(Edit: Despite being the “code” view, the wordpress post editor function still has WYSIWYG properties at times, like automatically inserting line breaks even if it means breaking apart an existing element incorrectly, as was shown above for a while. Should be all better now though! )
I don’t know about you but I love the fact that my friends listen to notably different stuff. It means more opportunities to discover new things. Also, what a great example of a simple chart indicating massive amounts of information.
Below is the text I got when visting the main site.
Site Temporarily Unavailable
We apologize for the inconvenience. Please contact the webmaster/ tech support immediately to have them rectify this.
error id: “bad_httpd_conf”
Of course no word from them using Twitter. Although funnily enough when I went to check their twitter profile to confirm…
Another Twitter outage. Nothing new. Still, at least with the screen (as shown in the image above) I was given upon hitting the site, I was immediately aware of the issue, and was given some kind of assumed reassurance that the Twitter team would be working to repair the issue. URLTea’s “error page”? Not so much.
Once again I wish to invite the URLtea operators to touch base with their users, and let us know about outages, and the future of URLtea. With a growing number of URL-shortening services out there, it becomes less and less apparent why I or anyone else should use URLtea. If you guys are interested in building a service, or a company, which people feel comfortable sticking with and recommending, it is in your best interests to communicate once in a while.
Twitter is notorious for outages at this point, but they’re discussing it publicly and making it clear that they are working to fix these issues. Dreamhost has issues regularly, which they report to customers via RSS and other direct-to-customer methods (i.e. not just posting it up on the site and assuming people will go there to read). Rackspace has blown up a couple times, too, and they sent out a slew of direct-to-customer emails. The reason these companies still get the attention that they do is because they respond to these incidents.
URLTea used to be my favorite URL shortening service. Emphasis on used to be. For (and I’m guessing here) I’d say the better part of a month, every time I have attempted to make a shortened URL or visit the site, it’s been coming up error, 404, you’re looking for what again?
It’s been a very Twitter-heavy weekend, as previous posts will demonstrate. I had a brief spat with some woman named Amanda Chapel because I had issues with the idea of arguing against the merits of internet culture on the internet. Particularly on such a limited platform such as Twitter. I really need to think and do some research before I discuss that whole situation at length. And I do want to discuss that at length. However, in the interest of being fair I intend to read more of Strumpette and see if I can get a proper bead on the philosophy at work here. At that time, I’ll share the archive of the Twitter conversation, and get into depth on what the internet means to me and what I feel it means to our culture as a whole. More on that later though.
One of the other Twitter discoveries I made this weekend was FlypeClub. I’d been followed (and followed them in return) a little while back, but it seemed to only produce an increased percentage of self-promotional fluff scrolling through my gTalk twitter window. This weekend however I got at least a minor peek behind the curtain and figured out that some other followers I’d picked up were authors and conspirators of this mysterious FlypeClub. For the record, I still have no idea what the deal is with it, but now I’m intrigued instead of annoyed by their updates.
A little basic reading, a little paying attention showed me who all is working on the FlypeClub project. (And I KNOW I’m breaking the first and only rule here, but I can’t help it. There is a reason why, you’ll see.) Not so mysterious after all on one hand, but more mysterious on the other. Who exactly are these guys? What was the draw to make something like this? Why the seemingly aggressive promotion when it appears they don’t really have anything to sell? They do claim to offer Alligator & Python swallowing courses for $20,000 a pop, but that doesn’t strike me as a business plan that would best be supported by intense social outreach. Yet there is something to this band of cheeky irreverents that has captured my attention, and gotten me to really thinking.
I have a love for the obscure, and for the obfuscated, for the inscrutable. Although I confess that this love does not extend to businesses who cannot be buggered to explain who they are and what their services entail. That is the exact opposite of good service and should be frowned upon. This is what got me to thinking when FlypeClub came on my radar. Who the hell are these guys? Were they a business or a set of individuals? What are the rules for marketing in the “social” world if they are a business?
Generally speaking, it is up to me to decide what a thing is, what it is worth, whether or not it is valuable or true. That was the challenge posed to me, more or less, by a mysterious Flyper - who I won’t name unless it’s approved - in regards to FlypeClub. That it is up to ME to decide what it is. I liked that. I appreciated greatly the direct outreach, and I appreciated more the admission that it is in fact up to me (and you, and you, and everybody who won’t read this) to decide “what is FlypeClub”.
Seems to me that this has always been the guiding principle of business, and of life. Experts, professionals, self-appointed social leaders can all tell me exactly what they want me to know. Media and corporations have the things which they feel will be liked by the largest amount of people. The great unwashed mobs of people I see on a day to day basis, and the scores of people who write opinions on the internet also provide information on what there is to like about this, that, and the other thing. That is all fine and dandy. I tend to prefer the opinion of someone experienced with a subject or a product to tell me about that subject or a product, and I always attempt to get opinions from other, ostensibly unbaised sources. Yet the thing that so many people do not seem to grasp is that ultimately it is absolutely, one hundred percent my decision (and yours, and yours, and everybody not reading this) as to what is hip, what is worth buying, and what is true.
Really, it’s always been that way. Influence only goes so far. The task of a business, an organization, a person who wishes attention from many is to do this: provide the public with something they cannot get from anyone else. Or, if they can get the product/service/opinion from someone else, give them very good reason to embrace yours over someone else’s.
This is one of the reasons I signed on to be an affiliate of TorsoPants. Yes, they (technically) sell tshirts. Yes, there are dozens of “witty” tshirt companies abroad, particularly on the internet. But I saw these guys and immediately liked everything about their site and what they had to offer. (For the record I have not yet bought my very own pair of TorsoPants, but I am also pretty broke.) It’s something that everyone needs (clothing) and it’s got a shine to it that no one else really has.
