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WhyBlogsI'm also coming up on a year (2/16) and so is Johanna. So to those of you who started writing/reading blogs in the last year or so: What has been your experience? What has happened as a result of blogging for you? What have you learned? What benefits are there for you? Esther 01/25/04 DaveLiebreich keeps a weblog. Others do too. Why? Which ones do you decide to read? What does the author get out of a blog? What does the reader get? Curious mind wants to know... JohannaRothman 2003.02.06 The aspect that decided me was the "public journal" aspect; I see it as something which would force me to trot out one thought everyday in front of some readers, as practice for more structured ways of trotting out my thoughts, such as articles or books. But there's more to it than that. Community plays into it, as with Wikis. Where are the other AYErs' blogs ? LaurentBossavit 2003.02.07 Laurent, I can't see your blog properly under Netscape 4.78. I can in Exploder. Aside from that, tell us more about the community part of it. -- JohannaRothman 2003.02.07 A blog can be a journal, but also at the same time one voice in an ongoing conversation. This is something that I picked up on recently, from an opinion piece on XP (http://alchhoni.notlong.com/) which referred to such a conversation. There are all sorts of technical gadgets, pings and blogrolling and trackbacks and such, which have sprung up to support these conversations. See also http://www.microcontentnews.com/articles/tippingblog.htm which makes an interesting connection between blogs and Malcolm Gladwell's model in The Tipping Point. -- LaurentBossavit 2003.02.07 I found that tippingblog essay to be very exciting. Dreams of influencing .... and [Pinky: what are going to do tonight, Brain?] ruling the world! [evil laughter] (CompanyOfFriends discussion moved to that page) KeithRay 2003.02.08 Well, I made the leap into bloggin. See http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/blogger.html and http://www.jrothman.com/weblog/htpblogger.html for my blogs. (I know, one is enough for most people. Not me :-) Now I just have to get the background and links right... -- JohannaRothman 2003.02.26 I've been watching this slow movement to blogs recently. It reminds me of a fellow naval officer who used to write "Quotes of the Day" on the dayroom blackboard. I liked the quotes as thought provoking. I've just read through Johanna's two sites and have read several others in our field. There is more to them than simple quotes and they are original to boot. Johanna, others, I can't help wonder, how to you intend to keep up this volume and quality? Mike, I hear of great and crazy things every day. I don't have to write a lot, just a little. Then I hear more. Then I write more. Doncha just love positive feedback loops? -- JohannaRothman 2003.03.28 In the meantime, I keep prodding myself to start and continue a journal as recommended by Jerry in, e.g., Becoming a Technical Leader. That would be private, but I'm very much in the fits and starts stage. MikeMelendez 2003.2.28 Laurent, Thanks for the tipping point reference. Like Mike, I wonder how people will keep up useful content. Although I suppose there are some that don't. Is there a really bad blogs list? - BeckyWinant 2-28-03 Johanna, Please turn on RSS sydication for your blogs. (No, I'm not sure how to do it in Blogger :-) I find I can "drink from the firehose" much more easily if I do it through an RSS-based aggregator. -DaveLiebreich 2003.02.28 Dave, what is RSS syndication? How do you turn it on in whatever you are using? You are talking to at least one person that doesn't know the terminololgy. SteveSmith 2003.02.28 I have just one problem: I have no clue what to do with it :-) Do you know what I do with it?? For other intros about RSS, Userland's information. JohannaRothman 2003.02.28 And for those of you who just want to know when the blog has changed, I have bloglet subscription things on my blogs. -- JohannaRothman 2003.03.04 My answer to the original question: Q: Why blogs? A: Because blogging is fun! I am having fun with my little blog. I can write a short snippet -- 200-300 words -- and away we go. It reminds me of a writing practice I used a few years ago. Every morning, no matter what, I wrote for 5 minutes. Just 5 minutes. After a month of days, I had an article. Now, I concentrate more on capturing the little bits of energy that cross my mind -- picking field stones, I think Jerry would call it. I use index cards to capture initial thoughs or write down something I'm chewing on. When I'm reading I copy snippets that catch my eye and imagination or raise an internal reaction (with attribution, of course). Later I develop the snippets or cards into columns. Blogging (so far) seems to be some where between one of my index cards and a column (of the sort I write for stqe or stickyminds). We'll see how it goes. EstherDerby 030403 Another reason to blog: I'm meeting people I've never met before. I like