More tinkering. Last night I made the header and footer fixed width, evened up the right-hand column’s width in relation to the left column, added more white space to the main content area, and made various other changes to the CSS. I’m much happier with the layout now – it looks more balanced and not … Read more

Yesterday I explained why I moved my blog from Radio Userland and today I’m going to explain how I did it. I’ll also talk a bit about my new CSS layout. The Move I have to give a big shout-out to Bill Kearney, whose Radio Exporter tool made it relatively easy to export all my … Read more

My transition to Movable Type is mostly complete now, at least in terms of migrating content from Radio Userland and getting my new CSS design to a position of relative stability. In this post I’ll explain my motives for switching to Movable Type. In my next post I’ll provide some details of the process I … Read more

Pardon my dust, I’m in the process of moving my weblog from Radio Userland to Movable Type. Also, as you can see, I’ve done a re-design. There are still a few CSS issues to iron out, so things may be a bit funky for the next few days. But I decided to publish my new … Read more

My article for Digital Web Magazine, The Evolution of Corporate Websites, has now been published. It’s a high-level look at web design trends over the past 10 years. Here’s the introductory paragraph: Hard to believe, but corporate Web sites have been around for over 10 years now. It’s fascinating to see how they have evolved … Read more

I’ve just arrived back from a business trip in Melbourne, Australia. I’m creating a strategy for and managing the implementation of a new Intranet site. While I was over in Melbourne, I saw some examples of strategic thinking in action – by the local taxi drivers. Everybody is strategic in some form. But taxi drivers perhaps have … Read more

I mentioned in my last post that one of my ongoing interests is topic mapping in weblogs. Topic Exchange and K-Collector are two initiatives that I’ve hyped a lot over the last year. However the blogosphere still doesn’t have a mainstream topic-mapping application – and I mean mainstream as in Technorati or Bloglines, apps that are used … Read more

In my previous post, I wrote about my early blogging efforts in March 2002 and the birth of Read/Write Web just over 1 year ago. In this post I review the past year and pick out some highlights. I’ll finish with some thoughts about what the next year may bring. Highlights of the past 12 months … Read more

Here goes another self-referencing post about blogging. A couple of days ago I clocked up 1 year on this weblog, having started Read/Write Web on 20 April 2003, with an introductory essay called (of course) The Read/Write Web. Looking back on the past 12 months, I have to say that weblogging has done me a … Read more

Today I got my first article in print. My interview with Marc Canter made it into Computerworld New Zealand (pg 16, April 19 edition – right over the page from Jon Udell). It was one of my goals at the start of this year to get my writing published in the print world, so I’m … Read more

I’m currently reading Lawrence Lessig’s new book, Free Culture, which is available as a free download under a Creative Commons license. I’m only up to pg 64, but already I’ve discovered some great new ideas. One of them is “media literacy”. This is the best definition I’ve found so far of media literacy: “The ability … Read more

In my day job I’m currently working on a Web Strategy for my company. I’ve created web strategies in the past and I enjoy doing them. At the previous company I worked for, a telecommunications multinational, I wrote a Web Strategy to merge the websites of the New Zealand and Australian offices. Unfortunately for me … Read more

Jason Kottke has summarised Lawrence Lessig’s new book, Free Culture, in 100 words using Microsoft Word’s AutoSummarize feature. Jason’s reasoning was that “no one has the time to read books anymore”. Sounds about right. So, inspired by this, I decided to do the same with my 50,000-word Nanowrimo 2003 novel Dirtside to Spaceside. The result is hilarious. Also … Read more

Hands up who wants to get rid of the word “blog”? I’m beginning to wonder whether the word “weblog” has outlived its purpose. But before you call the white coats, let me try and explain. You see, blogging to me has always meant writing and linking. Seb Paquet has a much more comprehensive definition, but in a nutshell … Read more

My first reaction when I looked at my referer logs and saw I’d been slashdotted was: Holy Shit! Actually it was Marc Canter’sPeopleAggregator that was the main link in the Slashdot article, but it was my interview with Marc that caused it. I’ve gotten 2000-odd visits from Slashdot so far (they’re still pouring in). This … Read more