Community
Create your own Brand but stay in the Community
Jeffrey Zeldman, a pioneer of web standards and a longtime blogger, quite wrongly posted about the death of the personal home page.
In it, he critiques bloggers and webified folks alike for, perhaps, unwittingly giving away our content and “brand” to other third-parties.
We are witnessing the disappearance of the all-in-one, carefully designed personal site containing professional information, links, and brief bursts of frequently updated content to which others respond via comments. Did I say we are witnessing the traditional personal site’s disappearance? That is inaccurate. We are the ones making our own sites disappear.
Everything I know is Wrong
I read Andrew Keen’s brilliant book The Cult of the Amateur over the weekend. I read it in one sitting.
I’m stunned. I’m shocked. I feel lost.
In short, with a mere 200 pages, Andrew convinced a hardnose like me that I’m wrong. About everything. About a great many things having to do with the internet.
I spent most of Monday in a fog. I felt like deleting my blog, shutting down my business, and going to work on a lawn crew for the next ten years. I’m not joking.
I think I’m starting to recover a bit. But who knows?
Still not getting Twitter. Help me out.
I’ve been on Twitter now for a while (maybe four months?). And this is the second time I’ve joined. And I’m still not fully getting it. It’s extremely time consuming when I use it.
While it might only be little flashes of light throughout the day (using Twirl), it’s still distracting when you are working on a project. Or on the phone with a client.
Ted Murphy of PayPerPost tries Social Networking in Central Florida
Ted Murphy, the founder of controversial Orlando-based PayPerPost, is at it once again.
He has recently founded a social network for Central Florida web workers called Doterati. There’s much wrong with this, but perhaps a few things right with it. I’m all about giving someone a second chance - even when Death Star attack sirens are going off in my head.
When I say he “founded” a social network, I mean to say that he spent an afternoon or two using Ning’s excellent network-creating web application to slap up a few pages to get it going. He did buy the domain name however (in his own name), and he has relegated himself to a “user” as far as any casual visitor to the site would know.
Email is Dead for Me
After a less-than-rousing response to a conference in which I invited 18 male friends who live locally, and got only two responses at all, I sent a second, perhaps ill-advised second email the following week, exactly seven days later, asking, “Hey, what gives? Why no response?”
Here’s what I sent (hold your breath - it’s a bit rough, but remember that most of the recipients were people I’ve known for over a decade - all men):
“Delete Unused Accounts” Day
I’d like to solicit the help of the blogging and web community with an idea I had while attending FOWA 2008 in Miami this past weekend. What about one day a year where we, the blogging, community-minded webified folks promote a “Delete Unused Account” Day?
Like many of you, I hear so much about all these web apps and how many “users” they have. As one speaker at FOWA pointed out, web application creators and drug pushers are the only ones who call our customers “users”. Anyway, the point is, I recall how many I’ve signed up for but never used. Or only used once or twice and never went back. Or never really understood it to begin with.
Back on Facebook
I’m not going to elaborate on my recent return to Facebook, despite my prior departure, but I’m going to basically use it as a way to just keep in touch a bit better with folks. I will not be creating any “unique” content there, although my writing here is automatically mirrored on my profile there.
Meet Jake McKee, the Community Guy
I met Jake McKee, a.ka. “The Community Guy” at BlogOrlando this past year and I’ve been meaning to cover his ideas and concepts in more depth since. Briefly, Jake made a splash onto the blogging scene by dragging Lego Corporation, kicking and screaming, into the 21st Century, by getting them to open up and connect with their existing community, all the while building the base of the community to include more and more different types of people.
Palm Bay Can’t have CIA Spy Drone for Now
Palm Bay’s Police Department is apparently a bit miffed because they lost out on getting a spy drone. Huh? 90% of good law enforcement is community based. Flying spy satellites over us to check out supposed crimes is against not only 4th amendment rights (are they going to get a warrant for all of Palm Bay?), but also really steps into a gray area in regards to the Posse Comitatus Act which prohibits the feds from acting like cops (basically).
211 Helpline refers to Planned Parenthood for abortions
I’m exhausted. I was on the radio early this morning to talk about 211 Brevard using taxpayer dollars to give out abortion clinic referrals to an abortion clinic and Planned Parenthood in Orlando. It’s really ridiculous what they are doing. They are tarnishing their own reputation at a time when they are struggling to get continued funding.
The whole story is over on Brevard Outlook here. It continues to amaze me that ordinary people will give the abortion industry a leg up, even at considerable personal risk. If the abortion industry, as a whole, were to stop being able to get their hands on government money, it would collapse. They can’t survive on their “business model” unless they do one of two things: raise prices or take government assistance.
Is Social Networking Finally Breaking Down?
I’m done. With social networking. I canceled both my Facebook and MySpace accounts last week. Why? It’s over. The dream of social networking. I’m convinced that people just don’t “get it”.
TechCrunch reports on a ridiculous new site called LifeAt. It’s supposed to be a social network for building residents in New York City? What’s next? A special website for people who ate at the downtown Mickey D’s last week? It has finally gone beyond the curious grouping of people with similar interests. Young with young. Professionals with professionals.
There are over 300 social networking websites available to sign up for about any interest you might have.
Brevard Ruby Users Group
I started a website for what I hope will be a local users group for Ruby, the programming language, and of course, its more popular Rails framework that is changing the face of web development.
To slap it up quickly, I used Wordpress, which as you may know, is a PHP-based blogging engine. Perhaps a bit of irony in doing that, since I’m somewhat confessing that maybe (ahem!) sometimes PHP still beats Rails.
BlogOrlando
Over 200 bloggers and entrepreneurs from around the state converged upon Rollins College’s Bush Auditorium to hear speakers from around the country come to talk about blogging, social media, and the evolution of the internet community. This was the second year of BlogOrlando, an unconference. Last year, there were 90 attendees. This year, the registration was closed when they hit 290 and the organizers (basically . I was honored to be there and met some awesome people doing some very awesome things.
Free Wireless Access in Brevard
If you live in Brevard, as many of my readers do, and are looking for great places to find free internet wireless access, a good place to start is this page in Brevard Directory. Some Palm Bay residents have pointed out that even the new Starbucks in Palm Bay is not offering wireless access yet. That sure is a mystery to me. Even the Wendy’s at Palm Bay Road and Babcock has free wireless access, although the service there is a little weak since the access point is buried in the manager’s office.
I’m not Duke or his son
For those who write me and wonder if I’m related to Duke or Lynn Salberg, the answer is no. At least not in anyway that I can figure out. Maybe if we went back hundreds of years to the middle ages, our ancestors might have all been huddling in the same ship that crossed the Atlantic or something.
I’m part of the Salberg clan that moved to the Melbourne area in 1973, from Miami. We lived here until about 1980 when my dad took a job with Aramco in Saudi Arabia. Then in 1990, we returned (just as Saddam was about to launch SCUD missiles into our hometown) to Melbourne. And we’ve pretty much been here ever since. Of course, our extended family also moved here in the late 1970’s.
