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Jun
6
How to find new things to read online…use the Human Filter!
Filed Under Blogging, Social Media | 3 Comments
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  photo credit: photopia / HiMY SYeD |
I’m an information junkie. I also share a lot of what I find with coworkers, friends, etc. So when people ask me where I dig this stuff up I often respond “just found while surfing” or “in my RSS feed”. I usually only pass on what I think is good. I call this Human Filtering.
Back in May, Chris Garrett launched this thread on Authority Blogger Forum. The concept was to develop a Blogging Pack with the goal to increase the quality readership of the blogs involved:
First read Michaels post
http://michaelmartine.com/2008/05/14…subscriptions/Second, add your feed URL and Twitter account to this thread
Third we all subscribe to each blog and follow each Twittererer (I will do an OPML file when we have enough people join in to make it easy to subscribe to each)
Fourth we should each at random stumble, favorite and/or comment on a recent post from as many articles THAT WE ACTUALLY LIKE in the pack as we can manage
Sound good?
We have around 1000 users of this forum, should give any blog a good boost if we all join in
So I joined, received a pretty good spike in RSS feed subscriptions, and was exposed to a vast array of new blogs to read.
And now we’re getting to the meat of this post, I’m going to profile a few of those blogs - just the ones that appeal to me. I’ll do this from time to time.
- Codswallop — one of Chris Garrett’s blogs. A good example of how to run a technology blog…with a side niche on productivity. I’m not sure what’s up with its URL though: http://www.cogniview.com/convert-pdf-to-excel/
- Freelance Switch — a big and bright blog dedicated to moving folks into Freelancing. Full of all sorts of advice and information.
- How Not To Write — yes, it’s a blog about writing…sort of. Or about the times between writing when you should be writing, are thinking of writing, but not. Or redefining ‘writing’ from writing…and I’m not sure which is which or even if I’m doing either, but the blog is a good read.
Over the next few weeks I’ll profile others that catch my attention. Stay tuned…
Jun
2
Why trust strangers when you can trust your friends.
Filed Under Doing, Review, Social Media | Leave a Comment
GigPark is a new social media / word-of-mouth referral web 2.0 and Facebook application (whew!)
What all that jargon means is that if you’re looking for a plumber, accountant, real estate agent or magician you have a convenient place where you can ask your friends (or their friends).
The concept is simple; invite your friends to GigPark, and then start asking them questions. Your questions are immediately visible to your friends, and their friends.
Friends, not strangers. What makes GigPark different is that you have a relationship with the people making recommendations - they are your friends or the friends of your friends, not weirdo strangers who may be plugging their own businesses.
When I signed up, one of the GigPark founders immediately became my ‘friend’ (through the magic of programming, I’m sure, since I never met him). Lucky for me, he has 342 friends (everyone signed up to date?) so my query will have some pretty good reach.
To add friends, GigPark makes it easy, hooking into popular online email services. They’ve also developed a GigPark Facebook application that you can add to your Facebook account.
Removing the complex and leaving the simple, this application is similar to the ‘Question & Answer’ feature in LinkedIn. You ask a question of a trusted group and expect that the replies should be of higher quality, or so the theory goes.
My take: it’s a new service so the jury is out. GigPark is still in development, and from reading the FAQ, it looks like they’re going to be expanding the service to individuals and businesses (they call them service providers).
Eventually, I’m thinking it may have value, as the number of users increases. Then again, when you add more people to the mix, the greater your chance of diluting the value of responses. And we’ll have to see how the service providers fit into the mix.
Your thoughts? Are you on GigPark? If so, what’s your experience?
Update: It’s only been a few hours since I posted my query on GigPark, and I’ve already received one response.
Technorati Tags: GigPark, Social Media, Word of mouth, referral, trust, facebook
May
17
Blogging at the Edmonton Public Library
Filed Under Blogging, In the life, News, Social Media | Leave a Comment
A week and a bit ago the Edmonton Public Library launched a variety of blogs.
