogging merely as taking part in conversation, do we ever measure the ROI on talking with people in the corridor, on the street or in the shopping mall?

What do you think? Have blogs become an essential business tool?

Jeff (and Dave) on cutting out the middle man

While it's arguably somewhat lame to blame the reporter for not promoting his book ('What Would Google Do?'), the crux of journalist and journalism professor Jeff Jarvis's replique to The Observer is worth mulling over:

"(...) what really struck me in this process - and it is always good for a journalist to endure journalism - is that the interview itself is becoming outmoded.

I’ve noted before that Dave Winer (who, ironically, is beating me up for being too much the journalistic traditionalist) wisely refuses interviews, telling journalists that everything he has to say he has said online.

"(...) The process of the interview has the reporter hold all the cards in his hand: who he talks with and what he will reveal to each and what he will say in the end, without links to what any of the parties has said. Then the reporter gets to toss it all on the table.

A process of links and discovery and conversation and correction would be far more illuminating of the ideas and issues than this old process of control through the sieve (and efforts to trump up conflict and drama). That, you see, is the real moral to the story: It’s the form that’s bullshit. (...)"

Ping.fm to your Typepad blog via del.icio.us

Even though Ping.fm doesn't post your micro-blog entries / status updates directly onto Typepad blogs, there is a nice workaround: set up daily links posts to your Typepad blog from your del.ico.us account, then set up Ping.fm to post to del.ico.us.

At least if your Ping.fm post include a web link, del.icio.us will save it as a bookmark and then include it in the daily links post to your blog.

I like the Ping.fm integration with Blogger and Wordpress better, but I do find this acceptable for now.

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Ping.fm, Typepad, del.icio.us, Blogger, Wordpress, micro-blogging

Now let's disqus on www.josschuurmans.com

Impatient as I am, and disappointed with the lack of portability between Typepad and Blogger, I decided to stick with Typepad for now. Portability was the show-stopper now, but I also must say I don't like the Blogger branding at the top of the blog, and I somewhat sympathize more with the smaller provider, SixApart, since Google is scarily all-pervasive already.

So I've just upgraded my Typepad Plus account to Typepad Pro, mainly for two reasons: (1) access to "advanced templates" which allow more design flexibility, and (2) allowing for more than three blogs on the same account. Here's Typepad's price/features comparison page.

Now that I have "advanced templates", I was able to integrate the Disqus commenting federation system. Well, this post is actually to test if it all works.

(I'm secretly also hoping that SixApart will improve the speed of Typepad's publishing system)

Blogged with the Flock Browser

Tags: Typepad, Blogger, SixApart, Google, Disqus, commenting

The Live Web Will Be Federated

Under the headline 'Blogging 2.0: Moving Toward Conversational "Flows"', Bill French wrote a piece on MyST Blogsite, in which he observes that conversations on the Internet are increasingly moving away from being contained within blogs, towards being distributed among lifestreaming or micro-blogging services (Bill calls them "flow applications") such as Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter.

He quotes me by saying:

"(...) Ironically, in this comment, Jos Schuurmans equate sthe emergence of social networks with the end of “channels”. (...)"

I subscribe to the view that online conversations will be less and less contained within channels, while more and more federated among and across different platforms and services. To the extent that channels can be seen as walled gardens, the emergence of the blogosphere itself was the disruption that started taking down those walls.

The point I was trying to make earlier, under 'The End of Channels?' and ''Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations', is that conversations take place across and between channels, not just within, and that it is therefore less useful to think of the Web in terms of channels. As David Weinberger and Doc Searls have pointed out: the Internet is a place, not a medium.

Indeed, enablers like Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, Identi.ca, Ping.fm, and Facebook are speeding up the trend of conversations being more distributed. But what these services represent most of all is the shift from a more static Web to the "live Web".

Another application worth mentioning in this context is Disqus, an enabler of blog comments federation. If Dave Winer will have his way, something similar is going to happen to micro-blogging as well... And why wouldn't he?

Tags: Bill French, David Weinberger, Doc Searls, Dave Winer, lifestreaming, micro-blogging, federation, channels, conversation

Hopes and fears of switching to WordPress

So here I am (again) strongly considering to switch blog hosts. Currently I have it hosted on TypePad's proprietary solution, but I may have it run on the open WordPress platform. I'd say that, this time around, it seems more feasible than ever before, mainly because of WordPress.com, who nowadays offer to host WordPress.

Considerations:

• WordPress is free as in "freedom of speech". WordPress is the standard in open and free blogging. It's very big and enjoys a large community to develop and support the platform.
• The WordPress.com brand has credibility. It was initiated and is managed by people very close to WordPress.org. One may assume that they all share the vision on free and open software which underpins WordPress.org. That vision entails, among other things, a credible level of quality and continuity, as well as clarity that the bloggers will own their own data, now and in the future.
• Most of the features available via WordPress.com are for free, as in "free beer".
• For a reasonable fee, domain mapping can be purchased.
• TypePad's interface has been slow lately. I hope that WordPress.com will be lighter and faster.
• Lately I've come across several features I would have liked to add on to my blog, but couldn't do it in my current setup with TypePad. Notably:
  • Disqus
  • Ping.fm
  • More flexible blog post footers, e.g. to include ShareThis, Ping this, etc.
  • Even lighter and faster templates for mobile browsers? I actually don't know if this is available on WordPress. But it should be, so that we wouldn't need to add confusion with services like Winksite or Mofuse.
• Overall however, these things - i.e. switching to another platform - usually take more time and are more cumbersome than one would wish for.
• I fear that the permalinks of my blog posts on TypePad may get messed up even after domain mapping on WordPress.com.
• It remains to be seen if all of the features that I'm currently running on TypePad will indeed be available on WordPress.com. On the other hand, I must admit that, having followed some of my heroes quite intensively lately - Doc Searls, David Weinberger, Dave Winer, among others - I have become more appreciative of simplicity in layout and faster download times (especially over a mobile phone). I may actually do away with some of the bells and whistles currently running on my blog.
• I especially like following Dave Winer's blog on the mobile interface, because it's light and fast and he has these collapsable blog post titles. Wonder if that's a feature available on WordPress...
• In my experience, TypePad has a very professional and responsive support service team, easily available for questions through the user interface. It remains to be seen how well user support works on WordPress's forums.
• Unfortunately, CSS Editing is a premium feature and doesn't come for free. But, as mentioned above, this is probably not a biggy. If it turns out I really need them, I'll pay.

Note to self: after going through the switch, update my blog post from August 21, 2007: "If you were to start blogging today..."

Ping this!

Mobile Internet sucks (= conclusion of 3 wks without ADSL)

I've been without broadband Internet at home for about three weeks - I was "between providers", so to speak.

Must say that, while I was still able to consume some of my daily Internet fix - browsing RSS feeds on my mobile phone -, it was at the same time a sobering experience of how embarrassingly ill adapted the applications on my Nokia N95 are to mobile Web 2.0 participation.

I'll probably remember this period best as the time when Doc Searls went in and out of hospital and blogged  it all. Good health and happiness to you, Doc!

Data speed is not the bottle neck. It's the lack of mobile client-side participatory software.

With my Nseries device and 3G coverage I could browse and email, but that was about it. No tagging, no digging, no blogging with any level of convenience.

So what I ended up doing was to bookmark the URLs I would have liked to tag, digg or blog and thus collect them in my mobile phone's browser for future reference.

I hope to catch up blogging some of those bookmarks over the coming days.

