It’s about time I published my strategy for my new topic-focused blog, eBook Culture. Although upon reading Erik Benson’s post tonight about getting on and building something rather than “talking about it but never building it”, I now feel a bit guilty about writing yet another grand plan instead of getting my hands dirty with … Read more

September is the Month of Mobility at Read/Write Web, I’ve decided. This month I’m going to explore the intersection between the Web and mobile devices. Principally mobile phones and PDA’s, although there’s also a trend of convergence of those two devices into “smart phones”. And let’s not forget new ground-breaking devices such as the iPod, … Read more

Last week I wrote about some examples of topic-focused blogs, all of which had technology-focused content. Josh Katinger left a comment pointing to his blog about motor racing, called Fast Machines. It didn’t look like spam, so I clicked through and discovered that Josh runs a very good topic-focused blog. And guess what – it … Read more

Before I blog the eBook Culture strategy I’ve been promising, I really need to get the strategy of Read/Write Web confirmed. Long-suffering readers will know that I periodically go through a hand-wringing phase where I question the meaning of my blog. I’m sure this is testing the patience of my readers, who probably want to … Read more

Andrew left a great comment on my previous post about blog branding. I’d mentioned I was number 1 for the Google phrase “two way web blog”. Andrew also informed me I’m the number 1 search result in Google for these phrases: “microcontent wiki” “fractal blogosphere” “picked a fight with clay shirky” I love that last … Read more

Keith Robinson is going through a re-branding exercise for his weblog. Even though I’m not focused on web design, I identify strongly with what Keith is trying to do – because I’ve been doing much the same thing over here. A few weeks ago I updated my About Me to reflect my new more narrowly … Read more

Elvis Costello and I share a birthday today. He’s the big 5-0, while I’m the next generation down (I’d tell you my age, but I’m not ready for Google to know). Elvis and I also share the same name. He was born Declan MacManus and I was born – and still am, unless you count … Read more

I’ve been meaning to add the RVW module for reviews for a wee while now and tonight I did it. RVW is an RSS module created by Alf Eaton. It’s basically some extra metadata you add to your RSS feed that describes reviews – of books, music, anything you like really. Reviews is one part … Read more

First impressions. Short book, more of a novella than a novel. I finished it in one day (a day off work). Alex Garland, if you don’t know his work, wrote a famous novel called The Beach in the 90’s. The book was much better than the Leonardo Di Caprio movie of the same name. Garland’s … Read more

So I’ve started a topic-focused blog, eBook Culture. Yesterday I outlined my personal goals for the site. Today I’m going to review examples of successful topic-focused blogs, from two people who are leading the way in this type of blog. PVRblog: product-centered content Probably the most well known example of a topic-focused blog is PVRblog. … Read more

Lucas Gonze comments on my post from yesterday: “Richard MacManus is throwing himself into eBooks. A synchronicity is that I ran across an excellent bit of non-fiction by Phillip K. Dick which is available freely on the net and couldn’t figure out what to do with it. It’s not desk reading — it’s too long, … Read more

One of my stated niches is ‘web strategy’ and I’ve written a couple of posts on this subject. However strategy is one of those things that is better practiced rather than preached. I could write a whole bunch of articles on strategy, but the only way for someone to be credible on this topic is … Read more

Summary: Microcontent in the form of sound bites, links and text extracts are the lingua franca of the Web. But the flipside is that context morphs very easily, so what are the moral and ethical implications of that? Following on from my post the other day about Systems Builders, in which I touched on these … Read more

I came across an article in Computerworld that has some good advice on designing and building IT systems. The article is by Michael Hugos and he starts out by defining “Systems Builder”: “This person can speak both the language of technology and the language of business. This person understands the specific business issues that a … Read more

Open-Media.org is an Open Source Media Project launched today by Marc Canter and J.D. Lasica. It’s going to be like the Internet Archive, only for multimedia files. In fact Brewster Kahle of the Internet Archive (home of the The Wayback Machine) is providing free storage and free bandwidth for Open Media. Here is J.D.’s description: … Read more