Cubicgarden.com
Evan Prodromou who I finally met at FOSDEM recently, has been running a poll to find out whats the best character limit for microblogging.
For our flagship site, Identi.ca, which runs on the status.net cloud service and uses the 0.9.0 beta, we’d like to open up the discussion of what an appropriate character limit should be. Setting a site-wide limit is a community decision we’d like to leave in the community’s hands. In a conversation on Identi.ca we’ve solicited some candidate character limits that we’d like people to decide on.
- 140 is compatible with Twitter; in many languages a notice with 140 characters fits into a single SMS message*
- 280 can fit into two Twitter or SMS messages
- 300 is a fan favorite
- 420 is Facebook’s status limit and 3 Twitter tweets or SMS messages
- 500 is a little bigger
- 1000 is bigger than that
- Unlimited
- Other
So personally I think 300 is enough. 300 will hold a very long URI with room for query string values. Also having it about the size of two text messages seems about right. If you stick to ANSI only characters you usually get about 306 characters to text with (160+160 with overhead) on most phones. Unicode drops it down to 280 characters which still seems fairly close to 300. I’m also thinking 300 characters keeps things micro readable still.
The idea of a more structured microblogging with URIs as metadata in interesting but I think metadata should be inline and in plain view. Its one of the neat things about Microblogging, which would be a shame to remove. Also got to say anything more complex than the current microblogging setup would maybe cause too many problems with backwards compatible. Literate results are good, if you want metadata use blogging instead.
I have not blogged for quite a while. This is down to a few things.
- Ecto is simply doing my head in, as it keeps loosing draft entries and screwing up on the spellchecker. I paid for the software and I'm back to using W.blogger again.
- I have been out and about across the England and Scotland recently. I have actually been to more places up north that ever before. My Flickr account is full of pictures from different places. I also need to find the time to sort out all my pictures.
- Wireless has been patchy in some places and after a day of working and night of socialising, I actually do need to grab some sleep.
- When I'm at home, i've been preparing to go somewhere else the next day or so and the broadband has simply been a nightmare due to Demon's restrictions (more about this later).
- Last of all, when I do find the time to blog, the blog is down because Resin has shut its self down on the server. I then spend a little bit of time trying to work out what the problem is instead of blogging. This has been a real pain and I know your as pissed off as myself about this. I'm totally lost why after months of perfect service, why this has just started happening.
I've heard about the problems but have not publiclly said much. But I'm sorry as far as I'm concerned, I stopped recommending Movable Type a long time ago and can't understand why people still use it. Suw's post on strange attractor is simply awesome and well worth reading if you also recieved the email from Sixapart. But generally it doesn't scale effectively, and I'm not saying many blogging servers do. But I wonder why everyone seems to think there are only 2 blogging application servers out there?
What about Blojsom, Community Server, Dasblog, B2, Roller, etc. Theres much more to blogging servers that MT and WordPress. Go Explorer, don't be constrained by whats the norm. Thom Shannon recommended http://asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm
After my huge mind dump for Pipelines, I've now decided to start a new blog called Flow *. It will be about everything to do with pipelines. I'll sometimes cross post some gems here but generally the flow blog will form part of my research and development into pipelines.
Me and Sarah did a podcast last night, number 14 (really 13 but lets not go there). This time we discuss Second Life, Myspace and Youtube, Feast of Fools and Sarah's new (non-hand me down) phone. The other good news is that Sarah has agreed to do the podcast every week now. So expect more geek and geekhag next week.
Me and Sarah did a podcast last night about some comments on her blog recently.The post was about race and interracial stereotypes and centres around a piece in the guardian over a year ago (march 2005). Now someones called werdz has decided to write a comment and get back at Sarahs comments on the original guardian article. Sarah felt it best to reply by a podcast.
Ben Metcalfe writes in response to Brad Templeton's post.
At the blogger panel at Fall VON … Vlogger and blip.tv advocate Dina Kaplan asked bloggers to start vlogging. Its started a minor debate.
My take? Please dont.
