Amatomu's slogan used to be "The South African blogosphere, sorted."
Well, now it has become unsorted, because Amatomu no longer seems to work. To "unravel" means to pull a knitted garment apart so that all you have is separate strands of wool, and you can no longer see the pattern or shape of the garment, or even the garment itself. It has gone.
And one by one the tools that I used to use to find interesting blogs have gone, or become unusable.
The first to go was Technorati. It's still there, I think, but it's no longer useful. It used to have tags that found blog posts with particular topic tags, but that no longer works. It's become a thinly disguised advertising gimmick.
The next to go was Blog Catalog. That's still there, but some whiz kid who had never heard of the old adage "If it ain't broke, don't fix it" decided to "improve" it. Now it no longer works.
Then it was the turn of MyBlogLog. Yahoo! bought it as a successful running concern from the original developers, and then pulled the plug on it. Yahoo! does that a lot. They did it with Geocities, they did it with Webrings, and they did it with MyBlogLog.
MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog were social blogrolling sites. They allowed each person to sort the blogosphere according to their own preference, but in such a way that others could see them and join in, the theory being that if you liked someone's blog, you might like the blogs they liked, and the people who liked their blog might like yours. Since those two disappeared from the scene, I've lost contact with a whole bunch of blogs that I used to read, and I missed them. I found some again and put them in my blogroll, but that doesn't tell me how often the writers of those blogs visit my blog, as MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog used to do.
But there was still Amatomu for South African blogs. You could see who had posted what recently, and which recent articles were most popular and so on. But now even that's gone.
There's still Afrigator, but I've never understood its user inferface, and no matter how much time I spend on it I never seem to find anything I'm looking for.
Occasionally someone comments on my blog, and I think, hey, I used to read your blog, but I haven't seen it for a long time, and now I no longer know how to find it.
It's all rather sad.
And when I say it's sad people say, you must move on... move on to Facebook and imbibe popular culture and immerse yourself in banal and trivial stuff like "What my friends think I do, what my mom thinks I do, what my boss thinks I do" and so on.
Blogging's better, but it's getting harder to find the good blogs.
Showing posts with label MyBlogLog. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MyBlogLog. Show all posts
18 February 2012
03 September 2011
End of blogrolling, end of blogging?
This morning I got a message about a new comment on my blog, so I went to have a look at it, and my blog vanished. There was just a message saying that the page could not be displayed and I must contact the administrator.
The comment I tried to look at was from "Anonymous", so, thinking it might contain some malicious redirecting code, I deleted it.
But still the blog would not display. I went to the Blogger forums and found that others had had similar problems, which appeared to be caused by blogrolling widgets. They either had bugs, or were being hacked, it seemed.
So I deleted all the blogtolling widgets.
But now my blog is isolated.
It was bad enough when MyBlogLog disappeared, and BlogCatalog was "improved" so that it became almost useless. But I still had blogrolls of blogs I liked to read, and I could see when they were updated, and so could read new posts on them.
But now I've had to remove them too.
Someone really does seem to be out to kill blogs and blogging.
I liked to read "The poor mouth", but can't remember the URL, and the same with lots of other blogs.
The comment I tried to look at was from "Anonymous", so, thinking it might contain some malicious redirecting code, I deleted it.
But still the blog would not display. I went to the Blogger forums and found that others had had similar problems, which appeared to be caused by blogrolling widgets. They either had bugs, or were being hacked, it seemed.
So I deleted all the blogtolling widgets.
But now my blog is isolated.
It was bad enough when MyBlogLog disappeared, and BlogCatalog was "improved" so that it became almost useless. But I still had blogrolls of blogs I liked to read, and I could see when they were updated, and so could read new posts on them.
But now I've had to remove them too.
Someone really does seem to be out to kill blogs and blogging.
I liked to read "The poor mouth", but can't remember the URL, and the same with lots of other blogs.
24 May 2011
Not the end of the world, but the end of MyBlogLog
Saturday was supposed to be the end of the world, or at least judgement day. It didn't happen, and very few expected it to. Harold Camping, whose idea it was, turned out to be a better as a publicist than he was as a prophet.
Today is the end of MyBlogLog. If only it were to turn out to be a similar non-event, but I suspect it won't.
But to make up for those disappointments, here are some pictures, provenance unknown, which my wife sent me by e-mail from work, allegedly taken from a boat in the middle of the south Pacific.
Though this may look like a beach, it isn't. It is particles of volcanic rock floating on the sea. One used to be able to buy pumice stones that floated in the bath, and this is evidently the same sort of stuff.
And that is the wake of the boat passing through it.
But if that was volcanic rock, where was the volcano?
The crew of the boat looked around, and saw it erupting under the sea, some distance away, and as they watched a new island was formed.
So instead of ending, the earth is renewing itself.
But can we say, "MyBlogLog is dead, long live MyBlogLog?
There were some MyBlogLog bloggers who visited my blog regularly, and I've now put them into my regular blogroll so I can find them again. There were others whose blogs I sometimes visited, but who never (according to MyBlogLog) paid a return visit, so I'll lose touch with them, and not be able to find them again.
But like volcanoes in the Pacific, new blogs will doubtless continue to appear from time to time.
Today is the end of MyBlogLog. If only it were to turn out to be a similar non-event, but I suspect it won't.
But to make up for those disappointments, here are some pictures, provenance unknown, which my wife sent me by e-mail from work, allegedly taken from a boat in the middle of the south Pacific.
Though this may look like a beach, it isn't. It is particles of volcanic rock floating on the sea. One used to be able to buy pumice stones that floated in the bath, and this is evidently the same sort of stuff.
And that is the wake of the boat passing through it.
But if that was volcanic rock, where was the volcano?
The crew of the boat looked around, and saw it erupting under the sea, some distance away, and as they watched a new island was formed.
