69,081 Words later ...

After a rather seemingly unsuccessful attempt to reboot my blog a couple of months ago it would be easy to assume that I haven't been writing anything. This couldn't be further from the truth. Around the same time I was motivated to fire up the blog again I discovered a rather unusual metal exercise (for want of a better word) that I have taken to with surprising ferocity.

750words.com is a beautiful website created by a budding technologist in the US, that has taken the existing concept of 'Morning Pages' and completely retrofitted it into Buck Roger's century - well our 21st century at the very least. The idea is you dump your thoughts, concerns, successes, fears and triumphs on to paper - preferably daily. Well that was the "old skool" version anyway. Buster's version (as I affectionately know him from his update emails) removes the need for paper and replaces it with a very comprehensive web portal. Rather than write you rambling's, you type them; and while the core concept is perfectly intact, Buster has improved it with some incredible innovation.

I'm not sure exactly why I've continued with it to be honest, but today I will have contributed yo my own 750 words journal for ninety days in succession. The tag line of the site is "Private, unfiltered, spontaneous, daily" and couldn't be more articulate. The original creator of the concept, Julia Cameron describes the exercise as the minds wake up call, or a mental morning shower. I concede it does sound pretty cheesy, but as a convert to the exercise I have to agree with this analogy.

Some of the innovation that Buster has brought to the table with the website 750words.com are blatant 'hooks' to give you a feeling of obligation to return each day and dump your words. Simple yet brilliantly implemented features such as monthly score boards in association with achievement milestones in the shape of badges can be earned over continual usage of the site. I think these are wonderful additions as self discipline can only motivate people so far. I can think on a couple of occasions after I'd amassed a streak of over thirty days or more in a row. I didn't feel like adding my days entry, but instantly turning that thought around when I pictured the streak being broken and having to start again.

So over the last three months - yeah it has been that long - I've been writing vigorously to myself about all manners of topics, all of which I'll keep private as per the nature of the 750words.com site. However I've also realised that I like writing to an audience, no matter how small and hence the second re-boot of the virtualsteve space. Like last time I've still got plenty of topics that I want to cover but haven't been making the time. This post is simply a public declaration that I still want to contribute to virtualsteve regardless of my daily electronic dairy commitments. For a long time I've felt that writing to myself was adequate but have slowly discovered that they are similar but distinctively different ventures to writing to an audience.

So while I've written 69,081 words to myself in the past 90 days its long time I re-begin to write a couple of words to everyone else ...

Virtual Steve goes Live!

Howdy and welcome to the official launch of Virtual Steve. What's so official about it you ask? Well today I actually told friends and family about the blog I've been running for the last six or so weeks.

Put up your feet, let the dog get comfortable at your feet and have a look over my past musing, rants and observations. As my profile states I'm not exactly sure of what I hope to gain from this blog if nothing else it will serve as my own electronic diary. I initially hoped to post to it daily but soon opted for quality over quantity as entries can be quite time consuming to articulate.

I've also integrated a Twitter feed and have been enjoying my foray in to these new communication media. Feel free to leave a comment if anything I say struck a nerve or tickles a fancy and pop by from time to time for my latest grumbles.

May your browser refresh and your mouse point true ...

A short high-pitched sound or whistle

Prior to 2006 the word ‘tweet’ had a very distinct and universal meaning and was about as topical as ‘Yawn’. In a few years what was once used to teach young children animal sounds has exploded into a social networking and micro-blogging service sensation.

If you’ve never turned on a computer before let me explain. Twitter is a web application that attempts to answer the question. “What are you doing?” Basically, it’s the away message feature of Instant message clients all by itself. Each entry has become known by the websphere as a 'tweet'

Twitter is synonymous with Facebook, MySpace and YouTube to name a few. Together they are single handedly (the irony of that expression isn’t lost on me) reengineering the way we communicate with each other, particularly the younger generation.

It is this reason I suspect in the aging geek equivalent of a mid live crisis I’ve joint the party and signed up on twitter. I have a handful of friends already on the service and the twitter site itself is quite polished, extracting possible twitter candidates to follow from my Google email account seamlessly.