that! JohannaRothman 2003.03.04 Blogs are also a great tool just for recording interesting web links. I've been using Blogger for almost three years now to keep track of articles and web sites related to my interests in software development, technology, business, and humans . All my posts are stored in one accessible place rather than as bookmarks on different machines, etc. My entries usually consist of a link to the page and a quote pulled from the article (kind of like tomalak.org does). The quote is useful for searching through the entries using blogger.com's "show posts containing" feature. Also, the link may rot, but the quote helps me to remember what the article was about, and sometimes googling using key words from the post may let me locate it at a new link. With Blogger, getting a quote from the article is pretty easy, just highlight the text you want, then use your "Blog This" bookmarklet and the text is copied to your entry. StephenNorrie 2003.03.04 & 2003.03.05 Steve - Your blog is fascinating! I spent some time wandering around and found it very interesting. Thanks for letting us have a look. EstherDerby 030703 Thanks Esther. This is the first time I've ever pointed to my blog in public. For people who are interested in blogging, but are overwhelmed or intimidated by the amount of work involved in a maintaining a public blog (generating original content regularly, expressing interesting opinions, creating a visually appealing template, setting up user commenting, talkbacks, RSS feeds, etc.), you can ignore all that and just use it as a record of your web StephenNorrie 2003.03.07 I have looked at various blogs. They seem interesting. One problem is I don't know what I need my service provider to provide. I use AT&T worldnet. Does anyone else use that AT&T and have a blog? "How to" tips appreciated. DwaynePhillips 7 March 2003 Dwayne, I see from your wiki page that you have web space with your ISP account. You probably have FTP access to it. That is all that you need to use Blogger; I don't know about the requirements of other blogging tools. My blog is just using the web space and FTP access that is provided by my ISP. Let me know if you would like any more information. StephenNorrie 2003.03.07 Dwayne - My blog is set up with blogger, so I can tell you how to do that. I don't know how to do the RSS part yet, though. ED 030803 A Report on My Life as a Blogger, by Esther Derby. I wrote to a friend recently that I had entered the world of blogging and that if nothing else, it gave me the illusion of accomplishment: I got the template set up, I figured how to do titles, I even (with Laurent's help) have RSS working. All those completed tasks! I imagine it's sort of like what people with hobbies do. I fiddle around with my blog, and try new things on the template, and by new hobby-related stuff (well, I upgraded to BloggerPro for $35 a year). I have noticed that I am writing down little snippets of things that I wouldn't have captured before. Which is good (I think). It's a sort of public way to gather fieldstones. ED on 032103 The creator of Blosxom, a MacOS X blog tool writes: The most perplexing thing is how little crossover there appears to be between the Wiki and Weblog worlds. In my mind, they're like peanut butter and chocolate. Yet reactions to this not-particularly-bold assertion suggest something more along the lines of broccoli and jello. I agree with his perplexity. And I'm soon to be blogging myself. So far, Blosxom lives up to its guarantee of "Weblogging in under 15 minutes", though since the log is powered by MacOS X's apache server, on my laptop, which is behind a firewall, no one is going to see the result until I figure out how to do the 'static' option and copy the html files to my dot-mac account. My first blog entry = KeithRay 2003.03.22 Re: The most perplexing thing is how little crossover there appears to be between the Wiki and Weblog worlds. . . . Wiki is a conversation. Blogs are tangled monologues. Wiki can drive to consensus, with challenges, new insights, refinement, and the occasional gift of a startling idea that came out of nowhere (until it arrives, when it becomes obvious.) Blogs are solipsism. JimBullock, 2003.03.23 (Added comment being responded to, 2003.03.24) sol�ip�sism ( P ) Pronunciation Key (slp-szm, slp-)
The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified. The theory or view that the self is the only reality. [Latin slus, alone; see s(w)e- in Indo-European Roots + Latin ipse, self + -ism.] solip�sist n. solip�sistic adj. Source: The American Heritage� Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright � 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=solipsism Don't hold back, Jim, tell us how you really feel! :-) As for the propostition that wiki people and blog people don't mix: I like chocolate and peanut butter together, better actually, than I like either alone. I'm not sure I'd like brocolli and jello together. I eat brocolli often, and I definitely enjoyed jello after two days of Norwalk flu.