So instead of ending, the earth is renewing itself.
But can we say, "MyBlogLog is dead, long live MyBlogLog?
There were some MyBlogLog bloggers who visited my blog regularly, and I've now put them into my regular blogroll so I can find them again. There were others whose blogs I sometimes visited, but who never (according to MyBlogLog) paid a return visit, so I'll lose touch with them, and not be able to find them again.
But like volcanoes in the Pacific, new blogs will doubtless continue to appear from time to time.
25 April 2011
Farewell to MyBlogLog friends
I suppose it's time to say goodbye to my MyBlogLog friends.
MyBlogLog provided the little widget that showed who had visited my blog, and, if they were themselves bloggers, provided a link back to their blogs. I've spent many hours surfing blogs that way -- following someone who visited my blog, and then someone who had visited their blog and so on. If one wanted to visit a blog again, one could join that blog's "community" and have a list of them, so it was a form of social blogrolling. You could have your own blogroll, but also see other people's blogrolls on MyBlogLog, and I've found many interesting blogs in that way.
But that's all ending on 21 May, since MyBlogLog was taken over by Yahoo, and Yahoo have announced that they are killing it on that date. So on the right is the "in memoriam" of what the MyBlogLog widget used to look like, frozen in time, something to remember it by, a preserved piece of blogging history.
Tomorrow we'll be going away on holiday, and by the time we get back, MyBlogLog will be gone, so the time to say goodbye is now. I may add some of the blogs I used to visit on MyBlogLog to my regular blogroll, but I'll probably forget some of them, and so will tend to lose touch. While we are on holiday I may ocassionally manage to post something at a wireless hotspot, but the places where one accesses those are not usually conducive to blog surfing.
There is also BlogCatalog, which was similar to MyBlogLog, but it was revamped about six months ago, to make it more difficult to navigate and use, and most of its functionality has gone. I'll leave the widget up while it still works, but I won't click through to the BlogCatalog site much, because even though some of the stuff is still there, it's very difficult, if not impossible to find any more.
Perhaps some of my MyBlogLog contacts will still visit my blogs, but I'll never know if they have done so unless they leave comments. So farewell, Adios, Hamba kahle -- maybe we'll see each other again, maybe not.
MyBlogLog provided the little widget that showed who had visited my blog, and, if they were themselves bloggers, provided a link back to their blogs. I've spent many hours surfing blogs that way -- following someone who visited my blog, and then someone who had visited their blog and so on. If one wanted to visit a blog again, one could join that blog's "community" and have a list of them, so it was a form of social blogrolling. You could have your own blogroll, but also see other people's blogrolls on MyBlogLog, and I've found many interesting blogs in that way.
But that's all ending on 21 May, since MyBlogLog was taken over by Yahoo, and Yahoo have announced that they are killing it on that date. So on the right is the "in memoriam" of what the MyBlogLog widget used to look like, frozen in time, something to remember it by, a preserved piece of blogging history.Tomorrow we'll be going away on holiday, and by the time we get back, MyBlogLog will be gone, so the time to say goodbye is now. I may add some of the blogs I used to visit on MyBlogLog to my regular blogroll, but I'll probably forget some of them, and so will tend to lose touch. While we are on holiday I may ocassionally manage to post something at a wireless hotspot, but the places where one accesses those are not usually conducive to blog surfing.
There is also BlogCatalog, which was similar to MyBlogLog, but it was revamped about six months ago, to make it more difficult to navigate and use, and most of its functionality has gone. I'll leave the widget up while it still works, but I won't click through to the BlogCatalog site much, because even though some of the stuff is still there, it's very difficult, if not impossible to find any more.
Perhaps some of my MyBlogLog contacts will still visit my blogs, but I'll never know if they have done so unless they leave comments. So farewell, Adios, Hamba kahle -- maybe we'll see each other again, maybe not.
25 February 2011
Dead: social blogrolling
Yet another Yahoo! service bites the dust.
I received the following e-mail from Yahoo!
The other social blogrolling service, BlogCatalog, became quite unusable about 5-6 months ago, so that's the end of that. I wonder if it's a sign that blogging itself is in decline?
Yahoo! has a long history of taking over useful online services and then abandoning them. First it was Webring, then Geocities, and now MyBlogLog. That means that the last useful service they maintain is their listserver, Yahoogroups. It's also something they took over from someone else, an outfit called e-Groups. If they abandon that, there'll be nothing left that will make it worth remaining a member of Yahoo!
I received the following e-mail from Yahoo!
We will officially discontinue Yahoo! MyBlogLog effective May 24, 2011. Your agreement with Yahoo!, to the extent that it applies to the Yahoo! MyBlogLog, will terminate on May 24, 2011.
The other social blogrolling service, BlogCatalog, became quite unusable about 5-6 months ago, so that's the end of that. I wonder if it's a sign that blogging itself is in decline?
Yahoo! has a long history of taking over useful online services and then abandoning them. First it was Webring, then Geocities, and now MyBlogLog. That means that the last useful service they maintain is their listserver, Yahoogroups. It's also something they took over from someone else, an outfit called e-Groups. If they abandon that, there'll be nothing left that will make it worth remaining a member of Yahoo!
21 November 2010
Entropy in the blogosphere: the disintegration of social networking
One of the good things I have found about blogging is that one can find people interested in similar things and exchange ideas with them. There are various tools, like blogrolls, for finding bloggers who say interesting things.
In the past I've found social blogrolling tools, like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, useful for this. But both have recently become considerably less useful, though for quite different reasons. BlogCatalog, as I noted in a recent post, recently decided to change the way it looks and works, and shot itself in the foot. With its reduced functionality it is almost useless.
MyBlogLog continues to function, and it is the behaviour of users that is the problem.
