Tomorrow I start a three day 'writing for the web' course.
So today I have decided to prepare the ground.
Having been online pretty much since the www began, I have lost count of the number of blogs, boards and websites that I have abandoned to their fate. Some, I know still exist, but I have long since lost the ability to access the backend to kill them (shame on you Bianca, and Geocities for that matter too) - I have even tried serving copyright infringement notices to get some of the more ancient, and image damaging, sites removed by hosts that must think I am a troll.
For me it really feels like the perfect time to draw a line under all that has gone before and start with a coherent scheme to organise my content on the web, one that will last for a while at least.
Apart from the unsettling feeling of chaos that all of my subscriptions and memberships leave me with, I have noticed that my attitude to the web has changed recently, thanks largely to facebook.
Before facebook, it was almost unthinkable to be too open about your identity on the web, even though Tim Berners Lee was espousing the semantic web, years ago, for some reason anonymity was seen as being the place to start - perhaps because of the slow uptake of decent spam algorithms.
But now, despite the best efforts of a cautious media, it makes far more sense to be up-front about who you are, in fact with the social web, it is virtually impossible not to be (for dubious exploitative reasons I'm sure). Whats more I have no employer or such like who may disapprove of anything that I care to say or do.
So it seems like a good time to consider an approach that somehow glues together all of the various uses that I have for the web, under a traceable trail of breadcrumbs.
Apart from private spaces like ftp accounts, server spaces, and even business and collaborative sites - I find that I use three main spaces:
A showcase - my static website that acts like a trade brochure.
A sandbox - a place to put thoughts and works in progress and to try stuff out.
A playground - somewhere to explore stuff and make unconsidered off the cuff statements.
The first one is sorted - it is served via Modx from my own server, and is updated manually every now and then.
The difference between the other two is basically the difference between the long form of a blog and a short form, perhaps more like twitter - although twitter has an overhead of involvement that I'm too busy to maintain.
I thought that I had found the perfect answer for the short form in Tumblr - which is an endlessly fascinating, cumulative experience. what it does it does so well - sharing, crossposting, following, being followed - it is the ideal playground and whats more it is a community, so you don't play alone.
So how to make some kind of meaningful link between the playground of Tumblr and the long form of a blog? I had an intuitive feeling that Tumblr must have a way of interacting with a more considered blog, after all it is all about making connections, right? You would have thought, but I have yet to find it, Tumblr is about being eclectic, it encourages you to bring content into it, and then watch it get re-circulated within it's own confines - it is not a two way street, try reposting something to a blog and things get very manual.
And then along came Posterous. when I first noticed it, Posterous was always mentioned as a rival to Tumblr, much like Facebook is to Myspace, it was as if you had to pledge allegiance to one or the other.
Although they may seem to cover similar ground, there is a huge difference in the basic architecture of the two systems - Tumblr is a posting and browsing forum, while Posterous is a tool to post with.
Posterous makes it simple to gather any sort of content and input it, BUT, and here is the difference, it also makes it simple to deliver that content, even repurpose it and deliver it to almost any other site, network, blog, aggregator, you name it.
Here then is the answer, for me at least.
Use tumblr to play, discover and explore.
Use a blog for more considered lengthy stuff
Use Posterous to capture the stuff you want to focus on - and deliver it - to either Tumblr or the blog (maybe even re-work it there) and while you are at it use Tumblr to deliver feeds, content and notices to Fb, flickr, youtube, picassa, the list is endless.
Now all I have to do is tidy up my rather crotchety, confused old blog and find a voice that people want to read.
So today I have decided to prepare the ground.
Having been online pretty much since the www began, I have lost count of the number of blogs, boards and websites that I have abandoned to their fate. Some, I know still exist, but I have long since lost the ability to access the backend to kill them (shame on you Bianca, and Geocities for that matter too) - I have even tried serving copyright infringement notices to get some of the more ancient, and image damaging, sites removed by hosts that must think I am a troll.
For me it really feels like the perfect time to draw a line under all that has gone before and start with a coherent scheme to organise my content on the web, one that will last for a while at least.
Apart from the unsettling feeling of chaos that all of my subscriptions and memberships leave me with, I have noticed that my attitude to the web has changed recently, thanks largely to facebook.
Before facebook, it was almost unthinkable to be too open about your identity on the web, even though Tim Berners Lee was espousing the semantic web, years ago, for some reason anonymity was seen as being the place to start - perhaps because of the slow uptake of decent spam algorithms.
But now, despite the best efforts of a cautious media, it makes far more sense to be up-front about who you are, in fact with the social web, it is virtually impossible not to be (for dubious exploitative reasons I'm sure). Whats more I have no employer or such like who may disapprove of anything that I care to say or do.
So it seems like a good time to consider an approach that somehow glues together all of the various uses that I have for the web, under a traceable trail of breadcrumbs.
Apart from private spaces like ftp accounts, server spaces, and even business and collaborative sites - I find that I use three main spaces:
A showcase - my static website that acts like a trade brochure.
A sandbox - a place to put thoughts and works in progress and to try stuff out.
A playground - somewhere to explore stuff and make unconsidered off the cuff statements.
The first one is sorted - it is served via Modx from my own server, and is updated manually every now and then.
The difference between the other two is basically the difference between the long form of a blog and a short form, perhaps more like twitter - although twitter has an overhead of involvement that I'm too busy to maintain.
I thought that I had found the perfect answer for the short form in Tumblr - which is an endlessly fascinating, cumulative experience. what it does it does so well - sharing, crossposting, following, being followed - it is the ideal playground and whats more it is a community, so you don't play alone.
So how to make some kind of meaningful link between the playground of Tumblr and the long form of a blog? I had an intuitive feeling that Tumblr must have a way of interacting with a more considered blog, after all it is all about making connections, right? You would have thought, but I have yet to find it, Tumblr is about being eclectic, it encourages you to bring content into it, and then watch it get re-circulated within it's own confines - it is not a two way street, try reposting something to a blog and things get very manual.
And then along came Posterous. when I first noticed it, Posterous was always mentioned as a rival to Tumblr, much like Facebook is to Myspace, it was as if you had to pledge allegiance to one or the other.
Although they may seem to cover similar ground, there is a huge difference in the basic architecture of the two systems - Tumblr is a posting and browsing forum, while Posterous is a tool to post with.
Posterous makes it simple to gather any sort of content and input it, BUT, and here is the difference, it also makes it simple to deliver that content, even repurpose it and deliver it to almost any other site, network, blog, aggregator, you name it.
Here then is the answer, for me at least.
Use tumblr to play, discover and explore.
Use a blog for more considered lengthy stuff
Use Posterous to capture the stuff you want to focus on - and deliver it - to either Tumblr or the blog (maybe even re-work it there) and while you are at it use Tumblr to deliver feeds, content and notices to Fb, flickr, youtube, picassa, the list is endless.
Now all I have to do is tidy up my rather crotchety, confused old blog and find a voice that people want to read.
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