AFK, Going to PAX

I don’t go to many conferences.  In fact, the only one I’ve been to (since at least the Dallas Fantasy Fest back in the early ‘90s) was SXSW Interactive early this year.  However, I’ve been looking forward to PAX (or Penny Arcade Expo) for months now.  I bought my pass and plane tickets and it’s finally right around the corner!

I’m really excited.  I’m not sure if I am going to do a lot of blogging, though.  I don’t plan to bring a laptop to the conference.  However, I am going to bring my trusty Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ5 with the Eye-Fi Explore SD card and spare battery.  So hopefully you will be seeing a bunch of pictures from the expo after I get back to the hotel room!

Anyway, I hope I will meet a few of you while I am there!  There is a picture of me on the contributors page in case you are in fact going and want to look out for me.  Or, if you live or will be in the downtown Seattle area any time next week, feel free to call me at 512.961.6189 or email me at phil@scribkin.com.

Posted in Status | Comments

Announcing Reblogging on DISQUS

…

Now on comments throughout DISQUS, you can find a reblog link where you can publish a quotation of the comment to your blog. This quote is cited with the original author, the blog where it originally appeared, and a link back to the original comment to give the discussion full context.

At the moment, we’re supporting publishing to Wordpress, Movable Type, TypePad, and Tumblr with more platforms to come.

So next time you see a comment that everyone really needs to read, give it a whirl. We’re excited to see more good content bubble to the surface.

Originally posted as a comment by Devin on A VC using Disqus.

Posted in News, Status | Comments

Statistical Abberation

I’ve been on a hiatus from blogging.  Hopefully, loyal readers of Scribkin didn’t miss me too much!  The first week after my last post, I tried to stay away from all the tools I have been using to keep up with social media stuff.  Basically, what I ended up doing is checking my email a lot and going to web sites that update frequently, like news.com, CNN and Engadget.

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Posted in Statistics | Comments

Taking a Week Off

I need to take a week to disconnect.  I’m going to be pretty quiet here and in my social media channels such as FriendFeed.  However, I did accept the offer to be on ReadBurner Weekly Live! this Wednesday so I am definitely going to be there for that!

Hope you all (or as we say in Texas, ya’ll) have a great week!

Posted in Status | Comments

Are You Stream, Digest or Something Else?

I had a lot of trouble coming up with a short, catchy title for this article, and I’m still not sure if I got it just right.  But the idea, which dawned on me a few days ago and is starting to nag at me, is not hard to grasp:

I do my best writing when I’m not in the middle of information overload.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I love information overload.  I have mild ADD so diving in to a vast cyclone of links, comments, entries and pictures is like taking a hot bath.  It is amazing and wonderful.

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Posted in Comparison, Opinion, Philosophy | Comments

Project SNSO: LiveJournal

I thought I’d kick off the project by highlighting one of the blogs I’ve used the longest, LiveJournal.  Up until recently, LiveJournal was owned by startup Six Apart, which still owns blogging platforms Movable Type, TypePad, and Vox.  Late last year, Six Apart sold their LiveJournal unit to Russian international media company SUP, who had been managing LiveJournal in Russia since 2006.

What is LiveJournal?

LiveJournal (or LJ) describes itself as a journaling community, and they stress the tight-knit nature of the community.  Of course, anyone can create an ad-supported journal for free, and you make it as private or public as you like.  However, most of LJ’s features are designed specifically to keep the conversation between LJ users inside the community.

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Posted in Project, Review | Comments

Project SNSO: Social Network Shout Out

I’ve had a really exciting idea growing in my head for about a week now.  I guess it germinated when I overlooked giving some credit for an idea on a previous post.  Since then, I’ve been more aware of the people involved in stuff that I find interesting.  To that end, I wanted to give back a bit.

For the next few weeks I am going to concentrate on different social networking applications and the people I have met on them.  I’m going to write to my strengths by focusing on presenting a primer of the service in the first of each article, and the people in the second half.

I hope to have my first article written tonight or tomorrow.  I will follow up every three or four days, and continue until I’ve covered all the services I use actively.  After that, I may follow up as I get involved in a new community.

