These Things Matter to Me
Thursday, July 03, 2008
Managing feeds. The doghouse and the kennel.
Like many of you, I have a love/hate relationship with my feeds. (Remind me one day to tell you about my feed: bottomless popcorn theory).
But today I'm here to tell you about two helpful strategies I use with my feeds.
The Doghouse.
Invented by a friend of mine, the Doghouse is feed probation. Basically you're marking a feed, by tag, or folder, as "in the Doghouse." You're disappointed in this feed. It's not living up to expectations. There are many reasons why a feed may get sent to the Doghouse. Maybe all of a sudden it went "partial," maybe images stopped working, maybe the past 30 items have been about a topic you're not interested in and you suspect the shift is permanent. Maybe somebody just got an iphone, and ever since it's gone downhill. You don't want these feeds to get mixed in with the good feeds, but you don't want to totally fire the feed quite yet. Send it to the Doghouse.
The Kennel.
The Kennel is just a vacation for feeds. For me, the Kennel is usually when there's nothing wrong with the feed, but I need to edit stuff down either for time or focus reasons. If you have a major project due, and can't deal with distraction, you may want to move all feeds unrelated to your project, to the Kennel.
Maybe it's the week before Macworld, and you just don't feel like reading 12 posts a day about iphone video camera rumors. Maybe you're on a budget, and reading about luxury hotels hurts right now. Maybe you have a Drupal deadline, and only want to read about Drupal and Linux for two weeks.
There are plenty of reasons to drop your feeds of at the Kennel, it doesn't mean you love them any less.
But today I'm here to tell you about two helpful strategies I use with my feeds.
The Doghouse.
Invented by a friend of mine, the Doghouse is feed probation. Basically you're marking a feed, by tag, or folder, as "in the Doghouse." You're disappointed in this feed. It's not living up to expectations. There are many reasons why a feed may get sent to the Doghouse. Maybe all of a sudden it went "partial," maybe images stopped working, maybe the past 30 items have been about a topic you're not interested in and you suspect the shift is permanent. Maybe somebody just got an iphone, and ever since it's gone downhill. You don't want these feeds to get mixed in with the good feeds, but you don't want to totally fire the feed quite yet. Send it to the Doghouse.
The Kennel.
The Kennel is just a vacation for feeds. For me, the Kennel is usually when there's nothing wrong with the feed, but I need to edit stuff down either for time or focus reasons. If you have a major project due, and can't deal with distraction, you may want to move all feeds unrelated to your project, to the Kennel.
Maybe it's the week before Macworld, and you just don't feel like reading 12 posts a day about iphone video camera rumors. Maybe you're on a budget, and reading about luxury hotels hurts right now. Maybe you have a Drupal deadline, and only want to read about Drupal and Linux for two weeks.
There are plenty of reasons to drop your feeds of at the Kennel, it doesn't mean you love them any less.
Labels: atom, doghouse, feeds, Google Reader, gtd, lifehacker, lifehacking, productivity, RSS, syndication
Sunday, June 29, 2008
YouTube is still magic
(A quick thought about YouTube that was too long for twitter.)
The sweet spot in a YouTuber's creative life is right after they feel the power, access, and infinite potential of YouTube, but before they get bummed by the haters. You know, that phase when he/she's making 4 videos a day.
The sweet spot in a YouTuber's creative life is right after they feel the power, access, and infinite potential of YouTube, but before they get bummed by the haters. You know, that phase when he/she's making 4 videos a day.
"I said I wasn't going to make another video today, but I just wanted to respond to desi64. Desi64 (I hope I'm saying your name right), I agree with you..."I know people get impatient with YouTube, and I agree it's a petri dish for many community "don'ts," but I don't think its diversity,activity, and pulse is matched by anything else on the Internet.
Labels: youtube
Monday, May 05, 2008
Google Reader lets you add notes now!
Maybe my friends and I just have too high of an opinion of how amusing our commentary is, but we've long-awaited the ability to leave notes on our Google Reader Shared Items. And now, perhaps responding to services like FriendFeed where you can comment on anything, Google Reader lets you leaves notes!
