[Phoenix-pm] phoenix.pm.org wants to aggregate your reddit, del.icio.us, twitter, LJ, myspace

Scott Walters scott at illogics.org
Thu Aug 2 07:39:58 PDT 2007


On  0, Michael Friedman <friedman at highwire.stanford.edu> wrote:
> Perhaps the lack of response is because most of us don't have blogs?

That's absurd.  I read on a blog somewhere that 80% of people have
blogs.  Maybe it was a poll someone put on their LiveJournal page.
I don't remember.

Yeah, I started to come to that terrible realization myself after I
spent hours Googling for "phoenix perl blog" and not turning up
anything I didn't already have (I knew about Andrew's, Ben's,
and Brock's).

But still, I'm amazed at that.  I honestly thought everyone used
reddit or del.icio.us or *something*.  Even LiveJournal.  I hear
so many debates about which blog site to use, the debates hinging
on the crowds on them, among other things.  My non-geeky friends
have MySpace or LiveJournal blogs...

> I know that I don't. The interesting stuff I work on is either not  
> technically interesting (yet another class tied to a db table) or is  
> company proprietary. Not to mention that I don't have time to keep up  
> a simple home page, let alone write a blog with any regularity.

It usually doesn't work that.  Okay, I push the line a bit with
talking about work stuff that could be considered slightly sensitive
(but certainly not trade secret), but most people just have
vacation photos, little observations about their life, random bits
of creativity, funny pictures and links for thier friends.  I don't
find much time to post pictures (though the Nokia N800 makes it
really easy -- snap a picture, then upload it right to flickr, or
shoot a video, and upload it right to youtube care of Opera) but
I somehow magically find time to rant.

By the way, the N800 is *way* cooler than the iPhone.  The
"ten reasons the N800 is better than the iPhone" didn't even
scratch the surface.  The iPhone doesn't have P2P apps you
can install with which to get fetch music to play ;)

Working in an office recently, we had a collective feed somewhat
like this (originally done with Yahoo! Pipes then moved to 
del.icio.us care of a tag) and nearly everyone I worked with
submitted links to essays on programming, project management,
emerging technologies, neat hacks, cool modules, things other
programming language communities are doing, etc, etc.  There
was no ranting or blogging, just a lot of linking.  So I got the
impression from that that most programmers had a social bookmark
of programming stuff.  Twitter is supposed to be huge.  I figured
we'd have a few other people who use it (Ben has a blog *and*
a Twitter account and probably other things).

Hell, I've probably got a dozen RSS feeds... my sticky notes at 
ponderer.org/webnotes, Twitter, Flickr (disused), YouTube, 
LiveJournal (disused), an RSS feed of messages I've tagged 
in mutt, an RSS feed from a calendaring app I use, feed 
from the blog thingie I hacked up really quick with Continuity
at slowass.net:1111, my use.perl.org blog, ...  okay, that's 
nine, but I'm probably forgetting a few.  So to have them 
coming out my ears while other people apparently have none 
is mystifying.

Consider http://twittermap.com/maps?mapstring=phoenix,+az ...
there are hundreds of Twitter users in Phoenix who have 
posted recently.  Yet no one in this group users Twitter?

Are we not geeks?  Are we just working stiffs?

Do you guys actually avoid technology because you work with it
all day?  Is this stuff disinteresting because it's computer
related?

> OTOH, I'm glad to see a blog aggregation service for interesting perl  
> stuff. It's nice to have everything in one place and it's a good way  
> to find blogs to read that I don't already know about. I just don't  
> feel I have anything to contribute.

Well, the only blog in there that really counts as news
is the use.perl.org news feed.  There are a bunch more...
perl.com (ORA), feeds of messages from the development
lists, feed of new CPAN modules, and a bunch of other stuff,
but if I started sucking all of that in, it would drown out
the Phoenix.PM-er's blogs.  All four of them.  It's not a bad 
idea, but it would have to be done in parallel rather than
over top of that.  I've also subscribed to PhxBUG feed and
I'll probably put Refresh Phoenix's on there, if they have
one, if I get around to it, and PLUG's.  Keep it local so
it's not redudant, you know.

Anyway, the sun is up, so it's time for me to sleep.

Thanks for taking time to comment so I'm not sitting here
talking to myself *too* much...

-scott

> 
> -- Mike
> 
> On Aug 1, 2007, at 10:39 PM, Scott Walters wrote:
> 
> >I want your Reddit, del.icio.us, Twitter, LiveJournal, MySpace, or  
> >use.perl.org RSS,
> >RDF, or Atom feed, or the feed of whatever blog you use.
> >
> >I know not many people will read through *all* of the aggregated  
> >news but
> >browsing through it would be a great way to discover other  
> >interesting Perl
> >people and get to know other Perl programmers in the valley and  
> >just give
> >us an excuse to interact with each other in general.
> >
> >If you're not sure how to find your RSS feed on your blog of  
> >choice, tell
> >me where the HTML view of it is or tell me the site and your  
> >username and
> >I'll try to find it for you.
> >
> >-scott
> >
> >_______________________________________________
> >Phoenix-pm mailing list
> >Phoenix-pm at pm.org
> >http://mail.pm.org/mailman/listinfo/phoenix-pm
> 
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> Michael Friedman                     HighWire Press
> Phone: 650-725-1974                  Stanford University
> FAX:   270-721-8034                  <friedman at highwire.stanford.edu>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------
> 


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