explodedlibrary.info

light blogging, my temporal wish list

Today I have half a day at work, before leaving on a mini-vacation in Tasmania to catch up with family & friends. Needless to say that I won't have much time for blogging or reading blogs until I get back on Tuesday.

Things I would like to write about today if I had the time: comparing Yahoo! 360 (I've recently received an invite to its beta) and msn spaces and LiveJournal; musings about the intersection of blogs and wikis; the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy movie (did this actually open in Australia before it opened in the US? I saw it last night).

overload and memories

It's interesting, for somebody who doesn't even believe in information overload, Steven Cohen's Library Stuff has been providing some excellent coverage on this topic lately.

I definitely agree with the conclusion that one of the answers to information overload is to trust that other people will read things which I won't, and that I'll find things through them or through the people who read them.

I think it's also important to be open to the possibility that some things will  inevitably slip through the cracks from time to time. This would happen even if you spent every waking hour, as well as the hours when you should be sleeping, trying to not to miss anything.  This isn't a tragedy. I think it is an old-fashioned and almost arrogant mindset which causes people to think that they can stay on top of everything which happens in every important topic. The reassurance which these people crave will only guarantee further stress and anxiety.

Information overload used to be one of my pet topics. I've noticed this since I've been looking for posts to add to my new memories section.

This is the list on my sidebar which includes some of my memorable entries. I've biased my selection towards older entries, especially from this blog's Radio Userland days. I can find more recent posts using TypePad's search blog feature, which obviously doesn't apply to the Userland posts. That's what this list is really about - making it easier for me to feel connected to the previous incarnations of this blog. I sometimes like to re-read my older posts and ask myself, do I still think that now? Would I write that now?

At the moment, this memories list has the prominent real estate in the top right corner, but after a few weeks I'll move  it towards the bottom of that sidebar.

Meetup's common-place tragedy

Just my luck. I was thinking that Meetup might be a good way for me to find some people in Sydney with common interests. Only last weekend I'd joined a few groups, but now I see that Meetup has shot itself badly in the foot and it might not be long for this world.

The service has been free for most people, with a premium membership option for people who wanted to pay for some extra features. This week Meetup announced a massive price hike - going from completely free to a charge of $US 19 per month for each group. There is also a temporary $US 9/month rate for people who cough up the cash early, but I can't see many taking advantage of that. Rather Meetup is just going to lose most of its active user-base as if it were a sieve.

Yes, Meetup has the right to try and make some money, but it's gone about this in totally the wrong way. These are just my thoughts as someone who's relatively new to Meetup.

Firstly, they leave it to the Organizer of each group to be responsible for paying for this charge - and recovering the costs from the membership. Meetup already had enough problems with attracting and retaining people to fill the thankless Organizer role. So what do they do about it? They charge Organizers for the privilege of doing this unpaid work, and expect them to recoup Meetup's charges from the group members. I can't think of a better way of ensuring that all the Organizers drop like flies than these proposals, and don't expect new Organizers to come running to fill these gaps. Asking a person to do such an unpleasant task as collecting money from people - that is the worst thing they could have done.

Secondly, a price rise from free to $US 19 per month per group is just too high, and this is speaking as someone who is more willing than most people to pay for internet services. A LiveJournal paid account is $US 25 per year - and LiveJournal is such a better site than Meetup. Yes, I know that if a group has 19 members and the Organizer performs a miracle and gets everybody to pay for their share, that's only $1 per month, but I don't accept that this scenario could ever really happen.

Before these changes, I could have possibly had my arm twisted to pay a few dollars a month to use a site like Meetup, but certainly not now - because  Meetup has been hemmoraging active Organizers and members and groups since these changes were announced - at least if my experience is anything to go by. A lot of the groups which I joined last weekend didn't have an Organizer or at least an active Organizer, but every single active Organizer I've encountered has quit (Meetup should know that active Organizers are the lifeblood of meetups, if anything the company should be paying them to stay around!), and a majority of them are setting up Meetup alternatives on Yahoo! Groups.

This is leads me to Meetup's third mistake. It's not as if Meetup members are a captive audience. Much of what Meetup does is emulated on sites such as Yahoo! Groups, which are free. Meetup's way of RSVPing for meetings might be one of the more useful and less common features, but even that is available on new paid services such as getalife.com.au

linkily returning to a Meta Monday

I first started blogging by linking to interesting things which I'd read. I usually just linked, and provided very little commentary of my own. There's nothing wrong with this sort of blogging, especially you have a gift for drawing together very eclectic sources (which I didn't) and you aren't too opinionated (and I realize that I am too opinionated). For a while I  preserved this metablogging style on my Meta Mondays, when I mainly provided just links with minimal commentary.

For some strange reason I feel like doing one of these tonight.

Michelle Goldberg, Salon, In theology they trust
This makes me feel relieved to be an Australian, but even so, this is scary stuff.

If you're too lazy to get the Salon day pass, at least read this Washington Post article which the above one references. Will it take a judge to be killed via a US religious right fatwa for people to wake up to what's going on here?

On to something completely different, Ernie muses about the sometimes awkward and disconcerting phemonemon of meeting people who know so much about him because of his blogging, and he knows nothing about them. Talk about being at a disadvantage...

I'm still exhausted from my last job search, and don't even want to think about job interviewing for the time being, but Meredith has some very interesting advice for job interviewers. Some of this information would also be helpful to interviewees, to help understand the process.

do I have issues with the printed word?

This blog has just been given a failing grade by Walt Crawford on its printability [see pages 4-6 of this pdf file]. *sighs* Well at least I'm in some good company. The snarky side of me is tempted to say this: Cites & Insights is not exactly screen-friendly. The two column layout demands much scrolling back and forth, which is kind of awkward. I'm not stating this to find fault with Cites & Insights, it's just stating the fact that it was designed to look best when printed on paper, which I am reluctant to do.

Still, Walt could rightly argue that Cites & Insights functions better on the screen than this blog looks when printed on paper.

It's interesting because it's never occurred to me that anyone would want to print out this blog. I certainly haven't, and I probably care more about this blog than anyone else. Aside from the whole dead tree thing, I have issues with managing paper documents. Once I start accumulating papers, they clump together and multiply in messy piles. Before I know it, they've invaded my entire desk and I'm drowning in paper. So if I printed out this blog, I would just be feeding this monster which ruins my feng sui and saps me of so much energy.

But Walt makes some valid points about why printability is important, especially for a blog like the exploded library, which has fairly lengthy posts which (on my good days) are like mini-essays. I decided to contact TypePad's support about this issue. This is what's currently available: using a print stylesheet, such as the one mentioned here at A List Apart. I'm sorry, but it sounds too bothersome for me. Here's the thing, although I dabble with technology in my day job,  I am also lazy and I don't want to be spending too much time on techy things in my free time as well. I only have so much time and energy for blogging (and lately even that has been less than my usual preference), and the more time that I spend on design and formatting, the less I have for the actual content, which is the part that I enjoy the most. That's why I like TypePad, because it's easy and reliable enough that the technology doesn't get in the way of the creativity, and it has sufficient customization options to satisfy my occasional urge to tinker. I do wish that it offered an easy print-friendly solution, and hope that this is eventually implemented in an updated version.