Here's how it looks:
Here's how it looks:
Labels: design, feature, Google Reader, interface, notes, RSS, sharing
Tuesday, April 15, 2008
Video: Drupal vs. WordPress. Presentation given at LUGRadio Live USA, 2008. San Francisco, CA
This weekend Selena and I spoke at the charming and hospitable LUG Radio Live USA, in San Francisco, CA. The topic was Choosing between Drupal and WordPress. It was very civil. A few people have asked for the video of our presentation, so I've uploaded it above with a Flash embed. More ambitious full-on video file to come later.
This weekend Selena and I spoke at the charming and hospitable LUG Radio Live USA, in San Francisco, CA. The topic was Choosing between Drupal and WordPress. It was very civil. A few people have asked for the video of our presentation, so I've uploaded it above with a Flash embed. More ambitious full-on video file to come later.
Labels: cms, drupal, lug radio live, lugradio, lugradiolive, lugradiolive2008, open source, usability, wordpress
Wednesday, April 09, 2008
So much dramz. Choosing between WordPress and Drupal.
Selz and I are giving a presentation on choosing between WordPress and Drupal at LUG Radio Live in San Francisco this weekend. She and I agree to disagree.
Selz and I are giving a presentation on choosing between WordPress and Drupal at LUG Radio Live in San Francisco this weekend. She and I agree to disagree.
Labels: choice, dilemma, drupal, lug radio live, lugradio, wordpress
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
Preview screencast of Wordpress 2.5's gallery feature
Wordpress's Matt Mullenweg previews a very cool feature of the soon-to-be-released Wordpress, small photo galleries in a post without painful manual layout. (And yes, there are plenty of shots of the cool new dashboard.)
Labels: blogging, interface, ma.tt, preview, screencast, social software, video, wordpress, wordpress 2.5
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
Help artists be artists. A defense of drupalmodules.com
The myth of centralization, the reality of distributed information.
If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that that:
This applies to all sorts of activities and information, but today I'm talking about software reference material, in specific, Drupal reference material.
Drupal is an incredibly popular content management system framework. You can call it other things. Drupal helps you make websites.
Drupal's fight to centralize
I'm relatively new to Drupal, quite like it, and recommend it frequently. That said, I have some issues with it, and among them what seems like peer pressure in the Drupal community to not create, or feel self-conscious about creating, Drupal resources outside of Drupal.org. There is a surprising lack of websites about Drupal given how popular it is. This is thoroughly confusing as everybody knows that with both proprietary and open source software, bands, artists, etc... having a breadth of resources/fan sites/ forums is a sign of a healthy, thriving community/market/mindshare. There's a time and a place for "many eyes" and joining large group efforts (like Drupal.org) and there's a time and a place for shirking mass-meetings, votes, digging in by yourself or a few collaborators, and making something totally fresh, especially for "proof of concept." Neither approach is better or worse, but they each have their time and place, and nobody should feel guilty or self-conscious for working hard on their own and making something.
Recently a non-Drupal.org resource was created, drupalmodules.com. This has been mildly controversial within the Drupal community. Drupalmodules.com is too new for me to honestly judge on utility alone, but without a doubt, it's purpose is undeniable: navigating the world of Drupal modules is very challenging, for many different reasons. While many within the Drupal community agree there needs to be a way to sift through modules by "quality" (there are wildly varying degrees of quality), the problem is bigger than just that. Quality aside, it's challenging just to know if you're picking the module that mostly closely scratches your itch... Anyway, Drupal modules: tough to navigate, agreed! Not agreed? That making drupalmodules.com was the right thing to do. Crazy, right?
Apparently there have been discussions for ages on a rating system for modules on Drupal.org, let alone a general redesign of the site, and its sub-sites. Maybe people think drupalmodules.com undermines those efforts?
Really people, there's no downside to having another Drupal resource. In bizarro-land, the downside is that people who believe in centralizing everything, think the cost of keeping track of things and managing quality is not worth the benefit of having constantly-created resources, failing-fast, iterating often, and innovating often. In that reality, people should stop creating things, unless it's a thing inside the heavily formalized, but tracked, "system."
But on my planet, planet Internet, we're enjoying the abundance! (and we have RSS readers) John, thanks so much for working on drupalmodules.com! I hope it doesn't cause you too much grief. I hope you get lots of donations, and don't feel self-conscious about putting ads up on your site (unless you don't like them :D ). Do not feel self-conscious about the success or failure of your site! I hope more Drupal websites get born. I highly dig Drupal, and think it will get better faster not just with an ever-growing gigantic body of Drupal.org community members, but with highly-motivated independent visionaries who use Drupal as a canvas to express their vision.