Dugg: PressThink: Filter the Best Stuff to the Front Page: A Demo | Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen wrote on June 16, 2008:

"(...) OffTheBus and NewsTrust.Net ran a little test two weeks ago. It's a crowdsourced week in review feature for high quality John McCain coverage, June 2 to 9. Here's the background and results. (...)"

What I find more interesting about this blog post than the content of the experiment or indeed the ensuing US-centric political flame war in the comments is the concept of the experiment, as well as Jay's reference to Dave Winer's rivers of news, and the concern that filtering may not keep pace.

(...) The mission of NewsTrust—it’s nonprofit and non-partisan—is to be a “guide to good journalism.” The site offers a “range of tools to help you find and share” the best work.

(...) Sites like NewsTrust take it for granted that expansion in media space is a good thing. But filtering and forwarding systems must keep pace.

(...) In this connection, I point you to NewsJunk.Com, a new site. Dave Winer, with some co-conspirators, created a river of news intended for serious users of political coverage. It’s designed to be radically inclusive and selective. (And fast.)

(...) Ethan Zuckerman, co-founder of Global Voices Online—a “find new voices” project that’s working—said he was concerned that tools to organize the flow and make it practical for people to use were not keeping pace with expanded opportunities to publish.

(...) For a more intelligent and flexible filter we can trust in pro editors to adapt to the Web. We can turn to bloggers (they edit the Web for us and always have.) Or we can try the participation route, also called social media. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: PressThink: Introducing NewAssignment.Net | Jay Rosen

Jay Rosen wrote on July 25, 2006 about his idea for NewAssignment.Net ("an experiment in open-source reporting"):

"(...) Assignments are open sourced. They begin online. Reporters working with smart users and blogging editors get the story the pack wouldn't, couldn't or didn't. (...) There's $10,000 to test it, courtesy of Craig Newmark.

(...) The site uses open source methods to develop good assignments and help bring them to completion; (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: The world's 50 most powerful blogs | The Observer

The Observer published this article on March 9, 2008, describing 50 popular and influential blogs.

"(...) blogging has never been bigger. (...) Here are the 50 best reasons to log on (...)"

(Via Charlie Schick, who made a nice rough analysis of the topics covered by these influential blogs, as well as their starting dates)

From those 50 blogs listed, I think I will consider feeding the following set to my RSS reader:

#3. Techcrunch

"(...) Techcrunch began in 2005 as a blog about dotcom start-ups in Silicon Valley, but has quickly become one of the most influential news websites across the entire technology industry. Founder Michael Arrington (...)"

#4. Kottke

"(...) One of the early wave of blogging pioneers, web designer Jason Kottke started keeping track of interesting things on the internet as far back as 1998. (...)"

#13. Treehugger

"(...) Treehugger is a green consumer blog with a mission to bring a sustainable lifestyle to the masses. Its ethos, that a green lifestyle does not have to mean sacrifice, and its positive, upbeat feel have attracted over 1.8m unique users a month. (...)"

#25. Mashable

"(...) Founded by Peter Cashmore in 2005, Mashable is a social-networking news blog, reporting on and reviewing the latest developments, applications and features available in or for MySpace, Facebook, Bebo and countless lesser-known social-networking sites and services, with a special emphasis on functionality. (...)"

#33. Crooked timber

"(...) With a title pulled from Immanuel Kant's famous statement that 'out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made', it's an amalgam of academic and political writing that has muscled its way into the epicentre of intelligent discussion since its conception in 2003. (...)"

#50. Copyblogger

"(...) founded in 2006 (...) Swelling with advice on online writing, it's an essential tool for anyone trying to make themselves heard online, whether commenting on a discussion board or putting together a corporate website. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Dan Gillmor: Principles of a New Media Literacy | Publius Project

[UPDATE, April 30, 2009: Dan Gillmor's essay on the Publius website appears to have moved. The new, correct link is: http://publius.cc/principles_new_media_literacy]

"(...) In this emergent global conversation, which has created a tsunami of information, what can we trust?

How we govern ourselves on the Web depends in significant ways on the answers. To get this right, we’ll have to re-think, or at least re-apply, some older cultural norms in distinctly modern ways.

It comes down, in significant ways, to some principles, both for media consumers and creators. They add up to a 21st Century notion of what we once called “media literacy.” But media literacy has generally lacked the kind of participatory piece that is so essentially a part of digital media. (...)

• Be skeptical of absolutely everything.
• But don’t be equally skeptical of everything.
• Understand and learn media techniques.
• Ask more questions.

(...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Reuters' "mojo" experiments with Nokia | Jemima Kiss

"(...) Reuters' journalists are experimenting with the potential of mobile journalism through a project with Nokia's research centre. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Nseries PC Suite Graduates, I Agree It’s Ready | Symbian-Guru.com

"(...) The best new feature is the inclusion of Nokia Photos, which replaces the old ‘Image Store’ application, as well as Lifeblog, so it seems. The best part of this is that now, when you sync pictures and videos from your phone to your desktop, they’re no longer both stored lumped together in a folder in your My Photos folder! Videos are appropriately placed in their own folder within your My Videos folder in Windows XP, and pictures in their own folders within My Photos. I really love that, as it makes it so much easier to keep track of where things are at when it comes time to edit. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Nokia Nseries PC Suite graduates from Beta Labs | IntoMobile

"(...) The 300+ MB heavy suite is actually a collection of applications (Nokia Lifeblog, Content Copier, Nokia Application Installer, Nokia Multimedia Player, Nokia Music Manager, One Touch Access, PC Sync, Nokia Photos, Nokia Map Loader) that "seamlessly link your Nokia Nseries multimedia device and your PC."

read more | digg story

Dugg: Evernote Offers a Backup For Your Brain | Web Tick / Alex Vorn

"(...) Evernote wants to be a database for every bit of knowledge in your life. It takes all of the digital data you collect throughout your day, both the important and the inconsequential, and stores them in a centrally-located library that's accessible in an instant whenever you need it. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Storing your digital self | ButtUgly / Janne Jalkanen

"(...) My answer is simple: never rely on proprietary software. I don't use Lifeblog, or any other "digital life management" solutions. (...) As a backup solution, I use a three-way synchronization solution with Unison - one replica on my laptop, one on my desktop and one in a remote server. (...) It's a tradeoff: whether you want a better experience now, or whether you want longevity of your data. I'm opting for longevity on the stuff that is important. (...)"

read more | digg story

Dugg: Blogging as a Form of Journalism | J.D. Lasica / OJR

"(...) Weblogs offer a vital, creative outlet for alternative voices (...)"

When cleaning up my paper (sic!) archive the other day, I came across a printed article in two parts, by J.D. Lasica for the Online Journalism Review (OJR), published on May 24 and 31, 2001. Just before I'm throwing this away for the benefit of the paperless office, I'll quote what I highlighted back then:

From: 'Blogging as a Form of Journalism', May 24, 2001:

'Channels' does not sufficiently describe the dynamics of distributed online conversations

Interesting conversation about "channels" developing here with Bill French.

Totallly agree that people create channels in efforts to create order from chaos. The way I used "channels" in my post on 'The End of Channels?' was with the traditional notion of, if you will, media titles, in mind: TV/radio channels or shows, zines, newspapers, websites, blogs, forums...

I suppose what they have in common is that they all have a name, an address, and usually a more or less defined scope. They are often furnished with editorial policies and they may be designed to further particular political or commercial interests. Also, most often they have a brand identity.

But if we look passed the keeper of the gate and over the garden wall, I am willing to accept that channels - as in "meta-handlers" - are not necessarily disappearing, but rather evolving into new forms, such as distributed conversations connected by tags.

