We hoped the “slow live blog” approach would give us more flexibility and speed when it came to writing and producing news. Instead of starting with a fresh article every time we want to cover something inside a regular beat, which might require a long catch-up introduction, context, background and so forth, we could just put fresh news at the top and let the reader scroll down to read previous updates if they hadn’t been following this story.

Updates on top, context on the bottom. Kind of like Wikipedia.

Internet, freedom from constraint

Had the Internet not come along and become the fulcrum of technological innovation and creativity, I’d probably still think I’d want to go to Law School.

Instead, I’m thinking through blogging, writing a few eBooks, taking photos, and making beats.

Give anyone the tools and the worldwide reach and they’ll be make it happen.

Never unfilled, never bored. There’s always the next hyper-connected thing to do. Addiction, possibly, but the Internet is just too good to be true.

Don’t think of a book as 60,000 words. Instead think of a book as 120 blog posts of 500 words each.

Any time you get stuck just reposition the work to make it more shippable.

My best advice for promoting a book is to get in a time machine, go back half a decade, and start blogging.

Austin Kleon

“Productivity Catalyst”

In short, the productivity catalyst is something (e.g. ritual, environment) that pushes you to get stuff done.

For me, that something is typically the train. I get all my blogging done on the train every morning. For me, the train signals go, an opportunity to dump my thinking on screen.

I usually like to drink a bit of coffee and meditate before I write, blending calmness and caffeine. I sometimes get a walk in too, deliberately skipping the shuttle.

Walking though is quickly becoming my favorite medicine of all; mixing fresh air and a rhythm of movement that relaxes the mind.

Often times Ill fall asleep in a middle of writing a post but finish it with time to spare. I know that when entering the Grand Central tunnel I’ve got about 8 minutes to publish. A deadline is the best way to expedite a task.

Your productivity catalyst should be motivating and relaxing, like stretching your muscles before a run. Quality of preparation is equal to quality of output.

There’s Only One Genuine Real World/Digital Identity

Mos Def, “Thieves in the Night”

Stop hidin, stop hidin, stop hidin your face

Stop hidin, stop hidin, cause ain’t no hiding place

Show your expertise.
Voice your opinion.
Demonstrate your creative skills.

Whether you like it or not the gap between the real world and digital world is closing. Soon there will be no such thing as online/offline behavior as the two become one of the same.

We should be able to tell who you are, what you like, and what you believe in based on the content you provide or share across the Internet.

Everyone should have a blog demonstrating what they know, what they want to know, what inspires them, or what they’re interested in. At the least, everyone should take responsibility for their voice and get a Twitter account.

Don’t be afraid to hold back and be ridiculous.

Be eccentric now. Don’t wait for old age to tweet a few strange things. - Paulo Coelho

You only have one identity so you might as well own up to it and be authentic. The only mystery is your own fear.

explore-blog:

I collect articles in Readability and Instapaper like pennies – and, like pennies, I do nothing with them.

Fantastic Creative Mornings talk by designer Simon Collison.

Actually, I like to blog about them and add my two cents.

Today WordPress powers one of every 6 websites on the Internet, nearly 60 million in all, with 100,000 more popping up each day. Those run through its cloud-hosted service, which lets anybody create a free website online, attract 330 million visitors who view 3.4 billion pages every month.

Wordpress is still in its user acquisition phase. Like Tumblr, it’s in no rush to monetize users. Only 1% of the 60 millions users actually pay.

I love the Wordpress dashboard and the fact that it optimizes better for Google’s search engine. However, as I mentioned, since switching to the Tumblr platform my content gets more pageviews and is more discoverable since the Tumblr community is more social. Wordpress is still a traditional blogging platform in that sense.

Wordpress is a robust platform for individual bloggers and big publishers. As someone reminded me in the cab back from SXSW last year,

Source: pinaquote.com via Wells on Pinterest

Anonymous on the Internet

Zuckerberg trained Internet users to reveal their true identity and stand by their opinion. But many Internet users are still living through fake profiles, avatars, and responding on Quora anonymously. You shouldn’t hide in the 21^st century.

To build a credible online personality and demonstrate independent thought, you have to remain accountable of real profile and your opinions. There are practical matters to maintaining anonymity such as personal health issues or if you live under a controlled state like China that punishes dissent. On the whole, though, you should be the real you.

Everyone deserves their own soapbox. The web has handed everyone a microphone and said, “here, speak up.” - Seth Godin

Your challenge is doing your research and expressing yourself in a way that gets you heard, whether that’s through text, sound, video, or still images. It’s up to you how to frame your status post.

Above all, just start and be bold enough to hang by your opinion. So what if you’re wrong.

These are some things I just assume are Internet habits:

Images that get tweeted natively on the Twitter platform aren’t good enough for Instagram.
Facebook is intentionally boring and useful to keep you coming back.
People see your Tweets but don’t always respond either because they’re busy, lazy, or can’t generate a countering thought.
It’s easy to see when other people steal your ideas for their own work and don’t give you a hat tip.
Those that publish something digitally everyday in the morning (blog post, tweet, etc) are generally successful.
Those that track their workout habits are incentivized to workout more.
Soccer (football) fans are religious about their sport online and off.
Minimalists hoard digital items but collect very few physical things.
Most bloggers lack originality. Tech bloggers all write about the same things using different words. Creative bloggers post the same images.
The medium is the message. Twitter forces people to think in brevity. An Instagram is the best status post.
The majority of people still don’t know how to use RSS feeds effectively.
Smart people still read books, digital or physical, because they long for paying attention to the story.
Downloading music is old school. No one wants to buy an extra hard drive.
Older digital users want a stylus for tablets and smartphones and a keyboard. Younger digital users have bad handwriting, can’t spell, and can type just as fast on touch screens.
Emails are text messages.
Online writers explain less because they can hyperlink out more.
A tweet back/retweet from a celebrity is the new autograph.
Facebook is still slow on mobile despite the recent upgrade.
Foursquare users aren’t going away.
On the whole, people just read headlines and forget the details.
Painters make unnecessary use of Instagram frames.
It’s hard to discover music on Spotify due to lack of catalog.

Safe to assume?

Zoom

I’m not a player I just blog a lot.

Zoom

Hugh Macleod

Glasnost

Fred Wilson is an open blogger. He writes skillfully about his opinions and observations and inspires me to do the same.

the blogging revolution is more than a free publishing platform and a new model for media. It is self expression at its core. It is people being who they are, talking the way they talk, and doing it in public. (link)

In fact, it’s the honesty that makes writing easy.

So many people say they’ll start a blog and never do. It’s a combination of the lizard brain telling them to watch what they say and the fact that blogging takes work, if you look at that way. It’s ironic that the people that want to blog and talk a lot are the less likeliest to do it.

Blogs require openness and revelation. For me, writing is an opportunity to get it out of my system. My words are not even meant to provoke but a chance for me to be accountable for something I’m trying to put together in my head. I want to figure it all out.

Blogging is an undone activity. There’s always something new to talk about and while you may have your core principles, the glut of ideas on the Internet can convince you to think otherwise. Blogging is for the elastic brain.

Wordpress Ads

I received an email this morning from Wordpress.com about its own ad system, an alternative to Google Adsense.

With Adsense, you embed a strip of html into your blog hoping that it matches your blog content. Relevant ads were rarely the case when I experimented with Adsense.

The Wordpress ad system will be no more relevant but it may be easier to sign up and install. It’s definitely worth testing.

Personally, the only reason I’d run ads on my blog is to raise money for charity. I’d rather sell eBooks if I wanted to monetize my efforts.

Bombtune

connecting the dots on screen

Bombtune

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