Small Pieces: The Gang Blog

• Small Pieces From 2002-05-25 •

Telecomm More...

Vergil Iliescu has inaugurated his blog with a reflection on the telecommunications story. Vergil once was a telecom guy and recalls being told explicitly: "We in Telecom must not be reduced to just carrying the bits - that will make us just a commodity!". (He also has some provocative thoughts about the nature of consciousness.)

Meanwhile, Kevin Marks has posted further comments. He has some great stuff there, although I insist that we're not disagreeing very much. The major point of disagreement is that he thinks that there's a good, solid business selling commoditized connectivity (a "stupid network") whereas NetParadox (Isenberg and my site) says that it's a more attractive business to sell services over a tuned network. We don't agree that there's a business selling commoditized connectivity.

Last but not least, I liked Andrius Kulikauskas's report on what his group came up with during my session at Connectivity 2002. I'd asked the audience to break into groups and come up with a story that would explain why we need to keep the Net open. Here's what his group came up with:

1) What is the technology?

All you need to know is that Transport and Content are two very different things.

2) How does it work?

Any assumptions that Transport makes about Content will limit the market opportunities.

3) How could we cripple it?

They're placing a ceiling on our imagination.

4) What could we do with it?

We want infinite growth of imagination, making for an infinite variety of opportunity.

Loosely joined by David • 14:20 UTC

Steve Yost is a friend of mine ... the sort of friend you actually meet for lunch now and then in the real world we've all heard so much about.

Nevertheless, let me complete the quotation Steve pings: "We're writing ourselves into existence on the Web." If that's not what I actually said, it's what I actually meant. No either/or is required.

Loosely joined by David • 13:31 UTC

• Small Pieces From 2002-05-24 •

Blur Circle: Tribe or universe
We're at a discontinuity in history. We've suddenly (by historical standards) become connected globally, yet are often isolated. The social entities we form are dispersed and often transient. Our attentions are so drawn by our jobs that we have little community in our communties.

That's part of the appeal of this mostly-broadcast medium of weblogging. We're trying to substitute for what we really need socially. "Writing ourselves into existence" is a poor substitute for just living well.

B!x, can you invite him to join in here? I think that writing ourselves into existence can help teach us to live well.

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 18:53 UTC

• Small Pieces From 2002-05-23 •

If you can't brag to friends, then who can you brag to? Library Journal's review of SPLJ (5/15) apparently is really good. All I have are a couple of blurb-worthy quotes: it's an "insightful social commentary on the profound meaning of the Web" and "This is a solid, penetrating philosophical analysis of the Web whose ideas will heat up the chat rooms and news groups. Highly recommended." Woohoo!

You may now carry on with what you were doing...

Loosely joined by David • 16:54 UTC

• Small Pieces From 2002-05-20 •

On Sunday, May 19, 2002, at 09:26 AM, Christine Hall wrote:
Hi

I visited SMALLPIECES.BLOGSPOT.COM, and noticed that you're not listed on some search engines! I think we can offer you a service which can help you increase traffic and the number of visitors to your website.

I would like to introduce you to TxxxxxxMxxxxx.net. We offer a unique technology that will submit your website to over 300,000 search engines and directories every month.

Dear Christine,

I don't give a fig about 300,000 search engines. There is one search engine that matters, and it is called Google, and it ranks smallpieces.blogspot.com very highly. Note this search

That is us at number 4 out of 2,400,000. I tried searching for your company, and it didn't show up very highly, except for complaints about spam.

Google crawls us daily, and even being linked here can do wonders with your Google ranking (Andrew is now number 3 on a search for 'funniest stories' - thanks Tom) which is why I have not included your URL in the entry, because your tactics are the complete antithesis of the ideas about authentic voice and emergent online community that we discuss here.

Please read the book we're discussing, then read the Cluetrain Manifesto and Gonzo Marketing before bothering us again.

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 16:41 UTC

Dave wants a tool to organise hyperlinks. I'm using one at the moment that fulfils all his requirements - Blogger:

Create a blog (or a blog per category - folders in your parlance)
*Within the browser (tool bar or whatever) invoke the app and store an URL and a comment in folder
Use the BlogThis tool to do this.
* Arbitrarily create and nest folders
OK, nesting doesn't work, but you can use keywords or multiple blogs. Nesting sucks anyway because you have to remember which folder its in, and I find most things belong in many folders at once. If you have used iTunes or OS X mail, you'll recognise this technique - tag everything, then filter on the tags. (If you haven't used iTunes, you owe it to yourself to try it out - it's like Google for your record collection).
* Be able to browse and search the archive
Have a look at that search box on the bottom right of the blogger page. Or use google
* Doesn't lock the info away in a way that makes me totally dependent on the app provider
Well, its in a database, but mirrored in HTML on a server of your choice, and cached by Google.

I'm sure Radio Userland would be just as good for this too, and does have hierachies, as it's all built around outlines.

Loosely joined by Kevin Marks • 00:27 UTC