The point I am trying to make is that old-style channels are designed to contain conversations within them. Sure, they are helpful as meta-handlers in creating order. And, agreed, the new meta-handlers are facilitated by social media, e.g. through tags. However, I hesitate to go as far as to call those tag-connected (micro-content contributions to) conversations, ehm, "channels".

In Dutch, we use the same word for channel and canal: "kanaal". So it won't surprise you that I quite strongly associate the word channel with a human-made, one-directional, controlled flow.

Bill writes:

"(...) People tend to prefer the benefits that channels provide - they create the notion of a "meta-handle" that makes it easier for them to understand, know about, and share. (...)"

Well, I won't deny that people find channels convenient. Still, to me, even "virtual channel" or "conversation channel" doesn't quite sufficiently express the dynamic nature of distributed online conversations. These conversations do not have ONE name, ONE address or even a defined scope.

Tags are useful in searching and navigating these conversations, - in particular because they add social filtering to the mix - and "tag cloud" is a metaphor that helps people venture into the Web 2.0 era.

And yet, even tag clouds cannot contain or accurately scope conversations. The Web, and in particular the social media web, makes our culture and economy more "probabilistic", as Chris Anderson puts it in The Long Tail.

So, why not liberate the conversations from their channels and simply call them "conversations"?

(See also: 'www.josschuurmans.com: 'The concept of "conversation" as in the Long Tail of Conversations')

Who is linking to www.josschuurmans.com?

I did a bit of vanity searching and browsing to see who is linking to www.josschuurmans.com, and tagged some sources at http://del.icio.us/JosSchuurmans/josschuurmans%2Binlink.

Dugg: Social Media Will Change Your Business | BusinessWeek

BusinessWeek's Stephen Baker and Heather Green have updated their article 'Blogs Will Change Your Business' from May, 2005, (which I dissected here) to include observations of social media over the past three years.

It's a nine-pager, so I'll read it on my commute one of these days before drawing any conclusions. However, I already know that one of my posts that I will compare this against, is: 'The End of Channels?', which has this summary:

The three aspects of social media that I'd like to view as qualitative departures from the past are: (1) 'The Dilution of Channels' in that online conversations happen all over the place; (2) 'The Wisdom of the Crowd', social software helping people navigate their way through online conversations; and (3) the participatory and co-creational nature of social media.

read more | digg story

Listen to my blog!

I signed up to test Odiogo's text-to-speech solution for blog content and was happy to receive an email with the following:

[STARTS]

Hi there,

We’re happy to inform you that the audio version of your RSS feed is now available at the following urls:

Audio Enriched RSS Feed:

http://podcasts.odiogo.com/www-josschuurmans-com/podcasts-xml.php     

This is your Odiogo RSS Feed.

Odiogo Control Page:
http://podcasts.odiogo.com/www-josschuurmans-com/podcasts-html.php

This page allows to:

- Perform a 1-click subscription of your Odiogo feed to major podcast clients (iTunes, Juice) Please note that the text content is embedded into the audio file and can be viewed through the lyrics option of your iPod and on some other mp3 players. More information on http://blog.odiogo.com/index.php/2007/08/31/new-feature-listen-and-read-blog-posts-on-your-ipod/

- Subscribe to Web RSS readers such as MyYahoo!, netvibes, google, etc.

- Share the control page with Facebook, Del.ico.us, Digg, etc.

- Stream the audio articles of your blog

- Listen to the individual audio posts

As a TypePad user, you can leverage our new Listen Button feature which displays a listen button above each post.

To install the plugin, just browse to http://www.odiogo.com/listen_button_typepad.php?feed_id=64247 and follow the instructions.

Your Odiogo Feed ID is 64247.

The Subscribe button gives access to all the options provided by the Odiogo system. You can add it to your blog by ticking the Subscribe tick box.

We advise you to review our FAQ and our blog; they both provide with tips for enhancing and promoting the service on your blog.

Please note that by using the Odiogo service you signify your acceptance of our attached Terms of Service (TOS).

Feel free to contact us if you have any questions at support@odiogo.com.

We hope you’ll enjoy using our service.

Odiogo Customer Support

http://www.odiogo.com

support@odiogo.com

[ENDS]

To listen to blog content while on the move, type an Odogio feed's URL into the podcast application on your Nokia Series60 mobile phone, e.g. like this:

Menu -> Applications -> Podcasting -> Podcasts -> Options -> New podcast -> Podcast URL: (type: http://podcasts.odiogo.com/www-josschuurmans-com/podcasts-xml.php) -> OK -> (click, click, listen!)

What I want out of this exchange

In a comment on my blog post, 'How can I serve you better?', kevin jones wrote:

"(...) why do you care what experience people have with your blog? what do you want out of this exchange? (...)"

Kevin, thank you for popping this great question! It really compelled me to think: okay, well, what do I want out of this exchange?

From an egocentric perspective, the promise of the Internet is to explore and enjoy the online experience. To learn and to be entertained.

Socially, the promise of the Internet is to expand the possibilities for having meaningful relationships into the online world. Moreover, some online relationships will be more relevant than some offline ones. Perhaps increasingly so.

On the other hand, some online relationships may be very short-lived. The conversations (i.e. the content of the exchange) generated by many superficial relationships combined, are often more meaningful than the relationships themselves.

My 24/7 online presence

My blog offers the richest expression of my online presence. It is the closest thing to "me" represented online, in a time-shift manner. Available 24/7, people can engage in conversation with me even when I'm not there at the same time. My blog tells them what I am interested in conversing about online.

What I hope is that my blog helps me engage in relevant conversations and meaningful relationships.

Most of my visitors come to my blog via Google. I have very little idea of who they are, what they are looking for (egocentrically or socially), if what they find is of any value to them, and how I could have offered them a better experience.

One possible key to offering them a better experience, I figured, was to ask them. Not just within the context of specific blog posts, as the comment feature on every post does. But in a separate place, free of context. Hence the entry: 'How can I serve you better?'

Why do I care?

The egocentric answer: because of the learning experience. It was an idea that I wanted to test.

The social answer: because I would like to improve the chances of my visitors engaging in relevant conversations and meaningful relationships with me, through my blog.

What if there was a tipping point here, whereby, with relatively small adjustments to the content, the style, the design, the structure, the navigation, the searchability or findability of my blog, a relatively larger improvement could be achieved?

Now, back to you, Kevin: Does any of the above make any sense to you? Why are you interested in this topic? And what's your take on it?

Lifeblog is a blogging application!

Yes it is, Ivan! :-)

Granted, Nokia Lifeblog is foremost an attempt at a memory prosthesis, as Christian Lindholm explained in that interview before the launch of the beta version in 2004.

Gordon Bell is making a more thorough attempt, albeit one that would be unpractical for the Nokia Multimedia Business Group's target customers at this stage. But don't worry, we'll get there. (See also Wikipedia: "lifelog")

The content you consciously capture (photos, video, sound, text) is part of that extended memory, as is the context information which mobile devices will be able to capture for you in the background. Both consciously created or selected content and less consciously captured context are part of our human memory, so the metaphor still applies.

As you mention, Ivan, content and contextual information is not all that valuable unless it can be searched. True, or, to put it in somewhat broader terms: real value is derived from all that information only when you start using it.

Now, this is where the onions come in.

Huh?

Trust your life to a piece of Nokia

The following text is a condensed version of an article published on Nokia's intranet (restricted access) on March 11, 2004. I've omitted part of the original text for reasons of company confidentiality and the confidentiality of interviewees.