EPL doesn’t appear to use a standard blogging tool (Wordpress, TypePad, etc) but rather chose to develop their own platform.
On the topic of blogs topics, the blogs included are rather diverse, from Aboriginal Peoples, Comics, Manga, and Graphic Novels, RFID in Libraries, and more.
…and this is just another reason that my local library gets me! Well done EPL!
May
14
Engaging in ‘high risk’ activity - moving my blog
Filed Under Blogging, Doing, Web | 2 Comments
I’ve decided to take the plunge and move my blog to a more traditional .com domain type (rather than the .net that I currently use). I’m going to keep the .net domain for more esoteric things, private development server, etc.
If you’re reading this on the old blog (blog.bradgrier.net), then please jump over to the new one, bookmark it, and check it out to make sure it works as you expect. You can find it at blog.bradgrier.com.
The dot-com is more common, people have a standard ‘expectation ‘of a site or blog when it has a .com address. A .net address seems to have a different ‘expectation’. And I felt the need to try out a new provider.
So, this will mean a bit of change:
- RSS feeds - already moved my feedburner redirects so there should be no disruption
- Incoming links - not sure what to do about this yet. Incoming links add value to your Google ranking, so this transition will cost me some of that precious Google Juice
- Site duplication - some of the articles I’ve been reading about moving domains suggest maintaining duplicate sites for a few months. I’m thinking about this. It may work, but I’d customize the content so that some sort of ‘domain moved’ message is appended to the feeds etc
But, I’m not the expert here, just the guy doing the work. Do you have any thoughts or opinions about moving domains? What should I watch out for? What should I do differently?
Technorati Tags: Changing Domains, .net, .com, domain, domain name, moving
Feb
23
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| Photo Credit: Lance Taylor |
The February 20th event where the Earth drifted between the Sun and the Moon was an interesting one for me.
After Tess mentioned the night before that it’d likely be visible here (Edmonton, Alberta, Canada), and that we do have a nice little telescope, some binoculars, and a couple of cameras, that maybe we should make an effort to actually watch it.
So, after a quick email exchange with a couple of friends, an impromptu eclipse party was set up on a good friend’s driveway (hi Scratch!). It was also fortunate his driveway faced east, right toward the rising moon.
Now to the social part. This was coordinated over the course of a few hours during the day, mostly by email.
The degree interest, and participation was awe-inspiring. Ranger Bob brought out his atom-smasher 8″ scope with camera mount. He also brought a few other scopes and binoculars. Ranger Bob wins the Gear award 
Another friend had a digital camera mounted on the scope, and recorded over 2000 frames to be compiled into a movie.
Tess and I brought our gear, Scratch had a few items of optics, as well a few other brought support supplies, Coffee and Donuts. The driveway looked like the media pit at a space shuttle launch!
Neighbourhood families wandered by. Kids kept oohing at the view through the scopes and binoculars.
The most interesting part of the evening occurred when we realized we were getting some glare on Ranger Bob’s scope from the overhead streetlight, right above us. Out came a large black umbrella, and turns were taken holding it up to shield the scope.
You can sort-of see the umbrella (the blurry thing) just below the moon.
But for me, the evening wasn’t just about the planetary event, though that was cool, it was about hanging out with friendly, like-minded people and sharing the experience.
I need to do more of that
For more info on the event and many more photos, check out:
Technorati Tags: Space, Astronomy, Eclipse, February 20 2008, Lunar Eclipse, Photo, Photography, Moon, Camera, Telescope, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada, Brad Grier, Article
Aug
17
This will surely free more of your valuable time
Filed Under Doing | Comments Off
Tim Ferriss (4 Hour Work Week
1. Do not answer calls from unrecognized phone numbers
Feel free to surprise others, but don’t be surprised. It just results in unwanted interruption and poor negotiating position. Let it go to voicemail, and consider using a service like GrandCentral (you can listen to people leaving voicemail) or Simulscribe (receive voicemails as e-mail).4. Do not let people ramble
Forget “how’s it going?” when someone calls you. Stick with “what’s up?” or “I’m in the middle of getting something out, but what’s going on?” A big part of GTD is GTP—Getting To the Point.
