I’ve complained about the problems of blog bloat and it’s something that really doesn’t make me want to blog. Frankly, the blogging is really only truly good structure for sites that deliver news. Anything that remains static is problematic for blogs because the good stuff quickly drops down and becomes difficult to find. Tag clouds and categories somewhat mask that problem by making older things more easily accessible by topic, but in the end information is ranked not by importance or relevance, but rather by latest post.
Throw in the fact that blogs tend to throw in personal posts and rants, and in the end you get a large amount of noise that needs to be filtered through. Tagging sites like del.icio.us and search engines help somewhat in solving the problem of finding good content, but they’re not efficient in properly directing traffic. I won’t even mention the fact that you should never rely solely on a tool you can’t control to make up for design shortcomings.
Frankly, only extreme diligence and focus in tagging and categorizing could result in an organized enough structure for long-term use. Unfortunately, this creates heavy overhead and prevents us from focusing on writing and creating quality content. Instead, time is wasted reorganizing the structure of the content every few months to accommodate for increased articles and new topics.
Instead, a hybrid Wikipedia/blog organization would be ideal for users, and ultimately for the webmaster as well. Unfortunately, this takes more time on startup to setup, and can’t be made into a turnkey solution as easily as a pure blogging platform. If properly set up, it creates significant value for the users at only a miniscule additional cost to the webmaster, which in turn will translate to massive value to the site owner in the long run.
So as to follow my own advice, I’ll be announcing a new site in the next month that will follow this kind of aforementioned structure. I haven’t disappeared entirely 
September 8th, 2007
posted in Blog History, Top |
no comments
Hey guys,
This is a post to let all of you know that I won’t be posting (or at least not much) for 2-3 months. I need some time to find a living place in Fort Lauderdale / Miami, get everything organized for a big move, and focus on a web project which we’ll be announcing later.
Look forward to some interesting stuff coming up in a couple of months!
June 10th, 2007
posted in Blog History, Top |
3 comments
I’ve got a big apology to make. While tweaking the site, I broke commenting, preventing the blogger/visitor interaction that is the cornerstone of Web 2.0. This is fixed now, and I owe Vince Cordic a HUGE thanks for pointing out the error. This one goes out to Vince:
You da man!
P.S., Regular posting will resume once my finals are over. I love blogging and the internet, but reality still comes first. At least until Google Life comes out of beta.
May 10th, 2007
posted in Blog History, Top |
one comment
I’ve been away for the last five days. I come back to find 200+ posts to read from my subscribed feeds (and I’m not subscribed to that many). Ack. 90% of these are junk, repeats, rephrased articles, and blah. 9% are news. 1% is quality.
Why is there so much crap out there? The blogosphere isn’t an ideal publication frame unfortunately - it’s great for news or timely items. Anything else, I really believe a traditional style website would be more useful, because then you can organize the information more efficiently and clean out the bloat.
The blogosphere, however, rewards frequent posting. In fact, posting less than 3 times a week will cost you readers. And posting more, as long as 1 out of 10 times it’s a worthwhile post, will get you more readers and more visitors.
I use my blog as a personal bookmarking tool, in addition to a platform. However, the stuff that appears on the front page (and feed) is only what I believe is worth reading by you. The rest of the stuff is thoughts, news, posts, that are relevant to the many category topics - I treat them more as tags, and will eventually only have a few top level categories once the content level increases. If you want to know more deeply about a topic, you’ll find info about it in those categories.
This is a self-indulgent rant. Blogs aren’t a fad, but it’s still an immature medium, with a “Hey! Look at me, I’m blogging!”-vibe. It’ll be nice once we all grow up.
March 12th, 2007
posted in Blog History, Top |
one comment
I like the idea of MyBlogLog. It mimics the non-virtual world - many connections are made or strengthened by running into people at the grocery store or movie theatre.
Unfortunately, it hasn’t been coded very securely (thanks to Shoemoney for pointing some exploits out, for which he got banned temporarily). It’s prone to spamming, and only provides marginal benefits. Really, it only worked because everybody was excited about the idea and checking it out, but in the end it just doesn’t give any real value.
The fact that it tracks all clicks made on my site is also sketchy. To top it off, I had the following error on my site today:
<b>Warning</b>: mysql_connect() [<a href=’function.mysql-connect’>function.mysql-connect</a>]: Host ‘p2.mybloglog.com’ is blocked because of many connection errors; unblock with ‘mysqladmin flush-hosts’ in <b>/home/myblogpub/public_html/comm2.php</b> on line <b>390</b>
I don’t know about you, but I don’t like getting errors on my site. Hence, MyBlogLog will be leaving my site. Maybe someday you’ll return, but only once you’ve matured. Bye-bye, MyBlogLog!
March 5th, 2007
posted in Blog History, MyBlogLog, Top |
no comments
I was looking at my traffic stats earlier, when I noticed something unusual. Take a look:
AWstats is annoying in that it doesn’t tell you which search engine sent you this, or from what page. So I dug into my logs, and I found this as the referrer:
http://search.live.com/result.aspx?q=sex&mrt=en-us&FORM=LVSP
Now, we all know the Live! search engine is still far from perfect, but why is it sending me traffic from the keyword “sex“? Unfortunately, this link doesn’t work, so I can’t tell exactly how this one person found my site through this search, but if anyone knows what FORM=LVSP stands for, I’d like to know, because this blog has nothing to do with sex.
That’s just more proof the Live! isn’t going to be competition anytime soon.
March 4th, 2007
posted in Blog History, Top, Windows Live |
9 comments
My privacy policy is simple:
No information gathered in any way through this site will be sold to anyone for any reason.
Furthermore, it will not be given to anyone unless a U.S. court orders me to do so.
Period.
February 28th, 2007
posted in Blog History |
no comments
SEO BlackHat is sponsoring a poker tournament. Considering I actually know how to play, and all I’m risking is giving out one link in return for the possibility of hundreds in return. Hell, I know how to play, I like playing - I might even say I’m good.
Besides, if I can’t win on skill alone, who can beat an avatar that looks like this? Besides Shoemoney - he wouldn’t hesitate.
February 25th, 2007
posted in Blog History |
no comments
You can use the following form to get in contact with me, and I will respond as soon as possible. Thanks!
February 23rd, 2007
posted in Blog History |
one comment
Sorry, I couldn’t find the post that you were looking for. Either I deleted it, misplaced it, or the damn monkeys stole it.
My guess is the last - damn those dirty apes!
In any case, I apologize, but there’s still a lot of stuff they didn’t steal, like my dignity, or my underwear (they really wouldn’t want to steal that), so look around and see if there’s something that you like!
February 23rd, 2007
posted in Blog History |
no comments
Since I check all my comments, I’ve gone ahead and removed noFollow from the links.
Enjoy the link-love!
February 19th, 2007
posted in Blog History, Top |
no comments
So I’ve converted my feed to FeedBurner (click here to add FeedBurner RSS), as that should give me a better idea of how many people (including you) are reading my blog and which posts you’re reading, so that I can provide more of the content that you want to read about.
Of course, you could also tell me how I’m doing by commenting. I’m still new to this scene, so I’d love as much feedback as possible!
February 17th, 2007
posted in Blog History |
no comments
You’re probably reading this blog through an RSS reader, and you added the feed a long time ago.
Unfortunately, I’ve restructured the site so that only certain items appear in the main feed, and this feed includes everything I want to record for myself. That means you’ll be getting a lot of fluff and some of the good stuff will get lost in it.
Have no fear! All you have to do is grab the main feed instead, which is right here!
February 10th, 2007
posted in Blog History |
no comments
