Aug 04

Always wanted to emigrate?

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Here’s your chance – and you don’t even have to move out of London. Danny Wallace has taken his dream and declared himself King of a new country. No need to call in the movers, his territory consists of his flat in Bow, a decision made after a failed attempt to invade Eel Pie Island, a small patch of land in the middle of the Thames. He’s now calling for citizens to join him and over 3000 have signed up. However, finding somewhere to sit to watch Danny’s coronation may be difficult – the flat is the size of a squash court. Never mind, it has a map, an army and a budget; looks like it’ll go far. There’s a BBC2 programme that goes with this as well.

Aug 04

Police Overflow and Paper charges

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The police will be everywhere today – has anyone else noticed they appear to be going round in threes?

Update: counted 45 police around Waterloo, up from last week.

The Independent is starting a new Bridget Jones Diary, from Helen Fielding. I was going to read it, but it’s behind a paywall…£1 to pay. £1. The paper only costs about 40p! So I don’t think I will be reading it.

Aug 03

Listings again

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The Technorati Popularity list – you can ignore it, love it or hate it for lots of reasons. It’s the equivalent of the All-time greatest hits chart, looking at total number of links over time. But just because Elvis or The Beatles would always be on top of the charts looking at total sales, does not mean they would be on the chart if there was a smaller timescale.

Blogpulse have a daily chart, citing the blogs with the most links on a particular day. Doing a random sample across a number of days, there’s some overlap with the Technorati list (BoingBoing, DailyKos, Engadget), but plenty of variations as well, on Sunday, blogher was at number 3.

BUt we’re still not there. The numbers increase every day, the long tail grows longer and there’s a growing call for a way of doing things differently. Whilst the instigators from Blogher are still discussing it, Jason Calacanis has gone and put his money where his mouth is. He is offering $50,000 in advertsing for a compnay who builds a listing based on what he is after, or $10,000 for an individual. He wants:

  • Regular updates
  • Controlable time slices, with a rolling chart based on a year and on past 30 days
  • Up to 500 entries.

    I’d add another requirement – the ability to slice and dice by category/metadata. That of course would need the categorising data to be collected form the blogs or when blogs are registered with the search services, but I can see the need to be able to assess ‘popularity’ with a niche, ie movie blogs, music blogs etc. But that’s a longer term desire.

    In putting this challenge up, you could argue that Jason is acting in the ‘old model’, or, more likely the ‘male model’. There’s a problem, here’s a solution, throw money at it and get it fixed my way. This is in contrast to the more collaborative, discussion based way I see Mary Hodder’s proposal developing. So is Jason just perpetuating the male domination of the space by making more lists based on popularity? I don’t think so; he’s trying to make what we have (a subjective, measurable analysis) better and is prepared to encourage it.

    • Aug 03

    Volume – Sifry part 2

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    David Sifry’s posting yesterday regarding the rate of blog creation got a fair bit of press, with the BBC being quick to pick it up. The free paper the Metro also has it, burt their online version is different to the one in the paper. Online, they talk about a number of blog related firings, as they so in the paper, but the paper adds a curiously out of place quote from Belle De Jour (well, at least I know she’s posting again). Interstingly, no explanation of what a blog is.

    Anyway, Sifry has his second review out today. This is reviewing posting volume – the number of posts added to the web every day; it’s coming in at 10.4 posts a second. So that’s one new blog a second and over 10 new posts a second; the challenge for the search tools is keeping up. The increase is attributed to the rising number of ways to post – IM, email, mobile and straight form other services. Ease of use encourages rapid response, reducing time between thought and it being on the page and out there. That may not always be a good idea, but as we’ve seen from recent events, there are occasions when such rapid response adds value.

    Aug 02

    Why…

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    Ben Metcalfe’s rant about working with people who just don’t ‘get it’ struck a chord.

    I guess it’s unfair to expect that the Internet exists as part of the fundamental fabric of everyone’s life in the same way it does mine. However it’s equally frustrating that concepts such as remixing content, tagsonomies, user generated content, collaborative filtering and so on could not be bought into the debate because most of my fellow participants were unfamiliar with even simple examples of them (eg Flickr). And the few that did viewed them as frivolous follies that would not form mainstream interests and behaviours.

    It’s a absolute fact that most people I discuss these ideas with have no idea what I’m talking about. Showing them the various tools makes them interested, but not yet committed. Slowly, minds are changing, but there are many out there up and down the heirarchy to change.

    However, reading the article immediately bought to mind a cartoon from the Metro that has been put up on my desk since I saw it last week – it just sums up some days.

    cartoon.jpg

    Aug 02

    Flickr Ecards

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    The Flickr Blog points towards another service that has been developed using their APIs. Charles Coxhead has pulled together an Ecard service, using images published under a Creative Commons licence. At the moment the text search does not work, so you can only send current images but a superb idea to introduce people to your favourite images.

    Aug 02

    New York

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    I’m back there next week so intend to do my usual and spend a day or two sightseeing. Time to dig outt he guide book again.

