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webmaster — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:44:06 +0000

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Musings for the week of 2009-01-26

Olaf — Tue, 27 Jan 2009 04:59:59 +0000

If you were sleeping a moment ago, I bet that fire alarm woke you! #

Musings for the week of 2009-01-19

Olaf — Tue, 20 Jan 2009 04:59:59 +0000

A pointer means ready; an hour-glass means busy. So what does it mean when your cursor *disappears* over an application?!? #
Brrrrrrr! #
It’s about 20 degrees warmer than “they” said it would be. #

Musings for the week of 2009-01-12

Olaf — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 04:59:59 +0000

Balthazar got a special quarter. It’s a “bison tentacle.” #
Hemse flooring at Ikea is $0.50 a square foot. Sick! #

Musings for the week of 2009-01-05

Olaf — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 04:59:59 +0000

Kids’ countdown to the new year at noon at Ink in Gainesville. #
Happy New Year! We’re out of here and heading to the beach in the later A.M. #
I was just singing along to a song using my bass voice. My wife said it sounded like a burp! #
New Year’s Day is nearly over. We made it to the beach in time for dinner and look forward to some post-holiday vacationing! #
Heading to the beach on a warm-ish January day! #
Just ate an *immense* amount of food at McGuire’s in Pensacola. #
Mama Mia! The ladies picked the movie tonight… #
Just got back into town. Having real Internet access again is like a sip of really good coffee after a camping trip! #

Musings for the week of 2008-12-29

Olaf — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 04:59:59 +0000

Tomorrow is Christmas – the 5-year-old is starting to vibrate. #
Balthazar just called the clock a “time machine.” Fitting, really. #
I hate cats at Christmas – they break your ornaments! #
Merry Christmas! #
I got the Zoom H2 field recorder! You can expect to hear some live drumming in the future. #

Musings for the week of 2008-12-22

Olaf — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 04:59:59 +0000

Just noticed I’m eating at a place with an 84 health score. If I don’t twit in after lunch, I’m dead. #
I have lived through lunch! Perhaps hot coffee will sterilize my bowels. #
70°F on Dec. 18th – this weather has sapped my energy completely. #
Nothing beats blasting out your favorite tunes from high school on a long car ride. #
Stevie Nicks and Tom Petty were an awesome duet. I can think of two of their songs together. #
Family reunion party tonight with the in-laws. I ate until I felt ill. #
A little girl last night said she wished *I* was her daddy. Awkward! #
Going to Stone Mountain today to enjoy the last day of unseasonal weather. #
So it wasn’t exactly a *warm* day… #
It was 70° only a couple of days ago – now it’s near 20°F! #
I think we’re going to get the Christmas tree up tonight! #

Musings for the week of 2008-12-15

Olaf — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 04:59:59 +0000

Tomorrow I attend a “Build-a-Drum” workshop. Very exciting! #
My son’s kindergarten teacher called me in to pickup a “sharp object.” It was a 3/4″ Forstner drill bit that he had forgotten in his pocket. #
First day of drum building was eventful! Tomorrow, I finish up and get to hear how it sounds. #
A mere 20 hours later and I have a drum from the drum-building workshop! #

Musings for the week of 2008-12-08

Olaf — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 04:59:59 +0000

Didn’t Taco Bell used to put *some* hot sauce on the tacos? Sheesh! #

Where’s “My” Community?

Olaf — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 03:00:20 +0000

I am imagining a better WordPress. For those of you who don’t know, it’s the engine behind Gradin.com, as well as countless other blogs on the Interweb. I have been using WordPress for several years now and I really enjoy it. Its many features have grown, and grown on me. Now that I am expectant of the plugins and updates provided by WordPress and its community, I find myself wanting even more.

Upgrading to Web 2.5
The Web 2.0 movement brought, among many other ideals, the concept of a truly “communal” Internet. We saw the entrance of communities such as MySpace, Orkut, Friendster, and of course, the blog, emerge. I maintain a regular blog and dabble in these other Internet communities, but ultimately find that they are not my thing.

What MySpace, for instance, did for me was to create a social community of friends and people with related interests. It’s a great concept, if only simple. I encountered two main problems with these solutions – set aside your particular opinion about the communities. The first, and most immediate, problem I had was that the site distracted me and my potential audience from my own blog. The other problem, something that took a little longer to become apparent, was that I was stuck into a much larger community than I was really interested in becoming “buddies” with.

My solution to these problems involves the maturation of Web 2.0 – perhaps to Web 2.5. I have heard of Web 3.0, but I don’t think the industry can make such a leap without some smaller steps in between. Web 2.5 allows the blog proprietor like myself to become part of these communities without stepping out of their home base.

The Case Study
My imagined solution looks simple at first glance. I maintain a blog. My friends maintain blogs and/or social networking profiles. I have other blogs/services out there to which I would like to drive attention. Now think of each of these things as containers to which I can subscribe, sometimes in a granular fashion. I build a collection of “friends,” “family,” and “interesting people” that I would like to have a reference to on my site. Today, you have blog rolls or even RSS feeds doing this. But what if you could access a container having someone’s profile and avatar, their blog articles, twitter feeds, and MySpace posts. From that container I can choose what I want to see, and how often I want to see it. Perhaps I just want digests. What’s more, the originator of that container can actually validate my request to subscribe to this data. They can also choose what they’ll allow me to see using templates (e.g. friends, family, co-workers), or define a custom rule just for me. The data continues to remain available through conventional means – say the RSS feed, a MySpace account, etc, but the personal container has controls.

I can extend it beyond the profile containers. Say you want to interact with your email or IM system through your blog. Think about having a single entry point to your personal web experience. The personal blog transforms into a personal dashboard with both public and private views. On the public side, you present your audience with your blog, some profile data, contact information, and perhaps a friend’s blog. Privately, you see your email, all your friends’ blogs, address book, and a calendar with your upcoming events.

There are ways to achieve most of this through conventional means, but there is no “solution” to it all. It takes a fundamental shift.

Back to WordPress
At the beginning of this post, I referred to my need for more in WordPress. WordPress utilizes a model of communal sharing already that leads me to believe that it is one of the strongest contenders to make my dream a reality. I’m jaded, of course, because I use WordPress a lot. However, I’ve also read about the WordPress.com Multi-User (MU) extension making its way to the public domain, BuddyPress. BuddyPress will make WordPress.com (and any other WP MU implementation) a community blog with integrated social networking a la MySpace. This is exactly what I’m talking about, if only on a very small scale. WordPress may have the framework to get where I want, but I still have to reach further for the over-arching API that allows WordPress to talk to social communities outside of itself. I believe WordPress has made the first move in my imagined Web 2.5.

The Solution
In brief, I imagine the final solution as being a web service that handles a centralized API for the OpenSocial, or something similar should the industry choose a better standard. Blog systems such as WordPress would have to utilize plugins to communicate with the API, but MySpace, Orkut, LinkedIn, and others would fit into the picture by being a part of OpenSocial. The custom web service would handle the “mash-up” of these different systems into a personal container. And of course, the user would manage their own container; permissions and contents.

In the end, I’d have my blog, my friends, and my choice. Web 2.0 moves forward and brings together the biggest social community ever on the Internet. Our personal sites become personal dashboards and launch points to our other interests. I think the way to Web 2.5 is clear, and someone out there is surely already working on it. You heard it here, first!