[STARTS]

Trust your life to a piece of Nokia

By Jos Schuurmans March 11, 2004, 16:00

HELSINKI, Finland. -- A dozen brains at NVO Multimedia Applications in Ruoholahti have combined their visions of mobility, their entrepreneurial spirit, technological expertise and marketing skill to work on... the "memory prosthesis".

Well, sure, there you have an exaggerated metaphor. No external device is likely to replace the human brain any time soon. But the larger idea certainly holds water and the first tangible result of their efforts will be version 1.0 of Lifeblog, a preview of which will be shown at the CeBIT fair in Hanover, Germany, next week.

NVO Multimedia Applications team's Director Christian Lindholm has been pushing the case for usability within Nokia for a long time. He invented the Navi-key and has, more recently, been standing at the crib of the Series 60 platform, which he is now actively promoting and developing.

The End of Channels?

Summary: The two aspects of social media that I'd like to view as qualitative departures from the past are: (1) 'The Dilution of Channels' in that online conversations happen all over the place; and (2) 'The Wisdom of the Crowd', social software helping people navigate their way through online conversations.

[ADDITION, October 26, 2007: I've added one more charasteristic to the social media mix: (3) 'Participation'. See also the addition towards the end of this post]

My local professional communicators' association wishes to pick my brain on "social media". So it's about time I captured the concept in writing.

The media have, of course, always been "social". Any form of human communication (where there are messages sent by senders and processed by receivers) is social. The Internet is a disruptive technology that accelerates certain properties of everything social, in particular human communication, including what we call "the media". In other words, to some extent "social media" is a pleonasm.

Also the Internet has always been a social space.

For homework I Googled the term. The Wikipedia entry, Robert Scoble's entry, and some other references I found seem to position "social media" mainly as something that has more "capacity" than "traditional media": online means faster and more immediate, easier to interact with, easy to copy and share, unlimited space...

Quantitative or qualitative?

Are we really talking about quantitative differences only? Or should we make some qualitative distinctions as well?

Posting this from the Lifeblog app on my PC

A Nokia N95 arrived to my pigeon hole today (September 4, that is). Fun toy! Checking out the over-the-air podcast download. A link to Adam Curry's Daily Source Code comes pre-set, so that's as good a place to start as any. Decent sound quality!

It's not just a fun toy, though. This is the first time since I started working for Nokia five years ago, that I decided not to upgrade to the next QWERTY-equipped Communicator (from the Enterprise Solutions business group), but to a one-hand operated device from the Multimedia business group.

Rather than being evidence in support of The Register's thought provoking Andrew Orlowski, I guess my choice reflects that the whole multimedia Internet experience is becoming more relevant in my line of work.

I must have been one of the first people to write about Nokia Lifeblog, an interview story with Christian Lindholm in March 2004, published on Nokia's intranet (restricted access).

[UPDATE, October 24, 2007: I posted a condensed version of the article: 'Trust your life to a piece of Nokia'.]

It has bugged me ever since that ES-devices never got around to support Lifeblog. And, frankly, now I have run out of patience - even though I know that the new Communicator runs on Series60.

To me, (a) QWERTY and (b) the nice big screen were the main selling points of the Communicator. So, it's been a trade-off: what I now gain instead is (1) more compact hardware and (2) a richer multimedia / Web2.0 / life recording experience.

22:45 04 September, 2007 Text note

P.S. 1: This is the "text note" I wrote on my PC after synchronizing the contents of the Lifeblog apps on both the PC and the N95. It was too big to be sync'ed to my phone, so I couldn't blog it from the phone. Short-story-long: this text was intended to go with the photo I posted just before :)

P.S. 2: Rich-text formatting, links, categories, excerpt, keywords, Technorati tags added later via Typepad's interface.

"If you were to start blogging today..."

Once in a while I get this question:

"If you were to start blogging today, which blogging platform, software and/or hosting service would you use?"

The answer isn't necessarily straightforward. In general, it depends on:

1. Which features are most important to you as a blogger;
2. How design-savvy and how tech-savvy you are, and how much you want to tweak by yourself.

I drew up an Excel sheet to compare some of the blogging services that I've used, on some of the criteria that I personally find most relevant.

The solutions in the comparison are:

• Vox, SixApart's third-party branded, community blogging service that allows you to publish different content to different groups of people: public, friends, family, and just yourself.
• Blogger, the inventors of blogging, now part of Google.
• Blogsome, a hosted service running on WordPress, an open source blogging platform.
• WordPress, open source blogging platform which you can download and run on your own or hosted server.
• Moveable Type, by SixApart, blogging solution which you can download and run on your own or hosted server.
• Three service levels of Typepad, by SixApart.

The criteria for comparison which I looked at are:

• Branding
  • domain mapping
  • third-party branding
• Access control
  • distributed access
  • multiple authors
• Design
  • easy layout templates and customization
  • advanced, CSS editing
• Features
  • easy-to-use backend interface
  • moblogging
  • widgets
• Application control
  • running the blogging solution on you own or hosted server
• Pricing

In some cases, where I haven't got the latest information about specific features, I have insert a question mark ("?"). I'd love to receive feedback and will be happy to turn those question marks into plusses ("+") or minuses ("-"). Please do correct me if I'm wrong about any of the inserted values.

Sometimes it's easy to choose

By way of illustration, I think there are a few "easy" use cases (or ways to narrow down your selection):

a) If you are rather tech-savvy, i.e. if you know how to install and maintain software on your own or hosted server, you can probably narrow down your selection to WordPress and Moveable Type  (- or even Blogsome in case you don't care about domain mapping). If you're not tech-savvy, you can count WordPress and Moveable Type out.

b) If domain mapping is important to you, and you don't have the technical skill to run blogging software on your own or hosted server, you should probably consider TypePad Plus.

c) If you want advanced control over your blog's design (and you don't want to run your own server), you should probably consider Blogsome (without domain mapping) or TypePad Pro (with domain mapping).

d) If you don't mind third-party branding, you don't care too much about domain mapping, and you are looking to share different blog content with different groups of people (i.e. public, friends, family, or just yourself) in an online community setup, have a look at Vox.

e) If you don't care too much about domain mapping, and you are looking for a free blogging service, try Blogger or Blogsome. Both are very straightforward and user friendly. Blogsome has a slightly richer feature set, including multiple authors and different access levels.

f) One reason to use TypePad basic, which is a paid service, rather than Blogger or Blogsome, is TypePad's customer service: the help ticketing system inside the blogging platform can be very useful.

Do you agree with my assessment? Can you help me fill in the gaps? Let me know!

"(...) It seems very simple when you see that you can have a web host and your name registered simultaneously. Numerous web hosting providers offer you to register your domain name with them at the time you do business with their company. It might sound great like registering cheapest domain name idea because of the convenience of getting everything done at once. But it is better to do domain name registration by your-self because this shows clearly who owns the name. There are many companies like godaddy which give domain buy service to their clients along with web design services. These services are also provided by wireless internet service providers. But to connect the internet they need to install wireless internet booster and give free wifi hotspot through which people can access the internet. (...)"

My top-3 inspirational blog designs

I've been meaning to start capturing inspirational blog design. So, here's my first iteration of a (very short) favorites' list:

1. Dom DeBellis's blog
Very elegant, light, clear, simple, airy. (stumbled upon via Doc Searls)

2. ThreeDimensionalPeople - Stephen Johnston's blog
Perfectly structured, relevant content, nice look-and-feel. I'm particularly impressed if this comes straight from a shelve (does it?).

