2,500 web pages bookmarked in del.icio.us

For some reason I really get a kick out of the total number of web pages I've bookmarked in del.icio.us. My bookmarks in del.icio.us have turned into a database of useful references that I've found on the web. It's like valuable property, and it's like my memory. My own web cache. Yea, del.icio.us is cache for humans.

Today I reached 2,500 web resources bookmarked. The last time I wrote about this was a 1000 bookmarks ago in December 2005 on my other blog. Since I first began using del.icio.us it has become a better and better service.

Software Definition For Weblog

This article about how to use a wordpress blog as a content managment system has a good definition that sums up the blog software. From Weblog to CMS with WordPress:

For those who have been living on a different planet, a weblog (or blog) is an online diary that contains a series of posts displayed in date order (newest first). In addition, blogging software usually provides an archive mechanism for filing away old posts, permalinks (human-readable URLs for each post), some means of classifying posts, a search engine, RSS feeds, and other goodies. However, the key factor is ease of use for web novices: allowing the creation of web pages using a WYSIWYG editor and without requiring any knowledge of HTML, CSS, FTP, or other acronyms.

Tech and Publishing Guys

Jon Udell:

What's in a name? A lot. The podcasting and AJAX revolutions were mainly linguistic phenomena. Suddenly there were words that crystallized ideas and patterns of behavior that had been evolving for years. We won't solve our problems by coining new buzzwords. But awareness of what our words condition us to think, and not think, has never mattered more.

Phil Windley:

Over the past few years, blogging has really taken off. A few days ago Doc Searls was pondering that he used to be in the Technorati Top 100 and now he’s not. Why? There’s all kinds of other stuff people are blogging about: “celebrities, politics, sex and other topics that float atop the polular mainstream media charts.” I’m at 3000 and something on the Technorati list, but still I get multiple tens of thousands of page views per month. Clearly, people at the top are getting a lot more.

Doc Searls:

Blogging as we knew it is done. The pioneering stage is over. The early adopter-early majority stage is here.

Fletcher, Scoble, Forrester Report, Blogging, Govtech and Del.icio.us

Wayne Hall points out David Fletcher has a new post about Utah IT.

I liked Scoble's post today about blogging. I like the small things in blogs.

Forrester has come out with an interesting report about social computing. I think this is some interesting traction if Forrester is giving it thumbs up.

From the executive summary:

Individuals increasingly take cues from one another rather than from institutional sources like corporations, media outlets, religions, and political bodies. To thrive in an era of Social Computing, companies must abandon top-down management and communication tactics, weave communities into their products and services, use employees and partners as marketers, and become part of a living fabric of brand loyalists.

I've heard that word of mouth is the most effective form of promotion or dissemination. I'm certainly more interested in what the people around me have to say about things than what I see on TV. I feel the same way about blogs. So this makes sense to me. It seems to me however that the internet and electronic communication gives individual word of mouth a microphone it never had before, and which has always been the great advantage of mass communication mediums.

Kansas City Star has a good piece on blogging.

I found the Kansas City Star story and Forrester report from Steve Rubel's Micro Persuasion, which I'm liking.

I recently sent some emails to some bloggers and I got emailed back. I love it so much. That's one of my favorite things about blogs and the blogosphere is that when you are looking at a blog, the person is right there, ready to talk to you -- they are talking to you. If you are there, being a person, the person on the other end is there for you to talk to. I've had some of the best communication/email exchanges with bloggers. Connections are pure joy.

I told Alice Marshall about Govtech's new buttons. Government Technology has added a "Bookmark to Del.icio.us" button to all the news stories on the homepage, and to the GT Mag stories, and the Digital Communities stories.

The eRepublic IT department also recently informed me that they are also adding the del.icio.us bookmark to all the stories in the content categories, such as E-Government, GIS, Homeland etc. I think this is really cool, and I think this will then encompass all the stories on govtech.net. One of the things I've wanted and I know executives at eRepublic (the parent company) have wanted was to build more of a community around the subject of egovernment and technology in government on the internet. There are bloggers around interested in technology in government, so I think this is a nice step in the direction of involving govtech more with people online. Government Technology has also added a feedback button, so people can now easily send feedback about articles.

Memetrackers

I just defined Memetrackers on my other blog.

Social Software is Stuff That Gets Spammed

I like this definition of social software from Wikipedia:

Social software lets people rendezvous, connect or collaborate by use of a computer network. The term came into more common usage in 2002, largely credited to Clay Shirky who organized a "Social Software Summit" in November of that year. Shirky defines social software as "stuff that gets spammed."