Ive written before on what I call the reader-friendly vs. writer-friendly dichotomy. My thesis is that media make choices about where to be on that spectrum, though ideal technology reduces the compromises
Brad actually goes on to advocate podcasting as an acceptable format as it can be listened to whilst jogging, etc. I think hes correct to a degree – podcasting is certainly easier to consume than video/vlogging as it is a multitaskable medium (unlike blogging too). However its still binary – it still requires you to consume at a pace decided by the producer and its far harder to index and search through. Unless it contains a meta-wrapper, there is also no hyperlinking which is arguably one of the greatest keys to the world-wide-webs success.
Its for this reason that Ive been sceptical as to the long-term success of podcasting as an informational medium. And this scepticism certainly extends to vlogging.
My take is that ascii is great but you know what, how bland would the world be if people couldn't express themselves in any form they feel most comfitable? See Ben is taking the reciever (user) point of view and I think thats fine for a lot of people. Even myself, I blog more that I podcast or videocast because I like hyperlinking. But it would be wrong for me to expect everyone to do the same. If podcasting works for you, hey go for it. Yes think about your audience you certainly need to balance that with your own creativity. So in the end I do agree with Ben's final point.
However I think most people would agree that we need to produce work in the format thats right for the content at hand, and for the end consumer whos going to consume it. For the moment at least, I think most people still use the blogosphere more for informational use than they do entertainment and as such that needs to be considered when youre about to produce your next blog/podcast/vlog
Ideally binary searching, scanning, deconstruction would be as easy as acsii but its not at the moment. I think this is mainly a limitation of the tools and services out there. The service and tool creators blame the lack of standards. So the question is where is the microformats of the media? I would have suggested Mpeg4 could have been but its got so screwed up who knows.
At long last, I can blog that Kevin Anderson our very forward thinking Worldservice journalist is leaving for a brand new position that he helped create.
This is probably the worst kept secret, which is why I'm a journalist and not a member of the intelligence services, but I can finally announce that I'm under new ownership. After almost eight years with the BBC, I'm joining the Guardian as their Head of Blogging and Interaction.
Head of Blogging and Interaction for the Guardian, is certainly a step on from the BBC World have your say programme. Its going to be a shame, Kevin worked so hard to get the BBC blogging and became a very good voice for genuine and authentic conversation with our audience. Anyway, I really wish him so much luck with his new position. I'm expecting big things from Kevin, and I might actually start reading the Guardian more in the future.
I forgot I haven't publicly said anything about Ben Metcalfe highlighting the direct urls of the weather feeds. My take on the whole thing is simple – Security through obscurity.
A system relying on security through obscurity may have theoretical or actual security vulnerabilities, but its owners or designers believe that the flaws are not known, and that attackers are unlikely to find them.
Security through or by obscurity, is generally a bad idea. By the BBC developer putting the urls inside a plain text javascript file, he or she was relying on Security through obscurity. Ben simply disclosed this information to the world. You could say well he should have let the BBC know, but like software vulnerabilities company's will sit on this information for years because its not important enough. Nope theres no douht in my mind that Ben did the right thing, and maybe taking down the blog post was a good idea for the BBC. We should be thankful and hell this might have spurred some movement on the backstage front? I do wonder if the javascript file in question still has the urls inside of it?
Michah Dubirko wrote this entry titled del.icio.us, blogging a while ago. I would take it slightly differently, and compare it to email. Since Del.icio.us applied the feature to send friends bookmarks to their bookmark inbox I've been really tempted to stop sending email too but I don't know if friends are getting them or not?
I've been meaning to blog this for weeks now. Dave Sifry's latest report on the state of the blogosphere. So generally the blogosphere has becaome a lot more international with english taking a step down in the most used language in the blogosphere. Its actually better that you think too, because english now count for less than 35% of the blogosphere. Theres lots of other interesting things in the report like the Chinese blogosphere growing a lot due to MSN Spaces and Chinese and Bokee.com. Dave suggests that Japanese bloggers blog small posts from there phone, hence the huge jump. In the same post but not really realted Dave talks about how Tags and Categories are used by 47% of the blogosphere now.
Talking about languages and blogs, the BBC blogs has new additions to its own blognetwork. Spanish, Arabic and Persian blogs. The Chinese and new Urdu blog are just around the corner too. I guess this is perfectly fitting with the latest report. I have yet to try out Native text (a free web service that translates RSS feeds from blogs and podcasts into foreign languages) but it certainly sounds useful. I hear the Persian Blog already has a large audience visiting it.
