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The week ahead: Blog Wars, Seesmic meetup and more

Byrichard
Reading Time: < 1 minute

This week should see me dropping by the Frontline Club in London for the first time in weeks. I want to see Blog Wars which could be quite interesting. “Blog Wars provides a sharp and funny look at the explosion of political blogs, which have become the loudspeakers for a new generation of activists speaking out and picking fights across the political spectrum”

I’m looking forward to yet another Seesmic meetup and I’ve heard that some interesting people should be present although I haven’t seen this written on paper yet. The usual London suspects should be there so that should be a really good evening. That will be on the 17th and more details are to follow.

I’m not sure whether there’s another Social Media Cafe but if there is then there’s a very good chance I’ll be present. I’ll keep you informed.

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Twitter is broken and I want an alternative

Byrichard

Twitter is a great idea poorly executed as a result of which I wish there was an alternative. It’s a chatroom that can be used on multiple platform which is what makes it so interesting. The managment however have decided to cancel Api support, or at least throttle it. As a result of this conversation is floundering.
As a result of this action twitter has become notoriously unreliable and people are no longer able to keep up to date with what people are doing quite as easily. This has resulted in many of my favourite tweeters being far more quiet. Others have felt the need to leave the service.

I would love an alternative to help me keep a constant wave of consciousness of what friends are doing. The 140 character model is good. It’s a very efficient way of dealing with information. We’ve got many alternatives but none are conversational yet.

I love the conversations and how you overhear so many things. I would pay for an alternative that has a far more stable track record. Give me that alternative.

I’m disappointed not angry.  There’s a really good product there but it’s so badly implemented I’m losing interest in twitter.

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NewsRack

Byrichard

For a while I have been looking for an external feedreader for reading the items collecting and stagnating in google reader. Yesterday I came across Newsrack and what I like is that it syncs instantly with the online version. As a result I can read the feeds on the macbook air when I am at home and out and about or I can read the feeds in browser when I am at work.

Look at the sync tab in the settings and you can select to sync starred, shared and shared by friends articles according to All/week/month/3 months. As a result you control how many items come in. You can select how quickly read articles are deleted. On the laptop I have set this to immediately after reading. As long as I have the articles online I’m happy.

Sharing is to all the usual places, e-mail, twitter, instapaper, readitlater, delicious and of course google reader. In this case memorise the shortcut commands and you can do this without bothering with the mouse.

Scrolling through articles is easy. Left and right goes from the feed view to the article and vice versa. The down key lets you go through the articles, click the right arrow and you can read the article. This allows for a rapid feedreading process.

The weakness I have has to do with the way keywords are dealt with. I would like an option to hide them from the RSS feed view. I just want to see the actual feeds, not all the sub themes. I hope they give us the option of choice in future versions.

I have only used the application for a few hours but so far I am happy with it. It’s not free but it’s only a tiny bit more expensive than a coke in Geneva’s old town.

Learning About Laravel and PHP
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Learning About Laravel and PHP

Byrichard

Today I started to follow a course where someone turns a static html page into a Laravel blog. I experimented with home.blade and one or two other features and I got two pages to load, and the login to work, without more than that.


What makes today’s learning and experimenting interesting is that the time I spent creating PHP arrays for my website content is now easy to transfer to json files for use with dynamic websites. What this means is that content that was stuck on individual pages is now organised by website section. I am now free to do more.


The primary goal is to convert the static part of my website into a flexible content management system as well as to possibly swallow up the WordPress powered blogs. For at least a year I have disliked that Wordpress uses react, so if I can replace WordPress with Laravel then I will be happy. All websites that use React look the same to me, and I don’t want to use technology that was developed by Facebook, no matter how popular.


Having a website is not just about writing blog posts and creating content. It is also about playing with technology and learning new skills. I want to understand how laravel works, and to have a way to demonstrate that I have learned relevant skills for future job applications. This website isn’t small. It has quite a few sections, topics, content and more. It’s worth working on and improving this website.


And Finally


I am curious about playing with ActivityPub. It is still in early days but if and when it is ready, it will be a more advanced of interactive RSS. I want to see what possibilities it will open up.

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Reactions – What if Twitter died

Byrichard

You can tell when someone joins a social network by what they think the network is for. I joined twitter in 2006. No one knew what the network was best at, eventually everyone decided to use it as a conversation tool. When people understood how dynamic conversations could be the network grew. The author of “What if Twitter Died“wrote this:

“it can’t seem to stretch beyond its celebrity, celebrity follower and tech roots. If you aren’t into celebrities or the tech industry, Twitter just isn’t that appealing, especially given all the other options for online social interactions.”

It is clear from this writer’s post that he has not been with twitter since it’s earliest days. His twitter profile indicated that he arrived in 2010. That’s up to two years after the golden age of twitter ended. My previous posts have explored this topic in depth.

While social media focus on marketers and public relations professionals I will keep blogging. It allows me to express myself without providing content for platforms that have destroyed the social dimension.

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