Both of them had little widgets (or "gadgets" as Blogger calls them) that you can put in the sidebar to show who visited your blog. And that is a reminder to me to visit their blogs. OK, some people don't show up there because they read blogs through RSS feeds. But others don't show up there because they have taken themselves out of MyBlogLog entirely, though their blogs remain there like orphaned children.
Here are some of the abandoned ones:
Bishop Alan's blog
The Stroppy Rabbit
Calum Carr's take on... whatever
Some are still there, but have removed the widget from their own blogs:
Skewed view
Conjectural navel gazing: Jesus in lint form
The poor mouth
While others never bothered to put the widget on in the first place.
The trouble with that is that it makes it more difficult to surf from blog to blog -- I visit the blog of someone who has recently visited me, move on to someone who has recently visited them, and so on. But with the widget gone, there's nowhere to go but back. So I'm beginning to feel constricted, as if the number of options is shrinking. It's all rather sad.
On my family history blog I discovered that most of those who visited (as shown on MyBlogLog) were not interested in family history or genealogy, and some were just spammers. But in that field someone revived an old device -- the web-ring. Web-rings let you surf from site to site following a similar theme. The problem with static web pages was that once you had seen them all, you had seen them all. Great for new visitors, but not for people who had seen all the sites. With dynamic web sites, like blogs, however, it is ideal. Each time you visit there is likely to be new content. So perhaps things are not so bad after all. I just have to find a web-ring for this blog, which is such a mixture of stuff it is difficult to fit into any category at all. So, goodbye BlogCatalog, hello blogrings.
In the past I've found social blogrolling tools, like MyBlogLog and BlogCatalog, useful for this. But both have recently become considerably less useful, though for quite different reasons. BlogCatalog, as I noted in a recent post, recently decided to change the way it looks and works, and shot itself in the foot. With its reduced functionality it is almost useless.
MyBlogLog continues to function, and it is the behaviour of users that is the problem.
Both of them had little widgets (or "gadgets" as Blogger calls them) that you can put in the sidebar to show who visited your blog. And that is a reminder to me to visit their blogs. OK, some people don't show up there because they read blogs through RSS feeds. But others don't show up there because they have taken themselves out of MyBlogLog entirely, though their blogs remain there like orphaned children.
Here are some of the abandoned ones:
Bishop Alan's blog
The Stroppy Rabbit
Calum Carr's take on... whatever
Some are still there, but have removed the widget from their own blogs:
Skewed view
Conjectural navel gazing: Jesus in lint form
The poor mouth
While others never bothered to put the widget on in the first place.
The trouble with that is that it makes it more difficult to surf from blog to blog -- I visit the blog of someone who has recently visited me, move on to someone who has recently visited them, and so on. But with the widget gone, there's nowhere to go but back. So I'm beginning to feel constricted, as if the number of options is shrinking. It's all rather sad.
On my family history blog I discovered that most of those who visited (as shown on MyBlogLog) were not interested in family history or genealogy, and some were just spammers. But in that field someone revived an old device -- the web-ring. Web-rings let you surf from site to site following a similar theme. The problem with static web pages was that once you had seen them all, you had seen them all. Great for new visitors, but not for people who had seen all the sites. With dynamic web sites, like blogs, however, it is ideal. Each time you visit there is likely to be new content. So perhaps things are not so bad after all. I just have to find a web-ring for this blog, which is such a mixture of stuff it is difficult to fit into any category at all. So, goodbye BlogCatalog, hello blogrings.
06 July 2009
Does Yahoo! have a death wish?
Yahoo! seem to be determined to drive away all their customers.
First they announced that they were closing their Geocities web sites (after years of neglect), which will break millions of links and mean the loss of much useful material from the web (as well as much rubbish).
Now my daughter has discovered that her Yahoo! mail account no longer works; she can read mail, but can't reply.
It appears that the reason is that they have changed their mail service so that it no longer supports the Opera browser. As a result, my daughter has switched to Gmail.
Well, I've been advising her to do that for years, ever since I discovered just how unreliable Yahoo can be. They "lost" my Geocities web pages for two months. They eventually came back, but too late. Within two days of their disappearing from the web, I had moved them to a new host. Perhaps others whose web pages may be orphaned by the closing of Geocities could do that too. The only disadvantage is that Google searches still point to the old site.
No sooner were my Geocities pages back up than they lost my e-mail account for six months. And when it came back they had lost all my archived messages. They lost my Yahoo 360 account, which was no great loss because it was pretty clunky anyway. The only problem is that I have no access to anyone else on Yahoo 360, and they keep urging me to "join" -- a bit stupid, since I have already joined.
Perhaps Yahoo are retrenching because they are losing money, but one reason for their losing money is that they are alienating their customers like this. They buy services (like Geocities and Webrings) from other people, and then mess them up, and wonder why they lose money. They recently took over MyBlogLog -- I hope they don't mess that up too. Actually it is pretty messed up already. On my other blog (and most WordPress blogs) they show that the only visitors are Eric, Reesa10, SteveHo and Rafer. People have been asking them to fix that bug for years, but it seems that they are neglecting MyBlogLog just as they are neglecting the other things they took over, which is why BlogCatalog is better -- at least it shows who the real visitors are.
First they announced that they were closing their Geocities web sites (after years of neglect), which will break millions of links and mean the loss of much useful material from the web (as well as much rubbish).
Now my daughter has discovered that her Yahoo! mail account no longer works; she can read mail, but can't reply.
It appears that the reason is that they have changed their mail service so that it no longer supports the Opera browser. As a result, my daughter has switched to Gmail.
Well, I've been advising her to do that for years, ever since I discovered just how unreliable Yahoo can be. They "lost" my Geocities web pages for two months. They eventually came back, but too late. Within two days of their disappearing from the web, I had moved them to a new host. Perhaps others whose web pages may be orphaned by the closing of Geocities could do that too. The only disadvantage is that Google searches still point to the old site.
