Most blogs allow comments. There’s no doubt about it; having comments enabled is likely to increase the popularity of your blog.
But that, in and of itself, is not a good justification. It assumes that popularity is desirable. The truth is that, when it comes to personal publishing, it’s not the amount of people who visit that count, it’s who those people are why they’re visiting that’s important.
His point that “it is not the number of people that matters” is so true and it actually mirrors some of the concepts relating to permaculture and ecosystems in the sense that it’s not the number of connections that matter but the quality of them. Thus if you have a blog and you’ve only got ten people who frequent it, that doesn’t matter. What matters is the quality of the relationship with those people and what each of you are getting out of that relationship.
The difficulty then is keeping track of these conversations. Trackback would be a good option but it relies on a certain level of techiness on the part of the responder and again, the issue of spam raises its ugly head. These days, it should be possible to replace trackback with search using third-party tools like Technorati and Google Blog Search. Expect to see that kind of functionality built in to more and more blogging tools.
True this is an option but he’s right in that the biggest problem with this approach is keeping track of these conversations. I’ve fooled around with some ideas on how to get around this myself but still don’t see a way yet. Again though, if you used a Technorati link to show all people responding to your post, you still have the problem of an overloading of comments even if people posted them on their own blogs. No matter what method is chosen some way is needed for these quality comments to bubble up to the top so that they don’t drown in the sea of comments.
Personally, I’d like to have enhanced comment / trackback system that allows me to selectively pick out people who’ve provided quality feedback and highlight these people first, yet you could still read the other feedback if you wanted as well. This emphasis on quality not quantity (i.e. best go to the top, from my point of view) would hopefully entice others to write more quality feedback as well.
Still having said all that, often times the best feedback comes from the most unexpected places. For example, I would have never have thought to research about permaculture in relationship to the Web but I stumbled across someone’s comment on another person’s blog and discovered it by chance. Now strangely enough I’m hearing more and more about the Web as an “ecosystem” which is what permaculture deals with (i.e. working with ecosystems, instead of working against them). Therefore, yes I’d still like most of my posts to be open to comments, since you don’t know where ideas or inspiration may come from.
Maybe Jeremy’s idea of being very focused with your discussions is the key since it will hopefully attract a smaller and more discerning group of people (specifically interested in that topic).
Jason Kottke wants to see mobile phones that allow you to quickly “ping” someone with tiny predefined messages, such as letting your wife know that you are leaving work now and on your way home (i.e. Message from Jason Kottke: I’m leaving work). Yes, you can do this now with SMS but he wants the ability to press a few quick keys (i.e. two or three strokes) to send the message off quickly without having to type it out every time.
What Jason is talking about here is something very similar to what I’ve discussed before. Situational awareness. With situation awareness all that you are doing is making the other person (or persons) aware of what is going on with you at that moment. That’s it. There is no ongoing discussion or dialogue. Think of it like a heart rate monitor that lets you know that person is ok by letting out a “ping”.
In Jason’s example that he used above, instead of relaying typical predefined messages, what if you constructed your message with a few strokes instead? For example, what if he had ten predefined locations and ten predefined events. So say he wants to tell his wife he’s leaving the office. All he does is press the [PING] key, then his [LEAVING] event key then his [OFFICE] location key and the message is instantly sent (assuming it is defaulted to her). I mean if you really wanted to get technological (and a little big brother-ish), RFID technology could even do this for you. For example, if you are not at work but walk into the office, the RFID chip that you left at your office desk would tell your cellphone of your change in location which means you are [ARRIVING] there at the [OFFICE] and that message could be sent automatically. Of course, the wife could set this ping to have no audible tone but instead just show the last location and event. That way if she is wondering where you are at the moment she can look at her cellphone to see that you are [DRINKING] [PUB] and know that you are hard at work. 🙂
Actually what I find interesting about this “awareness tagging” is the possibilities of using it elsewhere, such as on the Web. Imagine if everyone broadcasted these awareness tags for different things and there were awareness aggregators out there that collected information and displayed it in a variety of different ways. An example I gave before in a previous post was making people aware of your daily mood (i.e. happy, sad, etc). As I indicated before, imagine if an awareness aggregator collected these tags from everyone and displayed them in different ways. So you could see what the daily mood of the world would be. Or maybe you could see the mood by country with a tiny dot representing you on the world map. Or what about other awareness tags? What about if an organization wanted to start an awareness campaign about supporting a worthy cause? Imagine if they told you to use a specific awareness tag on your site to indicate your support for the cause and then everyone with that tag was shown on the awareness aggregator site via a world map. You could see all the people around the world that cared about something specific. Or, from a different approach, you could see all of the people in the world who disagreed with an ideology or government approach. It would be like a virtual walk on a government building in that you could see the number and diversity of people from all over who came together to make a stand for or against something.
