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It has been a long time. On reflection, I think the best practices that I thought should apply to the blogosphere, specifically the brevity, unclutteredness and independence that I thought were missing from that world, well they were being taken up by Twitter, Facebook and Instagram.

This arena looks old already. Yet there are still times when I want to shout to the world. However I don't want to deluge my friends' feeds, I can't compress what I need to say in 140 characters, and I don't have a little picture to summarise it.

So maybe this should restart. It's different this time though. No more insistence on being unique and universal and fully interlinked. Now just the thoughts for the day.

And not even typed or spellchecked. This is being done with one thumb on a little phone screen. But it's live. Watch out world, I'm back.

25 Personal Things

Well I said I'd start on the 25 random things. So I did.

I wrote them, but they aren't published yet. None of them are secret, but there is a nagging doubt whether this blog is the appropriate place for them. Obviously there is nothing embarrassing or illegal there, but they look inward whereas most of this blog looks outward.

And I still wonder how the revelation of further personal details would change the opinions of me of those around me. So I don't.

25 Random Things About Me

I'm not going to list 25 random things about me. Not today anyway. But I am going to point to some ideas about that particular meme. However I will (eventually) divulge some new personal facts, because this whole site is a form of self-expression, and using standard templates to represent content can make sense both for the writer and the reader.

Also, I am not going to explicitly "tag" selected people suggesting that they must pass it on - whoever you are, I do want to learn more about you, but because I'm interested, not because you need to spread the message to avoid an attack of the bad-luck-virus, or an eternity in hell.

Anyway twenty-five points is far too many for one note. I have regularly expressed high fidelity to a simple "top five", and that is more than enough for my suggested user-friendly word limits.

And finally, I cannot simply write "random" things, that would violate my principles. My posts should suggest order and synchronicity in a chaotic universe, so each one must be fairly well themed, the antithesis of random.

For more on the background of this, see Neil Perkin, John Naughton, Chris Wilson. For my first five, see tomorrow.

Legal Stuff - Creative Commons

Other sites aggregate good content from the web. On this blog I tend to reflect my own thoughts in my own words. That's one of the rules, though I don't always follow the rules, I do prefer to avoid parroting of popular opinion. And when I link, I attribute source.

Similarly I try to avoid obvious and predictable clichés - that is only worth doing if you can be Steinmanesque about it: the future just ain't what it used to be but we'll never be as young as we are right now and if you don't go over the top then you'll never see the other side.

And in various ways at various times I've often suggested that you are completely free to reuse and distrubute anything published here (perhaps you are encouraged to) provided that you acknowledge me in doing so. However I've not yet expressed this opinion in traditional legal language, I'm not sure that I need to anyway, but here for the record are two portions of the Creative Commons Notice that seem to apply here.

1. Licensees (you) may copy, distribute, display and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only if they give the author or licensor (me) the credits in the manner specified by these.
2. Licensees may copy, distribute, display, and perform the work and make derivative works based on it only for noncommercial purposes.

Go ahead. Make my day.

A blog not a website

OK, the personal stuff can wait. First to clarify something from the last post. I am not going to continue to "advertise" my company website on this blog, but I am going to continue to make arguably important points here about the nature of web 2.0 and technology and social networking.

From Tamar Weinberg's best internet marketing posts of 2008, I picked up a top five (outdated) reasons why a blog is not a traditional website:

1. Blogs are dynamic, websites are not
2. Blogs encourage conversation, websites do not
3. Blogs offer RSS, websites do not
4. Blogs publish current news, websites do not
5. Blogs create the blogosphere while websites are in a way standalone islands

However, as Tad's post admits, those are no longer always true. Many authored sites, even the BBC, now encourage interactive updates to current news. But Tad provides the more subtle insight that the real difference is that the info at a blog is expected to be valid at a certain point in time while the content on a website is expected to be timeless.

That is, on a website, you expect every page to be still relevant, outdated pages to be dropped. On a blog, you expect the information on each page to be current only at the point in time that the page was published. But I have some pages on my blog that are timeless. Tad suggests removing the date from these pages. Instead, what I'll do is copy them to my website.

Advertising

Recall the Top Ten rules to which we should aspire, including speed, simplicity, etc. Rule number 8 was simply No Advertising. So, despite potential revenue, no google ads here. But I said explicitly that this blog could only ever reach 9/10 for that measure, "I lost a mark for the intrinsic self-promotion".

I still maintain that every word and every picture that we ever leave anywhere on the web becomes part of our online CV, whether we like it or not. So within this blog I still try to demonstrate creativity, experience, focus, opinion, passion, reason and a sense of humour together with some hints that I know a bit more about marketing, technology, architecture, language, statistics, semiotics, and every other subject that interests me. So obviously I agree that recruiters should be looking for people like me.

