How Blogs Die

Frozen Toothpaste identifies two warning signs:

There are two general signs that a blog is heading toward extinction. The first is a declining frequency of posting, and the second is a proportional rise in the number of posts about the blog itself.

All in all, the post is a pretty astute observation about blogging in general.

To be a bit self-referential here, sometimes they just go into hibernation.

Dancing 2008

Long-time readers of this blog will recognize Matt Harding, the proprietor of Wherethehellismatt.com. His latest goofy dance moves are featured in a new video.


Previous videos: 2005, 2006.

Apple Moves onto Microsoft's Turf

Safari is now available for Windows. I've long been a proponent of Firefox, but the introduction of Safari for the PC is yet another reason to ditch Internet Explorer. I'll probably install it and give it a go since so many of my Apple loving friends swear by it. Download Safari.

NP: "Fake Empire" - The National

M.I.A.

I'm officially missing.

I'm not talking about my lack of updates to the blog either. Nope. This is more official than that.

A friend informed me yesterday that the official newsletter for my alumni class lists me as missing. Now, on one hand, this isn't very surprising for a number of reasons. I moved last fall, I ditched my land line in favor of going entirely mobile, and I haven't given money to my alma mater for quite a while (almost never... the 20-odd thousand a year they received in my name for four years should be enough).

On the other hand, this surprises me a lot in this day and age. Hasn't whoever is in charge of this newsletter ever heard of the Interweb? All you have to do is google my name, and low and behold, this site is the first result. My resume, which lists the university and my graduation year? The second result.

Even worse, I still receive actual mail from the general alumni office, and my information is correct in their alumni-connections database, including my new address, e-mail address, and phone number.

So, for a quick experiment, I google a classmate that I haven't seen (nor heard of) since graduation. How long did it take me to find his contact details. About a minute.

I know that I may be a little more comfortable with performing such things online as others since it is intrinsic to my day job, but this is a little ridiculous. Did these people sleep through the 90s? So I suppose I'm only missing through their inaction.

Of course there's still an upside: they can't call me begging for money and I don't have to read about all the things that those classmates I don't keep in touch with are doing. [Ed. Note: Karma will get you back on the list for slagging on them like this.]

NP: "The Wait" - The American Analog Set

Marc Andreessen gets his blog on. I do like his insight on Web 2.0.

More Web 2.0 B.S. Buzzwords Than You Can Shake a Stick At

Following up on my post about the overuse of buzzwords, especially in the Internet industry, here's some more buzzword bingo: The Web 2.0 Bullshit Generator!

Some of my favorite examples:

• reinvent peer-to-peer communities
• disintermediate user-contributed blogspheres (and you'd thought I made up that word)
• integrate long-tail value

Anyone else find any favorites we can ridicule?

Related: Web economy bullshit generator.

NP: "Mercenary Song" - Steve Earle

Disney Recognizes Piracy as a Business Model

Disney's co-chair recognizes piracy as a business model during her keynote address at Mipcom. Here's a key quote: "[Piracy] exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand."

She went on to say that the company would be relying on their content to drive everything moving forward, giving it primacy of place to drive traffic and create demand. However, Cory Doctorow responds: (@ boingboing.net)

Content isn't king. If I sent you to a desert island and gave you the choice of taking your friends or your movies, you'd choose your friends -- if you chose the movies, we'd call you a sociopath. Conversation is king. Content is just something to talk about.

Something to always remember, especially in my business.

NP: "This is Not What You Had Planned" - The Wrens

Google Reader Redux

Google has updated Google Reader. I posted about this when Google first introduced Reader about a year ago. Now, they've updated it quite a bit, and the results are quite an improvement.

They've addressed all the little annoyances that have been building up (though not enough to try feeddemon again) very well. Now, you can view your feeds according to how you've tagged them. This makes this a much more logical experience than before when the default was a long list. For example, I can either read or ignore the feeds from my music blogs without having to scroll through them or ignore them while I'm working on something else.

All and all, given my hour or two with the changes I'd say "job well done". They've managed to fix some of the things that were starting to annoy me without breaking the whole thing altogether. If you rely on RSS as much as I do, give it a whirl.

Buzzword Bingo!

For those of you who don't work in Internet technology, this may be of very little interest to you. For those of you, like me, who work in technology, we have a nasty little secret: our industry relies a gibberish of buzzwords to attempt to communicate. I'm positive that this isn't a big surprise to anyone, but we have to say: Enough is enough!

I've seen this my entire professional career. It started making "use" into utilize, turned into turn-key, cooked up soup to nuts, pausing midway to disintermediate, and now it utilizes solutions to solve problems (even I'm scratching my head at that one).

I've been railing about this problem for years, editing all the crap out of any document that crossed my desk, but it keeps cropping up. The worst offenders seemed to come from the big consulting companies (I'm looking at you Accenture).

