I’ve got this new system for email and blog posts.
I write until i feel better, then I erase it. Then i try to write it again, and erase it again. Then I write it one more time, and whatever it is i post it. This cuts the size of posts and emails (with a few exceptions), cuts the tangents and almost makes me concise.
I like it.
As for why there ain’t that many posts anymore (and why they’re all boring), well, my life has gotten even more rote and boring. I don’t do anything other then try and find money, bandwidth and shelter. When i find bandwidth it’s a mad rush to download a day or more’s reading material and apps to test. There is enough evidence of the broken record of my life on this web site without adding more.
A few days ago Dave Winer posted this idea (with a mockup) of the way he’d like to see his tv news. It’s essentially a checklist to filter your news from all the annoying things you don’t want to see. IE, i could check Sports and Fashion and never see a sports or fashion item. It’s a great idea, it’s what we should be able to get with online news, it’s what we desperately need for tv and radio news. In a way, it’s what we were promised with cable, but never got. It’s an idea i had years ago, before there was such a thing as a World Wide Web, and had forgotten till the Anna Nicole and Imus imbroglios. It’s such a great idea, I wrote a shameless stupid fan letter to Winer.
And we’ll almost certainly never see it.
Unless some enterprising RSS newsreader incorporates it. Which would probably be a huge pain. You’d have to filter more then the post title, and you’d have to filter context. But I’d sell my mother for it.
The purpose of social software is to better bring people together. Remember that. Because aa lot of Web 2.x bizniz drones don’t. Case in point is MySpace. MySpace truely sucks.
MySpace has an abominable user interface. If you don’t believe me, count the clicks and check the time it takes to send someone a message using MySpace. Trying to personlize your MySpace page is an exercise in futility, unless your a seasoned web designer with time on your hands to experiment with what works. Or you cut and paste someone elses spam ridden code. And it’s completely undocumented by MySpace. It is easier for a non technical person to learn to use WordPress of MovableType, in my humble opinion, your mileage of course may vary. Then there’s the disconnectedness of MySpace. I don’t know how many times I’ve missed a message on MySpace because it has no way of alerting you, or how many times I’ve thought that someone was online to find out they weren’t. Unless you continuously click the refresh button on your browser. And that’s not counting that 99% of the friend requests I get are for porn or spammers. It’s frustrating and it’s bad design.
And there’s no need for it. The interface could be cleaned up, they could tell you what html elemnts work in what fields in there damn forms, tell you how to lay out the damn page, and provide asynchronous notifications. They don’t because they have the number two most visited online property and they (News Corp) paid out the ass for it.n The times have changed, andwhat would have looked and worked great in 1995 just doesn’t fly anymore.
No in partial defense of MySpace, I’m not a typical user, I only need it to keep track of my non techy friends who use it. I have this blog, and my De.lico.us accounts and Jaiku and Twitter to keep people updated on my doings. But those poor non techy masses are being used (in more ways then one, but that’s another post). And since they don’t know better, they don’t complain.
So today I turned off my public MySpace profile. I’m only keeping the account active to keep up with people I know who have no other online presence. And I urge everyone who uses MySpace to look into the other options, which I’ll list below.
- WordPress: you can get a free blog from them here, or download the free Open source software for your own website here. This is the software that FFEJWORLD runs on, and I’m quite happy with it.
- LiveJournal. You can get a free or pay to play account with varying amounts of customization. It’s more community oriented then the free hosted version of Wordpress. If you have mad hacker skilz you can download it and put it on your own server: it’s open source.
- de.licio.us. The best social bookmarking software. An explorable tag soup of bookmarks, or do you say “user created taxonomy?” Some people use it for microblogging. I use it to power the RSS feeds in the sidebar. You don’t have to make your bookmarks public, and you can also use it to back up your bookmarks, and have them wherever you go.
- The two major point of prescence, microannouncment and nanobloging services are Jaiku and Twitter. These are hosted services, you don’t need your own server. Both of them are in there infancy. Both have varying amounts of mobile phone integration. And both are shit simple to use. No one has figured out how to make money of these sytems yet either, so they might not last.
- Twitter is the most popular right now.
- Jaiku has more features, especially the ability to aggregate other RSS feeds into it. I could have it aggregate my de.licio.us feeds or even this sites feeds.
Thunderbird, the Open Source mail client from the Mozilla Foundation has been updated to version 2.0. Get it here. I just finished the download, installed and am finding the user interface surprisingly sprightly and responsive compared to 1.5.x. I’ll hammer on it later, so far it doesn’t seem to hang up on autosaving like 1.5.x, and it seems to access the net faster.
