Archive for the ‘Meta’ Category

Posted on August 10, 2005 - by deCadmus

Who Are You?

According to a new ComScore survey you are:

• wealthy,
• young, and
• using broadband.

You also spend far more time online, visit more web sites, and much more likely to buy online than those who don’t read blogs.

So, is this great news for aspiring blog networks who hope to cash in with bigger ad rate cards? Or is this a junk survey that simply tells the folks who commissioned it exactly what they want to hear?

In my mind there’s still a bright line between a blog and a commercial web site. Why do I feel increasingly like the blog at the end of the universe with that point of view?

Via Metafilter.

Posted on July 31, 2005 - by deCadmus

Ch-ch-ch-changes…

You may notice a thing or two has changed.

Bloggle.com has always been several weblogs all rolled into one; each of them blissfully unaware of the existence of the others. While this has been fine for the blogs (they’re just bits — they don’t care) it’s become increasingly difficult for your author to manage a site that’s so splintered just below the surface… especially in light of such things as tags and other semantic systems that are trying to make sense of the web.

For six years I’ve relied on Blogger to power Bloggle. And, while from time to time I’ve waved my fists and rent my garments over its foibles, Blogger has served me well. But it’s time to move on… I’ve chosen WordPress for my new publishing platform.

There’s still some work to be done under the covers; tweaking of posts to make everything wholly compliant and readable and the like. And there will be tinkering… Oh! there will be tinkering. ;)

Here’s to the next six years!

Posted on May 16, 2005 - by deCadmus

Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

Regular readers (some 1,500 of you this week — so nice of you to drop by!) might note some changes…

Change number 1 — I’ve added a fun new feature to the right… “A few thousand words.” I’m taking advantage of the ability to take a tiny snapshot with my cell-phone, add a quick caption and post it instantly online (a blog within a blog, a MoBlog, in particular.) I have no idea what may show up there, and that’s at least half the fun.

Change number 2 — I’ve removed search. I originally added search capability at least as much for my self as for anyone else… It’s been handy to be able to quickly find prior posts on a subject I’m writing about so I could link them in for context. This was a very spiffy thing until Atomz search decided on a whim to toss ads into the search results. I’m committed to keeping Bloggle a non-commercial, ad-free zone; so Atomz is out of here. Mind you, Atomz is still a spiffy tool and I’d still recommend them to most anyone looking for a commercial search solution… I guess they’ve just outgrown the personal, non-commercial search space.

So far as search capability goes, there’s really no loss; it’s just as easy to search this site on Google (try this in Google’s search field: “site:bloggle.com search-phrase”). Google does a great job of exhaustively crawling these pages… They visit daily.

And now, back to our regular drivel.

Posted on May 4, 2005 - by deCadmus

Coffee, anyone?

Just to briefly note… most all of the writing on Bloggle these days is happening on the Coffee Pages. That’s not to say there won’t be more front-page user experience stuff, or stories and photos of life in Vermont… just that I’ve been more single minded lately than even my usual.

Speaking of user experience, however… if you happen to be in Vermont this week, I’m presenting at the Vermont/New Hampshire Direct Marketing Group’s conference at the Killington Grand Resort Hotel.

Posted on July 20, 2004 - by deCadmus

Bloggers Are the Sizzle, Not the Steak

Quotes the L.A. Times:

“But make no mistake, this moment of blogging legitimization and temporary press credentials doesn’t turn bloggers into journalists. “

Given the current state of journalism, I consider this quite the complement.

Posted on February 28, 2004 - by deCadmus

Life Happens

You know those really big gaps that appear in the chronology here? There’s a reason for those… life happened. Or, more likely, the job that has taken the place of my life for a while happened… and continued to do so.

It’s one thing to be busy, and to work in a fast-paced environment [both of which I tend to enjoy.] It’s another to realize at 1:30 in the morning when you’re still sitting at the computer from early in the evening the nite before that perhaps what you’re doing doesn’t qualify as either working to live or living to work, ’cause frankly there isn’t a whole lot of living going on at all. So, after apologizing to both the spouse and the dog, you make a resolution to really make a significant change.

