Tag Archives: StumbleUpon

Is there any point to blogging anymore?

Posted on October 4, 2010 | 1 Comment

I enjoy blogging so much that I maintain several of them, but I have to wonder if there is a point. To be honest, it often feels like I am shouting into the void only for the privilege of hearing my own voice.

Many web tools have arisen that do certain jobs better that I originally used a blog for since I started blogging. For instance, the purpose of the first blog I started was to keep notes and recipes while I taught myself to cook. Now I use Cookbooker to organize my cookbooks and to make notes on the recipes I have tried. Not only does Cookbooker maintain a searchable database of cookbooks and recipes, but it allows me to connect to other people who own the same cookbooks I do and see what they think of recipes I haven’t tried yet. I can’t do this with my blog.

I also originally started a book journaling blog to keep track of what I had been reading and post book reviews. Now I belong to LibraryThing, which maintains a searchable database of all the books in my library with my book reviews plus lots of other useful information. And it makes recommendations for other books I might like based on what I read. My blog can’t do that.

An original purpose of blogs was to share links, and I often do that on all my blogs, especially this one. But let’s be honest: There are more effective ways to share and organize links, such as Twitter, StumbleUpon and Delicious, all of which I use heavily.

So why do I keep up my blogs? I will admit I don’t post as frequently as I used to, but I try to post something on each blog at least once a week. The blog is still best for long-form writing, especially the kind of writing I’m doing now, when I’m just spewing random thoughts onto the blank page to help me sort them and reflect on them. And the blog really excels at functioning as a kind of electronic notebook, organizing everything in one place: links, random thoughts, longer essays, even media like photos and videos.

So I probably will keep posting to my blogs, even if it feels a little like masturbation from time to time. But I will keep on using those other tools, too, where I do feel like I more genuinely connect to other people, because — let’s face it — more people are on those sites than are visiting my humble little blogs. My blogs will probably continue to be my catch-alls from those other sites as well as a handy place to post my original thoughts that can’t really go anywhere else.

And that’s really what the blog is best at: a place for original thoughts. I need a place like that.

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New features/look for Google Reader, StumbleUpon, Facebook

Posted on October 26, 2009 | Leave a comment

The thing about people who write software is: They’ve always gotta fiddle with it. I used to manage a software development team, so I know what I’m talking about. Those guys aren’t happy unless they’re fiddling. You just got to hope that the fiddling turns out to be an actual improvement. It’s a crapshoot.

Now when millions of people use your software and you’ve still gotta fiddle, well, you’re going to upset some (or many) of your users. I’ve noticed that three websites I use frequently have been mightily fiddled with recently.

First up is Google Reader. First, they introduced a “like” button (a la Facebook) on articles and some additional sharing features, including making it easier to follow people’s shared items. Now they’ve added a Popular Items section, moved the Recommendations for new blogs to the left sidebar (called Recommended Sources) and added a new sort for articles: Sort by Magic.

I actually like most of the changes here. The Google Reader interface still works pretty much as it always has, with just a few new geegaws, so it hasn’t slowed down my browsing any. I magically found some cool people to follow, and the Popular Items section is a great way to kill a dull Sunday afternoon looking at cute pics, fails and funny cartoons without actually having to subscribe to any of those bourgeois feeds. I turned on “sort by magic,” and to tell the truth, I don’t notice any difference in the sort order, but I love the name. My grade: A.

Facebook’s changes aren’t nearly so intuitive. They’ve instituted two feeds, a Live Feed, which shows all your friends’ status updates, and a News Feed, which is supposedly the most interesting items from the past day. I find them both equally murky, and now I’m always vaguely suspicious that I’m missing something.

I was pretty much over Facebook, anyway. My friend calls it a “very clever Rolodex,” and that’s how I’ve started to treat it, only visiting when I get a message or need to look someone up. For day-to-day status updates, I get much more value out of Twitter. My grade on the Facebook changes: C-.

Quick tip: You can restore Facebook to (more or less) its old look. On your Home page, in the top left corner, drag Status Updates to the top of the nav bar and then click on it (you may have to click on the tiny “More” to show the Status Updates option).