No sooner were my Geocities pages back up than they lost my e-mail account for six months. And when it came back they had lost all my archived messages. They lost my Yahoo 360 account, which was no great loss because it was pretty clunky anyway. The only problem is that I have no access to anyone else on Yahoo 360, and they keep urging me to "join" -- a bit stupid, since I have already joined.
Perhaps Yahoo are retrenching because they are losing money, but one reason for their losing money is that they are alienating their customers like this. They buy services (like Geocities and Webrings) from other people, and then mess them up, and wonder why they lose money. They recently took over MyBlogLog -- I hope they don't mess that up too. Actually it is pretty messed up already. On my other blog (and most WordPress blogs) they show that the only visitors are Eric, Reesa10, SteveHo and Rafer. People have been asking them to fix that bug for years, but it seems that they are neglecting MyBlogLog just as they are neglecting the other things they took over, which is why BlogCatalog is better -- at least it shows who the real visitors are.
31 May 2009
Finding good blogs to read
I saw this appeal on another blog.
Suggestions, please! The Ultra, the Fabulous, the only, Miss P!:
I can understand and sympathise.
I used to use Blog Explosion when I was bored and looking for blogs to read. You could give it your favourite topic (mine was "Books/Literature/Witing") and it would show you random blogs dealing with that topic, and when it ran out of ones on that topic it would start showing you ones on other topics. By looking at other blogs you earned "points" which meant that your blog(s) were shown to other similarly bored people.
It was quite a good idea when it started, but apparently like so many things in the blogosphere (remember Amatomu and Geocities), it was abandoned by the originators of the idea, taken over by someone else who was simply interested in making money out of it, and then neglected, and allowed to run down.
Now Blog Explosion no longer shows blogs that are related to your preferred topic, but shows the same old off-topic ones over and over again -- I suspect because they have paid for preferred positions. The trouble is that some of those that keep getting shown first haven't been updated, so it becomes even more boring. I occasionally look at it in the hope that things will improve, but they don't. Perhaps the problem is that there are not enough new people registerin g blogs there, so they are showing the same old repertoire over and over again. So if you are reading this, perhaps you should try it. Register your blog at Blog Explosion, and have a look at what it shows you. Much of it will probably be new and fresh the first time round. If you find too much repetition, there's no need to go back, but at least your blog will provide a new option for some of the users who have seen it all.
Another way is to look at the blogs in the blogroll of blogs you find interesting. Use a social blogrolling tool like BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog to mark ones that look interesting and possibly worth a return visit.
For South African blogs Amatomu still works, though suffering somewhat from neglect by its sponsors. It also went downhill when, in addition to listing blogs, it listed blog hosts, so that half the blogs one sees there are called "Blat: to utter without thinking" or "Thought Leader", when in fact those are hosts to many different blogs. It needs someone enthusiastic to take over and do a radical clean-up and reorganisation to get back to the original idea that worked well.
Afrigator used to work OK, but has now become JASNS (Just Another Social Networking Site).
When I first started blogging I used to use Technorati a lot, but that too has gone downhill. It used to be possible to use tag searches to find stuff you were interested in, and each registered user had a page that showed their blogs, and what tags were popular at the moment, but that has now gone, and like Blog Explosion they've rearranged their user interface to make it more difficult to use. I suspect that this is in order to make you hunt in many more pages to find what you are looking for, so that you will be exposed to more advertising and make more money for them as you go down each dead end. Surely they must realise that this is counter-productive -- it might bring a short-term rise in advertising revenue, but eventually people users will be annoyed and go elsewhere. At the moment they seem to have a lot of technical problems, so even their new and disimproved and dehanced and clunkier user interface doesn't work properly.
So to the one and only Miss P. my best suggestion, at the moment, is Google Blog Search.
Any other suggestions?
Suggestions, please! The Ultra, the Fabulous, the only, Miss P!:
I’m running out of good blogs to read.
Any suggestions?
I can understand and sympathise.
I used to use Blog Explosion when I was bored and looking for blogs to read. You could give it your favourite topic (mine was "Books/Literature/Witing") and it would show you random blogs dealing with that topic, and when it ran out of ones on that topic it would start showing you ones on other topics. By looking at other blogs you earned "points" which meant that your blog(s) were shown to other similarly bored people.
It was quite a good idea when it started, but apparently like so many things in the blogosphere (remember Amatomu and Geocities), it was abandoned by the originators of the idea, taken over by someone else who was simply interested in making money out of it, and then neglected, and allowed to run down.
Now Blog Explosion no longer shows blogs that are related to your preferred topic, but shows the same old off-topic ones over and over again -- I suspect because they have paid for preferred positions. The trouble is that some of those that keep getting shown first haven't been updated, so it becomes even more boring. I occasionally look at it in the hope that things will improve, but they don't. Perhaps the problem is that there are not enough new people registerin g blogs there, so they are showing the same old repertoire over and over again. So if you are reading this, perhaps you should try it. Register your blog at Blog Explosion, and have a look at what it shows you. Much of it will probably be new and fresh the first time round. If you find too much repetition, there's no need to go back, but at least your blog will provide a new option for some of the users who have seen it all.
Another way is to look at the blogs in the blogroll of blogs you find interesting. Use a social blogrolling tool like BlogCatalog or MyBlogLog to mark ones that look interesting and possibly worth a return visit.
For South African blogs Amatomu still works, though suffering somewhat from neglect by its sponsors. It also went downhill when, in addition to listing blogs, it listed blog hosts, so that half the blogs one sees there are called "Blat: to utter without thinking" or "Thought Leader", when in fact those are hosts to many different blogs. It needs someone enthusiastic to take over and do a radical clean-up and reorganisation to get back to the original idea that worked well.