Chinese just launched yesterday in simplfied chinese which causes it own problems because its all in UTF-8. It seems a lot of chinese reading people set there browsers to the encoding GB2312 or Traditional BIG5
Mario dropped me a skype just a moment ago, the skype was this gem of a blog post titled China blocks Technorati.
I received an email this morning from Ken Carroll of ChinesePod telling me that China has blocked Technorati at the great firewall – it would appear that Technorati will no longer be available to anyone to use in China.
And its starting to kick up a stink over at Technorati and Mad about Shanghai. To be honest I'm not suprised. Technorati is one of the biggest blog search engines and was a gateway to all types of views and opinons from around the world. This simply won't do if your a chinese authority attepting to censor what your citizens are viewing online. Obviously I think this censorship is not a good idea and there simply causing there citizens to look a little deeper for the content they actually want to read just like the iran censorship of bbc.co.uk.
I do not even know where to start with Marc Canter. Honestly he's one of the guys whos been around since the early days of the internet and beyond. Good friend of other great personalities such as Doc Searls, David Weinberger and JD Lasica. I'm excited to announce that our next geekdinner will be with one of the most outspoken and genuine guy in the internet industry today. Marc Canter.
Here's a few snippits from the profile on wikipedia.
Marc Canter is a recognized figure in the sphere of open standards, social networks and blogging, and has been interviewed and quoted on the subject matter in numerous publications. Marc is a frequent speaker and panelist at conferences such as Web 2.0, SuperNova, Gnomedex, AlwaysOn Innovation, SXSW and many others. Marc is also a contributer to many open standards efforts and is champion for end-user controlled digital identities and content – being a co-founder of the Identity Gang
He is the founder and CEO of Broadband Mechanics, a digital lifestyle aggregator
LA) company. Broadband Mechanics builds tools and environments to enable online communities. They target their products at a broad user base with the hope that everyday people can make better use of Internet technologies.
Broadband Mechanics recently released Ourmedia (along with JD Lasica), a community for digital creators to store their work for free. This nonprofit effort provides unlimited storage for grassroots video, audio, music, photos, text and public domain works, and presents a community space to share and discuss personal media.
Broadband Mechanics also recently released StructuredBlogging, a compatability box effort at establishing clear standards for microcontent. This organization has released Perl and Php libraries and plug-ins for WordPress and Moveable Type. StructuredBlogging is a complete superset of microformats.org and has established schemas for events, reviews, lists, media (audio and video), people and group showcases.
You can find his voice on his personal blog
So the details of the event. It will be Monday 1st May downstairs in the Polar Bear's Cellar bar. It will start at 6pm and carry on till late. Yes its a Bank Holiday and I know London's Public Transport isn't the best on Bank Holidays but were starting earlier and bring everything forward so people can get home without too much hassle. The price will be 5 pounds just to cover the range of food as usual. Yes there will be vegatarian food and I have spoke to the polar bear about trying to seperate the food a lot more. I will post a entry on the geekdinner.co.uk website tonight if I can find the login and password. Look out for it on the londongeekdinner Eventful group and the London metro on Upcoming.
Although this is work stuff, I can't help but say at long last the World Have Your Say team have got there blog and its now live. Yes I did have a hand in its path out of the BBC firewall and on to the internet. Now some of you may say well the BBC has had blogs for a long time now, so whats the big deal? And I somewhat agree, but except for a few good examples like Island blogging and the Urdu blog. IMHO, Our part in the blogosphere has been kind of hap-hazard. (my own words not the BBC). Without going into details or pointing fingers, its quite true that we've not really jumped into the pool. Or rather we have rarely engaged with what blogging is truely about. Yes we've done blogs but not really let it take us away. Some would say this is a good thing but I personally think there are some places where we could be doing this. Which leads me on to World Have Your Say. See Mark Sandell almost says it all in this one entry. But what Mark does not say Kevin _strange attractor_ Anderson says in his entry about the blog. A couple of quotes from Cluetrain comes to mind.
73: You're invited, but it's our world. Take your shoes off at the door. If you want to barter with us, get down off that camel!
This team gets it, they not only have decided to get rid of there traditonal BBC pages and presence. But there shoes are off and there starting to paddle in the pool, ready to jump right in.