ED 032203 Jim, I disagree with you. Writing, in any form, is about the writer and the writer's thoughts. Blogs are honest about that. Even the ones with comments don't bring people to consensus, although they do encourage alternative perspectives. We haven't come to consensus on this wiki, nor on any of the other wikis I read. At best, there's discussion, but most of the time, the people who disagree continue to disagree. No consensus there. Of course, you're entitled to your opinion. Just don't expect me to come to consensus with you. -- JohannaRothman 2003.03.24 Wow. Look at all this stuff that didn't come from me, some of which I didn't anticipate or expect. Seems I'm engaged with intelligence not my own. This is almost exactly like having a conversation, vs. stewing isolated in my own thoughts and biases. How wonderful. Astonish me some more. A few specific replies:
I really don't know what anybody's disagreeing with other than things I didn't say. Then again, because I'm not the sole authoring intelligence here I don't have to be looking for any particular thought when it shows up, nor is my opinion the determining factor on what gets posted and kept. Exactly unlike writing a Blog. That's quite wonderful. Do I have to say "Blogs are cool" at this point? I never said they weren't cool, just different. - JimBullock, 2003.03.24 Jim, Yesterday: Blogs are tangled monologues.... Blogs are solipsism. These sentences caught my eye. I interpreted them as strong statements against blogs. Today: Do I have to say "Blogs are cool" at this point? I never said they weren't cool, just different. Now I'm confused. Did I interpret you wrongly? Have you changed your mind? Inquiring minds want to know. SteveSmith 2003.03.24
Interesting. Changed my mind, no. "Against" blogs, no. I'm a bit baffled by speech laden with "positions" anyway. "Against" chunky peanut butter? "For" agile? (Or more properly: Agile(tm), which, having poked fun I am now obviously "against." Sigh.) Seems silly. Seems like a lot of work. The two quoted lines feel like observations - candidate facts - to me. In the context of this question: " . . . how little crossover there appears to be between the Wiki and Weblog worlds" those observations feel like a partial answer to me, with a little allowance for poetic language. I didn't say a thing about monologs being bad, tangled or otherwise. I'm not sure solipsism is bad. Both of those came from other folks. And incidentally they both illustrate exactly the difference I suggest between Blogs and Wiki. Blog content originates mainly in one mind (there are hybrids now where you can comment), controlled, vetted and judged by one mind. The content of wiki originates with many minds. Is anyone arguing with the observations? -- JimBullock, 2003.03.25 Jim, ...with a little allowance for poetic language For me, the language was inflammatory rather than poetic. The language distracted me and I believe it poorly communicated your intended message. What do you think? I agree with you that a blog and wiki are different in some respects. They are also similar in at least one respect -- the desire to communicate ideas to a wider audience. I think the choice of a medium is a matter of personal preference. If someone prefers to communicate via a blog, it's okay. If someone prefers to communicate via a wiki, it's okay. If someone likes to use both mediums, it's okay. I suspect that you agree with the previous statements. Yes? SteveSmith 2003.03.26 I'm beginning to think that blogs are a means of thinking out loud in plain view. Being in everyone's view carries a level of excitement, hence enjoyment, but I think the exposure also draws the blogger to focus more, expecially if they want to be read. Journalism probably began in a similar fashion with older technology. MikeMelendez 2003.03.25 Question: What % of happy bloggers are extraverts, prefering to "think out loud" (or: "I don't know what I think until I say it.") Is there a similar "...until I write it." preference? Learn by saying, by writing or by teaching? It appears that blogs would appeal in any of those cases. What is the response generation rate of blogging vs. wiki? Are happy bloggers experiencing more networking as a side effect? BobLee 2003.03.25 Is anyone arguing with the observations? Yes. That is, I'd like to add to them. "Yes, and..." rather than "No, I disagree." The content of wiki originates with many minds. True. There are also varying degrees of "melding" of this content into consensus, insight, etc. On WardsWiki some pages are the anonymous result of hundred of editing moves by dozens of contributors. On the AYE wiki the voices are more distinct. It's not quite a mailing list: pages serve as focal points for new content for a long time (some of these conversations continue from year to year). Bookshelved works differently again - less conversational, more playful, less intense, less involved... Blog content originates mainly in one mind. True - at the time of writing. I form the impression, though, that a blogger is usually someone who also reads lots of blogs. There is a "conversation" to the extent that the content on the other blogs dislodges thoughts of your own which end up in the next