Afrigator used to work OK, but has now become JASNS (Just Another Social Networking Site).
When I first started blogging I used to use Technorati a lot, but that too has gone downhill. It used to be possible to use tag searches to find stuff you were interested in, and each registered user had a page that showed their blogs, and what tags were popular at the moment, but that has now gone, and like Blog Explosion they've rearranged their user interface to make it more difficult to use. I suspect that this is in order to make you hunt in many more pages to find what you are looking for, so that you will be exposed to more advertising and make more money for them as you go down each dead end. Surely they must realise that this is counter-productive -- it might bring a short-term rise in advertising revenue, but eventually people users will be annoyed and go elsewhere. At the moment they seem to have a lot of technical problems, so even their new and disimproved and dehanced and clunkier user interface doesn't work properly.
So to the one and only Miss P. my best suggestion, at the moment, is Google Blog Search.
Any other suggestions?
28 April 2009
For everything there is a season
For everything there is a season, a time to blog and a time to tweet, a time to vote and a time to count votes. A season to visit friends and a season to delete friends.
Holy Week is over, Bright Week is over, the elections are over, and Summer is over.
We're well into autumn, when things are usually harvested or something. Well the leaves from the mulberry tree need raking, at any rate. We did'nt get a single mulberry from it. The dogs and the birds got most of them, and the rest were trampled underfoot.
Then there are blogs, and blogging friends, and blogging non-friends, and blogging wannabe friends and blogging don't-wanna-be friends. The tall, the hamfisted, the pompous and the good-looking.
There are the people who are following me on MyBlogLog, and have made me their friend on Blog Catalog, but who have never visited any of my blogs. They don't seem to be interested in any of the things I'm interested in, but still want to be my "friends".
But there are also the real friends, though sometimes the links are tenuous or broken.
There are the ones like Cobus and Reggie who are now invisible, and whose blogs are inaccessible from MyBlogLog. Please log in and link your blogs, and don't play hard-to-find!The ones like Miss Eagle and Stephen who have new blogs, but haven't linked them, and whose old blogs are not to be found. And those like DaveMac, whose blogs have never linked.
There is Spookyrach, whose Friday cemetery blogging provides the humorous and the macabre, though not necessarily in that order. One of my great blogging ambitions is to have spookyrach visit and leave a comment one one of my blogs.
And there are those whose blogs are linked, but whose log-ins have expired, so they don't show up in the MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog widgets, so I never know if they've visited my blogs, or if they just find them too boring or too disgusting to visit. Like Tauratinzwe for example. Perhaps Oxonian, Roger and Arthur also fall into that category -- their blogs are still there and are linked, but they don't have the widgets on their blogs, and they don't show up as having visited mine.
And there are the ones who have visited fairly regularly, and have sometimes left comments. I'd like to thank them for that. I can't remember them all so apologies if I've left anyone else, but there is Dion, and Jenny, and Bruce (all Methodists), and PriestlyGoth and Crushed by Ingsoc and James and Jams and Matt.
Twittering is OK, but it's not the same as blogging.
And real friends are those one meets on more interactive forums, like those for discussing missiology, or religion, or the books of the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and friends) or just anything under the sun.
Holy Week is over, Bright Week is over, the elections are over, and Summer is over.
We're well into autumn, when things are usually harvested or something. Well the leaves from the mulberry tree need raking, at any rate. We did'nt get a single mulberry from it. The dogs and the birds got most of them, and the rest were trampled underfoot.
Then there are blogs, and blogging friends, and blogging non-friends, and blogging wannabe friends and blogging don't-wanna-be friends. The tall, the hamfisted, the pompous and the good-looking.
There are the people who are following me on MyBlogLog, and have made me their friend on Blog Catalog, but who have never visited any of my blogs. They don't seem to be interested in any of the things I'm interested in, but still want to be my "friends".
But there are also the real friends, though sometimes the links are tenuous or broken.
There are the ones like Cobus and Reggie who are now invisible, and whose blogs are inaccessible from MyBlogLog. Please log in and link your blogs, and don't play hard-to-find!The ones like Miss Eagle and Stephen who have new blogs, but haven't linked them, and whose old blogs are not to be found. And those like DaveMac, whose blogs have never linked.
There is Spookyrach, whose Friday cemetery blogging provides the humorous and the macabre, though not necessarily in that order. One of my great blogging ambitions is to have spookyrach visit and leave a comment one one of my blogs.
And there are those whose blogs are linked, but whose log-ins have expired, so they don't show up in the MyBlogLog or BlogCatalog widgets, so I never know if they've visited my blogs, or if they just find them too boring or too disgusting to visit. Like Tauratinzwe for example. Perhaps Oxonian, Roger and Arthur also fall into that category -- their blogs are still there and are linked, but they don't have the widgets on their blogs, and they don't show up as having visited mine.
And there are the ones who have visited fairly regularly, and have sometimes left comments. I'd like to thank them for that. I can't remember them all so apologies if I've left anyone else, but there is Dion, and Jenny, and Bruce (all Methodists), and PriestlyGoth and Crushed by Ingsoc and James and Jams and Matt.
Twittering is OK, but it's not the same as blogging.
And real friends are those one meets on more interactive forums, like those for discussing missiology, or religion, or the books of the Inklings (C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams and friends) or just anything under the sun.
12 June 2008
Social blogrolling -- what is a "friend"
There are three main social blogrolling sites that I know of: MyBlogLog, Blog Catalog and BumpZee. They are useful in that they not only let you compile a list of blogs you want to read again, but (if set up properly) let you see who has visited your blog, and you can then pay a return visit.
I joined MyBlogLog a little over a year ago, and found it useful for finding interesting blogs and keeping a list of ones I wanted to revisit.
I joined BumpZee, but found it clunky, slow, and less than useful. It doesn't show blog visitors unless the person is actually logged in to BumpZee, and they have to log in every time they open their browser otherwise they don't show up.