Ok, I just realized i was doing someone a disservice, mainly I wasn’t linking to WFMU’s Beware of The Blog. It’s a must read blog, it’s more then station news and mp3s, it’s really good. Hard to describe, hard to quit. I’ve linked to them before and I read them regularly. But there’s no simple easy way to syncronize what I read in my various news readers with my blog, so they got slighted. Sorry folks. (Note to Tim, rad this blog!)
So I fixed that, and went through the blogroll and cleaned out a few dead links, mostly Gillmor Brothers sites that were dead or superceded. And added another one 
But this could and should be a lot easier to do. Note to Ranchero, Red Sweater and Wordpress: we need better OPML integration into bloging clients and platforms (this applies to MovableType too, I don’t use Ecto so I can’t comment). We need true syncronization with category support. Odds are very good that if I delete a feed from NetNewsWire I’m going to want it removed from my blog. I should have the option from the drop down down “do you really want to” warning panal. I can’t find any blogroll management integrated into MarsEdit at all. Maybe OPML isn’t the way to go, maybe we need it implemented through the XML-RPC API. You folks are the wizards, you pick pick the method. The current Import/Export system is only good for starting up a blog, not maintaining one.
First of all let’s make one thing clear. I am not a fanboy, I can’t reel off the facts figures and trivia like one.
But…
He makes Indiana Jones look like a wussy. He’s had more Lives then Morris the Cat. He’s more sarcastic then Spiderman. More ingenuity then McGuyver. More alien hotties then Kirk. More areas of expertise then Picard (and more Earl Grey). More personalities then Sybil. Suaver then Bond. Straighter then Mr. Rodgers. More in touch with his inner child then Calvin or Hobbes. better with a sword then The 3 Musketeers. At one poin his Wu Shu was literally out of this world. He refuses to carry a weapon, but will use one. He’s the consummate traveler and the ultimate geek all rolled into one. He’s tied for Greatest Science Fiction (sometimes reluctant) Hero of All Time. Certainly the one with the longest career.
Did I mention he’s quite insane?
He’s a thief, a runaway, a trespasser, a vagabond. He is the Original Illegal Alien. He’s out to save the Universes. He once gave Douglas Adams work. Harlan Ellison Likes him (and wrote intros for his first American literary appearances)
He is The Doctor.
He returns to Chicagoland terrestrial (as in free/not cable/not satellite) TV on WTTW, on April 22nd, at his once and future time slot of 10pm Sundays. They’re not bringing back Dave Allan or Monty Python though.
(Long before Tivo I spent years, decades, making sure I was in front of the Box every Sunday night for WTTW’s syndicated airing of the BBC ’s amazing low budget SF/horror/action adventure/children’s series Dr Who. Words can’t do this series or this character justice. Like Monty Python, I still haven’t seen all the episodes so that I have something to look forward to in old age (like next month). I don’t suppose I could get
together a Dr Who watching click, in this PVR day and age, could I? Any takers?)
The Mad Cow is doing two fundraisers on Saturday (April 14, 2007).
In the afternoon, they’ll be at the fifth annual WLUW record fair benefiting Chicago’s own 88.7fm! Pulaski Park Fieldhouse 1419 W. Blackhawk, Chicago, Illinois
wluwrecordfair@gmail.com or phone 773-508-807
For all the details see: http://www.wluw.org/wluwrecordfair/index.shtml
Later that night, we’ll be back in our own neighborhood with DJ Naomi, Jade Lohan, and Cortez & Sef at a benefit for Co-op Image, a group that pairs Chicago artists up with neighborhood youth in a variety of arts education programs. 7:00 pm to Midnight Where: Chi-opolis Hall 2739 W. North Avenue Chicago, Il. 60622
To read more about the event and the wonderful things they do, check out: http://www.coopimage.org
Tim gave me a crank flashlight with a built in am/fm radio (thanks Tim). So when I’m bored, lonely or in need of a media fix, I give it a few cranks and give the dial a spin. Last night while spinning the dial I heard the unmistakable first notes of Ian Dury and the Blockheads’ Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll, so i stop spining and start listening. Wow, thinks I as I check the station, IAN DURY’S on WGN!!! And then the song abruptly ends and they start their sports call in show. So they didn’t use the whole song, but it’s still the bumper for their sports central show. As is Eric Clapton’s cover of Cocaine.
If you had told me thirty years ago that WGN would be a major sponsor for a Genesis reunion or would be playing Ian Dury someday I’d have ROTFL. Two words: Wally Phillips. Oddly enough, though Wally is gone it’s still the most lillie white radio station of the sanctimonious LCD type. The only thing that’s changed is the bumper music. And it’s finally caught up to where the rest of us were thirty years ago. Too bad they couldn’t get around to it while Ian was still alive.
1977-2007. Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll.
FFEJWORLD’s Twitter feed. I don’t know why, other then i find it amusing. Use it at your own risk, it’s going to be atypical.
