My Life on the Net

Before I start… might I tell you that Fused Reality Studios is back up. Now back to scheduled programming.

Now, before you start thinking that I’m going to start podcasting on a weekly basis I have to warn you that this may not be the case. It all depends.

But, somewhat interestingly I’ve recorded my big question in audio form because I think that half of the way to make a podcast successful is if you have anything close to ‘the voice’. Some people have the charisma, the energy and put all of the effort they can into their podcast.

Well, go and listen to it and see what you think.

Download the mp3.

I’ve been meaning to do a review/rant of twitter for a long time. Well, ever since I began using it over a year ago. Since then, I’ve posted over four thousand tweets and gained quite a few followers from what I’ve said or done over there.

But while most of us have been in the mix of twittering, following and being followed in turn - how have we not acted as a community to fix some of the worst problems faced by twitter? There are so many little things, but the one integral part that isn’t being sorted is simple to remedy.

Some people just don’t understand it and in turn, abuse it.

If you’re a twitterer who followed a link to this blog post then you know that I, as well as others, use it to promote their content. No problems there as our main use of it is to share ourselves and in turn learn about other people. But some didn’t get the memo and see this as more of a content delivery system and never have a two-way conversation between twitterers.

These people follow thousands of people a day and only publish about their own work. Almost every twitter update is a link to something of their own creation and somehow they expect us to be nice, follow them back and even go so far as to sharing their content for them. No way.

Why haven’t our twitter techs sorted this? It’s a sad thing that if you’re a sheep, will you stop yourself from falling off a cliff or get pushed by the crowds? Without people writing and complaining, these spam-tweets will continue to grow. We need a revolt. We have spent that past few months ignoring these spammers and only thinking of it as a minor inconvenience.

This needs to stop.

Will you be a sheep or will you simply ask the twitter techs to put a limit on how many people you can follow a day? These people are following thousands a day so limiting the follow count to 20 or 50 per day would be simple enough not to cause problems to almost every twitterer. It seems like a simple fix, so why aren’t we asking demanding?

We’re the community. We should set the ground rules.

Today is the third annual CSS Naked Day which is used to promote web standards. It’s as simple as that.  This is your chance to show how your website is still accessible and usable with it’s clothes off.

There were just over 1,500 people who were stripping everything off today, so why don’t you join them?

Well done. Some of you have managed to survive my writing for an entire year - which surpasses any of my house plants or even underwear (but we won’t get into that). Where has the time gone? I remember it as if it was yesterday when I wrote my first blog post here.

[INSERT FLASHBACK SEQUENCE]

It was sunny one April 1st. It was the first day in which I could go out in a t-shirt and enjoy Spring for it’s sun instead of the wind and rain. I hope it happens again, because this Spring has been terrible so far.

[END FLASHBACK SEQUENCE]

The blog has evolved so much from what it was to begin with and I’ve learned a lot. Loads of starting bloggers make mistakes - some of them keep doing them and wonder what they are doing wrong, some give up because they feel like they’ll never get it right. So what am I going to do?

For the next 10 days I’m going to be sharing my tips for starting or experienced bloggers who want to improve their blogs and how other bloggers perceive them. I’ll share simple things but they don’t account to a winning formula. They’ll help you feel happier about your blog but even now I’m learning what my readers like and what the boundaries are that I will share.

I hope you’re going to enjoy it.

If you’ve forgotten. I said Phwoto (the photo location sharing web app) I was creating would be operational by the end of last month. Big mistake. I didn’t expect to hit the brick wall which was family problems that stopped me from developing it.

It’s slowly getting sorted but I’m not around during the weekends to work on it, which leaves me about 6 hours per week to work on the code.

It’s a little tricky, but since things are getting better I’m going to set a release date. Knowing me, a release date in my mind will sort out every little problem I’ve got right now… So, without further adieu…

Phwoto is going to release 1st April 2007. (And no, this aint no April Fools!) and the aim is to set to let some people into the beta a week before.

It took a little longer than expected, but the revamped look is up and running. Sure there are little problems, but I’ll get them squezed out when I’m less knackered.