I joined Blog Catalog more recently, when we had a synchroblog on human rights, and found that they were also promoting blogging on human rights on 15 May.
To add blogs to your blogroll, in MyBlogLog you join a "community" related to that blog, and in Blog Catalog you join a neighbourhood. You can also have a list of "contacts" or "friends", which is similar to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace etc.
And this is where things start getting strange. I keep getting messages that people have added me as "friends" or "contacts" when it is evident that they have never even visited my blogs, much less commented on them. I don't know them, I've never corresponded with them, and don't see how they could be regarded as "friends".
I only list as "friends" or "contacts" people I have actually met, or whom I have corresponded with, or who have regularly commented on my blog, and I have regularly commented on theirs. In other words, people I have had some interaction with over some time. Adding people as "friends" or "contacts" when you don't know them and they don't know you seems counterproductive, and to destroy the usefulness of social blogrolling sites, and social networking sites generally.
I suppose Technorati could also be regarded as a form of social blogrolling, in that you can list blogs you like as favourites, but it doesn't show who has visited your blog, and recently its navigation seems to have become much more difficult.
Like many web services, they start by doing one thing well, and then try to do more and more things, and end up not doing any of them well. That's what happened to Google. They started by having a very good search engine, and then they tried to do just about everything, and now they don't even do their search engine well. They too have a social networking site like Facebook and MySpace, called Orkut, very popular in India, not so much in South Africa. But their search engine simply hasn't kept up with the competition.
I joined MyBlogLog a little over a year ago, and found it useful for finding interesting blogs and keeping a list of ones I wanted to revisit.
I joined BumpZee, but found it clunky, slow, and less than useful. It doesn't show blog visitors unless the person is actually logged in to BumpZee, and they have to log in every time they open their browser otherwise they don't show up.
I joined Blog Catalog more recently, when we had a synchroblog on human rights, and found that they were also promoting blogging on human rights on 15 May.
To add blogs to your blogroll, in MyBlogLog you join a "community" related to that blog, and in Blog Catalog you join a neighbourhood. You can also have a list of "contacts" or "friends", which is similar to social networking sites like Facebook, MySpace etc.
And this is where things start getting strange. I keep getting messages that people have added me as "friends" or "contacts" when it is evident that they have never even visited my blogs, much less commented on them. I don't know them, I've never corresponded with them, and don't see how they could be regarded as "friends".
Annoying things about social blogrolling sites
- People who add you as a friend when you don't know them
- People who add you as a friend when they've never visited your blog
- People who have blogs, but don't have the widget on their blogs
I only list as "friends" or "contacts" people I have actually met, or whom I have corresponded with, or who have regularly commented on my blog, and I have regularly commented on theirs. In other words, people I have had some interaction with over some time. Adding people as "friends" or "contacts" when you don't know them and they don't know you seems counterproductive, and to destroy the usefulness of social blogrolling sites, and social networking sites generally.
I suppose Technorati could also be regarded as a form of social blogrolling, in that you can list blogs you like as favourites, but it doesn't show who has visited your blog, and recently its navigation seems to have become much more difficult.
Like many web services, they start by doing one thing well, and then try to do more and more things, and end up not doing any of them well. That's what happened to Google. They started by having a very good search engine, and then they tried to do just about everything, and now they don't even do their search engine well. They too have a social networking site like Facebook and MySpace, called Orkut, very popular in India, not so much in South Africa. But their search engine simply hasn't kept up with the competition.
26 December 2007
Catching up on the blogroll and tying threads together
December has been a somewhat broken blogging month.
A couple of weeks ago there was a storm that knocked out our phone lines for a couple of days -- a cable struck by lightning or something. No sooner had that come back than we lost web access -- run out of bandwidth again, halfway through the month! No I don't do YouTube and podcasts, so it must be someone else in the family -- perhaps my son downloading updates to his graphics program, which he's using to draw fleas.
Then it comes back, and then it's off again. Telkom has a thing that lets you buy extra bandwidth now, but it doesn't seem to work. There's a problem, they apparently didn't like my credit card, so I report the problem but there's no feedback. They simply don't reply. Later my wife tries with her credit card, and that works, so we are back on the web, but for how long I don't know.
So I try to catch up with blogs I read -- starting first by checking on visitors to my blogs who have either left comments, or who have left a record of having visited through MyBlogLog. Then I go on to my blogroll, and so eventually discover several others who have been blogging on similar topics to me, so here is some of the catchup, and linking similar threads together. Some of them have been on my other blog, Khanya, which I use for afternoon and evening blogging, since Blogger works only in the morning. If it were afternoon now, I'd be blogging this on Khanya too, but since it's before noon, I'll use Blogger while it's working.
In my catchup, first through MyBlogLog and then through my blogroll, I discovered that some of my blogging friends have also been blogging on this topic:
We've also been discussing it in the AIC mailing list. One things that strikes me about all this is that it seems to point to a significant divergence between Pentecostal and Neopentecostal theology, and between the attitude of Zionist and other "Spirit-type" African independent churches (AICs) on the one hand, and Neopentecostal AICs on the other.
I say "seems to point" because there does not seem to have been enough research on this topic. It's something that needs urgent attention from African and Pentecostal theology researchersbecause people are dying, and so far the reasons are mostly based on guesswork.
For me there are at least three big questions, probably more:
A couple of weeks ago there was a storm that knocked out our phone lines for a couple of days -- a cable struck by lightning or something. No sooner had that come back than we lost web access -- run out of bandwidth again, halfway through the month! No I don't do YouTube and podcasts, so it must be someone else in the family -- perhaps my son downloading updates to his graphics program, which he's using to draw fleas.
