Blogging Formats Junk Food And Shuffle

Blogging And other Animals

There’s a lot of talk lately about the slow down of blogging in terms of the number of bloggers and blog post frequency.I’ve certainly slowed down my blog posting frequency. I don’t have that mania for a daily post as perhaps I did in the past. I’ve allowed various social networking and micro-blogging outlets to soak up a range of smaller spontaneous thoughts.

To me this relates to my previous post about music formats in that I probably see blogging now as the album format with something like Rejaw or Tumblr as the EP format (macro-blogging?) together with Twitter and others (status updates) being analogous to the single in digital download format. Dubious though my analogy may well be I hope it illustrates that I see this dissipation as all being part of the same offering.

Return to Niche?

Statistics would seem to show that people equally have less time or patience to read long form blogs which may well be pushing blogs back towards being a niche offering (no bad thing in my book) whilst the top 10% cruise through into the mainstream (whereupon, much like fresh faced indie music groups who commercialise their sound and who find then a place in the mainstream music charts they then probably sell their soul to the devil and lose much of their former originality and credibility).

Blogs On the Run

The range of formats is probably changing due to the growth of mobile computing via mobile phones & now netbooks and so the long form blog has spawned other complimentary outlets alongside it which suit the different ways that people access the Internet.In the same way that portable music listening, shuffle mode etc has slightly eroded the experience of sitting down and listening to a music album from start to finish because the technology that delivered it changed along with how people choose and consume music.

Junk Food Or Healthy Consumption?

Or perhaps we’d rather see the rise of micro-blogging as akin to the rise of fast ‘junk’ food.TV dinners for the ‘too busy’ generations.

My point is that it’s all just platforms, formats, vehicles or just another tool. It’s either the evolution of blogging or the slow dilution of a once powerful creative outlet into a series of side alleys and cul-de-sacs.
I can’t quite decide which.

Photo by andyp_uk under this creative commons license

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A Sideline In Timelines

I’ve recently started a new blog elsewhere to indulge my penchant for trying out different web based tools. I’d usually happily contain those ideas here but WordPress.com is understandably a little choosy about the type of html code it allows on its blogging platform therefore embedded flash and java script based technologies are currently not permitted unless via a small number of limited partners.

Timelines

So for anyone that’s interested I now have a companion blog called Timelines that is mostly about exploiting various visual ways of presenting information in an interactive way with audio visual and linked elements. I welcome submissions and collaborations. It’s primarily a light hearted playground & scratchpad for ideas & I may link there for various posts that I think could be presented differently.

For example I have presented the many blog posts here in one timeline and the various tape archive posts are able to be explored via another whilst a history of electronic music (ongoing) was started here.

Heres’ to diversification.

Timelines

Timelined

I do enjoy getting inspired by the creative possibilities of technology as sometimes there are better ways to visualize a large ammount of information aside from writing it all down in an essay style.

Creating timelines is one such example where a life history, event timeline or cultural changes can be explored visually. Circavie allows us to create personal timelines of events with interactivity built in by allowing external linking and the embedding of photos and YouTube video.

Sadly I can’t embed any timelines I make on WordPress.com due to the restricted code policies here but it’s easy to embed on platforms that have a slightly more laissez faire attitude to html code use such as a self hosted site, blogger etc.

I’m slowly starting a couple of blogs elsewhere that will allow me to experiment with a few visual technologies and will be making their locations public very soon.

For now you can view a timeline I’m in the middle of here (and I’m open to suggestions as to who or what I’ve currently left out).

 

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WordPress-The Shock Of the New?

Yesterday many of us awoke to a new WordPress.com web interface. Despite my initial surprise I have to put my hand up and and say I’m having a positive reaction to it.Maybe I’m wired up a certain way but I’m finding it reasonably intuitive so far.

It’s taken me a little while to re-orientate but the addition of a searchable gallery of previously uploaded media has been on my ‘yes please’ list for a while.

The previously previewed partial return of syndicated stats on individual post stats is an welcome addition too.

It took me a while to realise that the editing of a previously posted item was obtained via just opening the post in manage and that timed posting was still there but only revealed by clicking on edit next to ‘publish immediately’.

The ability to compose a post in full screen mode (Alt+Shift+G) is also intriguing if only for providing a slightly more distraction free writing environment.

Adding self hosted images is taking me a while to get fluent with due to caption and description options and the automatic assumption that thumbnails always point to full images but so far I’ve yet to find a feature change that irks me as the loss of the built in spell checker suits me fine as my GB browser spell checker was always fighting against the US centric WordPress based version previously anyway.

People hate change but sometimes the shock of the new can bring realisation that there’s a different way of doing things. I think the only thing that would improve the interface would be a drag and drop widget approach so that each user could customise to their own priority module preferences but otherwise you can call me strange but I like it (it even looks like I can finally post messages via the Safari browser).

The rumour is (I hesitate to use the term ‘the word on the street is…’) that WordPress.com may integrate more social networking features into its web blogging platform in the future.Oooh Ch-ch-changes.

 

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Updated Podcast Feed

I’ve re-jigged the podcast feed address for the various audio files of the Tape Archive which enables the download of audio files via iTunes, Songbird or other podcast software of choice. I’ve discontinued the rich media feed in order to ensure the ability for new podcast subscribers to obtain the full history of audio posts.If you subscribed via the old address then please update your settings.

Podcast subscription

 

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Blogger Now OpenID Provider Too

I wrote a while ago about the changes to commenting on Google’s Blogger platform which allowed people to leave comments using an existing OpenID. Now Blogger has finally become an OpenID provider themselves which makes them another high profile backer of the OpenID concept which lets computer users have a single secure and decentralised login name and password for use on a growing number of compatible sites.

Where to get an OpenID

Yahoo’s recent OpenID announcement 

 

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The Anti Stats

Yesterday I wrote briefly about the early day motion calling for disestablishment of the church which had received the motion number 666. Worryingly synchronicity or mere coincidence combined as my related end of day blog stats worryingly revealed themselves (no really).

 

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