It looks like Everybody 2.0 and their Dog 2.0 is coming up with another 2.0 buzzword similar to Web 2.0. I guess I’ll add to the party and talk about the cultural paradigm shift that is occurring right now and call that Culture 2.0. Hopefully when this is completed we will have Society 2.0, not to mention Business 2.0 (for real this time!), where people will actually have Compassion 2.0 for one another and works towards a better World 2.0. Did I miss anything…2.0?
Noticed on Boing Boing a link to Dick Hardt’s Identity 2.0 keynote address which I watched in full and enjoyed immensely. Why I enjoyed it so much was that in the first part of the presentation he asked the question “What is identity?” He replied by saying identity is “Who you are.” He then asked the question, “Who am I?” And then proceeded to blow me away by doing the very thing that I am trying to do on my website here. What is that? He defined himself by the work he has done, where he lived, what he read, what he watched, or what he likes. In a nutshell, who he is today is defined by all of these elements from his past and present. Even more so by knowing all of these things, we can probably guess pretty well which direction he is interested in going in his life based upon these same very things. Again, that is exactly the goal I’m trying to take with this website. I’m letting people get to know me by letting them look at my identity which is defined by the elements of my life.
BTW just a sidenote on this. I proceeded to Dick’s company site called Sxip because I enjoyed him and his presentation so much that I thought I’d check out his business but when I reached his website, I was confronted with typical corporate hooha. Why? Why do people keep pushing in this old direction? I mean don’t get me wrong he at least provides a lot more information about the people in the company and what they are doing than other companies do. However, what I would love to have seen is something more similar to what he said about himself in his presentation. I mean could you imagine if each member of his company shared the same information about themselves on their website as he did in his presentation. I mean you’d feel like you were actually dealing with people who were passionate and excited about what they were doing, as Dick appeared to be in his presentation, than some faceless sterile corporate entity. Geez, can you tell that I really want to give this paradigm shift, that is occurring now, a serious kick in the ass to get it moving faster. 🙂
If you have not heard about Operation Eden yet (as it is making its rounds in the blogosphere), definitely check it out. This is definitely an excellent testament to the willpower and fortitude of those still struggling to survive in Katrina’s wake.
I’m making some more site changes with regards to its structure. In effect, my goal is to turn this site into a timeline of sorts. Dates of posts will relate (as closely as I can remember) to the dates of when I thought of an idea, encountered a person, read a book, or purchased a music CD. I’m only in the initial stages here so there will be much more content from my past that I will be filling in later. When completed, it is my hope that this timeline will show not only where I’m currently at with my life right now but also show where I’ve been and where I would like to go. A perfect example of this would be my work history. When I’ve got it all completely, you should be able to view my “employment” topic category and basically see a “resume” of my work experience.
An indepth analysis review of Six Apart’s upcoming Project Comet blogging solution based upon the DEMOfall presentation video including (blurry) photos with accompanying descriptions as to what Project Comet aims to achieve.
Ok, finally found some more detailed information on Six Apart’s Project Comet and it is taken from Mena Trott’s own demonstration of Project Comet at the 2005 DEMOfall conference. The frustrating thing is that the video is slightly blurry so it is difficult to see what you are looking at. First off here’s a quote from the DEMOfall conference site that describes what the demo is supposed to be about.
Project Comet is a significant re-engineering of this pioneering blogging tool, providing greater control, flexibility and privacy in a workspace that lets you aggregate, store, publish and share any type of media asset. This new release illustrates the deep knowledge Six Apart has gained as a leader in the blog software market, and sets a tough new standard for other blog sites to follow.
Alright on to the analysis.
Ok this is the external public view of a Comet website. It looks like they used Mena’s Dollarshort website as an example (although it isn’t live because this site hasn’t been updated since June 13, 2005).
A couple of things to point out in the (blurry) picture. The header area has a picture of Mena with it. You’ll see a lot of this, especially in the backend, which uses small thumbnail portraits of people beside their related content. It makes it extremely easy to see who is talking about what.
The left main content area shows Mena’s posts grouped by day. Each post has a title above it and I think tag/topic information below it.