Then it comes back, and then it's off again. Telkom has a thing that lets you buy extra bandwidth now, but it doesn't seem to work. There's a problem, they apparently didn't like my credit card, so I report the problem but there's no feedback. They simply don't reply. Later my wife tries with her credit card, and that works, so we are back on the web, but for how long I don't know.
So I try to catch up with blogs I read -- starting first by checking on visitors to my blogs who have either left comments, or who have left a record of having visited through MyBlogLog. Then I go on to my blogroll, and so eventually discover several others who have been blogging on similar topics to me, so here is some of the catchup, and linking similar threads together. Some of them have been on my other blog, Khanya, which I use for afternoon and evening blogging, since Blogger works only in the morning. If it were afternoon now, I'd be blogging this on Khanya too, but since it's before noon, I'll use Blogger while it's working.
Christian responses to witchcraft and sorcery
This is a topic that has long been of interest to me, and I recently blogged about it on my Khanya blog, noting an apparent difference between Christian responses in Southern and Eastern Africa, and those in Western and Central Africa, notably in Nigeria and the DRC. And this seems to be spreading to the Western world as well, through the African disapora.In my catchup, first through MyBlogLog and then through my blogroll, I discovered that some of my blogging friends have also been blogging on this topic:
- Yvonne Aburrow (Nemeton) in Save the witch children
- Phil Wyman in Square No More: The Children of Pentecostal Theology and Square No More: Persecution of "Child Witches" in Kinshasa
We've also been discussing it in the AIC mailing list. One things that strikes me about all this is that it seems to point to a significant divergence between Pentecostal and Neopentecostal theology, and between the attitude of Zionist and other "Spirit-type" African independent churches (AICs) on the one hand, and Neopentecostal AICs on the other.
I say "seems to point" because there does not seem to have been enough research on this topic. It's something that needs urgent attention from African and Pentecostal theology researchersbecause people are dying, and so far the reasons are mostly based on guesswork.
For me there are at least three big questions, probably more:
- What is the reason for the apparent differences between Eastern and Southern Africa and Western and Central Africa?
- What is the difference between Pentecostal/Zionist theology on the one hand, and Neopentecostal theology on the other?
- What is the link between Neopentecostal theology and Neoliberalism? How far have Neopentecostals bought into the Neoliberal ideology, and is Neopentecostalism simply a contextualisation of the gospel in a Neoliberal worldview (thinking of economic liberalism rather than political liberalism here).
The Golden Compass
Before the film The Golden Compass (based on Philip Pullman's novel Northern Lights) was released, there was an SMS campaign by some people in South Africa urging people to boycott the film. I blogged about this at The Golden compass -- to boycott or not to boycott. When the film was released I went to see it, and enjoyed it, but found it rather over-simplified. But once again, I've discovered some of my blogging friends had written far better reviews than I could:- Yvonne Aburrow at Northern Lights
- Iambic Admonit at Golden Compass review
24 July 2007
BUMPzee social blogrolling
A few weeks ago I read a review of some social blogrolling sites -- MyBlogLog, BUMPzee and Blog Catalog. All three have a widget that displays recent readers on your blog, so you can see who has been reading your blog and pay them a return visit.
But apart from that, they work slightly differently. MyBlogLog is a true social blogroll site, where each blog has a "community" that regular readers can join, and if you want to pay a return visit to a blog without the hassle of adding it to your regular blogroll, you can join its community so you can find it again quite easily.
BUMPzee also has communities, but instead of being linked to particular blogs, they are linked to particular interests. This is a bit more focused. I joined and created a Missiology community, since there wasn't one. But as other blogs with missiological interests join, it should become a useful blogroll of missiology-related blogs, and aggregates their posts.
Now you might blog about lots of things, and not every post will be about missiology, so when you add your blog to the community, you can specify keywords, so that only, for example, posts tagged "missiology" or "missional" will be shown in the aggregator.
That seems to have the potential of being a very useful feature.
BUMPzee started as a site for affiliate marketing, and so at present most of the communities are on related topics, but it is now open to everyone (rather as Facebook started as a "students only" social networking site). So don't be put off by the fact that the top communities listed deal with affiliate marketing. Communities can now be on any subject you like, and I think I'll be creating a few more.
Apart from the missiology one, I've started one for the Inklings -- C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams & Co. I know there are several other blogs that have posts on those authors and related topics, such as theology and literature, and it will be useful to be able to look for updates in one place (if they join, and put the widget on their blogs, of course).
But apart from that, they work slightly differently. MyBlogLog is a true social blogroll site, where each blog has a "community" that regular readers can join, and if you want to pay a return visit to a blog without the hassle of adding it to your regular blogroll, you can join its community so you can find it again quite easily.
BUMPzee also has communities, but instead of being linked to particular blogs, they are linked to particular interests. This is a bit more focused. I joined and created a Missiology community, since there wasn't one. But as other blogs with missiological interests join, it should become a useful blogroll of missiology-related blogs, and aggregates their posts.
Now you might blog about lots of things, and not every post will be about missiology, so when you add your blog to the community, you can specify keywords, so that only, for example, posts tagged "missiology" or "missional" will be shown in the aggregator.
That seems to have the potential of being a very useful feature.
BUMPzee started as a site for affiliate marketing, and so at present most of the communities are on related topics, but it is now open to everyone (rather as Facebook started as a "students only" social networking site). So don't be put off by the fact that the top communities listed deal with affiliate marketing. Communities can now be on any subject you like, and I think I'll be creating a few more.
Apart from the missiology one, I've started one for the Inklings -- C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, Charles Williams & Co. I know there are several other blogs that have posts on those authors and related topics, such as theology and literature, and it will be useful to be able to look for updates in one place (if they join, and put the widget on their blogs, of course).
02 July 2007
Social blogrolling - controversy on MyBlogLog
There's been a bit of a tempest in a tea cup over a new feature of MyBlogLog -- the ability to send messages to all one's community members.