3. Christian Lindholm's blog
Early, custom-made design with unique branding, icons and navigation. Been around for a while and could do with a bit of freshening up. Nevertheless, still very pleasing to the eye.

I'll try and remember to tag inspirational blog design I may stumble upon in the future on del.icio.us.

[UPDATE, November 29, 2007: 'Your World', by Christopher Evatt, is another blog that I find well designed. It may well be an off-the-shelf Wordpress template. Clearly and simply structured, with a pleasing colour palette.]

The concept of "conversation" as in the Long Tail of Conversations

I'm preparing to have a conversation (okay, a presentation) at the MindTrek 2007 Conference in Tampere, Finland, early October. My topic is to do with the Long Tail of Conversations, and how we might connect people to the conversations across the Long Tail distribution graph that matter most to them.

(I was kinda getting there in one of my previous posts: 'Look at the Long Tail for the highest-value conversations'.)

When I submitted my draft conversation (ok, yes, presentation), one of the organizers asked me to elaborate on my understanding of the concept of "conversation". That was really good feedback, because it caused me to realize that I was using the term in different ways for different purposes, and it forced me to think about defining them better.

So here we go, sketchy at best:

Look at the Long Tail for the highest-value conversations

Excerpt: Where do you think creativity and innovation is born? And where do you think that the best-match conversations about the things you are interested in are taking place? The answer is: in Long Tail conversations!

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Whoa, I just noticed on Technorati that it's Doc Searls' birthday today. Happy "round" birthday, Doc! (I just celebrated my 40th on 070707)]

Not perfectly sure how and why Doc Searls associates my excerpts from the Cluetrain Manifesto with Ben Peters' talk about close reading of text (particularly since I haven't heard Ben's talk), but I hope he means he can see that I've read the cluetrain closely  :-)

Doc: "1) I haven't read the book in years;"

I was somewhat suprised to read that, although surely the contents of the book are so much part of Doc's being that in practice, he may never really feel the need to go back and look things up. (I do.)

The Cluetrain Manifesto on the rebirth of conversations

IMHO, the Cluetrain Manifesto is still the most visionary book, indeed a feast of recognition, of how the Internet is accelerating the shift from broadcast to search, from push to pull, from controlled messaging to open conversation.

From where I stand, the three most relevant themes in the Cluetrain are:

1. The significance of conversations, and how the Internet is bringing them back.
2. Why and how businesses need to change as a result.
3. The power of storytelling.

Below is my collection of references from the book, with an emphasis on the first theme, the rebirth of conversations.

[UPDATE, July 29, 2007: Doc Searls refers to my excerpts from the cluetrain on The Doc Searls Weblog:  Saturday, July 28, 2007. In response, I submit that we should combine the teachings of the Cluetrain and the Long Tail theory to be able to engage in the conversations that matter most to us.]

Dugg: The porous membrane: why corporate blogging works | gapingvoid

In a very simple and elegant fashion, Hugh MacLeod zooms in on one of the core themes of the Cluetrain Manifesto.

He explains in 15 points how and why a more porous membrane between its internal and external conversation will make it easier for a corporation to align itself with its market.

NOTE TO HUGH: Hugh, I hope you don't mind I copied your diagram above :-)

read more | digg story

The hassle of killing a TypeKey bug

Over the past few weeks I've been transferring the content from one TypePad Plus account to another, primarily because of a problem I encountered when I tried to use TypeKey.

The below copy-paste of my Support Ticket shows that, again, the kind people at TypePad were very patient and helpful to me.

But equally I must say that the whole exercise was a rather cumbersome one. In particular:

• I had to create a separate email account in order to separate my correspondence with TypePad relating to the two different accounts.
• I had to use two different browsers simultaneously in order to stay logged in to both accounts while downloading content from one and uploading it to the other.
• While exporting and importing the text content of my blogs and my TypeLists was fairly straightforward, it appeared virtually impossible to move the images with my blogs. I would have to manually download each image to a directory on my PC, then upload them one by one to each respective blog post on my new account, and remove the existing image links from the posts' HTML. (I haven't yet found the time to do this; in fact I am strongly considering just to remove all image-HTML from all posts before May 2007)
• I was informed I couldn't move my Photo Albums; the only way was to re-create them in my new account.

Quite a hassle to kill a little bug.

How can I serve you better?

Hi there!

Chances are that you came to my blog via a search engine. (In fact, the probability is about 98 percent)

Now, I would really like to know if you actually found what you were looking for.
(I realize that the probability of that is far lower)

Then again, there is a fairly good chance that, if you were looking for something related to the content of my blog but you didn't find anything exactly "spot-on", I could refer you to other sources or even help pull some relevant information together.

So, please, feel free to describe in some detail what you're seeking to find, by posting a comment below. I promise that I will respond to every request, to the best of my ability.

"(...) There are many wireless internet providers which can serve you better than any other dsl cable.  They can provide you the best web hosting services like less download time with the help of dedicated servers. For wireless services many companies provide free wifi setup to connect to internet without any cable. One of the main services which they provide is effective internet marketing with the help of affiliate programs including pay per click ppc, Adsense, blogger and pinging. The wireless hosting servers also provide wireless ip phones which works by receiving signals from the remote routers. If one wants to develop there side without the help of any webhost providers then in the market they can find many web development software which will assist them in making the website according to their requirements. (...)"

Can I talk to you about "northern exposure videos" for a moment?

HitTail suggests that I now blog about "intuitive nielsen jacob", "n91 battery cover", and "northern exposure videos".

It seems like a clever concept.

When I look at my SiteMeter reports, probably 98 percent of my current traffic originates from Google searches. HitTail records the keywords people used in their searches, and which brought them to my blog. It then suggests certain keywords that I could use in future blog entries in the hope of attracting more visitors.

It might work, and it may even be worth trying. But the funny thing is, it would distract me from the conversations I'd otherwise rather engage in. I'm sure many bloggers will feel the same dilemma.

[UPDATE, May 24, 2007: Mike Levin quoted the above paragraph in his entry, 'Online Marketing Webinars Coming Soon To HitTail', on HitTail's blog on May 23.

Mike wrote: "(...) to continue the "is HitTailing a good idea" theme, there's this very recent post from Jos Schuurmans that every HitTailer should read. What would you do in this dilemma (...)"]

Nevertheless, whenever HitTail suggests to create content that happens to be somewhat close to my heart, I should certainly consider it.

HitTail could indeed help me offer more value to my visitors. This whole thing actually made me realize that I could post something of an invitation on my blog, asking my visitors to tell me if they found what they were looking for. If not, they could describe their information need in more detail and perhaps in some cases I'd be able help them after all.

Something to explore...

Privacy concerns about Smart Digg Button

[UPDATE, May 24, 2007: In his post on HitTail's blog, 'Online Marketing Webinars Coming Soon to HitTail', Mike Levin inadvertently links to the post you're looking at. Instead, the link from Mike's post should really point at: 'Can I talk to you about "northern exposure videos" for a moment?']

Out of the 74 responses to date to Derek van Vliet's Smart Digg Button for Firefox, only one, by Muhammad, expresses concerns about privacy, "(...) as this extension tells Digg about every page you're visiting for as long as it's enabled (...)".

Derek, I'm certain this is a serious concern to many potential users. Would you care to respond?

Joined Jaiku

Strange how things appear to "hang in the air" sometimes and then suddenly fall into place somehow.

Only yesterday I tagged David Armano's blog post about "designing conversations" on my del.icio.us account. Forwarded to me by a colleague, David's presentation has a good story about building conversation architectures for news sites.

