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To some people the flourishing of the blog meme is annoying. It's not just the sound of the word, there's also the ascendancy of a certain model of writing on the web. I've sometimes mentioned my breathing room experiment and how it was a sort of daily (if possible) meditation. An attempt at aware writing, noticing of things, honing my chops as a writer, my voice as a narrator.

Just as some consider the blog "model" (for lack of the better word) limiting and tout the rewritable wiki concept, others criticize the artistic tip of blogging, as a disposable, shallow medium. Someone from ryze.org just sent me a link to 100words, a site that features monthfuls of daily entries from participants, each 100 words long. The rules are strict:

A new 100 Words batch begins on the first of each month and ends on the last day of that month. Everyone who agrees to participate writes 100 words every day without exception. Participants must complete the entire month in order to be included.

You are expected to write ON THAT DAY and FOR THAT DAY. Please do not "write ahead" and do not "catch up" at the end of the month. 100 Words is about capturing life on a daily basis, and then examining those days across a period of time.

I remember the exact same kind of aversion to "catching up" or backfilling. It's more a matter of "write here now."

For my part, I pledge that I will not post on autopilot. When I have nothing to say, I'll keep silent. For the moment, though, I seem to be on a roll.

categories: memewatch metablog

5:48:45 PM    say what []

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Sometimes you have to do something fully before you decide you do not want to do it. Browsing around today led me from diveintomark to zeldman and ended up reading burningbird's farewell address.

Despite a spelling peeve of mine ("compliment" where "complement" is called for), she makes a very interesting point how blogging is no longer good for her writing, cultivating an undisciplined and ephemeral output.

categories: memewatch metablog

5:12:35 PM    say what []

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For several years now I've been slowly spec'ing out an ideal personal publishing platform for posting a peck of pickled peppers.... Uh, sorry. No, actually I mean a system with a well designed content database at the core and a great deal of flexibility both in how to submit content (client, web, email, handheld, wireless?) and an equal degree of flexibility about how to stream or syndicate the content out.

I sometimes visualize it as a concentric series of spheres with the writer at the center. the innermost sphere is private (well, the infra-innermost sphere isn't even committed to electronoc and possibly not written down at all, but I'm talking about a technology solution here), your notes, working documents, letters, confessions, etc.

Next out would be something like personal correspondence, such as email to friends and family. Then you might have a sphere for a certain wider community of trusted colleagues, acquaintances, or other like-minded folk. Around here might be some fee-based or affiliation-based content.

Finally, there'd be the ultra-outermost sphere where this like this blog appear, completely in public, to be read by anybody. I'd like it if people could subscribe to the feed and/or get it via email. I'd also like to easily mirror or bounce public content to other locations. That last wish is being discussed at Drop.org, and similar discussions came up there a few months ago and about a year ago as well.

I've gathered user requirements and helped design user interfaces, custom content-management systems, information architectures, knowledge repositories and stuff like that, but I'm not much of a coder (been working on learning PHP/MySQL for about six months now), so I've never expected to build this PEP project of mine. It's also clear to me that many of the elements I have in mind are already available in one form or another, on one platform or another, using one or another set of standards.

The problem is that nothing (yet) covers all my bases, or even all of the essential facets of PEP, and the many overlapping partial solutions to not yet interoperate well enough for a klutz like me to be able to hack together.

Eventually someone will solve the constituent problems for me or I'll get it together on my own. In the meantime, I've tried not to let the perfect be the enemy of the good and just started blathering into my Blogger, LiveJournal, MovableType, PHP-Nuke, and now Radio blogs, expecting that I can migrate where I need to go once I figure it out.

categories: knowhow memewatch metablog

4:45:51 PM    say what []

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This is meta-meta-blog stuff so I'm keeping it off the home page, but thanks to another link from the widely read Dave Winer this blog is racking up more hits today than the pornoblog, at least for today.

categories: salonika metablog

10:33:00 AM    say what []

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I noticed today that Scott Rosenberg's blog can be reached by pointing to http://rosenberg.salon.com/ as an alternative to the serial-number address we all get. Is that a perk for Salon employees only, I wonder, or is there a way to make that possible for us, the great unwashed? I'm thinking blogistan.salon.com would be kinda nice.

categories: salonika metablog

9:41:56 AM    say what []

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One thing I love about doing blogs is the troll effect. If I post something incorrect or incomplete, someone is sure to come along and hip me to the truth. There are already a few comment to the Radio/Blogger comparison I posted last night. This one (from Roland Tanglao) corrects my assertion about there being no Blog This widget for Radio:

Radio does support a "Blog This" Shortcut. It's called "Radio Express". I use this for 90% of the posts on rolandtanglao.com, so I know it works quite well!

Thanks, Roland!

categories: metablog

6:39:56 AM    say what []

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