post you write, sometimes with a link, or a link and a quote. Sometimes, as with Stephen Norrie's, the original thought is reduced to its barest expression : "Today I noticed this bit of content"; no less interesting for that. Stephen's entries sometimes prompt me to consider writing about this or that topic, because I saw mention of it on his blog and I know that one other person is interested. So I'd change "originates in one mind" to "is articulated in one mind". LaurentBossavit 2003.03.25 I really enjoy reading what bright, thoughtful articulate people are thinking about the wonderful world of software. I've found a bunch I like, and as more of my pals start their own blogs, my list is growing long. I need a News Aggregator. Specifically, a News Aggregator that I can run without having to write (or think about) scripts or code (tags are ok). Needs to run on an XP machine. I looked checked out a bunch listed here: http://blogspace.com/rss/readers. They all seem to require me to know stuff I don't know, or to down load .Net Frameworks. Does any one have a recommendation or some advice? I can now generate RSS from my blog, but I can't read anyone elses. :-( EstherDerby 032603 For me, the language was inflammatory rather than poetic. Well, clearly. Why is "solipsism" a bad word? The language distracted me and I believe it poorly communicated your intended message. What do you think? I'm not so sure. Collective editing like on Wards Wiki can't happen on a blog. Seems very, very different to me. I just reread my - er - apparently stimulating contribution again, and I'm not inclined to change a word, including the one that seems to be causing such grief. . . . Writing, in any form, is about the writer and the writer's thoughts. Blogs are honest about that. The theory that the self is the only thing that can be known and verified. Seems bang on. --JimBullock, 2003.03.26
This quote came in my e-mail today. Seems like a synchronicity event, doesn't it? Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity. Author: Christopher Morley -- JimBullock, 2003.03.27 Cool... fame and fortune are due any minute. ;-) A search on "memoranda software" (my Blog's name and theme) lists my site within the top 10 results. "managing product development" brings Johanna's blog at the number two result. And "software management improvement" lists Esther's blog at the 10th result. KeithRay 2003.03.27 I have turned on RSS for both of my blogs. I would love it if those of you who run RSS would try this and tell me if I succeeded :-) JohannaRothman 2003.03.28 Johanna: I have been able to read your feed using Amphetadesk. Scary name, but the product seems to do what it's supposed to. (Dave Smith recommended it as an aggregator. Works on Macs and PCs). ED 033103 History of blogs -- http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/weblog_history.html I never figured out why the macrumors web site linked to I guess the guy was a fan. KeithRay 2003.03.29 Since I'm new around here, I'll go back to Johanna's original questions: Why (keep a weblog)? Although you wouldn't know it to look at my weblog, I originally started it as a way to start writing and putting that writing out in public. The attractiveness of doing it on a weblog is that there isn't all the baggage that goes along with other avenues of getting one's writing out in public. Which ones do you decide to read? For me, I like to read blogs from folks in the testing community (Brian Marick's is my favorite there) and folks in the same (or related) technical areas that I am working in. Since I'm a Microsoft employee, I particularly like to read weblogs from other MS folks for a couple of reasons: It's interesting to hear about what folks on other teams inside Microsoft are thinking about and working on and I'm interested in how open other MS folks are via their "public" channel (some MS bloggers are quite open about what's going on in their teams). What does the author get out of a blog? An outlet for their writing. A place to collect thoughts, ideas, and feedback. What does the reader get? Opinions from people that matter to you (since you select from the myraid of weblogs out there). Also, opinions from people who are actually there at places and events that we all hear about but aren't professional journalists (I forget the term for this kind of reporting). For example, one of the most followed weblogs in the early days of the Iraq war was Salam Pax's (http://dear_read.blogspot.com), a guy who was actually blogging from Baghdad. RonPihlgren 2003.05.04 Ron is absolutely right. Historians value almost without price the personal diaries that are left around a hundred or more years later, rather than the distilled, N-th hand accounts of other historians. Myself, I've never claimed that my books are more (or less) than reports of my own experiences or the experiences that others have related to me. I think a lot of people like to see that data and form their own models from it. That's a lot of what AYE is about - a kind of face-to-face BLOG, or perhaps a FLOG? (No.) - JerryWeinberg 2003.05.05 Jerry, the "fieldstone" metaphor you described in your writing workshop is a powerful one for me. I see each entry in my blog as