Finally, I’ve been using StumbleUpon for a very long time as an archive of links I’ve liked, and I think I have 1,400+ links stored there. I also use Delicious for active research and projects, but StumbleUpon is more of an archive of old links for me. And the redesign has me baffled. I can never tell what interface is going to appear when I click “Stumble It.” I don’t know whether I’ll get the option to assign categories or write a review or if the stumble will even work. It’s all way too confusing and basically makes me want to abandon the site altogether. My grade: F.

If there’s one thing we can count on, it’s that everything will change, whether we like it or not. And if there’s a software developer involved, the changes will be frequent, random and usually come without warning. We might as well get used to it.

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My social media world

Posted on May 18, 2009 | Leave a comment

This past weekend I joined Facebook, and now my social media world is so complex and intertwined that it makes my head hurt. To help me make sense of it all, I drew this map:

My social media map

My social media map

(I used bubbl.us, which is a really intuitive, easy-to-use, free mind-mapping tool.)

This doesn’t show all my social media sites, just the ones I use most regularly. But it did help me organize my social media efforts, at least in my own head. The black lines show everything that feeds into FriendFeed, which is my nexus and the most complete view of what I’m doing online. The gray lines show which services are being automagically updated by which other services, usually via an RSS feed or FriendFeed’s automatic output to Twitter.

I organized my social media universe into four quadrants. My home quadrant (tan) — my blogs but also my Google Profile – are my home bases on the Web and also where the world finds me. My networks quadrant (green) have organized quite naturally into a professional network that I use only occasionally (LinkedIn), a network of friends and family I know in real life (Facebook) and an online network with many overlaps with the other two networks that I use most frequently and is the largest (Twitter).

My links quadrant (purple) are my tools for collecting and sharing links. I read blog posts and other articles via RSS feed in Google Reader every day, and share interesting finds out to my network. Delicious is where I permanently store links and do research. StumbleUpon is more of a historical record of links I’ve blogged about, plus a lot of random fun stuff I discover while surfing the web.

Finally, there are miscellaneous tools that reflect my hobbies in the pink quadrant. I’m an avid reader, so I have several tools for organizing and recording my reading and books (LibraryThing, Lists of Bests, All Consuming), which feed back to my books blog and sometimes Twitter. I also use tools to track my goals (43 Things) and travel (43 Places), and to upload my photos (Flickr).

Of course, not everything is on here. I didn’t include really miscellaneous places like my Amazon Wishlist or Bookmooch, or places I rarely visit like Digg or Technorati. But it is nice being able to visualize my little online universe and my place within it.

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How to get started in the Web 2.0 world

Posted on October 2, 2008 | 1 Comment
Web 2.0

Image by Daniel F. Pigatto via Flickr

I have a colleague who’s interested in bringing some of our organization’s knowledge management efforts into the Web 2.0 world, and she wanted to know how to get started. My advice was, before getting an organizational blog or setting up a wiki or something like that, that she — or ideally everyone on her team — get involved on a personal level. Because I don’t think you can get Web 2.0 — and therefore your organization can’t get Web 2.0 — unless you’re doing it. It’s all about participation and collaboration, and that means you have to dive in.

So here are my suggestions for the steps you should take before you even think about setting up an organizational blog or wiki or anything like that.

1. Start bookmarking. You are soon going to be touring all over the web, and you need a way to remember the best blogs, videos and other stuff you find. You can use your browser’s bookmarks feature, but the Web 2.0 way is to share. So I suggest getting an account on a social bookmarking site. I recommend Delicious because it is so clean and easy to use, but StumbleUpon is also a good option. Both provide toolbar buttons so you can bookmark as you surf. Get in the habit of bookmarking the sites that interest you and tagging them in meaningful ways.

2. Read some blogs. Blogs are the heart of the social web. Somewhere out there, someone is writing about something you’re interested in or working on. Use Google’s blog search to find 5-10 blogs on those subjects and start reading them. Take a look at their blogrolls or the blogs they cite often, and start reading them too. Of course, there’s an upper limit to the number of blogs you can read, but you do want to be keeping up with at least 20, probably more if you can handle it.