Please feel free to speak up, suggest a community I may have forgotten about, or even if I missed you!  Obviously, following hundreds of people on certain networks means I can’t give everyone equal time.  But not to worry, I promise to really make an effort to find really quality folks. 

Posted in Opinion, Project | Comments

WordPress for iPhone!

This will be a short note because I am writing it on my iPhone’s touch keyboard. But, I thought it fitting. Why? Because now I can write updates (however painfully) directly from the iPhone!

Developed by Effigent for Automattic, it seems like a very sweet little app! You can learn more about it at iphone.wordpress.net.

Below, hopefully, will be a gallery of screenshots of the app.

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Posted in Breaking | Comments

I’m Blogging This!

There are a lot of opinions out there about what makes a blogger different from a writer, or even a columnist.  Bloggers seem to be in their own category according to everyone who writes (either for a living or for the love of it) and is not actually a blogger themselves.

Writer Wannabe’s

In fact, even bloggers don’t often like referring to themselves collectively as bloggers.  It’s almost too easy to say, he’s not a writer.. he’s a blogger. As if blogging did not call upon the same internal resources as writing.  You could argue the long form, of course… most bloggers will never write a novel by themselves, nor are they especially motivated to.

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Posted in Opinion, Philosophy, Soapbox | Comments

Advanced FriendFeed Tip: The Imaginary Friend

Silona and the Unicorn

They say write about what you know, and since I’ve been spending hours of my time on FriendFeed, I am starting to know it fairly well.

The Apology

Therefore, I am sorry that I’m contributing to the growing pool of I had this great conversation on FriendFeed and it inspired me to write this post-type posts, but this is going to be one.

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Posted in Primer, Related | Comments

Climbing the Long Tail

The Long Tail	The Bell Curve

The long tail.  For a relatively simple chart, it appears a lot of additional explanation and rumination is needed to really understand it.  And of course, what is more illustrative than a helpful chart?

Rewind back about 10 years ago, and a similarly iconic graph was getting a lot of attention: The bell curve.  Here, too, a relatively simple diagram was tossed out like a life-saver the hapless reader, drowning in a sea of information.  You can infer much from a bell curve, but apparently its mysteries, like the long tail, are only revealed through extensive research.

Personally, I got the concept just by looking at the chart (in both cases).  I think this is perhaps why these two ideas are so catchy.. we want to try to apply these concepts to any novel situation we encounter.

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Posted in Opinion | Comments

Toluu Learns to Hover

Caleb has added a new feature to his socialized RSS feed sharing app, Toluu today.  Now, anywhere in Toluu when you see a feed name and you hover your cursor over it, you will get a pop-up dialog with the feed name and the last 5 articles titles.

If you click on the article titles, you will be transported directly to the article in question.

This new feature will reduce the amount of context switching you will need to do as your peruse feeds in your friends list and other places.

If you haven’t registered at Toluu yet, it’s quick and easy to get started.  You can always email me (phil – at – scribkin) for an invite!

Posted in Breaking, In Brief, News | Comments

Wordle Now Does RSS

I don’t know how I missed this, but the fantastic little text-as-art app Wordle now will take any RSS feed and generate a wordle from it.  Make one for your site today!

Posted in In Brief | Comments

Mea Culpa

In Latin, mea culpa means, “my fault.”  Mea – me, and culpa – culpable.  In this case, I have to apologize for not updating in a few days. 

You can probably guess the reason why. 

Yes, I got an iPhone.  A white 16GB model to be specific. I love it.  And I’ve been using it pretty much to the exclusion of all else.

iPhone Unboxing Gallery, "Video Games Live" Concert Gallery

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Posted in News, Status | Comments

Scribkin is Now a Book!

Last week, while I was doing some research for a personal project that took advantage of Wordle, I found a great little service called Feedbooks.  I’ll go into more of the Feedbooks features below, but the upshot for me and scribkin is that I could have them convert my site feed into a PDF or e-book free of charge!

However, for some reason Feedbooks was having trouble with my RSS feed for a while, so I dutifully flagged it for consideration and waited.  I checked every day.  And today, I can proudly say that the problem has been resolved!

The upshot of all of this is here, a little widget I can display in my sidebar. →

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Posted in News, Review, Status | Comments