I’ve started a new topic-focused weblog: eBookCulture.com. It’s going to be exclusively on the topic of eBooks and the read/write culture that I think will develop around eBooks over the next few years. eBooks have so far not broken through into the mainstream, due to a number of factors – e.g. technical limitations of devices … Read more

As a follow-up to my Reliance post yesterday, which was on the subject of my dependence on web servers, I read something by Mitch Kapor this morning that resonates (even though his post was from a different context): “I think I’ve unfairly maligned servers in the past. It’s not the server I dislike, it’s the … Read more

Audio and video blogging seem to be hot topics currently. I myself have done two, pretty low-tech, audio blog posts. Both were readings of textual posts, one of a Read/Write Web classic from January 2004 – The Fractal Blogosphere. And the second audio post was something I wrote just last week – A New Kind … Read more

The thing about web technology – and computing in general – that continues to frustrate me, is that it forces me to rely on hardware and software that is often outside of my direct control. It’s all very well embracing the server side and using browser-based products like Movable Type and Bloglines, as I do. … Read more

Note: This post is also available in audio format (.wav file, 2.9MB). “Literary Reading in Dramatic Decline” announced the headline at the National Endowment for the Arts website on 8 July 2004. On that day the NEA published a report entitled “Reading at Risk” (PDF), which outlined the findings of a 2002 survey of the … Read more

One good thing about audio on the Web is that I can listen to things while I’m working. Which is precisely what I did this morning with Tim O’Reilly’s keynote speech at the Open Source Convention currently being held in the US. The audio was done by IT Conversations, rapidly becoming one of my favourite … Read more

As I was browsing the Web, looking for inspiration, I discovered a work by John Baldessari – a conceptual artist from America. He transformed the library space at UCSD (University of California, San Diego) into a beautiful work of art… the photos online are enough to make me want to go to UCSD and soak … Read more

Yesterday I did my first audio blogging post. I think audio has the potential to be a key part of the so-called Social Web, or Social Media as it’s being called now. And I like the term ‘Social Media’, over the more tradional term ‘Social Software’. It emphasizes that the current revolution of the Two-Way … Read more

Tonight I recorded my first audio blog post, a reading of my January 2004 article The Fractal Blogosphere. Quite topical, given my recent posts on subscriber statistics and weblog popularity. The audio file is .wav format, which you can play in Real Player and probably other audio players as well. I tried to convert it … Read more

I’ve just hit a century, 100 Bloglines subscribers. I was on 79 only 4 days ago, when I posted my article about Bloglines subscriber stats. Mind you it helps when the creator of Bloglines links to you 🙂 To put this into perspective, I also noticed today that Boing Boing has 8,025 Bloglines subscribers! Wow! … Read more

In yesterday’s post I mentioned The 3 C’s: Create, Communicate and Collaborate. The 2nd one could just as easily be ‘Converse’, as in conversations. All of these C’s are things I strive to achieve in my weblog. In an effort to strengthen the ‘Communicate/Converse’ prong, I’ve finally gotten around to converting my Comments system (hey, … Read more

I love Bloglines. It’s a browser-based RSS feeds aggregator that almost singlehandedly proves the case that web applications can be better than desktop-based ones. I say this in the context of Joel Spolsky’s already classic essay on why web browser apps are winning the war against so-called rich or smart clients. “The new API is … Read more

This is a Short Story by Richard MacManus. It takes a speculative look at what the blogosphere might be like in 20-30 years time. I My name is sylvian and this is my story of The System. Twenty years ago it was called the Web. Back then people were making it up as they went … Read more

There’s an interesting meme doing the rounds: what webloggers are reading this summer. This, of course, is right up my street. So here’s what I’m reading currently… although it’s actually the middle of winter here in New Zealand. I’m an eclectic reader, so I usually have a number of different books on the go at … Read more