Loosely Coupled Communities Across Space and Time

 Godley Head, Christchurch

From Glenn Derene, wiring at Popular Mechanics in “How Social Networking Could Kill Web Search as We Know It

… with the rise of social networking sites such as Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, Second Life, LinkedIn and even Google’s own Orkut, the next generation of Web users may find what they want by using their social network rather than a search algorithm. After all, the people in your online social network should know you better than a mathematical equation, right?

I find this article resonates. The concept that a mathematical formula can replace the collective knowledge of trusted friends always seems weird, and the absolute innocent dorkiness that “algorithms solve all problems” as naive.

Being able to ask your twitter-hive mind friends a question, say about WordPress themes (see: http://www.nickhodge.com/blog/archives/2508) and receive an intelligent set of answers is way more powerful than blind search engine bingo.

The power of the internet comes from its ability to very cheaply connect like minded people into loosely coupled communities unbounded by space and time.

Eight Random Facts About Nick Hodge

Nick at Godley Head, Christchurch 

Following an old meme Stilgherrian and fellow Munge Brother, Uncle Dave Wallace dredged up and tagged me, and Frank Arrigo: god bless his Saint Kilda socks also tagged me. So here’s eight random facts about me.

The rules:

  1. Each player starts with eight random facts/habits about themselves.
  2. People who are tagged need to write a post on their own blog (about their eight things) and post these rules.
  3. At the end of your blog, you need to choose eight people to get tagged and list their names.
  4. Don’t forget to leave them a comment telling them they’re tagged, and to read your blog.
  1. I have a penchant for Carry On… movies. The UK of 1950s through to the mid 1970s fascinates me. A country rebuilding itself without Empire, pre-European Union and Mrs Thatcher. The Carry On movies reflect many of the weirdness of the time. Oh, and I also like musicals from the same era.
  2. Born in NSW as a Royal Australian Navy “brat”, I recall listening to planes and helicopters and accepted this existence as normal for all kids. Abruptly moved to country South Australia to live on a farm; lived in a boarding school in Adelaide. After working and finding my soul mate in Adelaide all in 9 years; I moved back to NSW. Been in NSW for nearly 13 years.  Life is circular.
  3. After wearing braces my teeth for 18 months, and losing count how many baby teeth were manually removed: now dentists can work on my teeth unaided by anaesthetics. Congenitally missing a lower molar and do not have any wisdom teeth. My facial nerves are pretty well hosed. However, since Bell’s Palsy I cannot open my mouth wide as it locks up. Yawning is painful.
  4. One of my encounters with Crowded House: In Light Square, Adelaide buying tickets to one of their first, very small concerts. As my friends and I were leaving, the three Crowdies were approaching the club for a sound check. I said “Hello Mark” to Nick Seymour. Paul Hester asked if I had met “Tim Finn?” (as he was looking at Neil). Laughs all around. I felt like such a doofus. (BTW: if you are not getting the humour in this, you are not a Finnatic and I weep for you)
    Update: I was sitting across from Mark Seymour in a Qantas Club in Brisbane. I gathered up the courage to tell him the story here. He LOL’d and thought that it was a funny story. Circle closed 
  5. In January 1993, I went to Macworld San Francisco. My first (well, I did go to the Seybold Conference in 1989 when John Warnock blinked in the font-format wars: and this was on our honeymoon)  Macworld where I connected with Dave Winer. He was showing Frontier off in a room in the Marriott rather than a full stand on the show floor. Here I met Dave, Doug Baron (and Julie) and saw Utah – a UI builder for Frontier that sorta kinda shipped. I may have been one of the alpha testers for a while, too. 3 years later whilst at Apple I created a content management system in Frontier for the Fairfax 1996 Olympics website. Good days, good days.
  6. I dropped out of the South Australian Institute of Technology studying Accounting after about a month of studies. Epic fail. Thankfully, I managed to work hard and complete a higher education journey by completing an MBA. It only took me 10 years. Now I am fully qualified to do what I don’t want to do again. Strange.
  7. After a bad reaction to beer, I haven’t had alcohol since June 2002. Well, apart from a small slip on the back of a pickup truck in Mexico in 2005. Real Mexican tequila tastes excellent. Tequila just may be my weakness.
  8. After leaving school, I was part of a band called Stranger than Fiction. After dropping out of Accounting (See #6 above), I decided that learning Audio engineering may be a good thing to do. Dropping out again after 6 months, as I found Avril. It was way worth it 🙂

 

Next 8 Victims

  1. http://twitter.com/dswaters
  2. http://twitter.com/rog42
  3. http://twitter.com/ang
  4. http://twitter.com/aeoth
  5. http://twitter.com/willhughes
  6. http://twitter.com/steven_noble
  7. http://twitter.com/fifikins
  8. http://twitter.com/lu_lu 

Mark Pesce: Keynoting Australian ReMIX 2008

Taking down Conservapedia

Credit: Darren Sharp

This year’s keynote speaker at Australia’s second ReMIX is Mark Pesce. Like LOLCODE, Mark has his own, well deserved Wikipedia entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Pesce

Australians in the internet community would recognise Mark from his copious writings on freedom, email, free/meshed wireless. He is a thought leader amongst thought leaders in this web-centric world.

I’ve seen Mark present at various conferences through 2007, and have also enjoyed his writings. At ReMIX, Mark will be elevating our imaginations to a higher plane: what may this highly connected future look like?