David's presentation ends with a pitch for Twitter, a social networking and micro-blogging service that reminds me mostly of unified messaging. What caught my eye was something called "jaikus", SMS-like messages that people appear to send to connected friends. Connected via blogs, RSS feeds, SMS, instant messaging (and maybe even email?).

Today I attended the Media, Journalism & Marketing Days conference in Helsinki. I listened to a presentation by Jyri Engeström about the "Future of Participatory Media".

"Sites that work build services around social objects," Jyri said, and offered a five-step formula to do things right:

1. Define your object (Flickr has done it with photos; Delicious has done it with bookmarks; Amazon has done it with books);
2. Define your verbs ("upload", "tag", "share", "buy", "sell"...);
3. Make the objects shareable (permalinks, widgets, files);
4. Turn invitations into gifts;
5. Charge the publishers, not the spectators (Habbo Hotel, Second Life: avatar owners pay to create, design and furnish their online existence, while contacting other users is free of charge)

He then asked how many people in the room had blogs. Most of them did. How many felt pressed to blog more then they currently did, but couldn't find enough time?

Jyri: "I blog about one post per week. I upload about one photo per day. I send a jaiku about once an hour." Most of the bloggers seemed to recognise the feeling.

Hey, there was that thing called "jaiku" again!

As it turns out, Jyri co-founded Jaiku.com. I decided to give it a try.

My expectations? To be honest, due to privacy concerns I am less interested in the presence awareness feature of Jaiku, and more interested in the micro-blogging side of it. I recognize having too little time to blog because a blog entry needs to be, well eh... a "round" story. Professional deformation, I suppose.

So, I hope that something like Jaiku will help me blog more frequently, more instantly, just to capture and record thoughts, ideas, observations in a lightweight fashion - lighter than the old-fashion blog entry created on a laptop through a Web interface.

Why Jaiku, not Twitter? Don't know, really. Markets are conversations. I was more charmed by Jyri's live "presence" than David's online pitch :-) Which is to say that I haven't yet found the time to compare the two by their feature sets. I'll first try and get some first-hand experience with Jaiku and we'll see what happens.

Technorati Tags: Jaiku, Twitter, micro-blogging, blogging, instant messaging, presence awareness

Nokia Lifeblog 2.0 for NSeries introduced at CeBIT

From Nokia's press release, titled 'New Nokia Lifeblog - the photo diary that writes itself':

"(...) Nokia today introduced Nokia Lifeblog 2.0, (...) Designed exclusively for Nokia Nseries multimedia computers.

"(...) The new version of Nokia Lifeblog builds on the previous versions by adding audio notes as well as other valuable context information, such as calendar entries and location information, to the diary. This means that images and video clips are surrounded with the context in which they were taken, rendering them as part of the rich tapestry of items that make up your personal Nokia Lifeblog timeline.

"(...) With the push of a button, all your content can conveniently be transferred to a compatible PC, offering permanent storage as well as freeing up memory space on your Nokia Nseries device.

"(...) Available now for compatible PCs, the new Nokia Lifeblog PC software can be downloaded for free from www.nokia.com/lifeblog. The new mobile software, which is compatible with all Nokia Nseries devices, is expected to become available for free download from the end of April 2006.

"(...) Photos of Nokia Lifeblog 2.0 are available at: http://europe.nokia.com/nokia/0,,73864,00.html?name=n70(...)"

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• Sony Ericsson's moblogging with Google: not quite there yet (March 6, 2006)
  As to the comparison between Sony Ericsson's moblogging app. with Google versus Nokia Lifeblog: It is actually a disadvantage not to have PC software to support mobile blogging. With Nokia Lifeblog, you don't have to use the PC application, but it does offer powerful features for managing, filtering and sharing parts of your recorded content on your PC and some of it online.
• "FLICKR TAG: LINDHOLMFEST" (September 9, 2005)
  A note, written in black and pink marker ink, on "Nokia Company Confidential" stationary, halfway the staircase to the second floor in restaurant Mecca reads: "FLICKR TAG: LINDHOLMFEST". And then, in printed font: "Please print your pictures and glue them in the scrapbook below. Thank you! Christian."
• Moblogging requires QWERTY (November 9, 2004)
  The single most restrictive usability issue with Nokia Lifeblog is clearly that it doesn't yet run on any QWERTY handsets.

Technorati Tags: Nokia Lifeblog, NSeries, CeBIT, moblogging, blogging, photo sharing, mobility

Sony Ericsson's moblogging with Google: not quite there yet

Quick and dirty impressions re Sony Ericsson's K800 and K790 devices with Google-supported blogging. It's interesting that the media coverage seems to focus on three things:

• The significance of Sony Ericsson's team-up with Google, i.e. the business & finance angle. - Soi.
• The (whatever) camera technology. - Very, very temporary.
• The blogging app. - Now, that woke me up!

What strikes me as relevant with a view to moblogging is this:

1. Great that the blogging application comes pre-installed, with integration to Google's Blogger service;
2. 3.2 megapixels seems just about sufficient to do a decent mobile image blogging job;
3. Too bad the devices don't have QWERTY keyboards;
4. As to the comparison with Nokia Lifeblog: It is actually a disadvantage not to have PC software to support mobile blogging. With Nokia Lifeblog, you don't have to use the PC application, but it does offer powerful features for managing, filtering and sharing parts of your recorded content on your PC and some of it online.

Technorati Tags: Sony Ericsson, Google, Blogger, K800, K790, Nokia Lifeblog, moblogging

Blog routine v.0.6

And now for a bit of process mapping, here comes my blog routine checklist:

Take the pulse:

1. Check that my blog is live. Report any performance issues to my blog tool provider.

2. Check new comments and trackbacks to my blog.

3. Check my email for feedback to my blog.

4. Check Sitemeter for visits, referrals, search terms, entry page ranking. Scan for clues as to which parts of my blog people read most, how they find my blog, and assess where I could do a better job at helping them find the information they are looking for.

5. Check for references to my blog, e.g. Google Alerts, Technorati, etc. (See also: 'Google Alerts serve The Long Tail')

Produce new content (see also: blog entry creation v.0.6):

1. Respond to comments, trackbacks, email and references. Produce one or more new blog entries if relevant. Respond via email, comments or trackbacks.

2. Bookmark blog entries, referrals and interesting new-found sources for future reference.

3. Follow-up on blog posts "today a year ago". Assess if the one-year-old topics call for updates. Produce one or more new blog entries if relevant.

4. Blog the conversation. Check a number of sources on what's hot in my areas of interest. Engage where relevant.

5. Review mindmap of blog topics. Blog proactively. Own stuff.

A use case for monitoring

(Photo by LeoL30)

Here's a use case for monitoring. I have to admit it was a mere coincidence that I noticed David Sifry's 'State of the Blogosphere' so shortly after he'd published it in the middle of the night of February 6.

This is an important conversation, I thought, and so I wanted to join in swiftly, while it was fresh. Passionately I read and re-read his piece, made some interpretations of my own and contributed two blog entries on the topic of Blogosphere growth, one immediately and another one the next week:

Does Technorati see Blogosphere growth slowing down? (February 6, 2006)

Are half of the blogs that Technorati tracks dead? (February 14, 2006)

I was looking forward to part 2, but it caught me by surprise. David published it on February 13, and I noticed it only the next day. I blogged my comments as fast as I could, and dropped my first line on David's post after 26 hours. In the end I wrote two blog posts:

The Green Slider, a nifty piece of usability engineering (February 15, 2006)

David Sifry's top-one-percent 'Magic Middle' (February 20, 2006)

So, what I would really like next time is: to be the first to know when David Sifry posts his 'State of the Blogosphere' piece. Now, I could of course drop David a line, but what I'm really looking for is a tool that alerts me, specifically for this purpose, by email or even SMS.

