Monday, August 26, 2002

Introducing the Weblog Metadata Initiative Right, here is the second announcement ;-) For those of you who've been wondering what happened to the Truth Laid Bear's Blogosphere Ecosystem that inspired mine, it's been dormant (hibernating?) while he's been working on the plan for a new interconnection system:         Weblog Metadata Initiative It's all about connectivity. We've got apps like the ecosystems, Daypop, Blogdex and Organica, but they all operate independently and don't share any information. Also, they work everything out without any co-operation with the blogs they index, and it's not so convenient to get the information out. (Note: if you know Python, you can play with my ecosystem's data) Also, they're not as efficient as they could be. So, we're going to work out some standard ways to mark up your blog and provide useful information to us, and some standard ways for you to get our information back onto your blog. Some sort of open-source server, AFAIK. More power to all! Interested? Here's the FAQ and some key benefits. We also have forums so you can come and argue with us when we design things. Enjoy! Comment [Second p0st] 8:29:58 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Incentive. Here's some great words about getting the code down and not talking about it by Andrew Torrez on his Torrez.org blog. People too often confuse the success of a site on the idea. They think that it's the great idea that's going to reign in the users. They worry about whether the idea is sound. They bounce it off of friends and eventually kick the idea around so much that the original motivation, to make something people want to use, is lost. Personally I find the more I talk about something, the less I do it. Sometimes working alone, I wish I could bounce ideas of someone, but then I usually just get distracted or de-motived so I try not to do that. Also just putting the words down in an email, somehow take them out of my mind... it's the reason I haven't talked much about what I'm doing on my Journal project besides general frustrations or things I've learned. I don't want to lose momentum chatting about it. I got the above link from Philip Pearson's 2nd Post blog who has this to say: People spend a lot of time messing around talking about what they want to code, and how they're going to do it. What they forget is that the most important thing that decides whether a project will succeed or not is motivation. If you come up with a good idea, the best time to build it is now. If you talk about it for a week, that's a week worth of motivation you just wasted talking rather than coding. Philip's the guy who wrote the Python Community Server and the Blogging Ecosystem. I can barely read his blog because it's messed up on Mozilla, but he just announced today a couple new projects that he's completed (or more like 1 plus another half done). Very cool... just get it done, baby. -Russ [Russell Beattie Notebook] 8:27:59 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Pair Programming. A coworker and I once stumbled on to the perfect way to Pair Program - using VNC. You sit facing each other, so you can have some modicum of privacy, but then when you're working on some code or a problem, you fire up VNC and code together. All without the hassle of changing chairs, complaining about keyboards, leaning over, BO, that sort of thing. It's amazing how productive you can be this way. -Russ I thought of this while reading Gerhard Froehlich's weblog... I'd post to a permalink, but he has (ahem) "redesigned" the blog and I cant find any (as well as barely being able to follow the posts... I think it's time for a "version 2"). [Russell Beattie Notebook] 8:25:44 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

"We struggle between 1% of what we know and 1% of what we don't know, but rarely come across the 98%  of what we don't know that we don't know." - Buckminster Fuller 8:12:50 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Pretty Resources. Some of the best compilation of weblog world: - Science Blog - Unknown Blog - Green blog - Liberal Progressive Blog - New Left Directory - Journalist Blog - Literary Blog - Unesco Library Blog - Research Blog... [A Beauty Lover] 10:12:09 AM    trackback []     Articulate []