Category: General

Dave Winer in his post entitled The Internet as “idea processor”.

You need a village to raise a child, and you need an Internet to fully develop an idea.

This is a great comparison and as soon I saw it, it reminded me of something else. Imagine a bunch of families all spread out along a valley, all working on their own to build their homes and raise crops to help them survive and sustain themselves. Yet with each season they realize that it is becoming more and more difficult to sustain themselves. Then one day a few families bump into each by the river and start talking. They realize that if they work together instead of each working alone, they’ll be able to sustain themselves as a group much more efficiently. So they gather together and create a village by the river. Over time, with each family now focused on helping the community as a whole instead of just themselves, the entire group of people prosper and sustainability is easily achieved.

Now can you see how this idea or approach can be carried over to the Web as well?

In the comments area of an entry by David Weinberger entitled How do you sort your books?, it’s interesting to note that people don’t just categorize their books on their book shelves but they categorize them by the rooms they are in as well. Again this relates to the concept I mentioned before about using different areas or spaces of your site to auto-categorize your content. And actually blogging platforms that allow you to add content via the front-end of the site (like Squarespace) are perfect for this type of auto-categorization system (if the system is programmed this way) because all you need to do is view (or enter) the section of the site where you want to add the new content and the act of doing that automatically categorizes any content you add to it.

For example, if you click on one of your categories in your journal, you’ll see a filtered listing of entries related to that category. Therefore in that view, if you click to add a new entry, the system could auto-tag your new content with the exact same category filter since you want it placed in that same area or space.

I really dislike when I hear how “blogs get you noticed”. Uh, no they don’t. You get yourself noticed.

What I mean is that if you setup a blog and start publishing stuff on it, it isn’t going to get you noticed unless you do something else. Why? Because you have to make people aware of it first and thus build up a readership or community around it. If no one knows it exists though then how can it get you noticed?

Now here’s my point. The only way to get yourself noticed is to get out there and mingle with people (just like you do in real life). In effect, you are your own best advertisement for your site. Your words on other sites (participating in conversations) is what gets you noticed (as usually people will find it interesting and want to read more). Your content on your site though is what makes these people stick around.

Therefore, if you never step foot “outside” of your home, instead spending time just “talking to yourself”, don’t expect to “get noticed”.

Update: Actually I just want to emphasize something here. I honestly believe that a person can get noticed without having his own blog. If that person is a part of a community on another blog and comments there frequently, he’ll get noticed there just as much. In other words, it’s not so much the act of having your own blog that gets you noticed but instead committing to a relationship or community where people can get to know you.

Bill: Hey everyone, I’d like to welcome Steve. He’s going to be our new Priest for the group.
Everyone at the table greets Steve enthusiastically.
Steve: Great to be playing with you guys! I heard you’re all 10th level and ready to set off on an adventure to storm a wizard’s stronghold. Sounds awesome!
Bill: That’s right, they are. As the Game Master, I’ve got a few surprises in store for them though, so they better be on their toes.
Everyone laughs at the table.
Steve: Great! So when do we start!
Bill: Well we’ll be playing now but which day did you want start our private sessions?
Steve: Private sessions? What do you mean? I thought I was playing with everyone tonight?
Bill: Oh no, we don’t allow that Steve! Haha! That’s funny!
Steve raises his eyebrow with a quizzical look on his face.
Steve: Did I say something funny?
Bill: Well you can’t just start up a new character at 10th level and your 1st level Priest wouldn’t survive very long with us now would he? No, we’ll set some private sessions aside just for you and me so that we can work your 1st level character up to 10th level quickly though. You don’t mind playing four or five nights a week for the next few weeks do you? Be better if we get it all done quickly in one swoop so you can finally start playing with the others here. Sound good?
Steve: Huh? You’re kidding right?

I keep hearing people talking about seamless integration. They keep saying that they don’t mind using a third party service to add something to their site but only if it can be integrated seamlessly within their site. In other words, whatever service they use, you shouldn’t be able to tell it’s a third party service. Now ask yourself, how many so called Web 2.0 services today can tout this? Why is this happening? Is it really a limitation of the technology or more a case of these services placing a higher importance on their brand over their customer’s needs?

Got the opportunity to get out last night and see some local talent at the Roxy downtown. Not knowing anything about the bands other than a friend of ours knew the keyboardist in one of the them, I thought they’d probably be “ok” and it was a good chance to let loose for the evening. However after seeing and listening to each of the bands perform, I was pretty much blown away. I had no idea the local talent in Vancouver was this good, as I’d describe them both as extremely talented performers.

