I have been conflicted about what I want to do with this site (what else is new), and my opinion of blogging has changed considerably. That having been said, I still like the idea of having a place to centralize my web presence and occasionally post my thoughts and ruminations. I took a cue from JSleeper and made my first step in a new direction, which was to totally eliminate my topbar and replace it with feeds from my three favorite “social networking” sites: Flickr, Last.fm, and del.icio.us. At one point, I was so anti outside-content, but these three sites have proven to me as extremely useful and not simply distractions from my work and daily life.
In my opinion, the thing that separates these sites from communities like myspace and facebook is that they create enthusiasm that exists while you are away from their site– and maybe even away from your computer. After Whiskerino 2005, I got the photography bug and joined up on flickr. For 25 dollars you can get a year membership and upload as many photos as you like, tag them, share them, and store them. Not only is 25 dollars an incredible deal for a photo storage service, but it also places me into a community where I have learned more about digital photography and been encouraged to take better photos. I can look at a particularly awesome photo by a friend and see what kind of camera he is using and the settings he used on that camera.Myspace might be “A Place For Friends” but my myspace profile is locked down and private to all but handful of out of towners I like to stay in touch with, that, I ALREADY KNEW IN REAL LIFE!! Myspace doesn’t make me enthusiastic about making new friends but flickr makes me excited about taking digital pictures.
I was slow to get on the last.fm bandwagon when it started a few years ago, but now I can’t imagine why. Basically, this online service records my music listening habits, whether it be from iTunes, Windows Media Player, or whatever Linux-based music manager I happened to be using at the time (I’m back with Rhythmbox right now) and does a few things with the statistics it gathers. I can meet people with similar musical tastes as me, I can see what music my friends are listening to, and I can ask last.fm to recommend music based on my tastes. I still tend to prefer Pandora for getting turned onto new music, but the social aspect of last.fm is excellent.
I have been using del.icio.us for some time now. I haven’t really delved into the networking aspect of “social bookmarking”, but, since I work from multiple computers I like having a universal location to keep all of my bookmarks. I really loved having it when I was going to unnamed technology school, because I could always bookmark relevant geeky links and then have them handy when I got home. To make things even easier, I install the del.icio.us firefox plugin on all of my PCs and I can quickly click and add cool sites to my list. None of my friends really use it that much, but there are features to browse through a friend list and see what other people are linking. I have been pushing my del.icio.us links through my RSS feed via FeedBurner but I think having the feed visible on my front page might make del.icio.us even more valuable.
Unfortunately, the site still looks like shit. I have been too busy to really make it look nice. I want to push the envelope of what Wordpress can look like. I am bored with the two-column layout, and I know I want to utilize WP in a way that makes it look like more of a content manager than a blogging platform. I think this will mean that I will have to start from scratch. Maybe I’ll take a shot at it over the holidays.