Another fine example of providing something unique is Scarlet Imprint. I have purchased two books from them so far, The Red Goddess, and Howlings. They provide something that no one else does, and they do it well. Their books are well written, and well made (I was expecting much less from such a small press), and they are rare. Not only are they rare (very limited print runs), but they make it very clear that they take their work very seriously, and they are willing to communicate directly with those who would buy from them.
I am a decision making machine, and I am primed by the words and actions of others, but I don’t fire until my internal system of checks and balances has had its say. What kind of decision making machine are you?
Today I put a click mapping app on RandomKitty.net. It will give me “heat maps” of where people click when they are on the main page of the blog. I may add it elsewhere, but the home page needs an overhaul before I do that. If you’d like to view the current heat map of RKNet, go to http://www.randomkitty.net/clickheat and log in with the username and password of “checkit” (no quotes obviously). You’ll have to look at the whole week or the whole month to really get any data, and most of that was me clicking random areas to generate data that I could view to test my installation. I look forward to getting a little eye-tracking information for the site. I’ve been doing a lot of usability reading lately and I know that observing the patterns of people who visit your site is a great way to learn how to cater to them in a more educated fashion. (Or I could just ask: how do you like the site? Is it easy to use? Entertaining? I love feedback, good or bad.)
I also signed up for a Twitter app that will now auto-feed the new posts to the RKNet twitter account. I’m hoping that it will spread the news a little more effectively, maybe get a couple more people on the proper RSS, so they can tell me the Twitter update is annoying and can I please turn that off? I’ve also collected a lot of unique and bizzare followers on Twitter here lately, although I did end up following zefrank, and I even participated in a project to tell really short bedtime stories. (There are some really sweet ones in there.) I’m contemplating signing up for a reverse item, that will post my tweets to the blog, but that could be pretty blah if it’s just me. It would be way more fun if the other writers also posted their tweets.
I just got turned down for displaying Project Wonderful ads, but I’m not down about it. It’s just inspiration to really clean up the home page, get some content squeezed out of the fascinatingly weird group I hang out with, and resubmit. Besides, setting up a PW account was an important step for me. Not so I can subject you the viewer to ads here, but so I can eventually promote RKNet and monetarily support sites that I visit and enjoy at the same time! Win win. Besides, I am in the process of setting up another app that will hopefully drive some more traffic, maybe provide you the gentle readers with some links to other fun internet items (as if you need anything else but RKNet! PFFT!), and perhaps even drag in a little cash for yours truly. Mmm… delicious petty cash.
Speaking of del.icio.us, I finally figured out how to get a feed of links put up by people in my network. It’s like a whole world opened up. I suddenly understand the social value of the site with stunning clarity, and I have to say I’m networked with some folks that have great taste in linking.
The more I experiment with the various services, apps, and information sources that are out there, the more fun I have. It may not all be terribly productive, but most of it does provide me with opportunities to meet new people and learn new things, and I think that’s pretty valuable, don’t you?
Let it never be said that Twitter is a useless web app. Thanks to Twitter friend doshdosh, I’ve discovered an article which may assist me in refining my goals for this website, such as they are, and increase readership and hopefully feedback as well.
The article on problogger.net is titled From 0 to 2000+ Subscribers in 120 Days. The guest author, Tina Su, writes a blog called Think Simple Now and her passion is helping people improve their lives. The article details the steps she took to make her website successful, and they are all very positive, realistic and easy to remember.
With the assistance of this well written guide, I would like to take this blog, this site, this project and really turn it into something worth visiting, bookmarking, and subscribing to within the next 120 days. I have touched upon this goal before a few months ago but never really followed up. It’s one of the challenges with A) not having concrete goals and B) maintaining a more than full time job.
Hopefully with the help of some of my other authors, and friends who desire to do creative things and use the web for distribution, this site can become a bustling hub of super fun times for all who pass by! Won’t you tag along? It will be quite the wild ride.
Did it ever occur to you that I might work from home?
I’m cancelling the minute I find a viable alternative. In the meantime? I’ll be checking this out.
Don’t get me wrong, I love me some RSS. It allows me to read far more interesting articles per day than visiting individual blogs ever could. Yet without feedback and conversation, there’s nothing to separate someone’s blog from some kind of diary or masturbatory pontification. (Not that there aren’t some elements of both in a lot of blogs anyway, this one included.)
So let us all take a moment to break out from the comfort of our cozy feed readers, visit some of our favorite blogs, and let those jerks people know just how we feel! If there’s nothing recent that really inspires you, go back to old entries that got you really fired up and sound off. Stumble your way through tags and categories and find things that really pique your interests and speak away! Share your favorite entries with friends and get them to comment, too.
We the authors know you’re out there, and we love hearing from you. It lets us know we’re doing our job: entertaining, informing, and/or inspiring*. (*Trolling is a form of inspiration too!) Gentle readers, we love you! Share the love and leave a comment.
A recent article on Slashdot caught my eye when it noted feedback from a New Hampshire resident complaining that the lack of high speed internet was preventing him from doing business, and also noted that his was not the only business affected by the lack of development in the state.
Dear Diary,
Today I was all excited because I thought I had a bunch of comments. “12 comments in moderation”, I saw on my dashboard! My goodness! It was like a dream come true. A chance to find out who - if anyone - is reading, and find out their thoughts on any one of the odd topics that have so recently gone to press. The prospect of conversation sent chills down my spine like the hot breath of an eager lover on the back of my neck…
Some kids play in the sandbox. We play in the.... litterbox??? The RKNet staff is pleased that you decided to stop by. Currently this is a 1 author project, with periodic guest posts. Contact giania [at symbol] gmail.com if you'd like to play here to.
