Perfunctory public notice: On this day in 1999 xBlog started broadcasting to the world. This is the 6,000th item added to this visual thinking linkblog.
By winter 1999 the idea had been stirring for at least year, inspired by Camworld, Kottke, Rebecca’s Pocket, peterme and a handful of others. I built some prototypes but never put them online. But once I started working full-time at XPLANE I knew had I found the perfect home for these design/web/communication/etc links.
With the help of Jeff Lash, xBlog became a great linkblog. For eight years it’s been filled with almost daily links to what used to be scarce online visual resources. Those online resources aren’t so scarce now — in fact they’re everywhere. So xBlog’s function as a filter is still useful, but we’re going to take it up a few notches in 2008. Lots of notches.
xBlog’s linkblog component will still be here but I’m looking to start sharing much, much more. Good. XPLANE. Stuff. And trust me — we’ve got lots of good stuff to share.
“Blogging is a form of public conversation on the internet, in which BBC people may wish to take part.
When a blogger clearly identifies themselves as a BBC person and/or discusses their work, the BBC expects them to behave well when blogging, and in ways that are consistent with the BBC’s Editorial Values and policies.
Many bloggers, particularly in technical areas, use their personal blogs to discuss their BBC work in ways that benefit the BBC, and add to the “industry conversation”. These guidelines are not intended to restrict this, as long as confidential information is not revealed.”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Tuesday, August 28th, 2007 at 9:00 am
Jorn Barger, in response to this and this and more.
“as we observe the 10th anniversary of ‘blogging’
and debate the precise definition of that term
i’ll go on record as claiming not only that
rwwl was the 1st proper weblog
but that it’s still the
only
proper weblog”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Tuesday, July 24th, 2007 at 7:28 am
“Even if you never read a single thing Dave Winer wrote in his 439 years of blogging, it’s worth taking time to study his ideas about comments on blogs (he doesn’t allow them).”
…to the extent that comments interfere with the natural expression of the unedited voice of an individual, comments may act to make something not a blog…. The cool thing about blogs is that while they may be quiet, and it may be hard to find what you’re looking for, at least you can say what you think without being shouted down. This makes it possible for unpopular ideas to be expressed. And if you know history, the most important ideas often are the unpopular ones…. That’s what’s important about blogs, not that people can comment on your ideas. As long as they can start their own blog, there will be no shortage of places to comment.
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Saturday, July 21st, 2007 at 8:53 am
“I typically use this column to look at future trends, but this month I want to recognize some businesses that are simply doing a great job leveraging corporate weblogs, which are the most mature social media tools. While only a handful of corporations are blogging, the ranks are growing steadily. The leaders below all take different approaches to the craft, but it’s working for their businesses. With one exception, I’ve screened out tech companies, where blogs are now mainstream and different rules apply.”
“Speak Up, the first of the graphic design blogs to make any kind of impact, is not what it used to be. Don’t take my word for it, though. The news comes from the site’s irrepressible founder, Armin Vit, writing in a recent post titled ‘Speak Up: Now What?’ In the past year or more, says Vit, Speak Up has ‘run out of questions and even perhaps out of steam. Some of us (authors) have gone from outsiders to insiders. …We have done it all. We started to get repetitive and, well, sometimes even boring.’”
“You’d think that as a result of open-source development practices, blog architectures would be pretty close to perfection in areas like Web standards and maximum SEO impact.
You’d be wrong.
Unbelievably, nearly every WordPress, MovableType, or TypePad theme that I’ve come across in the past year fails a simple test for truly semantic (and Google-recommended) XHTML markup. Now, I’ll be the first to admit that these failures are by no means fatal flaws. At the same time, though, I find it extremely unsettling that an inferior markup structure is prevailing in the face of an absolutely correct way of doing things.”
“After a friend recently posted about trying to find the time to blog, I got to thinking: How do I find the time to blog? After some thinking, I came up with a few principles. In some ways, I’m the worst person to give advice, because my frequency of posting is terrible compared to any decent blogger. On the other hand, I’m the father of 3 children under the age of 4 (doing attachment parenting no less) and I work full time, so if I can find the time to post, then anyone can.” (Thanks Rebecca’s Pocket!)
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Wednesday, April 18th, 2007 at 6:43 am
A new design weblog: “Covers all design both normal and strange. Plus environmental issues.” (Thanks Design Observer!)
Rex Sorgatz has a short bit in Wired 15.03 on linkblogs, xBlog’s preferred format for 7+ years:
“The link blog was the first Internet organism, built from a collection of the simplest cellular units of the networked society: links. This sprawling ecosystem of social aggregators, page-rank spoofers, and quirky filters compresses ideas down to their inner nucleus. The primary organs – mass aggregators like Digg, Fark.com, and del.icio.us – arrange piles upon piles of user-submitted pages, hoping some wisdom reveals itself in the opinions of dark and formless crowds. Meanwhile, solitary link bloggers like kottke.org, Waxy.org, and your secret favorite link collector ignore the vast universe of the mediocre to reveal undiscovered morsels yet to be appraised by the algorithmic machines.
The link is its own genre: sparsely worded, underlined, a discrete distillation of a new world that lies on the other side of a click. Such a simple form, yet it connects two universes. By filtering and condensing, the link blog turns online chaos into a tidy little stack of clickable potential.”
Posted by Bill Keaggy on Saturday, March 3rd, 2007 at 5:24 pm
