telecom, technology and the occasional floobergeist
I’ve got an abundance of bits and pieces of canadian telecom and internet experience, and I am thrilled to be in a place in time when all is changing, technology is developing, and the status quo is being disrupted.
Floobergeist is a word that is beginning to defy definition. The more I roll that smooth pebble around, the more it becomes to mean. Floobergeist started out as the magic dust that turns dreams into ideas. And then it began to encompass the zing that happens when you have conversations about those ideas. And now, it’s the whole evolution from dream to conversation, with each step improving the later and the former along the way.
Everyone aspires to good conversations. They can lead you to adventures you’ve never imagined, and to people you can twig with.
Let’s have a good conversation…
welcome.
technorati tags:Oak Ridges
A weblog, which is usually shortened to blog, is a type of website where entries are made (such as in a journal or diary), displayed in a reverse chronological order.Blogs often provide commentary or news on a particular subject, such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. Most blogs are primarily textual although many focus on photograph (photoblog), videos (vlog), or audio (podcasting).
Blog - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
I've also been asked, by a few zillion folks what a blog really is, and where it came from. Doing a quick wilipedia search came up with the excerpt above. I am starting to see that Wilikedia is even better than Newton's Telecom Dictionary (aka my personal bible)
The term "weblog" was coined by Jorn Barger on 17 December 1997. The short form, "blog," was coined by Peter Merholz, who jokingly broke the word weblog into the phrase we blog in the sidebar of his blog Peterme.com in April or May of 1999.[2][3][4] This was quickly adopted as both a noun and verb ("to blog," meaning "to edit one's weblog or to post to one's weblog").
So - no one has a website any more, everyone has a blog... it's just the web 2.0 version of a website. No more static yickiness, easy to edit, easy to change, jusdt easy. Corporations have web sites (still), people have blogs. Blogs are interactive with their visitors, and can create a sense of community. Websites are ofen not terribly interactive, and don't provide many options for visitors to be involved in the site. Websites are notorious for having stale information. At some point, the entire web will be live and interactive. Soon.
technorati tags:what is a blog, weblog
An aggregator or news aggregator is client software that uses a web feed to retrieve syndicated web content such as weblogs, podcasts, vlogs, and mainstream mass media websites.
Aggregator - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
One of the tasks i've been given is to differentiate between Blogs and RSS readers. To create something for the average joe to twig on easily. RSS readers really just to the dirty work for you, going out, checking your favourite sites to see if there are any new articles, and then organizes your news, making it easy and quick to read and scan. I've run through a few different readers, part of me uses Google's Custom Page reader, and the other part of me uses NetVibes, which offers some neat widgets that can also help you waste time ;-)
Readers can either be web based, or actual clients that you can download. I'm all for the web based ones, as I am usually working off 3 computers at a time, and it's simply handly to have it available, wherever I am.
Most of the readers are free, but I've also come across some that are subscription based, especially those for mobile devices. There are a few for the Blackberry, and some that aren't tied to specific devices. Mark Evans recommends Virtual Reach for mobiule devices, and you get a 7 day free trial ;-)
Pulling from Wikipedia:
Aggregators, or RSS Readers, reduce the time and effort needed to regularly checkwebsites for updates, creating a unique information space or "personalnewspaper." Once subscribed to a feed, an aggregator is able to checkfor new content at user-determined intervals and retrieve the update.The content is sometimes described as being "pulled" to the subscriber,as opposed to "pushed" with email or IM. Unlike recipients of some "pushed" information, the aggregator user can easily unsubscribe from a feed.
Aggregator features are being built into portal sites such as My Yahoo! and Google; modern web browsers; e-mail programs like Mozilla Thunderbird; Apple's iTunes, which serves as a podcast aggregator and other applications. Devices such as mobile phones or Tivo video recorders (already aggregating television programs) may incorporate XML aggregators.
The aggregator provides a consolidated view of the content in asingle browser display or desktop application. Such applications arealso referred to as RSS readers, feed readers, feed aggregators or news readers.