At one former company, we even played "Buzzword Bingo" during company-wide videoconferences or other meetings. It's quite easy. Make a list of buzzwords. Place a check next to one of your buzzwords every time you hear it at the meeting. At the end, the person who guesses the most correctly wins the game. My personal best performance occurred in 1999 at a company-wide teleconference. I chose the terms "special sauce", "incentivize", and "900 pound gorilla". I kid you not.

It's been so bad for so long that it has (of course) inspired a parody. Ladies and gentlemen, I give you the Web Economy Bullshit Generator. The sad thing about this is that all these still meaningless buzzwords still show up surprisingly often, even though this parody is at least six years old.

What is the Problem Exactly?
As the article points out, "solution" used to a good word with a fixed and clear meaning. Now, it's used so much in the industry that it has become meaningless. I mean, does "business solutions" mean anything to you? A few years ago, I fought a protracted, and ultimately useless, battle to not include this word any where on the site I was helping to redesign and re-write. Even my current company has "solutions". Solutions to what problem, I'm not really sure.

Just Use "Use", Don't Utilize It
My first encounter with buzzwords was with the seemingly innocuous word, "utilize." Of course, this means to add utility to. However, I began seeing it used where the much shorter and more elegant "use" would be preferred. I'm not sure why this occurred. Maybe they think those extra syllables mean that it's a "smarter" word than the alternative. I say bullshit.

Being Smart Versus Sounding Smart
The running theme with all the buzzwords popping up boil down to using complex words to connotate ideas that don't require that level of complexity. This ignores one of the foundations of good writing: never use a 25 cent word with a 10 cent word will do.

Using buzzwords don't make you sound smart, they only make you sound like you're trying to sound smart.

A Solution to Solutions?
If you want to communicate clearly and concisely, remove all buzzwords from your writing, or as a former co-worker of mine marvelously put it: eschew obfuscation.

As with most things pertaining to the written word, you don't have to look any further than Hemingway for sage advice:

Be careful.... It is all very well for you to write simply and the simpler the better. But do not start to think so damned simply. Know how complicated it is and then state it simply.

This passage from The Garden of Eden has adorned every office or cube at every job I've ever worked. Working with words is my career, and I use it as the guiding principle for every bit of writing that I write or edit. It doesn't matter if the writing is for a mass audience on a Fortune 500 company's website or for my yearly review. I'd encourage everyone in the tech industry to do the same.

UPDATE: 37 Signals and Lifehacker jump on the bandwagon. And that example isn't that far from what I actually see.

NP: "Brand New Cadillac" - The Clash

Lewis and Clark: What Else Happened

This coming Saturday is the bicentenniel of Lewis and Clark's return to St. Louis after their voyage of discovery that extended white America's knowledge of this continent to the Pacific ocean. With that in mind, I'd certainly recommend Lewis and Clark: What Else Happened.

This blog not only provides daily updates (save for a period of time when New Orleans, the source of the blog, was underwater) from the Journals of Lewis and Clark, but also provides historical tidbits about what else was happening elsewhere in the world while the captains were on their two and a half year adventure.

I've actually made it through most of Lewis and Clark's Journals, so I look forward to exploring this site a bit more thoroughly. The Resources page on the site gives a number of jumping off points to find out more about the expidition.

NP: "New Dawn Fades (Live)" - Joy Division

Atlanta is Nation's Most Wired City

I'm never very trusting of such lists, but it's still kind of cool that Forbes calls Atlanta America's most wired city. There's probably a lot of truth in their caveat about the high population in the suburbs artificially elevating the ranking, but wireless hotspots are still popping up all over the place through the metro area. Of course, I rarely get to the suburbs to confirm my suspicions in this area.

NP: "Kill Them with Kindness" - The Satellite Rides

Whatever Happened to Half.com, Oregon?

During the height of the dot-com craziness, when millions and millions and millions of dollars were being spent on super bowl ads that were either confusing or just plain bad, Internet-retailer half.com pulled off a publicity stunt par excellance. The convinced the town of Halfway, Oregon, to rename itself Half.com, Oregon.

Ever wonder more about the full story, including what happened? Well, Design Observer has some more details on Half.com, Oregon.

NP: "All Glory" - Southern Death Cult

Flannel Enigma 2.0

I really wasn't kidding, although this probably will count as a 1.75 or something like that. I'm quite pleased that my tweaks didn't break every goll-darned thing! Of course I know that there are a few things that need working on:

• The font size looks bigger to me... I'll knock it down a notch unless my parents and any 50+ readers complain
• I'd also like to have everything centered. Is this an issue?
• Google Ads? I have space for them now. Yes? No? Strong opinions either way?
  
• Any other gadgets you'd like to see?
• Search, etc., at the far right... or left?