The rest, I need to work on. Check out the list and the comments to his post. Lots of good stuff there.
Aug
9
I’ve mentioned PhotoSynth before (from Microsoft Live Labs), but with the current space shuttle mission, this new gallery deserved a mention.
In collaboration between Microsoft’s Live Labs team in Seattle, Washington, NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, in Cape Canaveral, Florida, and NASA’s Ames Research Center, in Silicon Valley, these collections were created to allow people to see the shuttle Endeavour, and the Vehicle Assembly Building at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in a way never seen before.
Basically, you have hundreds of images geo-spatially located around the shuttle as it sits on it’s pad.
What PhotoSynth does is figure out where these shots overlap, and present you with an incredibly cool interface to navigate within the space, visually.
Another neat feature is the amount of detail present in the images. You can zoom, and zoom, and zoom, and on some very high rez images, you can reveal astonishing features.
And you don’t take a huge bandwidth hit either. I’ve very impressed by this, and am wondering where this technology will resurface in Microsoft’s world.
Post Script: This article was inspired by my good friend, Ranger-Bob and his awesome/leet technical ability. He is able to watch NASA TV, Live, on his Palm T|X, from his outhouse..now that’s dedication!
Jul
24
Listen to me. How to convert your blog post into a podcast.
Filed Under Blogging, Social Media | 9 Comments
Lately I’ve been exploring a few podcast and text-to-speech services. I’ve found an interesting combination of services that let me make my posts listen-able and downloadable — even set them up to be part of your regular podcast scrape.
This is a great way to review your favorite blogger, when you’re not able to have your computer with you (on the morning commute, bus, walking..etc), or you need to convert written posts into spoken ones for people with visual impairments or other accessibility issues.
First, sign up for accounts either at Odiogo.com or talkr.com. Both take RSS feeds of your blog and create mp3 / podcast files with your blog content being read by an artificially generated voice. Your quality and accuracy may vary, depending on the type of writing you do. Highly technical words may be completely massacred, but by having both services available, you’ll increase the chance that your post will be read properly, by at least one of the services.
Then, sign up for an account at PodNova.com. PodNova is an online podcast aggregation service, which allows you to release your podcast subscriptions from any single computer and keep it accessible on any computer with Internet access.
It also manages your podcast master subscription list, so you really only have to subscribe to the PodNova feed, and all your podcasts will be downloaded by your podcatcher of choice (Juice, iTunes..etc).
You can also listen to individual podcasts through the PodNova subscriptions page. That’s the option I’m using to provide audio to my blog.
What I’ve done is use PodNova to subscribe to both Talkr and Odiogo feeds, and link to the feed pages here:
Now, using those links, you can access my recent blog posts and listen to them at your workstation, or through your media player of choice.
I’ve also added buttons to my sidebar, though, weirdly, talkr doesn’t have an html page that displays all the the posts in my feed; they assume you’re going to use an RSS reader only. Either I can’t find it or they’re missing the boat on that one, so in my sidebar buttons, I’m linking back to the PodNova Talkr page for my posts. Klunky but it works.
Now, this doesn’t work well for every post. I have a couple of link lists that would just be silly when they’re converted to audio, but for longer, text based posts (like this one), making the audio available simply means that the post could be read, and now heard, by more people.
So, have you listened to any of my posts? What do you think? How’s the quality and pronunciation? Does it fit with your regular podcast listening routine?
Technorati Tags: podcast, audio, text to speech, artifical voice, blogging, blog, audio post, text conversion, cool, voice, sound, speech, iPod, iTunes, PodNova, Talkr, Odiogo, Juice
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