a fieldstone. Or maybe a fieldpebble -- my blog ideas come out in smallish chunks, which fits the way I think them up. I've been delighted to find that my blog attracts people to my web site. For some reason, I didn't expect that. -DaleEmery 2003.05.06 Gee, I was hoping like mad that my blogs would attract people to my web site :-) It seems to be working, at least to attract people to my blogs. My RSS pages are the most highly trafficked pages on my site. JohannaRothman 2003.05.06 Inc. magazine had a article on blogs recently, mostly as a form of "free advertising" and a way to form a community around a corporation's members. KeithRay 2003.05.06 It's not surprising that Inc. would take that approach, given that their approach to the world is "How can I make money from this?" --DaveSmith 2003.05.07 SteveSmith 2003.05.09 Steve, are you going to add comments to your blog? Can you add step-by-step instructions for those of us whose inboxes are full of messages because we can't figure out how to put those various pending messages somewhere? For those of you who are considering news aggregators, I bought the full version of NetNewsWire, http://www.ranchero.com, and really like it. -- JohannaRothman 2003.05.10 Johanna, please tell me more about "comments"? I don't know what you mean. SteveSmith 2003.05.10 Steve, Comments are a technique for visitors to comment on your blog entry. Esther, Laurent, Dale, Keith, and I all have comments. If you'd had comments, I would have posted a comment that said, "What's the first step in making my email manageable?" and gone from there. -- JohannaRothman 2003.05.11 Y'all only have yourselves to blame. I found enough good stuff trolling around your blogs that I need an aggregator. First, amusing one "ZaoBao" (an accidental addition to project Chandler) has some issues and isn't really being maintained. So, HotSheet looks interesting - multi platform pure Java (2EE) implementation, blah, blah, blah, buzz-word, jargon, trend-du-jour. Except HotSheet isn't working right either. So, now I have an IDE (Eclipse), a JDK (both Sun's and IBM's actually), and a CVS client (TortoiseCVS) up. Next comes getting the source, a Beans framework, and Ant (build tool). Yep, I'm about to do code. Having this thing not work on a stupid problem - not finding some config files, and can't figure out how to make them - is ticking me off. Give me another day or so, and I'll have this stuff going on Linux and Windows both - by choice, all the tools are cross platform - with the storage cross mounted so it doesn't matter what environment I'm in. It's been years since I've written a line of code. This is what happens when an app I want doesn't work right, and I run into that ridiculous "you don't have hands'on in the last three weeks with the tech buzz-word of the moment" nonsense on the same day. Be afraid. Be very afraid. - JimBullock, 2003.06.03 (Give me a pile of dev tools big enough, and I can move the world - the Greek has been mistranslated for years.) There's now a "play stock market" web site for blogs... A blog's profits relate to the number of incoming and outgoing links. Mine was just added (not by me -- I wonder by whom) but isn't trading yet. Esther's is valued at $4421, Laurent purchased 500 shares. Johanna's "Hiring" blog is valued at $3525, someone using the alias RC has 2125 shares. KeithRay 2003.06.14 I'm the one who had Weblogs pick up your blog. (That's where Blogshares goes for new blog data.) Insider trading - your blog links to mine, so that will increase my valuation when yours is indexed. Blogshares is a bit like pinball. Your one million dollars sound cool until you find out the top ranking players are worth billions. I'm not sure I'll keep finding the fun of it worth the time it takes (which is time spent not blogging). LaurentBossavit 2003.06.16 One of my (frustrated and wanting to be helpful) subscribers sent me this URL to help me fix my RSS feed: Apparently earlier version of RSS allow tags that make RSS 2.0 choke. Esther 062303 My feed is invalid. Great. Now what? SteveSmith 2003.06.23 Interesting link on: "What is a weblog?" Asks some questions about weblogs vs. wiki, similar to those above. -- JimBullock 2003.06.23 http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/whatMakesAWeblogAWeblog SteveSmith and I had a comment discussion on his weblog on his "Go Dark Loudly" posting, May 21, 2003. He last blogged on June 4, then "dried up", so I commented on his "Go Dark Loudly" entry that he seemed to have lost interest or become too busy. Steve replied: (quote) In your view, how does blogging contrast to wiki? A wiki feels more like a conversation to me. A blog entry feels like a publication. Steve's experience contrasts with Howard Dean's use of Blogging. See "An Interview with Joe Trippi (campaign manager) at for a look at how Weblogs as an organizing and 2-way communication stream are viewed. How "perfect" does a blog entry need to be? Is it a stimulus for feedback or a permant record of polished prose? BobLee 2003.08.21 ("Very Interesting...") The very name, "blog," seems to imply an unpolished piece of work. (Blob?) (I didn't polish this post, so I'll remain AnonymousLurker.)
Updated: Sunday, January 25, 2004 |
