Thoughts on Comment Fragmentation

I suppose I should be upset by the current wave of tools & services like shyftr that aggregate blog content and also host commenting features for that content. In essence, these services could be accused (and are) of stealing content.

I guess the short of it for me is that I hope people read my feed, visit my blog and comment because I’m providing some piece of information that has value for them. Like many bloggers, I may have had ideas of being a professional blogger and deriving my living simply by blogging – I’ve long since dropped that assumption. I blog because I want to participate, or want to voice my opinions or ideas. If what I have to say is important, people will show up at my blog.

There are legal aspects to these arguments, but I’ll need to think about it a bit longer.

UPDATE: What I really think this trend means, is that its time to change.  When the playing field is altered, the players need to adapt.  As such, new perspectives on blogging and conversations need to be adopted.

Is the blogosphere doomed by unprofessional behavior?

These public bitchfest’s by the supposed “A-List” really need to be taken offline. This crap has filled my RSS reader for too long – I want to be reading real, valuable, useful information from these “thought leaders”, not this drivel. If you can’t share an opinion in a way that adds value – why bother?

I haven’t bothered to read up on the current brouhaha involving Loren Feldman/Mike Arrington and Shel Isreal because I really couldn’t care less. The result is that TechCrunch has less value today than yesterday, and I now know that I’ll not even bother to stop in at 1938 Media. I’ve got better things to waste my valuable time on.

If you’re wondering when blogging will overtake MSM, you’ll first have to get the leading online “publications” to stop acting like 10 year old playground bullies. Until that happens, and people working on high-profile sites start acting like real professionals blogging will remain a little Gen-Y pipedream.

There – I feel better now. 😉

Happiness CLI

Taking a day to reassess, reevaluate, & determine if what you’re doing is what you want.

WordPress 2.5 Upgrade

WordPress Well I just upgrade my WordPress install to version 2.5.  Everything seems to be working as intended, so I’m not too worried about it.  After several upgrades, I’ve figured out the best method for me.

  1. Back up the database, and the WP-specific folders
  2. Inventory my plugins and verify that they are compatible with the new version
  3. Disable all those plugins prior to the upgrade
  4. Make sure that the theme is compatible with the new version
  5. Upgrade WordPress
  6. Enable the plugins one at a time, checking their main function to verify that there aren’t any issues
  7. Finally, test the site in all major browsers, which for me means FireFox, Internet Explorer, Safari, and Opera

It’s gone quite well and I think I’ll test one more thing by publishing this post.  That tests the compatibility with Windows Live Writer, my main (and favorite) blogging editor.

Have you upgraded WordPress yet?  If so, any issues? Good luck if you’re just getting around to it! 🙂

Is today the day?

That’s the question I Friday morning, mainly because I’m just curious what people thought.  Originally I had planned to post this later that day, but… life intervened.  Anyway, a number of people shared their thoughts and I thought I’d put them together in a short post.  So the question was…

What makes today special for you? Is today the day?

@lisarokusek

@rjacobse

@joannayoung

@waugaman

@wr3n

@shawnz

@johanbryggare

@slolee 

I want to say thank you to all my Twitter friends that sent responses, and I really appreciate you letting me share your Friday!  I hope that everyone get’s a bit of insight and inspiration from what we share in these Q&A sessions on Twitter – they’re fun!

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