delicious

I’m all over the place…quite literally…

August 20, 2008 By Dan Thornton

How so?

I’ve just published a new post over at www.140char.com on How to back-up your Twitter account and contacts.
Although I’m still using Feedeachother as an online RSS reader (Find me, here), I’ve bowed to public opinion and also signed up for Google Reader. It’s no slur towards Feedeachother, and the hard work by it’s creator,Udi, but I’m increasingly aware that it’s handy not only to export lists of bookmarks, feeds and contacts on a regular basis, but also to have them readily accessible somewhere. It’s also giving me the chance to compare the two services and see which one offers what I need. You can see my Google Reader shared items, here.
I don’t think I’ve ever published the location of my profile on Stumbleupon. If you’re not spammy, you can find me here, as badgergravling. It tends to be a mixture of tech, cars, motorcycles, and some photography and bizarre stuff. Some of the stumbles are for sites I work on, but only if it’s things I think are good enough to share – and I find an equal amount from the aggregate of all the other sites I visit during a day!
I’m also on Del.icio.us, here (I’m not signed up to the delicious.com namechange!), and also on Digg – and quite a few other networks. I’ve got most of them listed on Friendfeed and MyBlogLog, but there aren’t any other badgergravlings I’ve encountered yet – mainly because it’s an intentional mispelling.
I’m also signed up and become part of Seth Godin’s Triiibes group, which was invite-only for those pre-ordering his next book. I’m still not entirely convinced it’s not just an experimental social ant farm, but there’s definitely some interesting things that could come out of it.
And finally, I had to slip in a mention of Dave Cushman‘s latest post on /Message. Mainly because he namechecks me, and by the look of it, it either never gets picked up, or it’s a nofollow blog – which seems a little odd for someone like Stowe Boyd, unless he’s done it to combat spam comments…

Right, that’s cleared some of the decks…

It’s all change on the interweb

August 1, 2008 By Dan Thornton

As always my plans to spend a weekend dedicated to catching up, and even getting ahead, on my blogging etc seem to have been destroyed before Friday is even over, thanks to a horrible noise from the exhaust on my car. I guess that’s what you get for buying something cheap and unusual!

And that clumsily links into the amount of change that’s occurring at the moment to major sites:

New look Facebook has been talked about a lot, and it’s now available. And to be honest, I’m really undecided about the design. It certainly makes it more blog/lifestream than profile page, and it moves applications out of the way, which is good for dealing with application addicts. I’m surprised the advertising is moved out to a column where it is easier to ignore over time, although it did catch my eye the first time it logged.

And there’s new look Delicious. Notice the lack of del.icio.us, as it’s now become www.delicious.com, as they were seeing all sorts of versions of the name being used. A bit of a shame in some ways, as it was one major way to stand out from the crowd. Ma.gnolia might feel a bit silly now! Again the design is cleaner and more modern, and a little lifestream-esque.

And you may have heard the tiniest of whispers around the web that tiny new startup Google is being challenged by a new search engine called Cuil, which claims to index more pages than Google, and return more linked results. One interesting ploy is that they promise information for each search will be anonymous – fine in theory but what will happen in the event of a court case? At the moment, returns a bit flakey, like this one for Dan Thornton. But I’m going to give it some time before making a judgement – I was initially unimpressed with Mahalo, but I’ve grown to like it more and more as time goes by. The best thing about Mahalo’s human-powered search is that the official plugin allows you to display an information box alongside your Google results – meaning it can save you a few clicks if you’re researching something which is covered.

And rounding off a pretty quick skim, is the news for social media marketing, research and business people that Forrester has bought Jupiter Research, which is pretty big news in that space.

Now if I can just stop the exhaust falling off the car, I might be able to catch up with a few things.

Why I love links

June 28, 2008 By Dan Thornton

By nature, I’m a frustrated librarian and a compulsive hoarder. My music collection is in alphabetical and chronological order, and my loft is packed with old video consoles and other collections which I know fatherhood will stop me from indulging in, except as family heirlooms in 30 years time!

Part of this is a reluctance to lend CDs and books, even to close friends, for fear of them being lost, or being returned with the spine of the book broken beyond all recognition.

But now access to knowledge and entertainment is instantly sharable from the moment of discovery. From the almost infinite resource of online knowledge I can share findings via links, Del.icio.us bookmarks, or RSS. My tastes in music are logged, and accessible via Last.fm, and TV and videos get distributed from Youtube, the BBC iPLayer, or where ever they’re found. And it doesn’t matter if my friends lose them, and they can’t return them broken. In fact, even if, God forbid, I lost all my saved files and links, I could find most of the memorable ones that mattered in a few minutes with Google.

There’s a popular quote by author and broadcaster Leo Laporte which has spread via shared links:

“I’m less likely to read print lately because I can’t tag, bookmark, and share the stories. Info gathering has become a social process for me”

And it rings true. Print and physical copies are now back-ups, or objects for sentimental value. They’re for those rare occasions that you want to get away from it all.

And that’s why I love links!

Instead of booking an expensive social media conference

April 20, 2008 By Dan Thornton

You’ll probably get more long term value by using the three-figure booking fee to encourage your employees to actually sign up for Facebook, Del.icio.us, Digg, or Twitter. *

*Does not apply to the myriad of really good unconferences and workshops springing up, and organised by people who admit they don’t know the absolute answer to everything – but are working to get there. Examples include Measurementcamp or MediaCamp Bucks ’08 (Disclosure: I’m running a session there.)

delicious

Recent Comments