This was a lot of excitement for one year. Since the whole point of Pinboard is to be around for the long haul, I’m hoping for much less of it in the year to come. A personal archive works a little bit like a bank – you want to be able to use it and forget about it, rather than see it pop up in the evening news.
maciej – Two years of Pinboard.
Long weekends at home are awesome. 9 miles of hiking in Yosemite with 6,200 feet of elevation change and now: burgers!
The Year of Wonders. Alex Shakar writes a beautiful story about his first major book deal. Sometimes not everything works out as planned. (via Kottke)
And a week or so later, when you try to remember what you said at this party, that really terrific thing, you rack your brain, but can’t quite come up with it. That’s Twitter.
The blog, on the other hand, is slow, reliably reference-able, and findable. It’s like a speech, prepared in advance, with the text distributed. Some will hear the speech on the day it’s delivered, but others will be able to reference its text across the years.
Randy Murray – Business Blogging: Tweet For The Moment, Blog For The Ages.
Thanks to an early invite from Raanan I played with Google+ over the weekend. I want to jot down one thought about how Google+ treats identity.
A significant barrier to entry for many social tools is finding the people you already know who are using the service. This is what gets you hooked on a social service.
After logging in and exploring the UI for a bit I went to start creating circles. Here are the options, besides search of course, Google gives for finding people.
Yahoo! and Hotmail are the only two external contact sources I can use. 1 Those of us who have taken the time and carefully created lists of people we follow elsewhere should be able to import those networks directly into Google+. I don’t particularly care about the people Google recommends for me to follow.
With all the data Google has they could be populating lists of people. Instead presenting new users with their email address book, Google recommendations, and Yahoo! and Hotmail imports Google+ could instead be pulling data from Twitter, Facebook, Google Reader, and much more. Break each service into a filtered list and voilà, easy and relevant user discovery for first-time users.
Our identities online are formed by much more than our address books. If Google+ is what comes next it would be nice if they acknowledged and worked with this.
What’s important as a first run experience on Google+ is whether the people I follow elsewhere are already there. The easier it is for people to bring in their existing networks of friends and followers the better Google+ will fare.
Notes:
The United States of America is an idea in search of completion, and we are still arguing over questions that vexed the original founders at the birth of our Republic. Wouldn’t it be better — in fact, wouldn’t we take our poltiical and philosophical positions with greater seriousness — if we recognized that from the perspective of future historians, we are still actively engaged in the founding of this country?
Dan Conover – We are the Founding Fathers (& Mothers too!)
ProPublica’s newest news app uses education data to get more social. A really interesting app from ProPublica that analyzes data released by the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights. Even though it hits just a few data points it is fascinating to compare various districts and schools.
Homemade pasta with lemon basil and tarragon rolled between it. Dinner is going to be delicious!
Ways to acquire users for free. Cool tips on different strategies for attracting users to your product. The right data makes these decisions easier.
Whitman College, my alma mater, sent these out to all graduates the other week. It’s a mini, laminated diploma “to put in your wallet or a very small frame.” This seems about the worst possible way to spend funds.
When tuition is increasing along with cutbacks in staff why in the world is money being spent on frivolous things like this?
If I choose to go to a small private college with tuition over $40,000 it’s for the small class sizes, relationships with professors, and opportunities to get involved in a variety of things. 1 It’s not for a laminated mini diploma one year after graduation.
Instead of wasting money on creating, laminating, cutting, and mailing hundreds of these to graduates around the world Whitman could have covered the cost of books for a student who otherwise would have to borrow for them.
Notes: