vanderwal.net

SXSW Mini-Redux Part 2

It is 1am and I am home safely, my laptop is recharging, and I will soon do the same. I had a great time at SXSW Interactive as I had many, many wonderful conversations. I am still digesting many of them, (as well as still digesting those from the previous weekend at the Information Architecture Summit in Montreal.

The end of SXSW (I really wish I could have stayed to the end of the Interactive Festival to continue soaking in a realm people who "get it") was fitting as I snagged a ride and good conversation from Robert Scoble, which I am thankful for both.

More to follow, once I get some sleep.

Blog as Personal Knowledge Managment

Last night I gave a presentation to the ASIST Potomac Valley chapter. The topic for the evening was blogging and I was joined by James Melzer and Christina Pikas.

I presented The Blog as Personal Knowledge Management (695kb PDF download). The presentation may not make much sense with out speaker's notes, which I can rebuild when I have a little more time.

All the Blog that is Fit To...

From the blog realm. Elise Bauer provides an excellent overview of available blog tools. This is a very good article on the business of weblog tool development and what the tools offer.

The fine folks at Six Apart launched their redesign today. Not only is there a new look, but the navigation is improved and is now consistent. All of the Six Apart properties are now united, which is also very helpful. Their site is looking less like a blog and more like a professional software company, but the secret it is their sites are run by their blogging tools. Great job 6A and Mule who did much of the work!

Personal InfoCloud has a Real Home

We finally (yes, finally) have Personal InfoCloud ( http://www.personalinfocloud.com ) up and running. This has been a long time coming. Items posted there will most likely be cross-posted here as well. The Personal InfoCloud will takes its place with some other things that are on their way in the next few months.

Personal InfoCloud (PIC) will be home to discussions around the PIC and related topics. More than likely folksonomy discussions will move there as they are a subset of the Personal InfoCloud. This will become clearer in relatively short order, but folksonomy allows people to track information they have previously found using their own organization and vocabulary. Personal organization of information using one's own vocabulary is central to the Personal InfoCloud. Nearly a year ago I started using Flickr as an example of a site building for the PIC.

Enjoy the new site. Yes, now that the domain is attached we will be posting to it more often.

Jerks

Comments here are closed for the time being. All past comments are still online, but posting new comments is closed.

Yes, some jerk (far less caustic term than what these people really are, as there are kids around) decided to flood the comments with porn spam and other garbage. We have the IP address of the fool (who most likely had their computer hacked, at least this time it is not a military related IP, which is what many have been in the last three months that have been dumping the porn spam referals).

One thing about writing ones own blog software has been missing out on the flood of this garbage that those using the "off-the-shelf" tools have been dealing with the past year or so. This type of thing is one reason I have not moved this site to an already made blog tool, the other is I have features I have been working for this site that I have not found in other tools and they are things that I want. I know I am not greatly adding back to the community, but my time is horribly sporadic and I fit in work on the site tools when I can.

It looks like I may move to Typekey as a means to stop the comment spam. I may also upgrade the comment area when the comments return, so that HTML is not needed. It will take time, which is one thing I am very short on right now.

Quick Links in the Side Bar is not Optimal

Paul wants to "set up one of those link-sidebar thingies again" for his quick link list. Actually I am finding those the side link lists, like mine cause problems for folks tracking referrer links back and for search engines. Context of the links is helpful, but so is being able to find the date and page where these links came from. The way Paul is doing his quick links now works well. I was able to point directly to these links, the links he make have context, even if it is only a list of links.

Quite similar to the Fixing Permalink to Mean Something post the other day, the links in the side bar are temporary. I find links from Technorati back to my site from some poor soul looking for what comment and link vanderwal.net had placed. These links do not have a permalink as they are ever rotating. I have received a few e-mails asking where the link was from and if I was spamming in some way.

Why do I have the quick links? I don't have the time to do a full or even short write-up. I clear my tabbed browser windows and put the items I have not read in full in the Quick Links. Some things I want access to from my mobile device or work to read the info in full or make use of the information. Other things I want to keep track of and include in a write-up.