Don't control artists.
We all know the expression "design by committee," and how it's a derisive term used to describe the dynamic of when the lack of a cohesive vision dilutes quality. And it's no secret that user experience and design is one of the most common criticisms of Drupal. So it's extra discouraging when the very thing that will lead to improved experience and design in Drupal, escape from design by committee, is frowned upon. Big groups are great for fixing bugs, raising money, and lot of other stuff. I don't want the awesome Drupal.org community to go anywhere. I just want it to recognize and appreciate that lots of cool Drupal stuff might not come from Drupal.org, but can still help Drupal.org.
The myth of centralization, the reality of distributed information.
If the Internet has taught us anything, it's that that:
- authoritativeness is subjective
- information is distributed
- if anything ever seems centralized, it's only because giant pockets of activity are hidden, and once surfaced, we can see, "oh yeah, information is distributed!, better to have it available, than invisible!"
This applies to all sorts of activities and information, but today I'm talking about software reference material, in specific, Drupal reference material.
Drupal is an incredibly popular content management system framework. You can call it other things. Drupal helps you make websites.
Drupal's fight to centralize
I'm relatively new to Drupal, quite like it, and recommend it frequently. That said, I have some issues with it, and among them what seems like peer pressure in the Drupal community to not create, or feel self-conscious about creating, Drupal resources outside of Drupal.org. There is a surprising lack of websites about Drupal given how popular it is. This is thoroughly confusing as everybody knows that with both proprietary and open source software, bands, artists, etc... having a breadth of resources/fan sites/ forums is a sign of a healthy, thriving community/market/mindshare. There's a time and a place for "many eyes" and joining large group efforts (like Drupal.org) and there's a time and a place for shirking mass-meetings, votes, digging in by yourself or a few collaborators, and making something totally fresh, especially for "proof of concept." Neither approach is better or worse, but they each have their time and place, and nobody should feel guilty or self-conscious for working hard on their own and making something.
Recently a non-Drupal.org resource was created, drupalmodules.com. This has been mildly controversial within the Drupal community. Drupalmodules.com is too new for me to honestly judge on utility alone, but without a doubt, it's purpose is undeniable: navigating the world of Drupal modules is very challenging, for many different reasons. While many within the Drupal community agree there needs to be a way to sift through modules by "quality" (there are wildly varying degrees of quality), the problem is bigger than just that. Quality aside, it's challenging just to know if you're picking the module that mostly closely scratches your itch... Anyway, Drupal modules: tough to navigate, agreed! Not agreed? That making drupalmodules.com was the right thing to do. Crazy, right?
Apparently there have been discussions for ages on a rating system for modules on Drupal.org, let alone a general redesign of the site, and its sub-sites. Maybe people think drupalmodules.com undermines those efforts?
Really people, there's no downside to having another Drupal resource. In bizarro-land, the downside is that people who believe in centralizing everything, think the cost of keeping track of things and managing quality is not worth the benefit of having constantly-created resources, failing-fast, iterating often, and innovating often. In that reality, people should stop creating things, unless it's a thing inside the heavily formalized, but tracked, "system."
But on my planet, planet Internet, we're enjoying the abundance! (and we have RSS readers) John, thanks so much for working on drupalmodules.com! I hope it doesn't cause you too much grief. I hope you get lots of donations, and don't feel self-conscious about putting ads up on your site (unless you don't like them :D ). Do not feel self-conscious about the success or failure of your site! I hope more Drupal websites get born. I highly dig Drupal, and think it will get better faster not just with an ever-growing gigantic body of Drupal.org community members, but with highly-motivated independent visionaries who use Drupal as a canvas to express their vision.
Don't control artists.
We all know the expression "design by committee," and how it's a derisive term used to describe the dynamic of when the lack of a cohesive vision dilutes quality. And it's no secret that user experience and design is one of the most common criticisms of Drupal. So it's extra discouraging when the very thing that will lead to improved experience and design in Drupal, escape from design by committee, is frowned upon. Big groups are great for fixing bugs, raising money, and lot of other stuff. I don't want the awesome Drupal.org community to go anywhere. I just want it to recognize and appreciate that lots of cool Drupal stuff might not come from Drupal.org, but can still help Drupal.org.
Labels: artists, design by committee, drupal, drupalmodules.com, quality