But I have reconsidered slightly in the last days. Ultimately I am a director of a small limited company that supplies consultancy services - it has its own website, but it has so far been just a placeholder rather than a sales tool. From now I think some of the more work-focused themes might start to go there (it's clearly still in development).

Which means this blog can get personal ...

Happy New Year (eventually)

Top five reasons to have a New Year's Day blog post:

1. These are the best places that I visited this year

2. These are the best books and films of the past year

3. These are my resolutions and predictions for the new year

4. These were my most commented posts of last year

5. I should post every day.

Actually that wasn't meant to be critical, those are all perfectly good reasons. I'd have done one too, but I've been away. Normal service to resume shortly.

The Peopleweb

Really just a follow-up to the previous post. In the style of economist Tyler Cowen and his regular sentence of the day, I quote Seth Godin, author of Permission Marketing and other new marketing handbooks. From Seth's blog today:

57% of the marketers surveyed hadn't read a blog in the last year. These people are incompetent and should be fired.

Sorry, that's more than one sentence. Anyway, people have different and varied interests. Lack of interest in the web 2.0 should not be an absolute killer. Yet to put it into perspective I'll quote something obvious from Neil Perkin again , then follow with something from his last note:

It is irrelevant whether people prefer writing a blog, posting their pictures on flickr, or Facebook, or their passing thoughts on twitter, or whether they do all or any combination of the above - the point is is that they are doing it at all.

Advertising has to learn to help people do their thing with each other, rather than send messages to the world in the hope of making an impact.

Recruiters - Employ Firestarters

People should listen more than they speak. So we should read more than we write. Consequently I often find great blog posts that I likely could have written. Examples here and here. But recently I found a great blog post that I likely would have written.

Firestarters from Neil Perkin, Director of Marketing & Strategy for the commercial functions of IPC Media. It's excellent. Not only is it "I couldn't have put it better myself" but it's "exactly how I'd have put it myself".

Times are tough. The recruitment market is tough. But here are 5 reasons why employing people who blog is more important than ever:

1. They start fires. Blogging forces you to come up with new stuff. To be interesting.
2. They understand the value of connection. And are connected. To other interesting people.
3. They get digital. They appreciate the nuances and potential of social media. And how it works. Because they're doing it, not looking at it.
4. They network like crazy.
5. But most of all, because they're bothered. They have an opinion. They're not afraid to express it. They're passionate about their subject. And real passion is rare indeed.

Superb.

Far From Feeling

I read Marginal Revolution. There found a link to the Typealyzer. It parses the text of a submitted URL and then makes an automated attempt to show the parts of the brain that were dominant during writing.

So, this is not really me, but this is my blog:

The logical and analytical type. They are especialy [sic] attuned to difficult creative and intellectual challenges and always look for something more complex to dig into. They are great at finding subtle connections between things and imagine far-reaching implications.

They enjoy working with complex things using a lot of concepts and imaginative models of reality.

So far so "good" ... but it finishes with:

Since they are not very good at seeing and understanding the needs of other people, they might come across as arrogant, impatient and insensitive to people that need some time to understand what they are talking about.

Obviously not true?

Big Apple

One of my old posts has been picked up today at the world's favourite Metrotwin site. At last. Superb.

http://blog.metrotwin.com/?p=383

Breaking the Rules

It's halfway through the year. It's one year into this blog. According to vjack:

Why do you blog? The more important traffic and readership growth are to you, the more I'd recommend a 1 post/day target.

How new is your blog? The newer it is, the more I'd recommend averaging 1 post/day.

And over the last year, I have written 1 post/day. It's one of the rules.

It was the last day in the office for a friend today, not through choice, what is a cost saving for the client is a loss of income for the contractor. He is on Facebook, but like many, fears the consequences of potential employers looking into it. My view on that is unchanged. Everything there is public, that's why it was posted. It's the same with this blog, and I think there is already enough here to show far more numeracy, literacy, organisation and originality than in most of the CVs that I see. Some of it may be controversial, but that just shows courage and lateral thinking ability. I hope.

So time to stop. No more daily posts. Well time to slow down anyway.

One Year Old Today

It's been a whole year since post one. Time to take stock. In the holistic tradition of this blog, almost like it's indexed, this should also pull the last few posts together.

So the blog is perhaps like a real-time roadmap of middle America in these times of high gas prices. Well laid out, straight lines and an organised structure. Very clear and easy to read. Plenty of open space. And hardly any traffic!

Traveblog

When you are on a trip, work or holiday, it is traditional to write an initial post saying that blog updates will be infrequent and unreliable for a while.

However, while you are on a trip, there is a regular stream of new and unusual experience - if everything were the same then there would be no point travelling - and this provides good (at least original) material for the blog.