RSS feed readers make it a lot easier to keep up with all those blogs, because they deliver new content to you, instead of you having to go out on the web to get it. I like Google Reader myself, but there are many  other choices. Both Firefox and Internet Explorer have RSS feed readers built in, as well. To find the feed, look for the orange RSS feed icon and click on it: RSS feed icon

The most important thing, though, when reading blogs is to comment on what you read and like. Web 2.0 is all about participation, and commenting is one of the main ways to join in. Once you start commenting on blogs in your niche, you’ll meet the bloggers and other commenters and begin getting to know the community that you’re joining.

3. Jump into Twitter. It’s time to up the interaction a notch, and Twitter is a good way to do it. You can start out small and build up as your confidence increases. Find a few people to follow; first check the blogs you’re reading, as bloggers are typically on Twitter too. See who they are following and follow any of those people who seem interesting, as well. There are plenty of Twitter applications that make following tweets easier.

Why are you on Twitter? You will get in the habit of sharing: what you’re working on, what you’re reading, links, whatever. And you will have a ready-made community to ask questions and get feedback from. What’s more, it’s fun.

4. Get a blog. It’s now time to join the conversation. And I don’t mean starting an organizational blog. That should come later. First, you should start your own personal blog where you can write in your own voice. You may choose to write about your work or about some other passion. What matters is that you’re adding your voice to the conversation.

Starting a blog is easy and takes less than five minutes. I recommend WordPress.com as the best free blogging platform, because even if you don’t know the software, it’s easy to learn and get started on right away. If you’re intimidated by having a full-fledged blog or don’t have the time, you can start a “micro-blog” on Tumblr and share interesting links, video, quotes and other short snippets. Remember to keep commenting on other blogs and leave a link to your blog when you do. You’ll soon find that folks who read your comments are stopping by your blog and commenting on what you’re writing.

And before you know it, you’re part of Web 2.0.

If you follow these steps, more or less, and get involved in the online community on a personal level, you’ll probably find it much easier to think of creative and worthwhile ways your organization can get involved.

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Quick tip for StumbleUpon: Instant reviews

Posted on September 22, 2008 | 1 Comment

One bookmarking tool isn’t enough for me. I use Delicious for research projects and sites I frequently visit, and I like to keep it clean and organized. So I need another tool for those sites that catch my eye and I might return to someday.

StumbleUpon, although not nearly as effective at organizing bookmarks as Delicious, works great for this purpose. Using the StumbleUpon toolbar, all I have to do to bookmark something is hit the I like it! button. Usually, I don’t even have to come up with tags. And even if I never return to the site via my StumbleUpon page, I can at least share with other Stumblers.

Here’s a quick tip to make stumbling even easier. Before clicking the I like it! button, highlight a sentence or two in the page’s text that describes the page or what you like about it. Then click I like it! and the highlighted text will be entered automatically as the page’s review, prefaced by the words “From the page.” When you return to browse through your bookmarks, the captured text should jog your memory as to why you liked the site in the first place.

Visit me on StumbleUpon.

Visit me on Delicious.

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    What are blogs? And how can we use them? Resources list

    Posted on December 17, 2007 | 6 Comments

    This is a list of resources I have collected to supplement a presentation I’m giving at work on the subjects: what are blogs, how can our nonprofit blog effectively, and what is Web 2.0 anyway? These resources include many of the examples in the actual presentation as well as supplementary reading materials.

    View the presentation

    About Web 2.0

    Blogging Tools

    Nonprofit Blogs

    Blogs About Nonprofits Using Web 2.0 Technologies

    The Blogosphere (finding blogs of interest)

    Into Web 2.0

    • Tumblr – microblogging site
    • Twitter – microblogging site that integrates with text messaging and instant messaging (IM)
    • del.icio.us – Tag, organize and share bookmarks
    • Stumble Upon – review and rate web content
    • Digg – read and vote on web content
    • NGO Post – read and vote on web content discussing social welfare initiatives
    • Flickr – share, view and comment on photos
    • YouTube – share, view and comment on videos
    • SlideShare – share, view and comment on presentations
    • Wikipedia – world-famous collaboratively written encyclopedia built with a wiki
    • Wikibooks – collection of collaboratively written textbooks written using wikis
    • Facebook – well-known social networking site originally focusing on college students
    • LinkedIn – professional networking site
    • Dogster – social networking site for dogs
    • Causes on Facebook – nonprofits using Facebook to promote causes and raise money
    • IntraHealth Informatics’ Flickr site – nonprofits can share interesting photos to generate interest
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