Washington Post Puts Del.icio.us On Its Pages

Matt McAlister:

Washingtonpost.com and CJRDaily both added "Bookmark with del.icio.us" buttons on their article templates today. At the bottom of every article is a link that spawns a popup for users to save this article with del.icio.us and to add tags to help them find this article later.

Steve Rubel comments.

PR Newswire also plans to put del.cio.us on its pages.

Where’s David Fletcher?

Has anybody seen David Fletcher on the web recently? He hasn't blogged on his blog for awhile but I know he sometimes starts other blogs other places. His del.icio.us account also hasn't been active since January 13, which is kind of odd.

I check his blog about 5 days a week. It occurred to me that I'd probably keep checking his blog for about 6 months before I gave up.

Blonde Joke

Robert Scoble links to the best blonde joke ever.

Utah Rural Blog

There's a state blog about rural Utah.

Here's part of the description:

The primary purpose of "What's Happening in Rural Utah" is to share good news about economic development across rural Utah. In addition, we will share information about important economic development issues impacting rural Utah.

Meeting Another eGovernment Blogger

About 3 weeks ago I went to the 2005 California Best of the Web.

I was standing in the hall and a lady got my attention. She told me she does the Experimental Space blog. I instantly knew who she was. I often check over at that blog because it has some good tech and egov news there sometimes and I like it. Recently I decided to post the New Oxford American Dictionary: 'Podcast' Is the Word of the Year story in GT News after seeing her mention it in her blog.

This is the first time I've met in person another blogger I knew about through the web, and who knew me through my blog (and we never directly communicated or address each other before, through email or anything. Just read each other's blogs.) It was exciting and I really enjoyed it, and I'm amazed by how similar our knowledge and action is. I asked her if she uses del.icio.us. She said yes, and said she reads David Fletcher's bookmarks. That's awesome. I told her I read his bookmarks too. (For a Govtech News editor, a Gov IT director's travels around the Web is an amazing resource.) I asked her how she knew it was me that does this blog that you're seeing right now. She said she read my name tag I was wearing; it said Nick Mudge.

I've read about other bloggers and people meeting in person. It's nice to experience it.

Afterwards I realized that one of the person's bookmarks I have within my del.icio.us account is bhaven, and I realized that those are Barbara Haven's bookmarks. I had been looking at her bookmarks without knowing who she was. I recently blogged about Tim Berners-Lee starting a blog, which I found through her bookmarks, though I knew it was her by then.

Tim Berners-Lee Begins Blogging

The guy who invented the Web, Tim Berners-Lee started a blog last week. He got 455 comments on his first post before he turned comments off.

Here's one of the things he said in his first post:

In 1989 one of the main objectives of the WWW was to be a space for sharing information. It seemed evident that it should be a space in which anyone could be creative, to which anyone could contribute. The first browser was actually a browser/editor, which allowed one to edit any page, and save it back to the web if one had access rights.

And then:

Now in 2005, we have blogs and wikis, and the fact that they are so popular makes me feel I wasn't crazy to think people needed a creative space.

I’m Changing My Blogging

I'm going to be doing most of my blogging from now on at my blog Content & Technology Crossroads, priorly named Intersection (Just changed the name 5 minutes ago).

The reason is because I've noticed that most of my interest is in the evolving landscape of the interaction between people, content and Web technology to provide better information services over the Internet. I want to narrow in on that subject. And it seems to me that I'm most adept on that subject.

Most of what it will have on it will be applicable to eGovernment, as it will be applicable to anyone or thing that has an interest in providing better technology, information and public relations on the Internet.

And I should add, I think it will be more personal because sometimes I just feel like writing what I feel like writing.

Outsourcing Video Game Playing to the Chinese

NY Times: Ogre to Slay? Outsource It to Chinese

Here's a comment about this story left on Digg.com that cracked me up:

oh my gosh! I can't believe that we are even outsourcing our videogame playing so we don't have play it ourselves! What is this world coming to? TOO lazy to build up your own character's experience, so you pay someone else to do it for you? REALLY PATHETIC! But it sounds like a great job!!!

BBC Getting Into Blogging

From Nevon:

The BBC's political editor, Nick Robinson, started a blog last week, called Nick Robinson's Newslog.

His first post includes this text:

[...] The BBC is about to start a trial series of blogs, each of which will be built using the kind of software employed by millions of weblogs around the world. This is the first of that trial.

The 'kind of software' Robinson refers to presumably means TypePad as his blog is a TypePad blog (so a very nice coup for Six Apart Europe in getting this deal with the BBC).

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