I don't think A Google Alert is going to cut it, as the signal-to-noise ratio will be too low. A Technorati watchlist? What happened to Spyonit?

So the use case is: I know something is going to happen (on the Web). I don't know when, but I want to be the very second person to know. Even if it's in the middle of the night - you can wake me up for it. But no noise please, only signal.

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• David Sifry's top-one-percent 'Magic Middle' (February 20, 2006)
• Are half of the blogs that Technorati tracks dead? (February 14, 2006)
• Google Alerts serve The Long Tail (February 1, 2006)

Technorati Tags: Blogosphere, monitoring, news, search, alerts, watchlists

Blog entry creation v.0.6

Here's a process snippet, a checklist for creating blog entries:

1. Decide about topics according to the blog routine v.0.6.

2. Research. Fact finding. Bookmark relevant Web sources on del.icio.us.

3. Write blog entry. Headline. Body. Summary. Sub headers. Bold and italics. Quotes.

4. Add embedded links.

5. Find relevant image(s) under public or creative commons license.

6. Cut, scale, save, upload, insert image(s). Photo caption(s), attribution.

7. Add links: "Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com".

8. Add Technorati tags, using the Technorati Magical Seep Bookmarklet.

9. Link: "Bookmark this entry on del.icio.us. (will return to current page)".

10. Technorati ping: "http://rpc.technorati.com/rpc/ping"

Jay Rosen: blogs reverse the rational-emotional news paradigm

As kentbye reported on the Echo Chamber Project site, in a session on journalism at the BloggerCon III conference back in November, 2004, which was podcast by ITconsersations, Jay Rosen talked about how people start with the emotional passion of opinions and then go and research the facts -- as opposed to the traditional paradigm of facts -> analysis -> opinion.

Indeed an interesting observation when comparing blogging and traditional news reporting. It's worth capturing Jay's quote as recorded by kentbye:

"(...)JAY ROSEN: I want to put one idea in people's heads. The great thing about blogs for journalists is that it is "denaturalizing" their world. It's making their assumptions clear for the first time.

So in the mainstream journalism world, it is natural -- it is obvious -- that the first thing you need is reliable information -- news. And from that we can have analysis. And then further down in the transaction, there's opinion.

And so a well-rounded information diet begins with facts and news, moves to analysis, and later on opinion -- which is also the stages a journalist goes through in their career. You start off being a reporter. Maybe we'll let you do some analysis pieces later on. And eventually you become a columnist.

What blogging is doing is showing that that's just a convention. It's just a convenient way of dividing up the world. And while it may be true that people get their facts first, and then they kind of want some analysis, and then they move onto opinion. It also works in the reverse.

Lots of people get engaged first through argument. And it's argument that causes them to look for information. And to me this is one of the most valuable things about blogging. It's denaturalizing the journalist's view of how the world works. Because a lot of people want to enter into the public world through the eyes and the arguments and the ideas of bloggers. And it's from there that they go in search of news stories and information.

And not only is that just as good a way of getting the news, but it even might be more natural. (...)"

Technorati Tags: Jay Rosen, journalism, blogging, news, facts, analysis, opinion

David Sifry's top-one-percent 'Magic Middle'

I suppose Technorati is mainly concerned with the metrics and search side of all things Blogosphere. Technorati helps people find information, rather then helping them create blog content or get their voices heard in Blogosphere conversations.

Still, In the second part of his 'State of the Blogosphere' (part 1 here), Technorati's founder and CEO David Sifry briefly touches upon the challenges that individual bloggers may have in attracting attention. What he offers, really, is nothing less than... hope :-P

He basically pep-talks people into blogging, offering the perspective of becoming part of 'The Magic Middle'. That's Technorati speak for the realm of 155,000 bloggers who have from 20-1000 other people linking to them. By publishing regularly and with consistent quality, this is an achievable goal for many bloggers, David seems to suggest.

Well, it feels like a bit of a Catch 22, doesn't it? The Magic Middle makes up about 1.1 percent of those 13.7 million blogs that we could call "alive" (since 13.5 million blogs out of the total 27.2 blogs that Technorati tracks have been dead for at least three months).

Something tells me that, if enough average bloggers reach the 20-links benchmark, it will be lifted in order to keep the Magic Middle at around one percent of the blog population.

Still, David gives us two straws to clutch at. First, there is a particular quality to The Magic Middle:

"(...) "The Magic Middle" of the attention curve, highlights some of the most interesting and influential bloggers and publishers that are often writing about topics that are topical or niche, like Chocolate and Zucchini on food, Wi-fi Net News on Wireless networking, TechCrunch on Internet Companies, Blogging Baby on parenting, Yarn Harlot on knitting, or Stereogum on music - these are blogs that are interesting, topical, and influential, and in some cases are radically changing the economics of trade publishing. (...)"

Translation: it's worth trying to get there.

The second argument is that, although - yes - network effects and a power law relationship do exist in the Blogosphere, the importance of these mechanisms should not be overestimated:

"(...) There is a network effect in the Technorati Top 100 blogs, with a tendency to remain highly linked if the blogger continues to post regularly and with quality content. (...)"

"(...) [T]he number of new blogs jumping to the top of the Top 100 as well as he blogs that have fallen out of the top 100 show that the network effect is relatively weak. (...)"

Funny thing is, as it happens, I'm not so worried about the amount of attention to my blog. I'm more concerned with the quality of the attention. The way the Blogosphere should really work is that, if your blog entry adds value to a particular conversation, it should surface in that conversation. So it's not about your position on the head or the tail; it's about whether the Long Tail works as it is supposed to.

If your contribution adds value to the conversation and, as a result, the whole conversation moves a little further up the tail and towards the head, then that may be a nice by-product. But for many niche conversations, even this will not be the most pressing objective.

The most promising technology is technology that helps The Long Tail function.

Technorati Tags: Technorati, David Sifry, Long Tail, Magic Middle, Blogosphere, authority

The Green Slider, a nifty piece of usability engineering

In part 2 of his 'State of the Blogosphere' (part 1 here), Technorati's founder and CEO David Sifry illustrates how Blogsphere growth contributes to information overload as one of the big challenges of our times.

Then he introduces new Technorati tools, including a nifty usability feature, The Green Slider, which offer views to conversations in the blogosphere through filtered levels of "authority".

His point about information overload may be somewhat blasé, but is therefore absolutely spot-on:

"(...) In a world of over 50,000 postings per hour, and over 70,000 new weblogs created each day, keeping on top of and in tune with the most interesting and influential people and topics is the new frontier beyond search. (...)"

While I keep entertaining the opinion that collaborative filtering or some other form of artificial intelligence will be the key to hyper-personalized news selection, the logical evolutionary step towards this ideal is currently taking shape as a combination of tagging, social bookmarking, link popularity, rating and ranking.

David articulates conventional wisdom when it comes to filtering information:

"(...) People often ask, "what blogs should I read?" And often times a good answer is, "you should read the posts from the leading blogs in topics that of interest you. Blog Finder and Explore make this possible for the first time on a wide variety of topics--- and in so doing we hope will the blgosphere more approachable, useful, and comprehensible to more people than ever before. (...)"

Actually, I find the authority filter that David introduces much more interesting than Technorati's Blog Finder or Explore features. I fail to see how the latter are much different from regular tag or category searches, with results ranked by link popularity and chronology.

