I am happy to see that my 'hand-blogging' post rattled some of you.  It was particularly amusing to see suggestions about mixing the idea with character recognition software or smart-pen.  Such variations of the idea are not what I had in mind.  Besides, they are old ideas indistinguishable from digital-ink/tablet ideas.  The primary focus of my post to show that it is people that matters the most, not the technology.

Most people on this planet knows nothing about blogging.  I doubt if more than 5% of Internet users know what blogging is.  Stepping back even further, Internet users are only a small portions of the world population.  If the world population was a pancake, Internet users are the top crust and bloggers are just a small tip of it.

I spend a lot of my time thinking about how technology affects rest of the pancake.  I think about how blogging may be a tool for survival rather than a tool for mere communication.  From this perspective, character recognition software or Bluetooth-pen loose all meaning.  Even typing makes no sense.  Guess how many people in the world know how to type.  Only the top crust.

When I think of mobphone, I am thinking about a dirt cheap rugged device the size of a pager and only a few buttons.  Even voice phone calls are optional in such a device.  Such a device can be configured at a local store to point to a specific blog which is created when the buyer purchases it.

A person, lets say Mrs. Wong, walks into the store, choose how many categories she wants, pays $20, and receives the mobphone with category overlay, a URL printed out on a sticky paper.  Mrs. Wong goes back to her street cart and sticks the URL on the side.

Each morning, Mrs. Wong writes out prices and stuff on a blackboard, points the mobphone at it, and clicks the 'pricelist' button.  Each button serves as a form of cheap metadata.  Next she points the mobphone at her goods, lets say fresh fish, and clicks the 'fish' button.  That's it.  Mrs. Wong can look at her blog once in a while when she returns to the store to pay monthly due to keep the moblogging service going.

Mrs. Wong's customers can jot down or tear out a tearsheet to get Mrs. Wong's blog URL when they pass by her cart.  Each afternoon, they can see Mrs. Wong's goods and prices before deciding to make the trip down the street.

A similar 'down to earth' blogging can be done with FAX machines.  A blog is mapped to a phone number and a post is made by faxing a page.  Call it Fax-blogging.

When you really think about it, all this is obvious.  Unfortunately, it is not obvious until it hits you on the nose hard enough.  I hope many people get nosebleed from this and the previous post. <g>

I turned it on just now.  With my fingers crossed, I am posting this pointless post just to update the front page.  Silly me.

From a New York Times article via Dave:

Tobias von Schönebeck, a tour guide, shook his head when he heard about how the phenomenon was traced back to Macy's. "This is just the sort of thing that happens when you forbid New York to smoke."

Heh.

In light of Wiki troubles the Pie/Echo/Atom group is having, I thought I should just jot down some suggestions that could reduce some of the problems.

Stop Flash Floods

A busy Wiki page accumulates a lot of information quickly and the urge to reorganize the page in mass mounts.  Don't.  People identify a page by its content, not just its title.  Editing the page, particularly the first two screens of content are like flash floods that wash away recognizable landmarks and leave the Wiki user disoriented.

Instead, create another page and point to it.  This means introduction of page versions where each version represents structural changes.  Within each version, changes are accumulative.  There must also be a way to link to most recent version and list and enumerate the versions.  Page versions account for ahistoric nature of Wiki to some extent.

Doors, Places, and Objects

While every Wiki page are web pages, you must assign distinctive roles to those pages.  Some pages act as doors, directing or discouraging movement to places and objects.  Some pages act as places serving as containers for objects like documents and provide constraints for activities such as general musings or topic related discussions.

Pages acting as objects like documents should have a clear division between the object and the actions.  For example, Wiki page for Archiving API spec should have the draft spec at the top and discussion about the API at the bottom.

Too Many Pages

Discourage creation of Wiki pages on whims.  Assign people rights or buffer with a wait period (1 day) before a new page can be created.  Similar pages should be merged by adding a new page instead of deleting or reorganizing.

One of the things that keep me humble are Bionicles.  I just can't figure out why kids like these unattractive half-finished looking junk of a toy from Lego.  Since my son likes them enough to have a large collection, there is obviously something there.  Maddest thing is why kids are buying identical bionicles that differ only in colors.  Bionicles drive me nuttier than Barney.

Anyway, I took some pictures of Bionicles for my son so he can post it to his Club Lego home page.  Here is one of those:

Good Bionicles on Thin Ice

It has been like climbing a mountain covered with a maze of trails and fellow climbers.  For the past two months, I have been lost in the cloud, but now I have climbed out of it and seen the summit.  I don't know who else have reached here before me, but I suspect most people are still stuck in the thick cloud that turns the summit into an island.  It is a great feeling just being here.

As requested on the Pie/Echo/Atom Wiki, this is my blog post to spread the news:

Final Name Voting is in progress and will end on August 15th.

There are only seven cleared candidates so far and not much of voting is going on either.  The choices are:

• Barbwire – 1 vote
• Dada – 1
• Elbo – 2
• Feedcast – 7
• Loki – 0
• Sygnal – 0
• Wyre – 2

Of this bunch, Feedcast is the only one that doesn't make me cringe.  My only complain about it is that it's a bit long and it sounds like a mundane product name, not a cool standard name.

I proposed SIX before but there were some negative feedback.  How does Seven sound?  Six plus me is Seven.  Seven feed, Seven API, Seven-enabled.  Hmm.  Is there Seven Part, Inc.?;-p

Chris Pirillo, the Lockergnome, turned 30 recently and his friends made a video for him.  Check it out here.  It's hillarious.  Personally, I liked the "a little makeup and a little shakeup" bit the most.  You won't know what I mean until you see the video.