I know I have some very web-savvy readers (all them equalling about 10% of my audience), what do you think?

Of course if I decide to migrate to Wordpress, I'll have to to this all over again.

How to Go Web 2.0

It's all about the logo really:
Wanna go 2.0? (via ow)

NP: "Sometimes I Cry" - Guided by Voices

15 Websites that Changed the World

In honor of the Web's 15th birthday, which passed a short while ago, The Guardian provides a list of 15 websites that changed the world. (via kottke)

There are not a lot of these to quarrel with really. Can you really remember when you actually had to physically visit a bookstore and make a special order of something obscure rather than just visiting Amazon.com?

My only quarrels would be with the U.K.-centric nature of some of these choices. So I thought I'd try to locate their U.S. equivalents (which probably predated most of these even though they likely haven't changed the life of anyone in the U.K.)

• 6. friendsreunited.com - This site didn't debut until 1999, and I'm reasonably sure that classmates.com pre-dated that, even though it certainly hasn't changed my world.
  
• 15. easyjet.com - Launching in 1995, this one actually has a claim to the title. I can't recall any U.S. sites that allowed air travel to be booked on the Internet this early. This first U.S. site of this kind was probably Travelocity.

Of course, if it were my list, I'd probably add the Metafilter sites and Flickr to the list.

Anyone have any other complaints or additions to the list?

NP: "Deep Seat" - Swervedriver

404 Error: Tubes Clogged

I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone did this. Parodying Sen. Ted Steven's apparent contention that the Internet is "not a big truck... it's a series of tubes," isn't very hard to do, but this 404: Tubes Clogged Error page is among the more clever jokes in this genre that I've seen (warning there is sound involved, even though it's safe for work and relatively non-annoying). (via boingboing)

Google Confirmed as a Verb

Catching up with the colloquial rather quickly, Merriam-Webster has decided that google is a verb.

NP: "It's All the Same" - Wilderness

Funny Firefox Ad

Firefox has been running a sort of mini film festival, letting users create their own Firefox commercials. And my friend R.J. decided to get in on the fun, creating his own commercial. I'd say it's quite subtle, but once you get the joke, it's pretty damn funny. Of course, knowing him helped me.

NP: "I Never Wanted" - Idlewild

High Five Day

While it's not nearly as fun as Talk Like a Pirate Day, happy High Five Day! In honor of this grand day, I offer you an appropriate song:

• High Five (Rock the Catskills) - Beck
  

(What else will those crazy Wahoos think up?)

NP: "I'm Ready" - Scrawl

StumbleUpon

StumbleUpon is one of the coolest tools I've seen for a while on the web. Install it as a Firefox extension, and one click of the "Stumble!" button will take you cool websites in categories you select when you sign up. So far, I've stumbled upon a timeline of art history, a online planetarium, some cool animations, and a dictionary of British slang.

I warn you. Do not install this right now if you have a lot of work to do. Seriously, this can totally be a time suck.

NP: "Eighties" - Killing Joke

A Real Tipping Point?

Malcolm Gladwell now has a blog. I only hope that his blog is as interesting as his books and his writing for the New Yorker, if obviously less polished.

NP: "The Moon" - Cat Power

Dancing

This movie of a man (Matt) dancing all over the world just makes me smile. Many of you have probably seen it, but I find myself returning to it from time to time, especially when I need a lift.

NP: "In a Jar" - Dinosaur Jr.

Top Gun 2: Brokeback Squadron

See the trailer now. Now this is funny, especially since it echoes one of my favorite movie monologues, even if it is delivered by Quentin Tarantino. So, I suppose it was only a matter of time before someone put it together.

Changing topics quickly, does anyone else think that Sleep With Me (the monologue's source) is seriously underrated?

NP: "St. Petersburg" - Supergrass

Bye Bye Crackberry?

I know a lot of people that get super annoyed when someone is using a Blackberry to check their e-mails in otherwise social situations. Well, they may have cause to rejoice (click to watch the ad... Salon is worth it after all).

A trademark dispute between the makers of the now almost ubiquitous device and a small company in Virginia that appears to hold the patent threatens to make the devices illegal. Personally, I've never had much of a problem with them, as long as they don't distract from what someone is suppose to be doing (like making work decisions) or causing them to draw out useless meetings.

On the other hand, wouldn't it make your life simpler, Senior?

NP: "Your Little Hoodrat Friend" - The Hold Steady

Full Circle

Tim Berners Lee, the inventor of the web, now has a blog. Welcome to the conversation that you started!

NP: "Don't Bang the Drum" - The Waterboys

Internet Explorer vs. Firefox

Why didn't anyone tell me how bad IE makes the formatting here look? Go switch already! (I do promise to try to do a little better in the future though.)