I don't think its a bad thing to say that somethings had to be held back for the launch. These would include a blogroll, categories (was working on this today) and even trackbacks. But trust me keep an eye on the blog, because there's going to be some suprises which I simply can not mention here. Honestly I'm really excited about World have your say. Much more so that the Nick Robinson's blog, which launched in Dec 2005 to a lot of praise and cheers. Oh by the way Paul Mason's official BBC blog is worth checking out if your a Newsnight fan. I don't believe he's blogging anywhere else now?But I could be wrong.
Obviously this isn't the end of the blogs in the BBC, there is more to come. Its no secret that I'm working on the World Update blog which is written by Dan Damon. Dan is very fired up about his blog too and has also in the past been known to use Typepad to host his own personal or unoffical BBC blog. I feel he will also take a deep dive in the pool of the blogosphere and will be frankly honest about his experiences. I'm also looking forward to being able to subscribe to his blog and not have to read a stupidly long page.
So generally its a good day for the BBC and the Blogosphere. I'll be interested to hear what others think.
Since being alerted to Blogburst by Ben Metcalfe, I've had a RSS search filter running through-out the day. I've seen some really interesting posts filter through.
Well first what is blogburst? The tech crunch guys have pretty much got this covered, but there post has sparked a lot of coversations about there covering of Blogburst. For example Scott Karp over at Publishing 2.0.
Michael Arrington declares that BlogBurst Can Save Big (print) Media. To suggest that the lack of blog content is all that ails Old Media is deeply naive. Old Media needs to follow bloggers into the new content creation frontier, but that in itself will NOT solve the problem of business models.
And he's very right, its not about simply adding blog content to a already ageing medium. Anyone who does is seriously mistaken if they think thats the end of the deal. Its about a conversation not simply publishing. Scott moves on.
But why do publishers need BlogBurst as a middleman? Why can’t publishers hire an editor whose job it is to go out into the blogosphere and pull in the best and most relevant content, which is already easily and freely available through RSS feeds?
Agreed, but for some reason this does not happen. I can't work out why, theres already enough tools to keep a track of whats going on in a given subject and RSS can make these things more automated. But back to the point it simply does not happen. Like Scott says I will give BlogBurst credit for the understanding that the blogosphere needs a human filter to extract value.
and thats where I totally agree too. Blogburst is a human filter on the blogosphere and this is a welcomed new model.
The rest of Scott's post is about Tech Crunch which I'm not that interested in, but yes this could reflect badly on Blogburst if taken out of context. Mark Evans talks about the sign up issue for bloggers.
nother question is why would a blogger sign up unless they really, really want exposure and/or traffic. Blogburst takes a blogger's content and provides the following: “visibility and exposure”, “new readers”, “authority and credibility” and “the opportunity to take your blog to the next level” (whatever that means). The downside is there's no economic incentive for the blogger and little guarantee readers are going to visit your blog unless they click on your byline. For anyone really trying to build a brand, they should want and encourage people to visit their blogs.
Point taken, its a interesting question which I personally don't have a complete answer for yet. Blackfriars' Marketing talks about the scale issue and how effective human filtering is at the million plus mark.
This is a system that works great with 100 or 1,000 blogs, but collapses under its own weight with 100,000 or a million blogs. No editor or reporter is going to wade through a reading list of 1,000 entries, but that could easily happen with big categories like News and Opinion or Technology. If that happens, editors will go back to reading Memeorandum.com or TailRank.com.
One second, who said they were using Memo or tailrank? I certainly don't see any signs that this is true. Anyway moving on…
My suggestion to BlogBurst: take a page out of Web 2.0 and allow members of the newspaper community to vote feeds and stories up and down in the rankings. Otherwise, a successful BlogBurst could do just that — burst.
And I'm in total agreement, its about collabrative filtering.
What I find most interesting is BlogBurst's powerful Publisher Workbench. Its a API between there system and the internal content management of the mainstream publishers. How effective it is, we shall see but its a good move and being SOAP and XML (rest) means any internal development team could work with there service. I'm hoping this will cause Bloglines to release a API for there Citations service. I'm also wondering when Feedster and Blogdigger will consider collabrative filtering as another option with there machine filtering? Back saving old media for the closing. Old media needs to engage in the conversation if they would like to be saved as such. Its no good just dipping in and out of these conversations. The smart ones are already moving out of the slow decending circles. Hint hint.