    Aug 02

    Simply Fired

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    Simply Hired ,a recruiting/job company have launched a competition, collecting tales of woe from people who have been fired called, obviously, Simply Fired. They’ve lined up an interesting group of judges for the competition most of whome seemed to blog about the site yesterday.

    The winner and guest “will join The Apprentice TV show cast members on a week-long cruise from New York to the Caribbean, stopping at the islands of Puerto Rico, St. Thomas, and Tortola”. I’ve seen this programme occasionally on visits to the US and I’m not 100% sure if I’d call that a Grand Prize :o)

    However, read the Rules. First of all I’m not supposed to be reading the site:

    The following promotion is intended for viewing in the 50 United States and the District of Columbia (the “Eligibility Area”) only. Do not proceed further in this site or these materials if you are not located in the Eligibility Area.

    I guess I’m expected to ignore it now? Then, if I was American and I entered..

    Entrant assigns and transfers to Sponsor all right, title, and interest to the story. Sponsor shall have all rights to copy, edit, broadcast, publish, and use, in whole or in part, any story, and any other intellectual property protected or protectable materials submitted by entrant, in any manner without further compensation during and after the contest period, except where prohibited by law.

    I therefore appear to lose the ability to ever tell the story again. And finally

    The Contest is open to individuals who are 21 years of age or older as of the date of entry, are legal residents of the 50 United States or the District of Columbia, who have valid International travel documents as of the time of contest entry and who have an email account as of the time of contest entry.

    How many people does that make eligible?

    Regardless of the above, I think I may read a few stories.

    Aug 02

    Stickiness

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    David Sifry is examining the state of the world of blogs again, through his Technorati tracking. In the first of a few articles he looks at the creation rate of blogs, the numbers of which seems to be growing exponentially and doubling every 5 months. The key figure for me (as for him) is the seemingly consistent 55% activity rate, that is 55% of blogs created are active.

    I’d like to see a breakdown of that 45% drop off, which services providers have the greater numbers? I would not be surprised to see that there were higher abandonments in the ready-to-wear variety of blogs, the sign up and you’re there Bloger, Livejournal, MSN Spaces etc. Low cost of entry means less investment, so less incentive to stay. The same factors that are encouraging the growth also mean that people don’t stick to it. Looking at the results of the MIT blog survey, 20% of respondents said that the blog was created a a journal of their life. A personal diary. So like any personal diaries some will fall by the wayside, to be embarassingly discovered in a future moment.

    Aug 02

    Interestingness

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    Flickr have launched a great new feature, an interestingness page, a place where you can easily explore far more photos than you did before. And there are some amazing images. Another great way to spend those timeouts at work. I can see my contacts and favourites list growing.

    Aug 01

    BBC Continues to Educate

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    I see that the BBC’s Chris Moyles has leapt to the top of the Apple download chart, becoming one of the fastest selling podcasts of 2005 (sorry, been listening to too many chart shows). Ten hours after release, it topped the list of most subscribed; not sure if it’s there now as the list is not on the web and, owning a Creative MP3 player instead of an iPod never got round to updating iTunes. I now have the funny picture in my head of lots of American’s donwloading Moylsy and not understanding a word he says or, if they do, just not quite getting it.

    For me though, the success of the show is not the only intersting thing about the story. Look what else the BBC has on that page. A clear description of podcasting (without a refernece to iPods). The RSS orange button and a link to an explanation of what is RSS. Finally, links to both a listing of the BBC shows currently in the podcast trial and to the BBC Collective Podcast feature. The Collective is a subsite, looking at trends in entertainment. Let’s hope it does not go the same was as the Cult sites.

    The BBC continues to act as an educator, an authority of where things are going. Many people will not change, are slow to adopt, but if Aunty says it’s good, then it has to be.

    Aug 01

    Talk Digger

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    TalkDigger is a new tool from Frederick Giasson which should provide some help in the currecnt debate about which blog search tool is providing better results. In fact, its development appears to have been driven by the debate.

    Then some weeks ago I asked myself that question: why don’t you build an application to query all these search engines for you, displaying the results and some statistics of these queries. Then I started to develop Talk Digger. I also noticed that Robert Scoble was in a mood of comparing different search results from the major blogging search engines like Bloglines and Technorati. Then I told myself that such a service could also interest other people. This is the reason why I developed it as a web service: to enable other people to use it and benefit from it. Then Talk Digger was born.

    Put in a URL (it’s designed to work with a URL rather than a search term) and it works across 9 search tools and returns the numbers of found links. The results listing takes you to the service direct to trawl the findings. It also includes trending information to track popularity of search, useful if you are trtacking specific searches. A pretty useful tool to add to the set.

    Jul 31

    Listings and blogging

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    Blogebrity have an anlysis of popularity; looking at the the top 5 on the Technorati lists.

