Too much information!
It's one thing to be interested in blogs so you can read and learn and become aware of new ideas. But when it comes to joining into the discussions, watch out! No it's more than the well known problem of following discussion threads across blogs. It's just the ridiculous amount of stuff that gets written on any hot topic (like Folksonomies, for example.) If you want to contribute a half- intelligent idea to the debate, the number of links to follow and essays to read is very intimidating, and certainly the odds of uttering an original thought approach zero. So I'll stop here.
Tags, Meta Tags, Meta Data, Yada Yada
It is of course impossible to keep up with the avalanche of discussion about the topic of tags, folksonomies , tagonomies. David Weinberger points to a (beautifully designed : love those pictures!) essay on the topic from burningbird with lots of good quotes and pointers to other essays. Wow, a lot to read! In my mind the crucial thing about this new approach classification is that it gets around the achilles heel of the traditional approach of meta tagging or controlled vocabularies, which is, that most people just don 't do it. There are some special circumstances when a fixed list (or hierarchy) of categories or topics or tags will work for most people. But in the majority of cases, a fixed list of categories to apply to some item of information just causes frustration ("the category I am looking for isn't there") or confusion ("What does tag X even mean?") The end result is that information just gets mis-tagged or is left un-tagged. This is where so called folksonomies are so superior. Yes, often information will get misclassified. Whether this is so often as to render the whole system useless is an open question, which Technorati Tags, Del.icio.us and others will help us discover. p.s: One of the dangers to commenting on this discussion is that it is basically impossible to read all the essays and follow all the links and so you risk repeating what was already said. I believe that Clay Shirky has made essentially the same point. At least I am in good company.
Do Mac users have eye problems – Switcher’s Log – Part 2
It seems to me that all text and other Mac OS X user interface elements are a little bit bigger than their counterparts on the PC. Why is that? It seems like the same size screen fits less stuff when attached to a Mac OS X system than to a Win XP system. It's annoying - it makes you feel less productive. I am hunting for some tweak software to adjust this but I am starting to think it doesn't exist. Why?
[BlogBridge Tip] Activate your BlogBridge service account
(If you are not a BlogBridge you will not find this very interesting) We notice many of you have requested a BlogBridge account but not activated it. Here's the thing: once you ask for the account, you will receive an email with a link in it that you have to click. Until you click, your account will not be ready to us. (Our instructions need to be improved!) Why activate? Because until you do, the wonderful benefits of the BlogBridge service will not be available to you!
[BlogBridge Tip] Themes
Did you know that BlogBridge has 'themes' ? Well today there are only two, but soon there will be many. A Theme is just way to set all the fonts and colors and other UI settings in one fell swoop. For example, the "Big Theme" uses larger fonts making them easier to read. Enjoy!
Blogging, Journalism and Credibility – Harvard
I was lucky enough to be able to participate in a conference on Blogging, Journalism and Credibility at Harvard University. I am not myself an expert on this but found the discussions extremely instructive. And of course I see possibilities that our BlogBridge software might play a role in this space in the future. So I am vitally interested! Many many people have blogged in great detail on this conference, so I won't try to improve on that, except for this great little aha! tidbit : All the discussion in one way or another centered around the question of how blogging affect journalism and journalism might affect blogging. Will blogging be the CB radio of the 2000's, to be remembered as a curiosity of the times, gone and mostly forgotten? Or, will blogging instead render MSM (mainstream media) obsolete, putting even the New York Times out of business? The NYT? They are an institution. We all grew up with it. Everyone relies on it. They have a budget in the millions and revenues to match. Putting the NYT out of business is an outlandish exageration, that's what I think, and most of the room thought. So here was the aha!: Remember the Encyclopedia Britannica? Hmm. "They are an institution. We all grew up with it. Everyone relies on it. They have a budget in the millions and revenues to match." They weren't put away by blogs of course, but arguably by the internet writ large, the internet phenomenon. It could happen.
Day of reckoning coming for Microsoft?
You've heard this one before: there are more and more truly outstanding pieces of software coming out as Open Source. Everyone has heard about FireFox, right, the wonderful Web Browser from the Mozilla guys. I just came across news that Internet Explorer usage fell again for the 7th straight month, and it seems that FireFox is taking up the slack. Take a look at Thunderbird 1.0, another gem. Thunderbird is an email client and it's a very nice piece of work. You can see both of these apps here. I also recently read notice that there's a project starting to combine several Open Source projects into an email, calendaring, and address book behemoth. Might this challenge Microsoft Outlook? Sounds like an outlandish thought doesn't it? You might know that I am a big Microsoft fan. I've said that only they have the wherewithal to build, test and deliver massively complex software to huge user bases. Don't be fooled: simplicity is good, but good software is usually very complicated below the skin. My read is that with successful efforts like FireFox and Thunderbird things may be getting interesting for Microsoft. It will take years, but I think we are seeing some stormclouds on the horizon.
Switcher’s Log
For close readers of this (yes all two of you), I was considering switching to a Mac as my primary computer. Basically I had a mac as a tirtiary computer, just for testing BlogBridge. I got to like it, and after a fairly careful study of the trade-offs, I've done it. As of now, my Windows box is off on a table 'over there' and my Mac is right here at my desk. Actually the switch happened yesterday and I've getting acclimated. Just for fun, I thought I'd record my experiences. Day 1-2: Basics are working. I am getting email with Mac Mail. I had to give up Trillian on Windows and tried using AVChat (the mac equivalent.) It's ok but not that functional. Since then I've tried AOL IM for Mac (not too much better) but stumbled across Adium, an open source (don't you love it?) Mac OS X-ified version of Gnu AIM (GAIM.) I just started using it 10 minutes ago, and so far, its every bit as good as Trillian was! Coolness!
Improv in Wikipedia
I got many comments from people about my postings recently about Lotus Improv. Imagine my surprise when I discovered a pretty accurate description of Improv and its history in the WikiPedia. By the way, I had absolutely nothing to do with writing it. Actually I am quite curious who did write it, because he or she was pretty well informed so I suspect it's someone who was on the team from the early days, or knew someone who was. (Of course there are a few inaccuracies, but what the heck!) Cool
BlogBridge tip: Send us Feedback
(Non-users of BlogBridge, this wil not be interesting to you. But you have to ask yourself, why are you not using it?) As most everyone who uses BlogBridge seems to be subscribed to my Blog I thought posting a tip or news every so often might be a way to expose some thinking about BlogBridge to you all, so starting today I will be posting a regular item that I think would be of interest. We very recently added a command to the Help menu, "Send Feedback" which we encourage you to use if you have any thought, complaint, bug report, or whatever that you would like to share with us. Just enter your text in the box and that's all there is to it. Note that we have plenty of users who are regularly sending us feedback with email but still that's only a fraction of all our users so we thought we should make it easier. Please have a go at the new Send Feedback command on the Help menu! (By the way, if you want to send us email that is totally welcome too. This email is also read by the development team: blogbridge-devl@lists.sourceforge.net.