The other advantage of moving the quick links into the main content area is they would be easier to include in one aggregated feed. I know I can join my current feeds, but I like the sites that provide the feeds in the same context as they appear on the site as it eases the ability to find the information. This change will take a more than a five or ten minute fix for my site, but it is on my to do list.

A Wonderful Redesign

I need to give a pointer to one of the wonderful redesigns of late, Jeff Gates' Life Outtacontext is something I find wonderful. I have been enjoying it for a couple weeks now. I particularly like when I scroll to the bottom of the page. Jeff does not update his wonderful content frequently, but the design has me going back often.

Blogs highlighted on Meet the Press

While I am not a huge blog-for-blog-sake person, Meet the Press has a relatively long roundtable discussion on blog and the Democratic presidential campaigns. The talk about how Joe Trippi not only uses the blog to communicate with potential Dean supporters, but how he and others cull ideas from the blogs.

This highlight how new innovative ideas can quickly get posted by individuals, culled, and directly or with modification get implemented to better an endeavor. One clever idea that was culled from a weblog was the ability to have individuals share their unused weekend cell phone minutes and have the campaign use these minutes to call voters in Iowa. A rather clever idea and even smarter use of culling the Internet's vast cacophony of voices to find good helpful ideas to run a business/organization better and smarter.

InfoDesign is Now InformationDesign

Bogieland's InfoDesign has redesigned, restructured and moved to InformationDesign. The new site still has the great daily content and gems, but now includes sections for events, people, and others that have been part of the site, but not as easy to find. I also like the new XML feed, which will make seeing the updates more easily.

The new structure and design may make this site more than just my must read every morning before work, but also a resource to come return to regularly when I have more time. Peter and conspirators have done a great job with the new site.

Info Cloud and Personal Info Cloud weblogs setup

We have set up a couple new sites using TypePad to focus on Info Clouds and more directly, the Personal Info Cloud. The Info Cloud and Personal Info Cloud are extensions of ideas that came out of the Model of Attraction work.

The information posted on the TypePad sites will most likely be syndicated here, or vis versa. The use of TypePad is easing the need to have a separate location for these ideas and works in progress. Off the Top will not be changing, it will still be a melting pot of ideas and information. Direct access to more focussed information on topic or categories are still available by clicking on the category below each entry or using the category list.

The information cloud work ties directly to standards, information architecture, content management, and general Web development passions that drive me.

Making money from weblogs

Matt provides a great article on making money from weblogs. The article is well written and provides great advice and insight. At this point it does not seem that money from weblogs is a huge amount of money, but it does look like it will pay for hosting and provide extra cash, at the least.

Organge cone comes to life

Last night I stumbled across orange cone, the weblog from Mike Kuniavsky. I am looking forward to following his site and see how it comes to life.

Mobile edition added

We have added a mobile edition of Off the Top capturing the last 10 entries. This should work well on nearly all mobile devices, including PDAs. The entries are provided in plain XHTML and do not have categories nor comments.

Let us know how this works for you.

New music written and recorded before your eyes in 24 hours

This morning I caught-up with Scott and Shannon's blogathon, which is 24 hours of postings on their site. The donations go to a great cause and they also did an amazing thing. The two of them wrote and recorded two new songs.

The wonderful parts of this are they are 3,000 miles apart, the collaboration was on line in the blog for this purpose, their auditory updates were posted throughout the 24 hours, and their two voices and guitar tracks and other instrument tracks were all pulled together for two wonderful songs. I have been humming Southdown all day. I want to spend more time reviewing each of the steps to this transparent adventure.

This may be the coolest things I have seen on the Web in quite some time.

Spamotomy

Amit has launched Spamotomy, a site focussed on the complete removal of SPAM from our lives. The site keeps up on news as well as pointers to nearly 100 tools for SPAM removal and so much more.