And then you change nothing at all. Or, that’s how it’s usually worked.

This time I did something different. Boy, did I.

Hello, Vermont!

Posted on February 23, 2003 - by deCadmus

On-stage, and off.

It’s been a tremendous fun weekend, performance-wise. Friday evening the little improv company that I play with - Commedia Sans Arte - was featured at the Just Off Broadway theatre in Kansas City.

While we’ve taken the stage together more than a hundred times at Renaissance Festivals, this show marks our first *real* gig this side of the 16th century… which means it’s the first time we actually played to a space where we actually had control over the technical aspects - sound, lighting and the like - and didn’t have to compete with what was happening in the lanes, or the merchants hawking their wares just down the way. And I find myself hard-pressed to describe just how right it felt to do a film noir translation scene with a guy in the background thrumbing a slinky, swingy beat on a stand-up bass. Good fun.

And then Saturday evening herself and I attended a fabulous concert by Cherish The Ladies… Irish music, traditional and slightly less so, fronted by the amazing Joanie Madden on the penny whistle [high and low] and flute. And just a coupla blocks from home. ; )

Posted on February 19, 2003 - by deCadmus

And more on Doctorow.

I pre-ordered Cory’s Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom from Amazon. Round about the time I got it, Cory announced that the novel would be freely available for download in its entirety. [His publisher must love him.] When it comes to reading a novel, I still prefer books to bits, and - either way - this one is a spiffy read.

I was unavoidably transported to my twenty-something days, sneaking a Disney job interview into a business trip to Anaheim. I got a short “insiders” tour that I’ll never forget. [Did you know there's a small half-court inside the Matterhorn?] After a second interview that day I learned that all Disney cast members had to be clean-shaven. [!] I wonder how many other would-be-Imagineers have chosen other paths, unwilling to give up their beards? But I digress.

The ‘lectronic version of Down and Out is made available via a Creative Commons license - a new way to protect as little or as much of your copyright as you care to. I’m intrigued, and as I learn more I’m increasingly inclined to make the entirety of Bloggle available under a similar CC license. It seems a nifty way to make my lil’ contribution to the Public Domain.

Posted on February 18, 2003 - by deCadmus

All the news that’s fit to blog…

Cory Doctorow wonders out loud whether Reuters’ decision to cut 3,000 jobs is in any way a result of the disintermediation effect of the blogosphere. I’m inspired to wonder a little further out…

The evolution of the modern journalist [don't snicker, that'd be rude] had long been toward an unbiased, dispassionate recording of events: who, what, when and where. At some point in the not terribly distant past, this grew to include interpretations of why, and speculation on what it all means. Our dispassionate observer became involved in the event; a hollow, shadow-participant… and then only until a bigger and better event came along.

Enter the amateur journalist… better still, millions of them. No casual observers here, these are folk who recount with vibrancy and passion - and often surprising clarity - events in which they are fully engaged. Bias doesn’t much matter, as another point of view is only a click away, found on the blog of yet another fully-involved party.

Me, I think we’re seeing journalism redefined by a new medium… yet another step in the curious evolution of journalism.

Posted on February 17, 2003 - by deCadmus

Building Block

Back to the subject of the user experience…

I’ve had the extreme fortune to, once again, find myself playing my favorite role - practicing a mix of usability and information architecture, and being something of a customer experience gadfly. When the dotcom bubble burst I had to wonder if I’d get the opportunity to return this space at all. Instead, not only do I get to play, I get to coach a team of very smart people, as well.

In August I accepted a position at H&R Block, managing the web content services team. In September I started doodling tweaks to the site’s IA on notebooks and napkins. In October, we started whiteboarding. In November we presented a new design to management. And over the course of 45 days in December, we executed that design. That all-new version of the H&R Block web site went live January 10… synchronized with the new season’s product launch.

All in all, I’m awfully pleased with what we’ve built. Sure, there’s some bits I’d like to have done differently, if we’d had the time. There’s little things, still, that rub me the wrong way… but we can address those, and we are.

Building and launching the site was a galvanizing event for the new content team, who continue to throw themselves into new projects with all the energy of an upstart startup… just without the Aeron chairs.