The syndicated content an aggregator will retrieve and interpret is usually supplied in the form of RSS or other XML-formatted data, such as RDF/XML or Atom.
technorati tags:RSS Readers, Google RSS, Virtual Reach, aggregator
technorati tags:stats, subscribers, Google Page Rank
Om Malik discusses the validitity of the claim that there are 50 million blogs in the *blogosphere*…. and the merits of how many of them are actually active…. I tend to be cynical. From experience.
It’s too bad there isn’t a way to tell how many active vs created blogs there are. In the past 5 years, I have a feeling i’ve contributed to the explosion of blogs. You see, I’m a habitual blog creator. It’s a bit of an addiction with me. I’ve got 4 blogs with Live journal, 3 with blogger, 3 with wordpress, one silly soulcast, and those are just the ones I remember!! Not to mention the ones that are active; jules.ca, the curious tale of the girl and the telco, and tech whisperer. And just wait till floobergeist.com gets out of the gate!
GigaOM : » How big is the Blogosphere really?
There might have been 50 million blogs that have ever been created but there aren’t 50 million blogs in active use.
Not enough annoying strangers in our lives.That’s not sarcasm. Annoyance is something you build up a tolerance to, like alcohol or a bad smell. The more we’re able to edit the annoyance out of our lives, the less we’re able to handle it.
Question: Why don’t you check your Technorati ranking?
Answer: Because the data won’t change my actions. Getting data for no good reason just drives you crazy. The secret is to get very flexible in the face of data you care about—changing your x every time you see y changes—and incredibly inflexible in the face of data you don’t care about.The reason I write is to have an impact. I measure that impact in the email I get and the way it impacts people’s actions. Even if 100 people a day read my blog, I’d write the same stuff.
MS strategies today fail to justify how value-add is being created from the IMS infrastructure when people can already talk on Skype for free -- and most of the QoS problems on Skype are really either internal to the PC (e.g. contention for CPU or network access) or local to the customer premises (first-hop to WiFi access point).- Many of the IMS functions when decomposed are replicated for free on today's Internet (e.g. basic dyndns.org dynamic DNS routing -- eg. I can make a SIP call that will reach me wherever I am -- the "home agent" function is very cheap/free).
… I’m starting to see a bit of a trend, with bloggers adding their RSS stats to their sites, quoting how many RSS subscribers they have.
I’m torn, and a little curious, as the sites who have these little “status symbols”, seem to be VERY popular sites, and the folks who read them KNOW that they are popular, and the people who read them likely have them as RSS feeds in their readers.
So, if you are popular, and you know you are popular, and the rest of the thinking world knows you are popular, what is the value of having a little stat-o-meter illustrating your popularity?
Hrm.
I’d rather see a feature on RSS platforms that allow me to see WHO is subscribing to my site. I know, not terribly confidential, and not terribly security conscious, but still…. ;-) That sort of info would be valuable, as opposed to nameless, faceless subscriber information.
Technorati Tags: RSS Stats, Popularity
Alas, as the vacation begins, there is still unfinished business to tie up. The EVDO phone comes in handy from the deck. I can have the best of both worlds. Connectivity, with a VIEW.
It started out sunny this morning, but as the day grows, so do the clouds. And the wind. At somepoint his morning, I inagine i will be driven from the outside office to the screened in porch. Ehhh. Beggars cannot be choosers, methinks.
Have a great weekend!
technorati tags:6 Mile Lake, EVDO
the end is nigh for spot…. stay tuned for tomorow’s episode…. :-( he’s fighting it now, but it doesn’t look good for the little guy.
technorati tags: spot, beta, death watch, siamese fighting fish
his gills are still gilling, but his posture hasn’t changed. when i swirl the water around in his (giant sized) wine glass, he perks up, and then returns to lounge position.
Fish should NOT lounge.
… he’s still vaguely alive, and i use that “alive” term very loosely. I’ve even resorted to asking for professional help. Waiting for the prognosis now.
If he holds up over the weekend, perhaps we can suspend the deathwatch. Although, I’m expecting to return to a floater and a funeral :-(
… Spot survived the weekend. He’s back in his huge tank, and he’s on the mend. I don’t know what he went through, but he’s coming through it!
;-)
MTS Allstream releases its Q2 results today. There is a conference call scheduled at 4:30. Will Westjet be enough to instill confidence in employees and the investment markets?