NP: "July Junes" - The New Pornographers

The Poetry Archive

Poetry, at its heart, is a spoken art. So, I was especially excited to find The Poetry Archive, a collection of recordings of poets reading their own work. Right now the selections are a bit light, but they have poems by Browning, Tennyson, and Wilbur among them. I won't make this a list of links to the specific poets' pages, but I encourage you to go explore a bit.

I will make one exception to this however: W.B. Yeats. Yeats is perhaps my favorite poet, and the site has a recording of him sonorously intoning "The Lake Isle of Innisfree", the poet and poem that single-handedly turned my head towards poetry.

Picture the scene: Spring term, junior year. I'm an English major who has almost completed his major requirements, and who has, thus far, pretty much avoided any poetry beyond the Renaissance. To prepare for a comprehensive exam that I would need to pass to graduate, I needed to fill some holes between Beowulf and DeLillo, so I took a entry-level survey course to learn a little about Victorian literature. I think the course title was "Browning through Auden".

I hated this class. I hated all the stories, poems, and novels that we were reading. And I hated the professor's cheerleading for works that I really couldn't enjoy. I didn't really hate how easy it was. After my first paper, the professor called me into his office to try to convince me to switch majors to English. "Uh, I am an English major who'll be writing an honor's thesis next year," I replied. Good, good.

So we get to Yeats, and the professor confesses to the class that he doesn't really like him, but that to be complete, he really has to teach him. Great, I thought to myself. I haven't liked any thing that he thinks is good, how bad is this going to be. The assignment began with "The Lake Isle of Innisfree".

I've read that poem exactly once in my life.

Yes, you read that right. Once. It just stuck. I can still recite it on command. I went on in a single day to not only read the Yeats assignment, but also to read all the Yeats contained in the textbook. I then went to the bookstore and bought the collected poems, which I finished over the following summer. I haven't been the same since. It opened a whole wonderful world for me. Keats was next, and Wordsworth and Coleridge and Whitman and Lowell and Jarell and... the list grows quite large. But that poem started it all.

NP: "Dreams & Light" - The Wolfgang Press

NPR Podcasts

For those of you with iTunes, I highly recommend checking out some of NPR's podcasts. NPR offers a lot of these. You can browse them now, or subscribe through the Apple Music Store in iTunes.

Currently, I'm listening to today's NPR Story of the Day podcast about hunger among the working poor in Smyth Country, Virginia. Sadly, I'm familiar with many parts of this story. I never wanted growing up, but I remember food drives, especially around the holidays, and my Dad working for the Hunters for the Hungry.

To totally change a depressing subject, NPR's all song's considered is also very good.

One Red Paperclip

He trades it for something larger, and that for something even larger, until he turns that paper clip into a house. Watch his progress. (via boingboing)

NP: "Shoot You Down" - The Stone Roses

Top 100 Internet Moments

Because we like lists, and I remember a lot of these. I do think there are a few truly "Internet" moments he missed that merit inclusion.

• All Your Base Are Belong to Us
• Jib Jab's presidential campaign satires
• Bonsai Kitten
• The original Napster
  

Of course, these may just say really bad things about my surfing habits over the last 10 years. He does get bonus points of remembering Mahir though (I kiss you!). (via kottke)

UPDATE: Another missed moment from the comments:

• Getting Dooced

UPDATE II: The organizers of the webby awards have also released a list of 10 Internet watersheds moments. So, I'll add Matt Drudge's part in the whole impeachment distraction to the list as well. I was probably just repressing it anyway.

NP: "Cigarettes" - Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Google Feed Reader

Google just launched an RSS feed reader. Very cool. Maybe I'll transition from RSS Reader now since it has a number of annoying features. (via BoingBoing.)

UPDATE: I can't seem to get my feeds to import right now, and I'm certainly not going to re-enter them all. I'll update in the next couple of days to let you know if it's working or not.

UPDATE (II): Well, I still can't get it to import my feeds.opml file, but I managed to enter about a third of my regular reads yesterday. I've been playing with it this morning and it's pretty darn cool. Now I just have to find the time to enter the rest of the feeds I read regularly.

UPDATE (The Third): After a while, I've managed to get all my feeds entered into Google Reader. (Hint, use the search for content field to go directly to a source, tag it, and subscribe to it). I'm really liking the interface--so much so, I've already ditched RSS reader as my default. Seriously, I'd definitely advocate using Google Reader.

NP: "Got Carried Away" - The Trash Can Sinatras

Salon.com Redesigns

Salon.com, one of my daily reads on the Internets, launched a redesigned website today. The editor also gives some further information about the new design.

Overall, I like the new design. The old one had begun to feel hopelessly, well, 1999. The ever increasing number of ads seemed to be shoehorned into a design that wasn't really ready to accommodate them. Hopefully, the new design won't suffer from some of the performance issues that I'd been noticing over the last few months.

NP: "Soft Revolution" - Stars