An interview with Jason Kottke on The Verge. Jason’s blog is still, consistently, the blog to read. Even more so now that he’s able to draw from Stellar.
I have two invitations to Stellar to hand out. Just ask: @torrez.
I had this sitting in MarsEdit as a draft for longer than I meant to. Last year I created a bookmark folder called Best of 2011 and throughout the year dragged a link in there to every post that knocked it out of the park. I edited the list down a bit after re-reading them:
- FOMO and Social Media by Caterina Fake. (This is not the correct URL for the piece, but her site is in transition and the URLs are a bit broken.) I noticed a lot of the posts in the folder were those wake-up call posts that sort of jar you back into reality. I have known of Caterina for years, of course, but we had never met until this year and I am really glad I got a chance to. This post arrived at a time when we were creating MLKSHK and I think it altered its direction a little bit. It certainly altered my perceptions a bit.
- It’s the End of the Web As We Know It by Adrian Short. The title of this post is over the top but such is the state of the web right now. Inside the post there is an important point about where we are sliding as we give Facebook and Twitter our identities. I have more to say on this subject. It angers me when I see people only allow a Facebook option for creating accounts on sites that have very little to do with the Facebook service. I hope to write that post soon.
- Up and Down the Ladder of Abstraction by Bret Victor. This is the web I want. You don’t just read this post, you use this post. What an amazing piece of work this is. See also: A Brief Rant on the Future of Interaction Design for another good post from Mr. Victor.
- The Web Is a Customer Service Medium by Paul Ford. A lot of people put this on their lists of great posts last year and it deserves it. I just read it again and I want to push a Like button or fill in a little red heart or drop a nickel in a Paul Ford hat. I suppose I will do what we used to do in the old days: link it.
Finally, not posted this year, but I saw it this year. I will leave you with the Venn diagram (hah! seriously!) that influences my work life right now: How To Be Happy In Business.
I’m still working out the kinks here, but I am returning to proper blogging. This isn’t a 2012 thing or an experiment, I am returning to share good stuff with you. I hope you like it.
Dave Winer (!) posted some notes about the year and a response to the “golden age of tech blogging” being over.
Is the "golden age" of tech blogging over? Jeremiah Owyang says it is. I guess it's all about point of view. If you think tech blogging was Mike Arrington and TechCrunch, then yes indeed, it's over.
When Steve at Coudal.com asked me to be the guest editor for links I was initially hesitant. I used to consider myself a pretty good source for finding interesting stuff. My day was so predictable that I knew I'd have an hour or so in the morning to check my newsreader before meetings started. An hour or so during meetings to check again. And maybe during a few minutes in between meetings I'd write a quick blog post about something interesting I'd seen.
When I left my job in January so did my free time in between meetings. Now every day is a race to see how much work I can cram into the 8 hours or so I have to work before running home to make dinner, clean up, and get to bed.
So for the next month I've carved an hour or so into my schedule to get back into gathering links. I've missed out on so much good stuff, both software related and otherwise that I'm hoping November will turn out to be very productive for this old weblog of mine.
Justin writes about his long history with Boing Boing and introduces a new site called Boing Boing Classic for people like him who just want the old Boing Boing back.
I'm always interested to hear how other people are keeping up with feeds. This is basically what I do now after much moving around of feeds. I've got my favorite people, people I know, people I "must read" (that's the name of the folder), and those sites that have a nice signal/noise ratio. Then another folder called "main" that is nearly everything else.
When I just need to keep up with the "must read" people, I can jump in and out. When I feel like sitting down to really consume some sites, I can dive into the "main" folder.
Jason celebrates 10 years of running a very popular, personal weblog. I began reading him somewhere in the 98/99 year and never stopped. I copied him by registering my last name + .org and starting my own weblog.
Other things I know about Jason: Our birthdays are exactly one year apart (he's younger). We have the same number of letters in our first AND last names. Those are things I know about Jason.