    The list phenomenom got some focus in the backchat yesterday. Comments included:

  • The fact the he is popular doesn’t make it more interesting to me
  • I find the super blogs unweilding and terribly boring
  • I personally don’t care who is popular, either I like reading the blog or I don’t
  • I think ultimately, if we give a lot of importance to ratings and top 100 this and that, we’ll lose a lot of energy and time and miss out on what blogs are bringing that is new.

    The general concensus was that the popularity of a blog is ignored when people are looking for things of interest. Search tools allow you to lookfor blogs that are writing about your favourite topics. As Blogebrity says, the most popular blogs are often multi-author, and they write about lots of things. They pull together snippets from all over and they act as a good starting point to find other things. When I started reading blogs, I did start with what are called A-list blogs. they link to a lot of things (and get lots of links back) They are a jumping off point to the rest of the environment, the head of the trail. I got asked the other day how I found a blog; I have no recollection, I followed a trail, read something new that I liked and added it to the list. I’m doing the same from the Blogher listing. Reading the new links, saving the ones that have some resonance. Finding new voices is a joy.

    But lists won’t go away; and they’ll be most easily driven from things that are easily measured – technorati uses incoming links. Other measures get into subjectivity, looking at peoples votes etc. And there’ll always be arguments and dissension whatever the measure.

    Update: 30 seconds after posting this, i read this from Tony, which references Vote-Links, which is looking to add semantic meanings into links.

    Update 2: here’s some more links that discuss listings. Mary Hodder talks about the discussion and about her proposed community algorith to add more context to any popularity stakes (because any listing is some measure of that). She also links to a wiki list that has been created since Blogher, of women of authority who are prepared to talk at conferences.

    Against listings is Halley. She comes down against ‘a’ list – that’s old media but makes this statement which lies closest to my own take onthe matter

    If lists exist to give you a fast way to find other blogs you like, then there should be many many lists — best female blogs, best Spanish language blogs, best food blogs, best blogs on hybrid cars; etc.

    One list won’t do; there’ll always be a matrix of lists. Whilst someone may be top of one person’s list, be a favourite, they could be way down another person’s list, someone who they never, ever wnat to read again. Tastes differ. Trying to find one way of recognising such tastes is futile

    • Jul 31

    Small World

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    In the chat yesterday I realised that I’d sent off an email to one of participants, Ethan at The Vision Thing, a few hours beforehand. Then I went and signed up for a dinner in August and realised I had met the rest of the people signed up to date.

    Jul 31

    Blogher Round up

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    Yesterday I tuned into the chat for Blogher. It appeared that the majority of people involved were not at the conference, but were keeping track through the live bloggers; we held a sort of parallel discussion, covering such topics as wahy we blog, political blogging and the art (or not) of flaming and how to deal with being flamed. There was only one track for the chat, so in the times where there were multiple sessions, there was a small vote. I only lasted half the day – too much time difference. Two good round ups of the day are from Jay Rosen and from Nancy White. There are many other posts and photos to be found through the normal search engines(the conference blog has the list). Maybe the next time (I’m prety sure there’ll be a next time) I’ll get to go.

    Jul 30

    Blogher

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    Many of the posts I’m reading today reference Blogher. There’s a live chat here, plus a list of people who are liveblogging the event here.

    Jul 30

    The Other Side part 2

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    On Thursday, I posted about Kryptonite,how there is always another side to the story and how the compnay updated its approach to listening to customers. The chapter of Blogging in a Crisis has since been updaed by Robert and Shel.

    There’s a few more companies that may be able to take some lessons from Kryptonite. The first is Dell. Jeff Jarvis has been having some problems with them, with a complete lack of customer service. But the story is not confined to a few blogs; Rick Segal overheard a lunchtime conversation:

    I happened to be sitting across from a couple of bank tellers from TD Canada Trust, the bank in our building. These two ladies I’d seen before so I knew where they worked.

    Lady one: I was going to buy a new Dell but did you hear about Jeff Jarvis and the absolute hell he is going through with them.

    Lady two: Yeah, I know the IT guy told me that the cobler blog was recommending we stay away from Dell.

    So there we have the story spreading, producing lost sales and bad conversation. Dell is unlikly to get back in their good books without a lot of work. There are lots of comments and opinions agian about Dell not listening, not reacting, not knowing how to relate to customers in these internet-powered days.

    But there’s another side to the easy access to information, to postings being indexed and searchable. Sometimes you find a company is listening to its customers, does not like what it hears and reacts in a way that is not what the blogger wants. Jay Goldman posted a comment a his friend Joey deVilla’s blog regarding a local moving company in Toronto. The comment was a warning about some moving compnaies to avoid, one of which was Quick Boys Moving Storage. It appears that the company involved tracked Joey down and requested with menaces that the comment be removed. After originally removing the comments in order to get some time to reflect, the comments and the whole episode including transcripts of the calls are back online. With some rather interesting comments in the new post. So here we have a company that does listen – but carries on with the same attitude regardless.

    Jul 28

    Blogher shared

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    On the subject of gender-focused activities, Blogher takes place this weekend in Santa Clara, CA. For the many who could not make it but may wish to join in, a chat room is being set up to join in the conversation.