What's this all about then? It's a blog. We get that. How is reading this blog going to change your life, you may ask yourself. It isn't... or at least it shouldn't. One goal of this blog is to examine how web based communications and connections can be used as a tool to enhance, not replace, traditional face to face information exchanges.
So why bother with all of this? Are there not countless blogs, books, videos, and other media out there doing exactly this? I am sure there are, in fact I know there are. And hopefully, this experiment will help me to explore and utilize those references to create new ways to tie together information across a multitude of formats.
Just started using Blip.fm, what a cool service. While I really like the idea behind Twitter, I personally don’t use it a whole lot for outputting expression, I am more of a a watcher to see what other peole are doing. However, with Blip.fm, I find it much easier to be interactive with others. It may be my affinity for music, but I like being able to share moods, memories, thoughts, whatever, tied to particular music. It’s like adding a soundtrack to my life, which I find fun.
The interface is nice, much like Twitter, with some added info on each blip (song artist and name). As other “DJ’s” that you have subscribed to blip their music, it comes up on your page, and you can re-blip, add it to your favorites, or just wait until your player gets to the song they blipped, and starts playing it.
The two other music services I use are Pandora and Last.fm. If you were to make a line graph with the left side being music and the right side being social, these three services would line up something like this:
Social Music Graph
I think this is the ideal position for someone who loves music, but wants to explore and share it more via social networking. Listen to my Blip.fm station today and try it for yourself!
Finally back to working on stover/logic, made some changes and updates. One of the new features installed is CommentLuv, a pretty cool way to connect people between blogs. Here is an excerpt from the author, Andy Bailey’s blog
The CommentLuvWordpress Plugin will visit the feed of the comment author and attempt to scrape the last post they made and display it under their comment, this way you can encourage people to join in the discussion of your posts and give something back straight away.
The plugin looks for a feed at the site given in the URL field of the commentform, if you have an auto find feed then it should find it.
The plugin retrieves your last post at the time of the comment being entered and appends the extra text just before the comment gets saved to the database, this way it doesn’t put any extra load on the database or server other than the effort required add another 60 or so characters to the comment content.
Over the last three months, this blog has fallen mostly silent. The original goals I set out for this site ended up being a little too focused to hold my interest, and there are many other things that did not fit within the original context of stover/logic that I write about, or comment on on a regular basis. So, without too much fanfare, I am going to expand the mission of this site to encompass pretty much anything that comes across my desk / into my head, take a look at everything in stover/logic at some point in the future, and determine then if there is a pattern of information that can define what this blog is actually about.
Over the next few weeks, I am going to be updating the site with new features, new topics, and new information. Probally the same design, as I like this template, and I did not have to do much work on it to get it where it is. Thanks to PowerTheme for creating such an easy to use, simple theme.
While I seem to not have much time to write much original content on this site, I have come to the realization that one way I can use this blog for communication is to post things that I am truly passionate about. One of those things is alternative energy, a subset of my passion for promoting “green” or sustainable living. As long as I can remember, since the 70’s, I can remember this being a subject close to home, as my mother has always supported and presented many of the basal ideas of proper stewardship of the Earth to me growing up. Exposure to this subject grew with me through the years, with an almost total immersion in it at the Colorado School of Mines when I returned to continue my education.
