andyc’s posterous

London, near England - Wednesday April 1 2009

A G20 protester proudly shows the wounds of a fierce battle against riot police. This unfortunate anarchist was battered with a baton, trampled by a police horse and taser’ed. He still manages a smile as he recuperates at home eating a Granny Smith apple.

Playing with native Tumble application

Here follows a email conversation between Michael C Harris and myself (from July 2008) on the merits of Atom versus RSS.

Normally I wouldn’t breach confidentiality without Michael’s express permission but the only defence Ciaran G could summon up was this post from Dave Winer (which wasn’t exactly a ringing endorsement of Atom).

Andy C: What’s the deal with the Atom vs RSS war with you ?

• Is it functional ?
• Is it ‘freedom’ ?
• Is is licensing ?
• Is it because you invented Atom ?

What is it ? Please put me out of my agony.

Michael: C Harris: There are a couple of reasons. First, there are at least 3 quite different versions of RSS, and one accepted version of Atom. There are gaps and inconsistencies in the RSS specs (hence other RSS specs were created to fill the wholes) but the Atom spec is quite complete. The Atom spec is very well written. These things make it easier for developers, which in turn make it more likely to just work.

Also, the Atom Syndication Format (which is what people mean when they say Atom) has a partner specification called the Atom Publishing Protocol that allows for remote publication. For example, Habari is AtomPub enabled, so if we create an OMB plugin, you’ll be able to publish to it just by using an AtomPub client (which you can also use to publish your photos to Flickr, or post on your blog).

Unfortunately, there aren’t a lot of clients around yet, but that’s one of my projects when I finish the PhD.

I think AtomPub (also known as APP or, incorrectly as the Atom API) is great and will be really important in the future. RSS has no comparable mechanism.

In a nutshell :)

Wanted to be able get some random thoughts into the Tumble Dryer on ‘Fast Spin’ today but forgot the address so this is a quick test. Now to investigate whether we can improve the SEO and get more than 5 Google referrals.

Laconi.ca and identi.ca offer many advantages as a microblogging platform.

The single biggest advantage over competitors is often overlooked though.

Each and every release of the Laconi.ca project is Open Source - yeah, yeah, eveyone knows that - no what I was going to say was that each and every release of the Laconi.ca project is codenamed after a song by the wonderful R.E.M.

For example, the latest release to hit the streets (0.7.2.1) is named ‘Talk About The Passion’.

I routinely tend to install Laconi.ca releases not necessarily because I intend to use them but just for something to do.

So I was intrigued to read that 0.7.2.1 includes a Web based installer so I thought I’d give it a spin.

I think this is a major, significant development for Laconi.ca (and OpenMicroBlogging) as it completely opens up the prospect of installing Laconi.ca to casual users who are comfortable installing WordPress and other PHP based packages that use a MySQL database. Curiously, this feature seemed to almost go unnoticed (even on identi.ca).

Download the Laconi.ca 0.7.2.1 tarball. FTP to Bluehost and unpack as usual.

I eagerly and impetuously visit http:/mysite.com/laconica only to get a pesky error message

10 seconds hunting reveals that the Laconi.ca installer actually lives at ‘http:/mysite.com/laconica/install.php’ which looks much more promising

Simply enter your approriate details for the database, credentials etc and hit ‘Submit’.

Success !

Now it is time to visit ‘http:/mysite.com/laconica’ where you are greeted by your new shiny Laconi.ca installation.

Feel free to create an account for yourself. After all, you’ve earned it. You have created your own microblogging platform in 18.6 seconds flat.

You have now successfully created your Laconi.ca account. And you never had to make those tiresome edits to ‘config.php’. Congratulations

The temptation to actually post to your Laconica (unlike Scoble) overwhelms you.

That’s it. You’re finished.

[If you find yourself squinting at the screenshots, click through and squint less.]

With no apologies whatsoever to Guy Kawasaki

There are implications beyond vanity to having a large Twitter fan base.

Yeah - Just think of all those woolly jumpers you can knit for Christmas presents with 24,739 followers on Twitter. Baa.

Late one night in a hotel, I discovered I hadn’t brought a MacBook power supply, and I was leaving early the next morning for a remote location. I posted a message to Twitter, and within 10 minutes, five people offered to bring me a power supply; one delivered it to me within an hour.

Late last night in a lonely hotel room, I discovered in these tense and difficult times, adult entertainment or even a perfectly decent film is no longer allowed after  changes to the corporate Travel & Expenses Policy (section 38, subsection B, para 5) so I decide to check my email instead.

This illustrates the practical implications of a large following on Twitter. Here’s how to get it

Sshh ! This is actually a classic traffic generating Top 10 post that will be sucked up by the adoring masses on Twitter, FriendFeed and elsewhere. Only the most astute will notice that it only includes 9 points and I will retort ‘Yes - but that’s exactly the point !’

Follow the “smores,” or social media whores

You know who they are - Scoble and me. Me and Scoble and, err, that’s it.

Send @ messages to the smores

Yes. Please send me and Scoble a bland, irrelevant message. We won’t reply to it. Well, to be honest, we won’t even read it but hey, at least, you will feel better and you can tweet it.

Create an effective avatar.

No. On second thoughts, don’t. No-one cares what you look like. If you are stunning, people will think you are a spammer and/or some idiots will stalk you in real-life. If you are ugly, no-one will follow (or stalk) you and, no offence, but we certainly don’t want to see your ugly mug.

Follow everyone who follows you

Wise words. After all, if some spammer interested in selling you real-esate for $1, then you will obviously have a lot in common, won’t you ? Don’t bother researching what each new follower writes about and whether it’s interesting or compelling. Just follow them straight back. Like the woolly old sheep that you are. Baa.

Always link to interesting stories and pictures

That’s right. Even if they’ve been linked to 300 times already. Someone, somewhere in some distant galaxy won’t have seen that hilarious picture of a man on the top of WTC with a plane heading straight for him.

Establish yourself as a subject expert.

Top tip. Don’t even bother with the ‘establish’ bit. After all, it takes too long and ‘expert’ is a very subjective term. Just call yourself a ‘subject matter expert (self-annointed)’.

Incorporate pictures and other media.

Always carry a camera and microphone at all times. Record every single visit to the lavatory, ignite your farts and post the resulting pictures and audio soundbites. Better, film your wife giving birth and the bedroom antics that put her in this condition. Always guaranteed to drive high quality traffic. Honest.

Use the right tools.

Look - don’t bother writing any original content. Just procrastinate wondering which tools to use. Never write a review of the various tools and utilities you have evalauated or those you actually like or dislike. That would be far too useful.

Repeat your tweets.

Don’t just limit yourself to your best tweets. After all, all of your output is brilliant, isn’t it ? Otherwise, what would be the point. No - don’t limit yourself to your best material. Repeat every single Tweet, every 8 hours to ensure everyone in all four continents gets to see your endless stream of inane drivel. Come to think of it, 8 hours is slightly too infrequent. Why not write a bot to repeatedly post your tweets every 10 minutes ?