It’s amazing how much of a PR tool it has become with companies and celebrities hoping on board to flog their wares under the guises of doing everyone a favor. The scary thing is this fresh medium works as we haven’t been over exposed to its loop holes. Not ever 48 hours old on twitter and I’ve already subscribed to Samsung, Xbox and Essendon FC marketing is some form or another.

Despite all this I’m going to stick with it for the time being, having run this blog for over six weeks now. The time necessary to output a 140 odd character message versus crafting a four to five paragraph blog entry is considerably appealing. I think the two services complement each other and with a little nerd gadgetry I hope to integrate one with the other ...

Liskula to the left, Rosemary to the right, Google stuck in the middle of you

I'm really quite ashamed to make a post about the 'skank' blogger incident but at the heart of the issue is a confounding prospect. In the name of completeness I guess I better paraphrase the back story in order to kindle any debate.

Put simply it is a little name calling between a pair of young ladies that don't particularly like one another, however the precedents set are far more noteworthy. A professional writer summaries everything here, here and here - but read on for my amateur hour version of events.

Way back in January Liskula sued Google under the guise of alleging defamatory comments after somehow coming across a blog that was bad mouthing her on the popular Blogger service hosted by Google.

Liskula then recently won the right by court order to discover the identity of the anonymous blogger who had allegedly posted derogative remarks on the Google hosted blog titled "Shanks in NYC".

Upon discovering that the blogger was an irrelevant person in her life and not a friend or family member Liskula after a little song and dance with the media, dropped her defamation charges.

Now Rosemary, yeah you guessed it the not so anonymous blogger plans to sue Google for $US15 million for breaching her privacy.

First of all I feel a little sad for anyone who suspected family or friends be behind the negative comments but the real issue is around whether or not we should be allowed to remain anonymous. Personally I think the entire anonymity of the web is its current shortfall.

I've been and are a member of a number of online communities in varying capacities and typically the more you know about the participants the more civil people behave. Xbox Live is a perfect example of an excellent service that suffers a snide underside due to the foolishness of a small percentage protected by an epic blanket of anonymity.

Rosemary had an interesting argument though it does dull her original actions in the first place. She claims that before Liskula took the issue to the courts the number of visitors to the allegedly offending blog was likely to be two people - herself and Liskula. Obviously with world media taking an interest in the case the words 'skank' and 'Liskula' are common matches now.

I'd argue that if you are placing it in the public domain that everyone has access to then you should assume that everyone has viewed it. I guess my bugbear is that while the tiff is essentially between Liskula and Rosemary Google have somehow been blamed for the entire fiasco.

I guess its classic tall poppy syndrome and if you are trying to take over the world one web click ad at a time, you're going to get lots of odd ball challenges ...

A change in mentality

I’ve had a blogging revelation over the last few days on the back of needing to research and learn a new technology. Traditionally with this blog along with emails that I scribe I try for interesting titles or subject lines. I’ll often take an extra minute to link the subject with the body sometimes utilising a subtle undertone - for example last week I used the Swedish translation of a Willie Nelson song title -though in fairness this is as extreme as I’d go. Another perfect example of this is my review on two of the DigiDNA products in July. I titled my post “Thank-you DigiDNA” where “FileAid \ DiskAid Review” would be more appropriate.

The revelation is around relevance and keyword searches, it is about how we filter the inter web for useful information. If I’m looking to buy a new gizmo or trying to configure a specific product to collaborate with another product my search engine keywords will be very specific to that task. A Google search for “Thank-you DigiDNA” had by blog third in the results list yet on a subsequent search for “FileAid Review” I didn’t even make the first five pages. If I ever want to help a fellow web surfer with any of my brilliant life observations then I need to maximise the likeliness of my blog being offered to them as a relevant search result.

So with a little remorse though strengthened with the knowledge that it is for the greater good. I’ll be reverting to the more common practice of clear distinct post names, under the illusion that at some point in the future I’ll write something that is useful to a complete stranger ...

A gimmick to encourage regulars

Now I won’t claim to have done any real research in the field but I have participated in my fair share of electric communities and I think regular features give the fans something to look forward too. So without further ado it is time to announce my own first half baked idea for a regular feature.

“Ponder this” will hopefully feature each weekend and pose a question that for whatever reason I’ve pondered sometime throughout the week, I won’t answer the question but rather leave it open to my audience to appease us all ...