In the top right corner you’ll see what looks like a tag cloud similar to what Technorati or TagCloud does. In this case though, I believe this is more of a “topic” cloud which shows things that are of interest to me and what I’m talking about. I believe these are the “multiple streams” that Six Apart mentioned on their website about Project Comet.
And finally off to the bottom right you see a listing of books I believe that Mena has been reading. Now one thing you can’t see is the heading for the sidebar info. For example, the heading for her books reads something like “Books I’m Reading” with reading as a link to her full listing of books she’s read.
Ok, now to the backend area of Project Comet where we see the how this community aggregation of a network of people works.
Again in the top right corner header area we see a picture of Mena indicating that this is her aggregated view of her friends and family in her network. Beside her picture it looks like there are some menu options as well. Maybe they relate to her profile settings, not sure.
In the middle left we see what looks like the lastest four photo albums (or maybe photos) posted by people in her network. On the middle right, we see the latest media (i.e. books, music, movies, etc) that people in her network are reading, watching, and listening.
Below that in the bottom right, we see the latest blog posts from people in her network (and note the portrait thumbnail beside each post to easily see who has written what).
Finally in the bottom left corner, I think we’re seeing the most active conversations or maybe topics within her network, although not 100% sure since the text is so small.
Now we see a post being created with the main post entry area on the left and on the right is the “media asset” library (that they mentioned in the initial quote I wrote at the beginning of this post). I’m sure each of those different items on the right are different media types (i.e. photos, music, movies, books, podcasts, etc).
Here is the Photo “media asset” library open which we can then select an image and then drag and drop it to our post we’re writing. Yes, this is the drag and drop aspect of Comet that they mentioned (although in the demonstration he highlighted an image and clicked the insert button (or whatever it is called) on the bottom right of the dialogue window to insert it into his post. I’m pretty sure you’ll be able to drag and drop from this library window as well though.
One thing that is very important to note here with regards to their dragging and dropping is that I doubt you will be able to “drag and drop” photos from your desktop directly into your post. Those photos need to be uploaded first somewhere into your library and then from there you can drag and drop them into your post. Actually Squarespace, the web publishing platform that I’m using right now can work in the same way. I can drag a photo from any web page and drop it directly into my post editing window. The image has to be online somewhere for this to work though.
Oh one more thing to note about this as well. These media asset libraries are basically just TypePad lists and photo albums with some more functionality added to them (i.e. sort by date, maybe see related posts tied to item, etc). So in the sidebar, as shown in their example, you are still seeing the latest books added to her TypePad Amazon Book List but somewhere on their I’m sure they’ll have the ability to click on a book and see the post that relates specifically with that list item (a book in this case). Or what they may do is use the Sidebar Title link again. Maybe when you click on the link in “Books I’m Reading” it takes you to a listing of your actually posts talking and reviewing the books you’ve read. This kind of makes more sense, as the sidebar TypePad list is just the current RSS stream of books you’re reading but the collection of journal posts would be all of the books that you read (with the topic stream name of “books” for them I’m assuming, which could also be accessed from the topic cloud in the top right corner of your site).
This is a photo of an image that has already been inserted in the post being dragged and dropped in the upper left corner of the post. If you look real closely you’ll see the outline of the image in the center of the post, including the black cursor, as it moves across the post into the upper left corner.
After getting the image and content where they want it, they selected some attribute information in the bottom left (note the popup selector list with the black cursor selecting something). I believe what they are doing here is selecting the appropriate stream topic that this content should be associated with. If I was talking about my cat, then I’d select “pets & animals” from the list (or create a new stream topic).
And here’s the completed post now being shown on the site’s front page.
After inserting the post, they clicked on one of the topics (in the stream topic cloud in the upper right corner of the page) which took them to this page which is a list of posts from her various family members (including herself) on the topic of “pets”. Note the right sidebar maintains pretty much the same content as the homepage (i.e. topic cloud, photo albums, and books being read).
What I’m not sure about this “dynamic view” as they called it, is whether this is what would be seen to the public or to just Mena. I’m assuming in this case it is what would be shared with the public in total. I think the more private information (say the stuff that only her mom wants to talk about) is shown in the backend only. Not 100% sure on this though.
Now remember before I mentioned before about the sidebar content titles have links on them (i.e. Books I’m Reading). Well this example shows a sidebar title being clicked. Again I’m not 100% sure but I think the title is something like “People in my Family”. Because when they click it, they get the view below.