Tom Howie and his band were up first and they could have headlined as a local act easily in my opinion. Sincere would be the single word I’d describe Tom with. He just seemed really genuine and didn’t appear to be putting on an “act” in anyway. Kind of a “take me as I am” kind of guy and performance. Overall, I loved what I saw and purchased his EP immediately with a very strong interest in getting a hold of more of his music in the future.

Brandon Paris and his band were up after Tom and again there were amazing. Diversity would be the word I would use to describe the band and what makes them so appealing, as their music seems like it has a little bit of everything in it (a “fusion” if you will). The lead men of the band, Brandon Paris and his exuberant sidekick Dagriff, are an incredible combination together onstage. Brandon’s words cut into you with his sincerity, while Dagriff’s reggae vocals fill you up with endless energy making it hard not to get up and hit the dance floor. Again, I immediately grabbed their CD, as these guys are definitely going places as well.

Update: Apparently both bands will be playing again on April 23rd at The Blarney Stone downtown in Gastown at 216 Carrall Street. It supposed to be a benefit concert and tickets are only $10. Definitely going to see if I can make to this one again, as these guys are awesome. I’ve been playing their CD’s repeatedly since Thursday and with each playing, I like them even more.

I’m fooling around with the design of my site some more. This time I’ve decided that I want to see how far I can push things just using styles. In other words, no layout modifications (i.e. site template changes) to the base Squarespace layout I’m using.

I believe I like this default style setup I’ve got now, primarily because of the larger font size which makes it much more easier to read. I realized this when I switched from my site’s previous style to view Dave Winer’s Scripting News site which has a larger font. I realized that some people may have a difficult time reading with my smaller font sizes, so I bumped them up. After I had finished the change, I actually preferred it much more to the previous font size.

Next step is adding “detailings” such as site header images and so forth. After I’m done, I think I’ll release the style as a download and also indicate how I achieved some of the “tricks” on the site. For example, I want to have a different header image for each area of the site and I’ve finally figured out how to do this now without having to modify your site’s templates. Again, I’ll reveal more of this later.

PS. Oh and I’ve also figured out how to create a “splash page” very easily in Squarespace. These aren’t really recommended nowadays but some people would still like them on their site. Again I’ll reveal this later.

Update: Justed started adding some of the different banner header images to the site. Again, no Squarespace site templates were modified to do this, just added a snippet of CSS code to each page. That’s it.

I just realized that I think one of the main reasons I’ve been quite frustrated in general over the past few years is that I have had no creative outlet other than this blog. This is quite hilarious when you consider that I used to do the following.

• martial arts
• compose music
• write stories (fiction / fantasy)
• create worlds / characters (RPG)
• draw / sketch
• sing
• dance
• design (graphic / web)

An excellent interview with David Weinberger over on YouTube as he describes the basis of the Cluetrain Manifesto and the perils of identity systems (which I totally agree is a bad approach).

In my last post, I mentioned that community-based administration is a much more effective way to administer a community than the use of spam catcher bots, moderation, or forced registration. I’d like to talk about this a little further in relationship to what I’d actually like to see in blogging software today to make community-based administration much easier for the main site owner to delegate to his community members. Again in effect creating the situation where the larger a community becomes, the easier it becomes to manage (instead of the opposite effect which is happening on so many blogs today).

• Administration Reporting – Before anything else this is the most important of all. If you plan on delegating administration to certain community members, you need these community administrators to be able to self-administer each other as well and be aware of what each of them is doing. Therefore reporting of administration activities among admin members themselves is critical, as it can easily catch an admin who is abusing their admin rights. Again this raises your culture of openness in your community to your admin members themselves. They more information you can provide them, the easier they can assist those within the community.
• Admin Usage Categorization – Admins need to be able to categorize why they are taking actions against someone. In other words, they need to be able to easily report why they are banning someone. In effect though, the system should self-categorizing. For example, if I notice a spammer commenting within the community, I should be able to select a admin option on the comment, select ban, and finally select an option explaining why that person is being banned (i.e. spammer). As soon as I process that action, it is added to the reporting system mentioned above so that others can review it if necessary.
• Varying Levels of Rights – This is the most obvious admin requirement. While you may want to give full admin rights to a long time trusted community member, you may only want to give a few selected rights to someone who has been a part of the community a shorter while. Having the ability to set a varying level of rights (and of course assigning these rights to groups which members can then be placed within). For example, I said that I don’t like forcing people to register for sites and that anyone should be able to speak opening, even anonymously if they wish. Yet what if in registering, you decided to give additional priviledges to members who had been a part of the community a longer time? What if they were given voting priviledges say? What if a community member could initiate vote on a comment and get it removed as spam themselves with the help of other community members (based upon the number of votes required that you set)? Again you’re empowering the people within your community.