But I'm not sure that I want this to become a travelogue. I suppose that's what Twitter and suchlike are for. While I ponder, this constitutes filler for the day.

Blogging - It's good for you

Scientific American offers reasons to keep going ...

Scientists (and writers) have long known about the therapeutic benefits of writing about personal experiences, thoughts and feelings. But besides serving as a stress-coping mechanism, expressive writing produces many physiological benefits. Research shows that it improves memory and sleep, boosts immune cell activity and reduces viral load in AIDS patients, and even speeds healing after surgery.

So far so good ...

The frontal and temporal lobes, which govern speech—no dedicated writing center is hardwired in the brain—may also figure in. For example, lesions in Wernicke’s area, located in the left temporal lobe, result in excessive speech and loss of language comprehension. People with Wernicke’s aphasia speak in gibberish and often write constantly. In light of these traits, Flaherty speculates that some activity in this area could foster the urge to blog.

Gibberish?

Time for blog

Only dead fish swim with the water. And today Neil Perkin wrote something that echoed here:

When I talk about blogging, the number one question I get asked by non-bloggers is where do you find the time? I think this is the wrong question about the wrong thing. I find the time because I believe it is important enough to do so.

I might expand on that another day. Meanwhile the American blogger vjack has just started a series of blogging guidelines. I'm sure that plenty of others have too. But I still aspire to the basic top ten guidelines that I published last year. Rule number one was simple: One post per day, no more, no less.

But yesterday was an exception. If I get back home too late, if I've had a few drinks, then I don't trust myself to write anything that will stand the test of time.

So this year only 134 posts in 135 days. I'll make it up.

The CV Newsletter

Why join a social networking site? Why write a blog? There have been numerous articles written about the risks, and there have already been many cases where something published on-line has come back to haunt. All of us in the on-line world also have a life in the real world, and reputation is slow to build and easy to destroy.

I've covered the basic reasons before, and this is not the place for a repeat of self analysis and psychology. This time the argument is simple economics, the benefits outweigh the costs.

The ever-readable Seamus McCauley recently noted that a friend of his had recently enrolled in a graduate program at a reasonably well known university in England. However, his experience there was poor, he soon realised that the course was basically just a pathetic degree provider for high-paying foreign studeents, especially from China. So great for generating fees for the particular institution, not so great for the reputation of English universities as a whiole.

But more interesting was this comment in the article: I will not advertise my degree at UEA on my CV, whether or not I graduate.

Whether or not he realises it now, it is too late for that unfortunate student. I consider that everything that he has written on the blog is already a part of his "CV", whether he likes it or not.

Employers, isn't a current, comprehensive, searchable evolving blog a much better guide to a candidate than a couple of typed pages anyway?

Facebook (again)

I'll repeat here what I've said on the application itself - I'm on Facebook, I periodically log in there, I'm happy to add friends there, but I have an odd view on its applications.

There are loads of people on Facebook who laugh at the zombie and pirate and werewolf applications, who scoff at the pokes and superpokes, who would never dream of sending random online slaps and tickles. I'm not like them.

Because I have nothing. No artificial colours or preservatives anyway. The organic food section of the Facebook supermarket.

A profile. A wall. A circle of friends. A link to this blog. That's about it. Hello.

The Fast Show Comic

Oh no, Scott Adams recently "redesigned the Dilbert.com web site and added a ton of features, such as animation, deeper archives, mash ups, and more."

It's horrible. You know my views on this subject. Simplicity. Space. Sex. Speed.

However, Scott suggested that there are three types of reader:

• The first group is the ultra-techies who have an almost romantic relationship with technology …


• The second group objected to the new level of color and complexity, and the associated slowness …


• The third group subscribes to the philosophy that more free stuff is better than less free stuff …

Obviously I'd be in group two at the moment. But good news, I'm catered for. There is a superb new comic site here.

Feedback Measures and Ideals

Yesterday I wrote about measures and feedback.

Measures. It was the UK Budget this week. Arguably the biggest economic measure decided in each budget is the proportion of revenue that is redistributed to government services such as national health and education. It seems that everybody is unhappy with it. But whereas some think it is too high, others think it is too low. So everybody may think it's wrong but maybe it's about right.

Feedback. I got some negative feedback today. Well it was actually just a quick comment from a (real world) visitor, she said that she did read the blog occasionally, but now thought the posts were getting too long. But from what I see the vast majority of posts elsewhere are far longer than these (I maintain that it is often harder to say something original concisely than to say it comprehensively) or else they are just quick "look what I've seen on the web" posts. There are at least two points of common equilibrium, and I sit between them.

So I conclude that it may be easier to determine a single ideal tax rate than a single ideal post length. But as yesterday's was long by my artificial self-imposed standards, today I'll stop here.