But yes, the authority filter seems promising. As David describes it:

"(...) [It] is a tool to fine tune results, and its a great way to zoom in on the voices that are commanding the most attention, and then zoom back out and listen to the whole diverse medium that is the blogosphere. (...)"

"(...) I've found this great for searches on highly trafficked topics, like "George Bush" or Olympics, or on topics that are known to get a lot of spam, like mortgage or refinance," David adds. "I find that it often helps me to also answer the question, "Who is the most influential blogger talking about XXX this week, and what did she say?" (...)"

If nothing else, at least it's a rather nifty little usability feature, that green slider!

[UPDATE, Feb.15, 07:42 Finnish time:]
Couple of interesting comments on David's post:

• Easton Ellsworth sees the green slider as a better advanced search: "(...) Rather than make users go to an "advanced search" form to enter a given threshold number of links, you just let them slide up and down between blogs with more and less incoming links. (...)"
• George Nimeh asks: "(...) As defined, doesn't the "authority meter" reinforce the status quo and favor the existing A-list? (...)"
• Editor B: "(...) The current slider prejudicially favors "authoritative" blogs by including them at all the lesser levels.  I can't filter them out (...) [W]hy not offer the option to see *only* posts with "little authority"? (...)"

[UPDATE ENDS]

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• Are half of the blogs that Technorati tracks dead? (February 14, 2006)
• A business model for collaboratively filtered news? (February 8, 2006)
• Does Technorati see Blogosphere growth slowing down? (February 6, 2006)

Technorati Tags: Technorati, Blogosphere, search, authority, information overload, filtering, usability

Observations about (social) bookmarking

(1) Capturing ranks rather high among my ten most pressing reasons to blog. Especially with the daily links now working, social bookmarking is becoming something of a "blogging-light" to me. It's a very time-efficient way to capture sources, references, information that I've read or scanned. I interpret the notes field in the bookmark popup as a mini blog entry. The space is limited, you can't insert links or images, and the headline of the "daily links" post is meaningless, but nevertheless. It's an economical way to blog.

(2) I've wondered about standardization of tagging before. Wouldn't it be oh so Web 2.0 if search engines, social tagging sites and online blog tools standardized on exchanging tags in the background? At present I'm typing categories and keywords in TypePad, tags on del.icio.us, and then there is Technorati drawing its own conclusions. Slightly frustrating. (although I heard Burks Oakley mention a slick tool called the Magical Sheep Bookmarklet in his podcast on Technorati and the Blogosphere - I'll have to test that.)

(3) Maybe I'll post this one on the LazyWeb: I'd very much like a searchbox on my blog that lets me search not only the full content of my blog (like the Google and Technorati search boxes on the left), but which also indexes the contents of all the URLs that my blog links to. One vision of blogs is that, as they evolve, they will contain (links to) most of the information a blogger has come across and found relevant. It's that vision of a memory prosthesis. So, as a blogger, I want to be able to search that repository of my own collected knowledge.

Technorati Tags: social bookmarking

Does Technorati see Blogosphere growth slowing down?

Blogs are now doubling every 5 and a half months, Technorati's Founder and CEO David Sifry writes in his 'State of the Blogosphere' entry today. Am I correct in concluding that we have a 10 percent "slower" growth today than in October, when David reported blogs were doubling every five months?

If true, this could signal that the exponential blogosphere growth curve may start bending towards an S-curve, familiar from hype phenomena.

David takes the pulse of the blogosphere every once in a while, particularly on the growth of the blogosphere, based on the weblogs that his company tracks.

He did so previously on October 17, 2005 (on which I blogged in November), on August 1, 2005, on March 14, 2005, and on October 10, 2004.

David's observations in summary:

• Technorati now tracks over 27.2 Million blogs
• The blogosphere is doubling in size every 5 and a half months
• It is now over 60 times bigger than it was 3 years ago
• On average, a new weblog is created every second of every day
• 13.7 million bloggers are still posting 3 months after their blogs are created
• Spings (Spam Pings) can sometimes account for as much as 60% of the total daily pings Technorati receives
• Sophisticated spam management tools eliminate the spings and find that about 9% of new blogs are spam or machine generated
• Technorati tracks about 1.2 Million new blog posts each day, about 50,000 per hour
• Over 81 Million posts with tags since January 2005, increasing by 400,000 per day
• Blog Finder has over 850,000 blogs, and over 2,500 popular categories have attracted a critical mass of topical bloggers

Somewhat related on www.josschuurmans.com:

• Rashmi Shinha's cognitive analysis of tagging (November 28, 2005)
• Technorati's CEO on blogosphere growth (November 24, 2005)
• BusinessWeek: 'Blogs Will Change Your Business' (May 16, 2005)

Nielsen Norman's 10 best intranets of 2006

The Nielsen Norman Group's report 'Intranet Design Annual 2006: Ten Best Intranets of the Year' reveals increased use of multimedia, e-learning, internal blogs, and mobile access.

Winning companies also encouraged consistent design by emphasizing training for content contributors," Jakob Nielsen wrote in his Alertbox column of January 23, 2006.

The report reviews the designs and usability of ten intranets that were chosen from a much larger number of nominated designs.

The ten winning intranets are:

• Allianz Australia Insurance, Australia
• ALTANA Pharma AG, Germany
• Bank of Ireland Group, Ireland
• Capital One, USA
• IBM, USA
• Merrill Lynch, USA
• METRO Group, Germany
• O2, UK
• Staples, USA
• Vodafone, UK

(last year's winners)

Some of the key areas for which best practices are presented in the report are:

• Encouraging employees to self-publish content
• Training intranet publishers
• Keeping the intranet up-to-date
• Supporting factory-floor employees
• Supporting branch-office and in-store users
• Onboarding of new employees
• Consistent navigation
• Intranet favorites / Quick Access lists
• Task-based information architecture (IA)
• Multilingual intranets; supporting international employees
• Mobile intranet access
• Multimedia and video on intranets
• Collaboration tools and discussion boards
• E-learning features on intranets
• Internal weblogs
• Intranet search
• Development process for intranet redesigns
• Staffing of intranet teams; where they report in the organization
• Updating and maintaining standards and guidelines for intranet design
• Intranet branding
• Advertising and promoting intranet features
• Polls
• Staff directory and employee profile pages

According to the usability consultancy's findings, too few intranets perform careful studies of productivity improvements, and thus rarely have hard ROI numbers.

Branding took a major upswing this year. Whereas in previous years, 59% of intranets were branded, and 41% were simply called 'the intranet', now 80% of the winners had branded their intranet.

"There's no need to overdo the branding: intranets are for internal use, and you're not competing against fifty other intranets," Jakob commented.

Among the notable trends from past competitions are a consistent look and feel across the intranet, special training activities for content contributors, and the use of task-based information architectures.

Video and mobile access on the rise

"Poorly used intranet videos can substantially reduce productivity," Jakob warned. "(...) It's important, for example, to correctly set users' expectations so that they only click through to videos they actually want to see."

"(...) Mobile devices are no longer just phones; they're also intranet extensions - at least when the intranet has features designed for smaller screens. (...) O2 has a special mobile edition of its intranet that's optimized for the BlackBerry and strips the homepage down to a few of its most useful links. (...) Vodafone's mobile intranet scales back content services. (...)"

The Nielsen Norman Group also spotted a contra-trend: "(...) the first good use of overlay graphics (where an image appears on top of the content). On the Web, this is one of the most annoying and repellant advertising techniques. Nonetheless, Allianz Australia effectively uses overlays to highlight and explain useful new intranet features. (...)"