General Musing

This item continues the section “Write something:”, which I hope will inspire you to write something for yourself using the keyword. The topic for today is: Controversial.

How do I write something controversial?

Take an item which everybody has an opinion on find the most extreme dissenting viewpoint and imagine what that you would be making arguments to support that view. This is easiest for subjects you know much about, as you know all the pitfalls and counter arguments which are often presented in this view. Write about a taboo that scares you, take all the arguments you usually have and turn them around.

The other way is to take something which is common knowledge and blow it out of all proportions. I wrote and article about most marble containing trace elements of uranium and being radioactive. I could have just as well exploded this into the possibilities of getting cancer from marble countertops, feeding the food prepared on these radioactive countertops to children.

Image source: Jerry Wong

This item continues the section “Write something:”, which I hope will inspire you to write something for yourself using the keyword. The topic for today is: Make People Smarter.

How do I write something that makes those who read it smarter?

Research and simplify! Choose a subject that you would like to learn about, learn about it and break it down into it’s component parts so others can understand. Some time ago I wrote about how you would be able to make clones in your kitchen. I looked up what the equipment would cost and the exact techniques which would be required. I was inspired to learn and wrote an article which would make it easier for others who wanted to learn the same or similar knowledge.

Image source: Jerry Wong

This item continues the section “Write something:”, which I hope will inspire you to write something for yourself using the keyword. The topic for today is: First.

How do I write something First?

You can’t plan it, and when the time comes you should be ready to do it. Often I get things which are old news, and I will blog about them if they are interesting. On occasion I will get a gem, something that I know that nobody has. This can be something as simple as a photo or video – which I redirect to Snypher – and it can be a wikileaks style leak – although that happens rarely. This is not like writing something Unique, this can be something which everybody will be writing about tomorrow. Just as long as I got it first.

Read It Out Loud

I was also inspired this week by an article Kevin Walsh wrote: Five ways to improve your writing. I mostly read my posts out loud to avoid exactly the problems, which often lead me to kill my darlings, as Kevin puts it. This ensures that what I’m discussing is clear to all who read the post.

Image source: Jerry Wong

As you may know I use WordPress.com for my blog, and although I complain about it lacking some features it does regularly add new features. Which is what it did with the new Publicize feature.

Publicize gives you the ability to post items to Twitter, Facebook, Yahoo! Updates and Messenger Connect.

I’m quite happy with this addition to the WordPress tool chest.

This item continues the section “Write something:”, which I hope will inspire you to write something for yourself using the keyword. The topic for today is: Newsworthy.

How do I write something Newsworthy?

I am a member of a number of groups, and as such I sometimes get newsworthy material which nobody has. This can be from NANOG in the form of data on networking activity; security groups about exploits or security attacks; and private communications from people. This is also a product of being trustworthy within the communities I take part in.

Let’s take the example of a number of items I posted about LinkedIn sometime ago, these contained private communications between LinkedIn staff and users, this was not because I knew the staff or the user involved. I was given this material because I had before discussed some items related to the practices of LinkedIn on my blog and showed that I would bring the story without bias.

Image source: Jerry Wong

This item continues the section “Write something:”, which I hope will inspire you to write something for yourself using the keyword. The topic for today is: Unique.

How do I write something unique?

I usually often am inspired at unusual times with ideas which I think only I have, such as the Bliki I recently talked about. I then formulate the idea in my mind and create a mindmap on the subject. I don’t truly belief that nobody has had this idea before, as this is usually not the case. Which means that after collecting my thoughts on the subject I search online to discover what others have said on this subject and incorporate my ideas with other ideas I find.

Other times I’m inspired by a question and discover that nobody has written or made a collection of the answers before, such as how do do something like the hard disk erasure that I wrote about, before that article I knew a little on the subject and although I was inspired by XKCD, news items of criminals being caught and them giving up their hard disk encryption keys after long interrogations by law enforcement.

Image source: Jerry Wong

Many times when writing something for my blog I find I write it for myself, without writing to make a difference, unify, inspire or elevate another person. And I can write to do these things. So I have decided to start a new section in my blog called “Write something:” which is meant to inspire you to write something which does this.

The topic for today is: Useful. What is useful? Something which you can put to use; which you can use; which can be more than just the use on its own it is full of use: Useful!

How do I write something useful?

I start by thinking of a topic which others are talking about, something in which I can add something which I find useful and can’t just be copied from another source. In my case this can be something which I thought of when I was inspired. This is why I have a little notepad with me, so I can write my ideas down as soon, or soon after, as I get the inspiration. For me this often happens in bed, whether I am lying awake or sleeping. I wouldn’t encourage you to write down your sleeping dreams, although this can be useful for yourself it mostly isn’t for others.

Image source: Jerry Wong

I’ve been sick all week, flue. And it hasn’t stopped me for thinking big thoughts.

I was reading “Where Have All The Flowers Gone” and suddenly stopped when I noticed that the author was using a Wiki as a blog, then I thought about it and a picture of the advantages of combining a blog and wiki together. Besides from the obvious wiki markup which can be used in the blog, also the ability for updates to wiki/blog items to be posted into the blog stream for RSS, it’s also possible to use [[wiki markup]] to create a backlog of items you may wish to blog about. I naturally googled it and discovered that the Bliki already exists as an idea:

A bliki [...] combines features from both: as with blogs, posts or articles appear in reverse chronological order on the front page, with the most recent one at the top; but editing is done in wiki style, with a version history for each page and special markup tags.

With the power of hindsight I think that the original creator missed a feature, which is also sidelined in this article. My love of folksonomy obviously requires me to question whether the addition of articles related from curation, folksonomy, tagging or social bookmarking sites would be a perfect addition to creating an all inclusive curation environment. Quora has moved fora into the bliki field, although as with a wiki it relies more on created content than on external content.

Image source: Raphaëlle RIDARCH

As I was writing the last article about Google’s FeedBurner I noticed that they have a new interface, which is far more like Google Analytics.

This means new views of the data, like maps and more detailed view of the interaction with the FeedBurner data, although the click data generated fron the last post is probably .

Perhaps this is the Phoenix…

It has been almost 1.5 weeks since Google’s FeedBurner removed the FriendFeed subscribers from it’s statistics. Or is it that FriendFeed no longer publishes the data to FeedBurner? I know that the 1000+ FriendFeed readers can still view my blog items – if they want to – and I have no issue with the artificially boosted numbers being brought back to normal.

However this has revived a 2009 discussion in the Google Group about the quality of FeedBurner, and the need for there to be an alternative to this poor service this Google application is delivering. However none seem to mention the elephant in the room: FaceBook.

In 2009 FaceBook acquired FriendFeed, and with it the now infamous Like button. At the same time Google was busy developing their Wave, on which they seemed to wipe-out earlier this year. As I’ve said previously the time between the mainstream acceptance of the Social Media application and the start up is between 2-4 years. It’s could be easy for me to blame Google for not acquiring a great product like FriendFeed, yet now with this tit for tat strategy that FaceBook and Google have been employing it is no wonder that applications, like FriendFeed, and users thereof are being further effected by this exercise in Game Theory.

FeedBurner has indeed been living up to their caption: “We set feeds on fire!” Now all we need to wait for is the Phoenix that arises from the ashes.