Some, like Meg in Australia, have complained that it is spam, but it seems that those who are complaining have joined hundreds of communities that they have no real interest in.
And I disagree. I think being able to send a message to all one's community members (provided it is not overdone) is a good thing. Perhaps some will abuse the facility by sending spam, but then the answer is simple -- leave their community. But a message once a quarter or even once a month should not be a problem.
I think "community" means that one desires to interact with others in the community. If people join communities on MyBlogLog and similar social networking sites, they ought to be interested in the topics of the community and in interaction with the members. If they do not want to communicate, they should not have joined the community in the first place.
In my blogs I have tried to make it clear what I am interested in and what I blog about, and I do that in MyBlogLog too. I hope that people who are interested in similar things will read my blogs and comment, and join my communities in MyBlogLog so we can keep in touch, and so I will be reminded to look at their blogs occasionally.
But some people seem to join communities just to see how many they can collect. I have difficulty in understanding the motivation for joining a community where one has no interest in anything the community is about. If you join a football club, and have no interest in football, why did you join? If you then object to receiving the club newsletter, don't complain to the post office about the club sending you the newsletter, just resign from the club.
I have the same problem with people on social networking sites like MySpace, whom I've never heard of, saying "I want to be your friend". If they've read and commented on my blog, or we've discussed things in a newsgroup, or exchanged e-mail or snail mail, or communicated in some other way, fine. But just to be a "friend" with no discernable common interest with me makes no sense.
One of the problems of electronic networking is that it can lead to communication without community. But the sudden demand from people on MyBlogLog for community without communication is far more difficult to understand.
Some, like Meg in Australia, have complained that it is spam, but it seems that those who are complaining have joined hundreds of communities that they have no real interest in.
And I disagree. I think being able to send a message to all one's community members (provided it is not overdone) is a good thing. Perhaps some will abuse the facility by sending spam, but then the answer is simple -- leave their community. But a message once a quarter or even once a month should not be a problem.
I think "community" means that one desires to interact with others in the community. If people join communities on MyBlogLog and similar social networking sites, they ought to be interested in the topics of the community and in interaction with the members. If they do not want to communicate, they should not have joined the community in the first place.
In my blogs I have tried to make it clear what I am interested in and what I blog about, and I do that in MyBlogLog too. I hope that people who are interested in similar things will read my blogs and comment, and join my communities in MyBlogLog so we can keep in touch, and so I will be reminded to look at their blogs occasionally.
But some people seem to join communities just to see how many they can collect. I have difficulty in understanding the motivation for joining a community where one has no interest in anything the community is about. If you join a football club, and have no interest in football, why did you join? If you then object to receiving the club newsletter, don't complain to the post office about the club sending you the newsletter, just resign from the club.
I have the same problem with people on social networking sites like MySpace, whom I've never heard of, saying "I want to be your friend". If they've read and commented on my blog, or we've discussed things in a newsgroup, or exchanged e-mail or snail mail, or communicated in some other way, fine. But just to be a "friend" with no discernable common interest with me makes no sense.
One of the problems of electronic networking is that it can lead to communication without community. But the sudden demand from people on MyBlogLog for community without communication is far more difficult to understand.
13 June 2007
Social blogrolling
Many blogs have blogrolls - lists of blogs that the author of the blog likes to read. But I'd like to invite bloggers who read this blog to go a step further and have a pictorial blogroll, which you can get by going to MyBlogLog.
How does this differ from an ordinary blogroll? Well, you can go to the page for this blog, and see the blogroll in reverse -- not just the blogs that I like to read, but the people who've bookmarked this blog because they like to read it. And you can click on their icons to see a list of their blogs.
Also, each blog and blog author has tags. Once upon a time Blogger (the software that runs this blog) allowed you to go to the blog author's profile and see a list of their interests. Then you could click on one of the interests that is your interest too, and find other bloggers with that interest.
Unfortunately it doesn't work any more (like many other featured of the "fully-featured" new Blogger).
But never mind - MyBlogLog has a workaround. Click on the tags, and you will see other bloggers who are interested in that topic, and blogs that deal with that topic. Things like Facebook and MySpace give you social networking, but MyBlogLog gives you social blogrolling.
One of my main interests is missiology, and at the moment there are very few blogs on MyBlogLog with that tag. Yet there were quite a lot of bloggers with that listed as an interest in their Blogger profiles. Unfortunately one can no longer find them that way, but if they listed it in MyBlogLog, the problem would be solved. And it would be nice if some of my fellow Orthodox Christian bloggers did the same thing, and then put a widget like the one below on their blog. Try it and see.
How does this differ from an ordinary blogroll? Well, you can go to the page for this blog, and see the blogroll in reverse -- not just the blogs that I like to read, but the people who've bookmarked this blog because they like to read it. And you can click on their icons to see a list of their blogs.
Also, each blog and blog author has tags. Once upon a time Blogger (the software that runs this blog) allowed you to go to the blog author's profile and see a list of their interests. Then you could click on one of the interests that is your interest too, and find other bloggers with that interest.
Unfortunately it doesn't work any more (like many other featured of the "fully-featured" new Blogger).
But never mind - MyBlogLog has a workaround. Click on the tags, and you will see other bloggers who are interested in that topic, and blogs that deal with that topic. Things like Facebook and MySpace give you social networking, but MyBlogLog gives you social blogrolling.
One of my main interests is missiology, and at the moment there are very few blogs on MyBlogLog with that tag. Yet there were quite a lot of bloggers with that listed as an interest in their Blogger profiles. Unfortunately one can no longer find them that way, but if they listed it in MyBlogLog, the problem would be solved. And it would be nice if some of my fellow Orthodox Christian bloggers did the same thing, and then put a widget like the one below on their blog. Try it and see.
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