Ruminate

Just saw a blurb for a workshop on using RSS with the perfect tagline: “Know More and Do Less”

I sent this to Eric Meyer, since his post on the subject doesn’t allow for comments:

Your description of a solution to the plague of reverse chronoblogy reads like a description of how to use a good RSS reader. With settings to display the entry tree in chronological order, default “collapsed”– bloglines, feedster, etc. should all provide what you need without a problem…

I guess the question then becomes how much you do on your site proper and how much you leave to tools designed to provide flexible methods for displaying and reading content…

Eric is referring to the issue of seeing what is new, not really discussing content dating per-se, but I have been pondering whether dates really matter at all for most blogs, or if the only real important issue is sequence… which does fit into the discussion.

I chose Movable Type for this weblog a long time ago, and then switched to Textpattern– rejecting Blosxom, the tool that I was most interested in using– because Blosxom relied on the filesystem’s date and time, which is too easily changed when moving files around or posting files from an offline collection, etc.

But do dates really matter at all? I am convinced date-based archives and calendars are of little use for reading a blog. Content which is relevant (or not) remains so regardless of the date it was posted. If most users are like me, they are interested in what Eric is interested in– seeing what is new. Otherwise, they are interested in a specific post, wich means the content, not the date. So what point does the date, without any context to use it as a trail of discovery or interaction, really serve anyway?

Update: Eric pointed me to his earlier entry in which he wrote:

“…saying “yeah, weblogs are backward but you can fix them with an aggregator” is in my mind functionally equivalent to saying “yeah, weblogs are broken but with a completely different method of representing the data and a new piece of standalone software, we can hack around the problem.”

To which I reply [I fixed a few typos here]:

I wonder if the fact that I didn’t get to this quote is due to the fact that the page with the information I was initially responding to (archive page) had your entries in the “wrong” order from what I am used to?

Given your CSS advocacy– a technology with a similar concept in my view– it just makes sense to me that (ideally) the content provider chooses one of a number of different ways to present content while the user would (ideally) be able to get at that content in the way that is best for them.

Your first statement is the case. But weblogs aren’t broken, providers simply have to make an initial, default choice that shouldn’t be the only available avenue. Whether that default choice should be one way or another is open to question, but the answer to that question lies not just in the domain of sequencing, but is directly tied to the frequency of a visitor’s contact with content. Which, in true loopy fashion, ties right back into what RSS and aggregators are best at, which is– in essence– making high frequency contact possible without being forced to a high frequency of (often fruitless) visits…

As a model, embedding this kind of logic in the site itself, as it seems you want to do, doesn’t make as much sense to me as a site providing content in a way that can be manipulated to suit the needs of the user and letting them make those decisions according to what they want. After all, ultimately there will be different preferences and both are right.

• The new Google look has been made official. :: I don’t like it. First, it only half-uses CSS. But the main problem is I want my tabs back. And on a big screen it’s toooooo wiiiiiiiide

• While I’m at it: Google Web Alerts are cool (I’ve used the news clipping service for a while)… but when will they offer their own RSS feeds for this (and quit threatening suits against outside services that do it for them)?

• Epitonic :: The cutting edge of music

• Webjay :: Share playlists of web music… are there other collaborative sites that do this? The nascent social features are very cool

• Zeldman stumbles on actions people take in lieu of having anything material to talk about

• Can’t read the text, but the music is cool

• Alex Schroder [of EmacsWiki!] took notes at Web Based Communities 2004

• Explore a visual map of Google News stories and articles :: tasty

from a very interesting piece by Clay Shirky on ’situated software’:

Situated software isn’t a technological strategy so much as an attitude about closeness of fit between software and its group of users, and a refusal to embrace scale, generality or completeness as unqualified virtues. Seen in this light, the obsession with personalization of Web School software is an apology for the obvious truth — most web applications are impersonal by design, as they are built for a generic user. Allowing the user to customize the interface of a Web site might make it more useful, but it doesn’t make it any more personal than the ATM putting your name on the screen while it spits out your money.