The final shot from the demo. This is after the sidebar title, as I mentioned above, had been clicked. It shows another “dynamic page” of everything that Mena’s family is talking about. Again note the right sidebar content doesn’t change though, as it is still just showing Mena’s photo albums and books she’s reading, not her entire family’s photo albums and books they’re reading.
A final thing to note, each of these “dynamic pages” is almost like a “weblog” in themselves, which is what Six Apart was hinting at. In addition though, I still have the funny feeling that you can take these content topic streams and use them anywhere, even on another site. For example, let say Mena is a hardcore gamer who has a topic stream that talks about gaming. Well if she was in a clan, I’m sure she could create another weblog with it’s own design for her clan and stream her gaming topic stream to it, not to mention all of the content streams from her other clan members as well. Voila, you now have a “dynamic site” using content streams from different people in your network.
But what if she didn’t want this gaming content on her personal site? No problem, she still creates the content in her backend panel but it just isn’t shown on her personal weblog but instead on her aggregated community clan weblog with her gaming friends.
The following is what I believe Six Apart’s Project Comet will entail (and a lot of it equals the approaches that I’ve been researching myself). I started writing this out earlier today and it kept getting bigger and bigger in detail. Too big actually. Therefore, here is the extremely short version (which is still lengthy).
Instead of breaking a single blog down into parts using category tags, think instead of creating small focused micro-blogs or “streams” that are connected together (like the strands of DNA) into one overall encompassing blog. Yes, we’re talking small pieces loosely joined again. These streams can be anything and everything. They could be a micro-blog specifically focused on web design, cooking, restaurants, movies, music, books, your podcasts, documents, whatever! The idea here is to break down your thoughts into these basic building blocks of streams which you then combine together to create your entire “river” of thought. Of course what was stopping people from doing this before in the past (as I tried to do it myself more than few times) is some way of connecting or aggregating these streams (which TypePad now has incorporated within their system).
What’s the big deal? Why break content down in these streams? Well since they are the basic building blocks for a website or blog, you can mix and match these streams anyway you choose and even more importantly you can create multiple dynamic blogs on the fly to better suite their intended targets. For example, lets say I talk about web design, gaming, cooking, travel, and then the typical stuff like movies, music, and books. I decide to create a stream for each of these topics. From the backend management tool, I just manage all of these separate streams from one location. From the front end though, my visitors actually see three different websites that I’ve dynamically built using these streams. My web design site uses a techno design and template to show off my web design, movies, music, and books streams. My social weblog utilizes a stylish lounge design and template to show off my cooking, restaurants, travel, and music streams. And finally my gaming blog utilizes a kick ass gaming design and template to show off my gaming, movies, music, and books streams. In effect, I’m using the same content streams but reconfiguring them together in different ways to match my target audience.
Of course the next step is community aggregation. Let’s say I have couple of friends who also do web design but they have streams that talk about gaming, movies, music, and books as well. I think their content in these streams is great so I ask them to collaborate with me on it, invite them to my gaming blog via the backend system, and voila their streams (which they manage from their own backend panel) are inserted and mixed with my own stream automatically. Now we have a group weblog on gaming that is starting to kick ass with our combined content. Whoa, wait a minute were doing so good that we start getting decent traffic. Wow, it looks like a lot of traffic. So we decide to throw up some Google ads to see if we can make some money. Wow, we do! Hmm, but how do split the money we make? No worries, the system has already figured that out for us by calculating how much we’ve made and dividing those funds proportionally between each stream based upon the traffic and popularity of the content from each one.
I think you can figure the rest out now with regards to how families would create their own private dynamic sites with their collective streams on pets & animals, books, movies, and so forth. Also, to start doing working with streams right now yourself (no matter what blogging software you’re using), all you need to do is divide up your content into these micro-blogs (like different channels on a TV set) and then find some way of aggregating your latest content from each of them on the homepage of your site (either via server side scripts software or maybe something like FeedDigest). BTW one of the nice side effects of this approach is that not only do you get a focused feed for each stream but you also get a separate focused feed for the comments for that stream as well.
With the strike of single match to light a candle in my den, a feeling of warmth and home surrounds me with the sight of it. With the smell and sound of the igniting match, thoughts of camping out in the woods as a kid beside a crackling fire come flooding into my mind. Therefore, with but a single simple action, I have become connected to so many meaningful things relating to my life. This is exacting the feeling and experience I want in linking my thoughts on this site. A single thought or experience should allow me to go back and see all of those meaningful thoughts that relate to it. How to do this is another story though. 🙂
