The Twitter Party and Coming Home

I have spent a lot of time on Twitter and Friendfeed in the last month or so, and as a result there hasn’t been time to post here. That is a shame as WordPress is a fanatastic blogging platform, and here on WordPress.com we have a great service. It’s kind of like a rented apartment space where the people that run the building really look after you. The interface has evolved into a great place to type stuff, certainly better than the interface for Blogger for instance. WordPress.com is a great place to blog, and I intend to find more time to get back on here and get some real content generated.

The trouble is that it is SO easy to get sucked into the great party that is Twitter and Friendfeed. There are a lot of great people posting a lot of entertaining and interesting news, opinions and general hilarious chit chat. So much so that it is very difficult to break away and find time to sit still and think and get an article together to post on a blog. It’s actually a kind of Zen thing. You have actually got to sit down and think before you start to set out a blog article. On the other hand on Twitter or Friendfeed it takes mere seconds to get something out there. There is no think time, no wait.  And the atmosphere as I said is really good, but it is like being at a party. And good as parties are, at some point you’ve got to go home. And in the online world, your home is your blog/webspace/domain.

So I am going to come home home to blogging. That doesnt mean I wont be at the social networking parties, they are just too much fun to miss. But I do have to start spending some time at home, esecially, as I have said, as it is a really nice home with excellent amenities.

community spirit on twitter

There is something starting to develop on Twitter that I don’t think I’ve seen on any other social network so far. There seems to be a real growing sense of community. Now, you might say so what? We’ve seen communities online before. Stretching right from the dial-up BBS’s, through to Facebook. That’s true, they were communities, but this doesn’t seem to me to be like anything I’ve seen previously. This community has a heart. It really does care, and its growing and evolving.

My first example is the best. Connie Reece has been tirelessly campaigning on Twitter for her friend, Susan Reynolds, who Connie has never actually met in person, who has breast cancer. Connie has started a fund to collect for Susan, the frozen pea fund, so named after the frozen peas that Susan was advised to put on her breast to stop the pain. To raise awareness of this Connie suggested that people change their avatars to include peas, to stimulate the conversation. This has been a great success, with people not only changing their pictures (or pea-vatars), but showing support by pledging money to the cause. And it’s more than a fad.

The most amazing thing is that most of these people have never met Susan Reynolds. They only know her either through Connie’s efforts or through Twitter or Susan’s Blog. They have been brought together by this new medium. It’s not like reading a blog, where people often use more formal language and are careful what they write. In a blog what people have said may have happened days or weeks before. Twitter seems more like IM, where people put more of themselves into the conversation. And as it’s spread out over time, you get to experience what people are saying in their time frame. It makes it all seem more real.

As a result the sense of belonging or knowing that person or group seems to be heightened. Its not even like in Facebook, where that seems to be a few hours or so behind reality. Twitter is more, now. And Facebook has all the Web 1.0 accoutrements such as banner ads and all those annoying pirate and werewolf apps. Twitter is cleaner, makes you feel closer. And that is what a community is all about. Feeling closer to the people you know and care about, and extending that community in open and honest ways.

So please show you support for Susan Reynolds and Connie Reece’s efforts to publicize this by visiting the site http://frozenpeafund.com and making a donation, or come onto Twitter and join in the global conversation and join our community. And send some Twitter love Connie’s way as well, she has been working, from my estimation, day and night to publicize this with no financial reward for her. Well done Connie. And good luck Susan and get well soon.

my online strategy for 2008

Well, it’s actually going to be my overall strategy for 2008, but anyway, here goes. 2007 has been an odd year for me, with the defining factor being that I haven’t had enough money to get by. That means all kinds of things I wanted to do I couldn’t, or had to cut back on. Like photography. I haven’t had a 35mm film developed since April. And the SX-70 has not been out of the cupboard all year. That is a crying shame. I had to drop my Flickr pro account. And this blog nearly went out the window, until I shuffled some stuff to keep it online. It is still costing me too much but it is such a central part of what I do know it would be almost impossible to give it up. So its stays. But even though the financial situation hasn’t improved, I am determined that it is not going to alter my ability to plan for the year ahead. With the above in mind, my strategies for next year will be:

1. More art. I let my creative side dry up a bit last year, mostly because of lack of cash for materials and lack of time to do stuff in. Not in 2008. I am going to find the money from somewhere. Art is part of how I define myself, its part of me. I find it hard to stop being creative and if I don’t make something, anything for a while I start to lose it a bit. So I am going to spend more time taking photos, drawing, making sculptures, looking at sunsets, daydreaming and generally doing all the things I haven’t been doing. I am now Chair of the South(bank) Bristol Arts, so I suppose I ought to be producing some art. I have started working on a sculpture. And I ought to do some more work on that book I started drawing for.
2. I want to develop this blog so that it is more personal. I think it need more of me and my life here, it seems a little impersonal sometimes. So it will get a makeover sometime soon, with a new focus, me, possibly a new name and a new identity. I want to blog more so expect more of a story here about what goes on in my life.
3. Social networking. 2007 saw me using Twitter and Jaiku and Pownce and Facebook and Ning, and, well, you get the message. Seemed to be a tidal wave of social networks. Some have fallen out of use somewhat, but Twitter and Facebook seem to be very important. So I will continue to use social network tools, although I feel that I ought to cut back a bit. And I need to concentrate again on Ning. Going to further develop my microbrand!
4. Technology. Going to continue working on SharePoint 2007 at work, and I expect that is going to grow even more in the next year to take up even more of my time. I don’t want the technology to take over so much next year, so I am going to play down the tech side in my life, although will still blog about it here to get it out of my system.

So that’s it. More talking, more art, more focus. Seems easy, but as a wise man once said "no plan survives contact with the enemy" so it might get watered down somewhat as the year progresses. Happy 2008 to you.

learning ruby

I have wanted to play with Ruby on Rails for a while, but always shyed away because of my lack of Ruby skills. I am determined to set this right, so I am going to spend some time learning Ruby. I have given myself until the 1st of January 2008 to get up to speed and feel comfortable with hacking around in it. I don’t intend to be an expert, just learn enough so that when I look at RoR I wont be totally lost. I have some basic programming skills. I created two versions UWE’s PC build system, mostly using VBScript and VB. I have also some Python experience and some basic PHP. I wouldn’t, however, describe myself as a programming diva. It’s all basic hacking and sticking code together. I have seen several online tutorials that look good, http://rubylearning.com/ by Satish Talim is one that I am looking at right now. There is also the Pragmatic Programmers Guide. And my Twitter friend Peter Cooper says that he has a book that he can recommend

windows live writer – again

I have re-installed Windows Live Writer. I have been around practically all of the blogging software out there and whilst I have a few favourites, there always seems to be some little function that isn’t there or some thing that doesn’t work.

I really like Flock, and the blogging functions are quite good. The bit that lets it down is the support for images. I tried ScribeFire for Firefox, and that too is very good, as long as I don’t try to post stuff to http://sbaweb.co.uk, the admin there shouts at me as it produces messy code. The image management in ScribeFire is better than in Flock. I tried Word 2007, but it sometimes forgets how to connect to my blog. It actually works very well for when you are blogging to SharePoint, but as I’m on WordPress here that doesn’t help. I even tried Google Docs, which allows you to write a document and then publish it to your blog as an article. That works really well, and even manages any images for you. The problem for me is the really stupid way it handles line wrapping, like, it can’t. And then there is the problem of it messing around with styles. You can’t paste text into it from another blog to quote with messing up the styles. Big problem when you want to blog about something. So although I really like the idea of having a centrally managed blog software, it’s not to be (yet).

Now, I tried Windows Live Writer before, and was impressed (eventually, after getting it installed), but it was always let down by its general beta state. It had rough edges. Well, I’ve been around all the houses and here I am back at Windows Live Writer again to see how it has developed now it is in final release. The installer seemed to be a bit insistent that I install all kinds of Windows Live branded stuff. If I was a novice I would probably have let it install all kinds of crap and set my start pages to Windows Live etc. Its really annoying that when I asked for the download for Windows Live Writer, it bundled in all those other packages too. Microsoft, please don’t do that.

After the install woes, however, it seems to be a much improved interface, and it connected to my blog with little problem. The interface is clean and very well laid out, like a mini word processor (the company DOES have some experience in these matters). Getting images into the page seems to be very easy, although this is the first post that I have tried so far. And the editing window reflects what you will see on the finished page.

I haven’t tried the plug-ins yet, but the list of available ones seems to be fairly comprehensive. I have also yet to see the code that this puppy puts out, to see if I can use it to post to http://sbaweb.co.uk without getting yelled at by Lawrence (sorry Loz) but I’m going to look at what is produced and will report back on long term findings – as usual if I can be bothered.

camelot! – no, wait, test from flock

Flock 0.9.0.1 is out, and it is now quite possibly far and away the best browser out there for built-in features, certainly the best for people who “socially network” and like to hang around web 2.0 sites and blog about their experiences. There might be slightly too much information to take in at one glance, but at least you have the choice what to use and what to turn off. All in all a really good product. Its a shame they don’t have the render engine out of Safari or Opera (if they did I’d be ecstatic) but that said it renders much better than IE. Check out Flock and see what you think, especially if you have a blog and write articles often or have Flickr and regularly upload pictures.