Microsoft know Mark is going to provide some thought provoking insights.

 

ReMix_700x170

Selling your Identity Stunts your Intelligence

As mentioned by Duncan Riley in “Rocketboom Founder Puts His Twitter Account On Sale“, Andrew Varon Baron is “selling his twitter account” as a stunt.

As at posting, the bidding is at US$510.00

I am not sure how this ID is valued, and it seems strange that it has value when decoupled from the person selling the name.

Unless you are another Andrew Varon Baron, or are a competitor to RocketBoom – and in either case Andrew should really just twitter-squatter on his identity.

One never knows where twitter IDs are going to be useful in the future.

Interesting, if unintelligent, stunt.

(edits thanks to @bck)

Hunting WordPress Themes

Time to change themes on this site.

I have a simple request: White-space is king, single left hand navigation with fluid right-hand content column. Tweaking the typography to look brilliant is more important than whizzy graphics detracting the eye.

As @evilsue says on twitter: “have reskinned blog…..again….its the poor girls substitute for buying shoes

So, with these demands in mind – my first port of call was to put a call out to the Twitterati. Here is my list of sites, in no particular order.

Let’s start the ThemeHunting:

http://codex.wordpress.org/Using_Themes/Theme_List

What is a theme, and how do you create one?

At the bottom of the page, there is a list of Theme sites.

Very soon you head into nasty MySpace-themed sites with mega-advertisements ugliness.

http://themes.wordpress.net/

wordpress_themeviewer

This is the uber-viewer of themes, hosted by WordPress. There is a standard set of content you can apply to various themes.

For instance, for my next theme I would like left sidebar, 2 column, white, no header image and widget-ready.

Either the way the themes are classified in ThemeViewer, or the viewer itself seems borked as you get a mixture of everything when you search.

The themes here seem to be rather plain, but it is the place to start your search.

http://www.elegantwpthemes.com/

Elegant themes seem to involve lots of shading, blue and images.

No magical searching to make life easier to find that theme.

http://www.revolutiontheme.com/

This is an uber-theme that alters the concept of WordPress as a blog into WordPress as a CMS.

http://www.topwpthemes.com/

Advertisements stating “earn $3506 per month from blogging” seem to harangue you on this site; again many pre-built images in the header.

Mega-click through blog with no smart searching. fail.

http://www.templateworld.com/free_templates.html

Interesting list of templates, but seems to be frozen in 2007

http://www.noupe.com/design/60-unusual-wp-blog-designs.html

Now, if I was going super-trendy with lots of graphics and colour – this is the site I would choose first.

There is an excellent list of no-frills themes too in the 45+ Must-see Themes. And I think I’ve found my first contender:

http://www.briangardner.com/themes/blue-zinfandel-wordpress-theme.htm (although in review it lacks right-fluidity)

It is also interesting to see the themes borked by comment form ugliness

http://www.wpthemereview.com/

Des Walsh, of Thinking Home Business, posted this link.

Here, each of the WordPress themes earns an SEO score: how well the particular theme works with search-engine optimisation. In my instance, I have some WP plugins doing some magic behind the scenes to ensure the searchbots get it right.

From this site, I found my second contender:

http://www.theblogstudio.com/index.php/v5/resources (Branches theme, I would howerver change the top-left image)

Branches

http://del.icio.us/popular/wordpress

Of course! follow the tags, son.

First to pop up in the list is http://www.wpzoom.com/

Smashing Magazine has an excellent list of plain well designed themes: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/03/25/15-more-free-first-class-wordpress-themes/

I like BalanceWhite and TextBack

 

Meta-theme Generator: http://www.yvoschaap.com/wpthemegen/

This is fun: WordPress theme by form. I recall trying this about a year ago, with epic fail. Now seems to be rather cool.

Rocking Themes: http://rockinthemes.com/

The current/to be replaced theme here is Ambient Glo Fluid 1.5. Looking around on that site, I notice that there are some excellent minimalist designs such as http://rockinthemes.com/rockinminimalist-2-column-free-wordpress-theme/

 

Conclusions?

WordPress Themes are like shoes. You can shop until you drop, install them all and wear different colours on different days.

Oh, the choices!

Tips and Techniques for Presentations

BarCamp Sydney

(photo by JJ)

As presented at BarcampSydney3: 

  • Imagine the best presenter/presentation you have seen
    • This person has practised more than once.
    • plan for the worst case scenario (no projector, laptop nor audience)
  • know audience, topic, environment
    • If you are not comfortable wit the topic, don’t present it
  • Theatre
    • projecting your voice: always stand
    • volume levels: for any audience above 4 people, you need to turn it up a little bit
    • breaking the fourth wall (that is, walk and talk into the audience)
    • Use props.
    • hot vs cold liquids: careful with water as it tightens the vocal chords
  • emotional connection
    • Emotional projection: like voice volume, you need to turn it up a few notches to make an impact 
    • tell stories: humans have brains wired to remember stories and retell them
    • audience involvement: get someone on stage and break the fourth wall
  • referential comedy
    • appropriate humor (think of your audience) is always a good thing to incorporate
    • to help: keep referencing one humourous comment/moment
  • Dealing with the hecklers
    • attention seekers (so give them some attention)
    • or are pained by some experience (divert to post-presentation one on one)
  • always leave your audience wanting more

Thanks, Sridhar, for the positive blog comments. 🙂