Can I Write a Book?
I’ve had many people suggest over the years that I write a book. It’s always been a goal of mine. I even recently had a published author suggest it, which although very complimentary, made me just more depressed.
Here’s why. I don’t have the time. I certainly have the ideas to communicate. I write well. I edit even better. But as life goes on, you get depressed when you don’t finish the things in life you hope to do. Especially the things that you know you can do. I might not be cycling across America anytime soon, but I can write. Now. Today. In fact, I’m doing it right this second.
A Dozen Dirty Reasons to Get a Gravatar
You don’t know about Gravatar, do you? Of course not. That’s why you’re reading this. See? You’re still reading. Follow me, young padawan learner and let me teach you the ways of the Gravatar.
If you are an English major and hate creative explanations, or if you don’t like being told what is good for you, then you could just jump over to Gravatar.com and read the dry explanation there.
Okay, everyone else. We got rid of the stooges in the class. Let’s get back to the fun.
Subtle Blog Changes
I’ve made a few changes of which you need to be aware. Why? So you can become a better blogger. So you can enjoy my blog more. So you can tell me that I’m wrong to make these changes.
1. Blogroll centralized. The first subtle change is I’ve removed most of the external links from the sidebar that were, in essence, a blogroll. This will undoubtedly irritate those twenty or so folks who were getting some free inbound link love on hundreds of pages of Salberg.Org.
Images in WordPress Posts
Photo by ZanastardustFor some time, I’ve been meaning to put a contextual image with each post. I’ve been too busy. Then, I stumbled upon Zen Habits today, because of Leo Babauta’s announcement that he is leaving the Web Worker Daily blog to start an eBook. Fair enough, but I didn’t know he had his own blog anyway, so I happily subscribed.
Then, I noticed his wonderful images from Flickr on each post and I thought, yes, yes… I’d like to do that. Better than creating custom icons for posts as some bloggers do, since I don’t really have time for that. So, I do a little search and find a wonderful guide to using Flickr on blog posts by Skelliewag, to which I also subscribed. (See Part 2 here also).
WordPress could replace “Growing Disenchantment with Social Networking”
In my prior article I wrote briefly about how I believed social networking, as we currently know it via MySpace, Facebook, et. al., is breaking down - and quickly.
Now, Anne Zelinka of megablog GigaOM reports on Chris Messina’s efforts to use WordPress as a platform to enable blogs to share their own contact lists - much like a ‘friends’ network that you might find on some proprietary system. Then, especially if other major blogging platforms emulate this idea, you’ll be able to have your own friends network on your own branded website or blog. Which is as it should be.
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.
Spam is Beyond Control
One thing many folks don’t seem to fully grasp is that if you want to be available, that is to say, if you want people to contact you, then you must allow spam in your life. I hate these Russian-originated stock quote spam emails as much as you, but it is a necessary evil in order that people can conveniently have an email address.
Often, I’ll see blog postings and various tech magazines give a list of dozens of ways to control spam. It is quite often more time-consuming and frustrating to implement those ideas than it is to just let spam take its course.
My Goals for this Blog and this Blog Only
Darren Rowse, who runs the monster site, Problogger.com, recently put out this little challenge to have bloggers write about “developing goals for a blog”. Darren occasionally will put out “group writing” offers with the bait that he’ll include a link to your article if it is pretty good. The guy gets so much traffic that it is almost crazy so people tend to covet a link on his blog. I purposely missed the deadline for two main reasons (not counting my lack of direction lately).
Where’s the Old Blog?
I’ve had a few emails about why I started a new blog, what happened to the old blog, etc. Yes, in a moment of shining clarity I deleted the old blog - forever. I can’t seem to recall the exact clarity anymore that led me to do that, however. I think it had something to do with the overall focus that the blog had strayed toward. You can still see the excerpts of the postings by using Google’s Blog Search and typing “MelbourneLawrence” which was the name of the old blog. I think you’ll see what I mean.
