Notes from Sven Latham
Something to add to your vocab: hircine:
Thanks to Woodge for pointing me to this – a great inspiration for blog ideas and general madness. Let’s face it, he’s definitely imitable.
Doubt I’ll be able to keep the momentum for this running for long, but here goes 🙂
New thing I learnt this week: Don’t put Lithium batteries anywhere near your mouth. It bloody stings.
If you’re wondering I tend to bite on things when I’m concentrating. Normally pens, pencils and paper clips. This time I grabbed a battery.
Have you noticed the various politicians starting blogs? I think it’s brilliant; a great way to connect with your electorate. I’ve started keeping a list of politicians across the world that run blogs, whenever I see them entered on Blogwise or mentioned elsewhere. If your local politician has a blog not listed here, please tell me. If they don’t have a blog maybe you should suggest it to them (and let us know that you have)?:
Wesley Clark. US presidential candidate, 2004 (Dem).
Tom Watson, UK MP for West Bromwich East (Lab).
Richard Allan, UK MP for Sheffield Hallam (Lib Dem).
Lance Brown, US presidential candidate, 2008.
As I write this, I am in a student accommodation in Birmingham University, on a 9,600 bps connection over a mobile phone 🙂 Why? Because I can.
More tomorrow!
Tomorrow I’m heading off to Birmingham for two days, for a radio conference. I’ll be contactable by mobile & email if anybody really wants to talk to me!
Actually being elsewhere might give me a chance to think about the future of things like this blog, Blogwise, etc. I really have some great ideas and features for Blogwise which, until now, I’ve always been frustrated about how basic and unrevealing it is! I don’t, however, have the time to implement anything new under my current ‘schedule’ so I’ll need to decide where my priorities lie!
More soon, I’m sure…
I think I might cry. The following graph is a live update of how many blogs are waiting to be submitted on Blogwise:
Of course… if you’re reading this from the archives that’ll have gone back down to zero or it’ll be off the scale 😐
An employee at About.com emailed me the other day asking if I’d add their new blog-style articles to Blogwise. I can’t refuse really – they fit the bill for entry, but it represents another 450 blogs on the site!
Actually I’ve had a difficult time considering whether I should accept or not. An injection of 450 blogs means that around 1 in 13 blogs are from About.com – that scares me. My conclusive decision was pased on my belief that companies with valuable, article-style resources should definitely be encouraged to use this format. We’ll see how it goes.
For those of you interested PHP 5 is out (in early beta form). The Zend engine has been completely rewritten and now supports quite a few of the more advanced class/object behaviours common to, say, Java.
I’ve never really gotten the idea of Blogshares. It’s not that I’ve ignored it, it’s just that I haven’t really sat down and tried to understand it.
I feel sort of embarrased now. Casually clicking a link to the Top Blogs revealed that Blogwise is 13th (I didn’t even realise it was listed). Apparantly any outgoing shares are worth $25,000, and of the 100,000 shares available none are left. The value keeps rising (currently $622.49 a share) and the current valuation is $306,731.87!
Can somebody please give me a very brief idea of how I start ‘playing’ Blogshares?
1. Surf sites at random, or have a set list of regular reads?
I have about ten sites I visit daily. They’re all in my links page somewhere or other. Some days I just go out with no particular aim and find random sites that I enjoy, then I usually forget about them 😐 I really should blog or, or learn to use favourites.
2. Do you visit mostly blogs, or news or other sites?
If they’re not blogs, they’re usually sites about blogging! I also read BBC News and The Register. I got introduced to silicon.com today as well.
3. Do you go online every day, or just a couple of days a week?
I spend anything up to 10 hours online a day, every day. My ISP must hate me.
4. Do you allow comments on your blog, or not?
Absolutely! The most frustrating kind of blog is one that you can’t leave comments on!
5. Do you shop online at all, or at regular stores?
Suprisingly enough, I shop online rarely. If I do shop online I’m very specific about where I go. Only popular named sites
6. Have you ever done online bill-paying/banking, or not?
Yes. My PIN number is….
7. Which news site do you prefer… MSNBC.com or CNN.com? Or do you prefer some other one?
CNN is okay. BBC News is great; no ads for one thing.
8. Live chat rooms, or message boards?
Message boards. Chat rooms rely on two people being online at the same time. Since I’m up antisocial hours none of my friends are ever online (sniff).
9. Instant messaging or e-mail?
Both. Email for important stuff that needs recording. IM if there’s something I want to talk directly with somebody about. It saves picking up the phone.
10. Yes or no: have you ever met, or at least talked on the phone with, another blogger? If not, would you want to? Why or why not?
The only bloggers I’ve met are the ones I’ve introduced to blogging myself, or the reason we’ve met isn’t directly because of our blogging activities. I haven’t built up a huge relationship with another blogger yet. Not enough to go visit them. I’d happily talk to them at expos though 😉
As if I haven’t got enough already…
Actually, the name is a bit deceptive; it’s a blog about my 3rd year project which will include RDF.