fillosophy

Topic Web2.0

So it wasn’t much of a philosophically deep discussion about the problems with world poverty, over-population, political whatever, etc… It was about Life Streaming.

Life Stream (n) : A site or conglomerate sites that a group or single person uses to display moments, events, happenings, conversations, sayings or quotes in an open format viewable by others. The medians can be video, photo, text, voice - or any other viewable, editable format available on the Web.

First (the fillosophy piece); having your life out there to share with others is the idea behind MySpace and army of other sites. Given the right content, and context, you can use your life stream to help others with certain things - like that really neat script you wrote for work to help you keep your applications easily accessible to improve your productivity… But if you don’t really have anything to share with others, try to find something - and outlook, opinion, cause… hell anything you value; and if nothing else, entertainment. In other words… try not to wste bandwidth with meaningless dribble… well, ALL the time, anyway.

Onto the fun stuff, what’s a good foundation for a life stream?

It’s super simple to get into too much, too fast, when looking into the Web 2.0 “hey world, here’s me” cycle. Some choices should be made, perhaps just based on preference, others based on… “peer pressure”. For me? First and foremost, you’ll want a stomping ground central, also-known-as a blog.

Wordpress or a Personal URL with an install of Wordpress?
This one’s all your choice, really. I went the Wordpress route first for fillsophy.net.. but found that the URL was open. Being a Web Developer… it was a pretty clear decision for me. I want more control over stuff (like tracking, and mail, and actually getting my hands into the data structure… so here we are). Once you have your own URL you can do things like what’s been done on n-re-k.com.

Registering a Domain Name is pretty simple and you can find name availability at a number of sites. I’d not recommend using places like Yahoo! to register your domain, rather find a web hosting services that’ll allow you to register a name and get some server (hard drive) space. Recommend IX Web hosting, APlus Hosting, GoDaddy’s ok - or you can use my shameless self promotion and ask me how much I charge for hosting through my company Aten Syndicate.

Twitter or Pownce?
If you haven’t heard of one, or haven’t heard of either - don’t sweat it. These sites are so amazingly straight and too the point, its almost insulting. What they do: Twitter and Pownce are geared for micro-blogging; short message/phrase statements about your day to day that you can share with friends and connections online in a easy to see time line format. They’re spidered by search engines like crazy, and often my twitters about my blogs show up on Google well before my actually site does… that’s the “roi” portion of why to get a microblog.

Twitter features: Mobile access from WAP browsers (m.twitter.com), SMS support (update your twitter from your mobile phone), IM support (update your twitter from AIM), fully customizable profile color schemes and background images, friend count, direct messages and badges for your blog(s) and other online stuff. There’s also a Facebook application you can embed on your page, as Twitter is an RSS feed-ready stream (outbound only).

Pownce features: Send files (10MB on the free account, 100MB on the pro account); Send messages to defined groups/the public time line/directly to a friend/or in reply to a specific post; a selection of templates for your profile’s look and feel, and it’s also RSS feed-ready (outbound only).

Tumblr!
I’m not sure if there are other ‘hosted’ tumblelogs out there, but I’ll assume that since this once came from recommendation Ms. Lisa Brewster of Sophistechate it’s not only the best one, its probably the most functional… Because this thing kicks serious Web 2.0 booty. I was going to save the aggregates stuff for the end, but this is new to me, and I’m fairly excited about it. Tumblr allows you to create an account (obviously) but point the name of your site to it… For example http://tumble.n-re-k.com - very handy for us Search Engine addicts.

Anyhow, Tumblelogs, from what I gather, is a series of everything web that you find interesting enough to note. Be it, a quote on a page, a URL, a video, a chat conversation, a picture, or some text. I mentioned aggregate… Certain sites such as Jaiku and Tumblr allow you to specify an RSS feed from another source, to stream it on your page at that site. So in the case of Tumblr; I can post something on Twitter, and have it appear (via RSS) on tumble.n-re-k.com. So now one update can go to more than one place, and low-and-behold; your neat fun-filled fact that you posted on twitter is now available… pretty much wherever you tell it to show up.

Flickr or Zoomr
WHAT?!? You don’t have a Flickr account?! Get one. Flickr and Zoomr are easy to use; integrated with RSS (so you can web 2.0 the crap out of your photos), and -my personal favorites- (though I’ve only used Flickr); the groups and comments allows you to check out and talk about other people’s photographic works, share stories about an event, add favorites and tons of other stuff.

YouTube
I’m not a vlogger (video blogger), so I can’t say much on behalf of the video blogosphere people, but I do know that people use it, and often. YouTube allows for RSS output as well, so that’s handy… very handy; and other than that? The comments are open for those of you in the know on other… better… vlogging sites.

Social Networks:
MySpace - ever heard of this one?

Facebook - Much cleaner than MySpace, with tons of add-on applications available for Twitter and Flickr, among others, Facebook is simply a better way to manage online communications with people you actually know. Some people tend to get narcissistic when it comes to “how many” eFriends someone has, or how emo they can be… Facebook? doesn’t really matter if its on that site; its weirdly easier to never see it.

LinkedIn - For you employed people, LinkedIn is a great place to keep track of co-workers and give each other pats on the back for doing awesome work.

Eventful - This isn’t the only organized-event calendar on the planet, but I happen to be partial to this one. Its quick, simple, easy to share events with people you know, or groups of people on the site, other events are easy to browse, its Web 2.0 friendly, and its where the BarcampSD people hang out… we’re cool like that.

Tools:
Check out the list of tools and other online applications below. I could go on and on about all the stuff that’s out there for your to share your life stream with your friends and relatives; but in the end, you just have to really look at the site, the features, how it interfaces, and then decide which one works better ffor you:

• Feedburner - Publicize via bookmarking
• Technorati - Track, publicize and organize blogs
• del.icio.us- Share your online favorites
• Digg - Share your online… favorites
• Stumbleupon -Also share your online favorites, but add them to your lifestream! (RSS out)

I’m leaving out a TON, trust me… But these are a good start.

enrique
fillosophy.net : admin
www.n-re-k.com