Blogged with Flock

Tags: flock, browser, web,

may need to move here permanently

Becuase of the continuing cost of upkeep on the peterhaus.co.uk domain and the website hosting, I may at some point in the near future have to move the site to here. That will mean I would have to move the old posts here too. I dont know how to go about doing that so will have to do some investigations, but it must be possible to export the posts from a WordPress site and move it to a WordPress.com blog fairly simply? If anyone reads this and knows how to do it then please let me know!

Twittervision and the world-wide cake…

Twittervision and the world-wide cake meme

A few days ago I was witness to something quite unique. The spread of a meme across the world. It was the world wide spread of an idea, and it took less than a minute to go worldwide, and carried on for ten minutes before dying out. The meme? I want some cake. The medium? Twitter, or to be more exact, Twittervision. It was a simple statement by somebody, I can’t quite remember where, I think it was France, to the effect that they were hungry and would quite like some cake. That was replied to by someone in England, and it was then picked up in other countries by other people. Soon, practically everyone was talking about cake. I wanted cake myself. Now, imagine that idea is something like a real product that you want to publicize. Or an idea that you want to spread. You could have GLOBAL influence within a minute or so. Think about that, that’s something you couldn’t have had even a year ago, even with blogs. Instant global reach with instant global feedback. The global conversation has begun, in near realtime. Will an idea catch on? Try it in Twittervision, and see. If you are ignored, your idea was crap. If it sticks, you have a winner.

scoble – taking week off in support of kathy sierra

Taking the week off « Scobleizer – Tech Geek Blogger

Robert Scoble, someone who I admire as a tech blogger, has decided to stop blogging for a week in support, or protest, of what has happened to Kathy Sierra. Kathy writes the well-regarded Creating Passionate Users blog, which is an intelligently thought out, well reasoned and – well, not controversial blog. I have often read her blog and it has really good ideas about how to create effective, user friendly, online applications. So far so good. But a few months ago she started to get “lampooned” on another website. Actually it was more than that, it was bullying. The people who were carrying this out denied any wrongdoing, and still reckon that they were doing it for fun. But I have seen some of the stuff involved, and its not funny. Then to top it all she received a “death threat” email and postings to her blog. That was what pushed it all over the edge. She cancelled a speaking appointment at an upcoming conference, and has announced that she is to stop blogging. That is bad enough, but a trip to her website will confirm that she has a lot of support, but also some dangerous people who are also leaving really, and I mean really, abusive comments. She feels under attack, and vulnerable. I think that it is unacceptable for her to have to feel this way, no matter what the other protagonists may say in their defence.

The whole affair, besides making Robert Scoble stop blogging, and that is a major event in itself, has made the blogging community stop and think. If it can happen to Kathy, can it happen to me? After all you really dont get anyone more inoffensive and personable than Kathy. I dont know her personally, but you only need to read the back articles to see that she doesnt go out and try to make enemies, far from it. It is a power thing I guess, with the people doing the attacking jealous of the fact that she is an intelligent and successful woman. I have read the defenses, and they dont add up.

I have been a victim of bullying, and it is unpleasant, and it is often difficult to prove to others. But we should always listen when such allegations are made, be sensitive to the person who is being bullied, and try to help them. And that often also applies to the people doing the bullying. They do it for a reason, usually something lacking in themselves is to blame. They need help too, although its often hard to feel compassion for them at the time. The developments in the past week are disturbing and mean that anyone who has an online presence where they express their opinion, on any subject, needs to stop and think carefully about what they say, to whom and why. That cannot be good for freedom of speech.

this is a post from google docs

Believe it or not, you can now post to your blog from within Google Docs & Spreadsheets. It all seems to work too. Considering that the last post was from Word 2007, which has fantastic support for blogging built-in, it does seem that the days of specialist blogging tools will soon be over. I do prefer the interface that Word gives you, as you get a visual representation of how your post will look when it’s published, but Google Docs is free, and available anywhere you have a browser. Now I know you can post to WordPress from anywhere with its own built-in tools, but its nice to be able to work on stuff and then upload it when you’re ready.