Situated software, by contrast, doesn’t need to be personalized — it is personal from its inception…

In my experience, it is undeniably true that a lot of successful software application projects are those which were conceived to meet local and/or personal and/or limited needs. This is part of the very mythos of programming and at the heart of the open source and free software movement… but I hadn’t thought about it (or seen anyone write about it) as clearly and directly as Clay Shirky does in this piece.

At the same time, many successful software projects do start as commercial, mass-market enterprises. They might fail spectacularly and be familiar to technophiles, but so do thousands of little heeded small-scale projects. I’m not sure that there is the kind of causality and correlation with success that the piece implies.

No matter, that is a small point in an article that is rife with interesting observations. I completely agree that the idea of situated software built by non-traditional “programmers” and end-users to meet specific small group needs– and relying on their social context as part of the application– is where we are going. Knowledge enabling demands it, the tools are slowly arriving to provide it, and this points to a captivating future.

• Speak and Spell Simulator :: c-o-o-l. I loved mine when I was a kid…

• Don’t let the door hit you in the ass on your way out, Dickhead :: Good riddance to bad rubbish

• Structured Procrastination :: I’ll read it later

• Personalized Google searching :: How will it know if I am in a bad mood?

• Sublime’s sublime cover of ‘No Woman No Cry’ :: WebJay

If a born-again Christian believes in literal prophecy and that the end-times are near, shouldn’t they be disallowed from operating heavy equipment, piloting aircraft, and driving? Or should it be expected that they would refuse to do such things?

• Traffic Whoring How-To for blog authors :: (actually, I like Dave Pollard’s site, and his advice is sound, as it usually is)

• Weather forecasts via RSS :: A little more time saved (a little more time to waste)

• Bush sputters and snivels :: then berates aides for letting Kerry discover this secret Republican campaign weapon… the Bible

• Too much sleep harmful to your health :: So is too little. I’m trapped in a Three Bears story, searching for “just right”

• Jim Jarmusch’s new movie is out :: More information on Coffee and Cigarettes from the IMDB

• 100 movies that deserve more love :: Some of my favorites get props

• One more movie link while I’m at it :: Being Charlie Kaufman

• Picking your nose is good for you :: But not so good for your love life…

• Headline writers should be more careful :: ‘Nuff said

I like Scoble’s weblog fine– at least he doesn’t try to hide or deny his evangelism and affinities. But his recent post about Bill Gates made me remember when I was in Orlando at a Gartner Group conference. Bill Gates was a keynote speaker. This group of Fortune 500 Masters of the Universe with their custom tailored suits, Italian leather shoes, and everpresent Palm Pilots– and this was back when the tech bubble was still growing larger and only executives carried PDAs– were reduced to acting like twittering girls on their way to a Britney Spears concert. “It’s Bill! That’s him. Oooohhh. Ahhhhh.” They were all jostling for position in the line to get into the conference hall.

I didn’t even bother to fight the crowd to get in. I entered the hall well after he had started talking, stood at the back for a while, and left early. He’s a smart man, and very rich, but his presence didn’t make me breathless and weak in the knees as I might be if I could hang with Leon Lederman or David Foster Wallace. It takes all kinds…

• Free webcasts available from the Learning Objects Conference :: March 29-30

• Curious biological names :: science humor

• Run your writing through The Passivator :: You will have to use a good browser, like Mozilla or Opera

• Play Zork and other text adventure games via IM :: You are reading a linklog. There are more pages here.

• Use PubSub to find topical material and direct it into RSS feeds :: For your viewing enjoyment

• Free Culture: How Big Media Uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity :: by Lawrence Lessig. Good– no, great– stuff.

• A gathering of Free Culture reviews with comments and an RSS Feed

• The world of forensic art :: as seen on TV

• The new and improved Technorati site is out