Things you’ll like about it:

• It’s scalable - so if you increase text size it’ll go with it. (Something I’m normally to lazy to set up).
• A nice print stylesheet (for those who are interested in… printing)
• OpenID support (working but a little fiddily)
• A nice e-mail for the first time you comment.

Things coming very soon:

• Reply-to feature. I’m finding it hard to find a plugin (So if you know one… *hint* *hint*)
• Anything you want.
• Anything I can think of when I’ve had a good nights sleep.

I’ve not beeing looking after this place very well. Just look at it! When was the last time I cleaned the carpet?

Unfortunately, I’m not talking about real life - I’m talking about here, this site.  Today I’m bringing in the cleaners to make this place squeaky clean. I’m optimising code, rebuilding stylesheets (and finally putting a print style back in) and moving some furniture around. I might even put some curtains up to make this place look a little more roomy.

Same content, same feel… just… comfier and nicer to look at.

I’ve been hinting about a project I’ve been working on for a little while now, so it’s about time I spilled the beans just a little further and ask for a little help.

When I go on holiday people freak about how much equipment I take. A couple of SLRs, monopod, filters, beanbag and a whole load more.  What can I say, I like to be prepared - and I like to take photos.  This first came into mind when I was visiting Dublin.  It was a city I’d never been to before - wasn’t interested in the nightlife, the booze (although I did have a few too many), the shops and we definitely didn’t have the time to fully explore the city in 2 nights in the centre of the town.

Searching the net for some photographer’s favourite spots didn’t really help.  Not many hits, and the one’s that did turn up were the acclaimed tourist spots.  I wanted to find out the real Dublin, not the doors to the Guinness factory.

Photo.net has some great articles about where to shoot, and when to shoot in a select few cities around the world.  But that’s the problem. It’s TOO select.  I wanted to know from the people.  I wanted to know from the kids, the teens and the adults around the place and know where they liked to go - sneaking in early in the morning to a beach, a dock, a back alley.  Not only that, I want to SEE these places, know where they are and head out there myself.

So, I’m finding a solution to that problem.  The only thing is, I just can’t develop it without information.  I have some for Edinburgh, for Dundee - but hardly anywhere else around the globe.  I need your help.  When I go into beta at the end of the month - I already want some information to be there, otherwise the people who try to use it will find it small and not worth visiting again.

So help me!  I’m begging you! 

It’s not hard. Share a few spots you like, even if you’re not a photographer.  Comment here or send me some mail at help@phwoto.com and I’ll thank you for life!

I’m taking some inspiration from Chris Brogan’s 100 Blog Topics I Hope YOU Write…

1. When you start to think that 12 hours a day is a minimum requirement to be on your computer.
2. If you find that you have more friends online than you do offline. Keep a balance.
3. All of your twitter followers know everything about your daily habits, including each and every time you go to the bathroom.
4. You order all of your food, movies and sort out all of your bills online and never leave the house.
5. The furthest you’ve walked in the past few days is to the refrigerator.
6. When you see anything out of the ordinary in the outside world, you twitter it.
7. If you don’t blog for a few days, you get emails from your readers wondering if everything is ok.
8. Your ISP calls you daily to inform you that you’re running out of bandwidth for this month.
9. You find your sleep pattern is tuned to a different time zone, just like mine is now to CET.
10. When you start to make websites to fill in the blanks of the web, just because it’s bothering you.
11. If you have more domain names than you can count or remember.
12. You have to wear earplugs to drone out the souns of the fans you have installed on your multiple computers
13. When you have triple the amount of screens than you have computers (although that has been a dream of mine for quite a while)
14. Sleep is something you wish you had more of, but you feel that if you miss the latest story on the front page of digg before the server crashes then it’s not worth seeing.
15. If you travel, you need to check in advance to see if your hotel provides free wifi - and if not, you rebook.

I hope everyone who celebrate Christmas had a good one, I did.  It was fun filled ride of gift giving and recieving, of stuffing myself with turkey and sleeping a lot. But what did I get for you?

It’s my first true social web project, and although it’s specialisation is small - it should be pretty cool for photographer’s out there.  I’m keeping the details wrapped up till it’s complete, and hopefully i’ll get it done by the end of the week for a jan 1st launch - but I doubt it, perhaps february.

Keep your eyes peeled, as I’ll need your help to get it up and running!