Recently in weblogging Category

We're again at that time of year where I mess with the design and layout of the site. I have another site I'm currently working on (snf.me) and although I'm happy with TypePad's product, I don't like the inflexibility in things I grew used to having under my own control. Right now, Action Streams (the programming that aggregates all of my feeds into one place) is not working correctly, so you're seeing double and triple posts of old articles. I don't know how to fix that yet, but I'm gettin' there. I can't figure out why AS has problems with multiple RSS feeds and that's what I intend to work on.

I should be reposting some snf.me material over here shortly and hopefully I'll get time to work on the issue at hand.

I busted my MT installation and now I am working to figure out what I busted. How frustrating.

Perhaps in some time, this will become more of a howto, but for now, I am trying to take public notes on how I finally got Action Streams working in the manner I had originally intended all the way back in May of this year. I called up my buddy, Aaron over at 601am.com and asked how I can do better at integrating some of my social network streams into my regular weblog. I've found Twitter amazingly handy, along with with a host of other social network services. I had originally hoped that my blog could be my own source of these "services," but that would be missing the social component, which I have come to enjoy (for example, trading or showing off photos on Flickr and sharing bookmarks on Delicious). Instead of linking everywhere outward, why not integrate the streams created by each of these services within my own blog stream? Action Streams allows you to essentially re-stream your created content within Movable Type. How it does it is still somewhat of a mystery (I just recently dove a bit into the code and am thoroughly confused), but here were my objectives: for every service I want to integrate, I want to publish it, either on my main blog page or in a concentrated form of my output in a blog and stream mixed page. For longer items, such as my blog entries, I need to start breaking them apart into multi-part entries like I had done in the beginning vis a vis extended entries. For the social networking items like those submitted to Delicious, Flickr, and twitter, there is really nothing more than publishing things as is because they are short by their very nature.

The easy part is installing Action Streams. Download, unzip, copy items to the correct location within your Movable Type installation directory. The difficult part follows, as the documentation is practically nonexistent. Here is what I did, though:

This morning, I was going through my twitter feed and came across a Chris Pirillo entry about getting 1TB of online storage for free. Now, that is very intriguing. In Amazon S3 terms (the best pricing for reliable online storage that I have yet to see), 1TB would cost $150/mo, plus transfer fees, which I calculated at around $54/mo. (especially if you are using the storage for continual backups). Amazon's S3 service has proven extremely reliable and safe for my needs (I'm backing up things like photo and iTunes/music libraries - not private documents) and the pricing tends to be reasonable when you calculate the cost of maintaining space for the backups on your own. Thus, it is hard to not take a second look when someone mentions you can pay $0 for something that costs over $150/mo at the most reasonable place you know of.

I cruised over to Oosah and started to take a look at their service. It looks very interesting, as they offer ways of creating image, video and music mashups. You can connect content from disparate services and upload your own content. It also looks like they support a multitude of codecs and file formats. All of this looks fantabulous, until you read between the lines:

9c. Ownership of Content: You retain all ownership rights in your Content. However, by posting Content to Oosah, you automatically grant, and you represent and warrant that you have the right to grant, to Oosah (and its successors) an irrevocable, perpetual, non-exclusive, assignable, royalty free, worldwide license to use, copy, perform, display, distribute and to prepare derivative works of such Content in connection with the Site and any current and future services offered by Oosah, and to grant and authorize sublicenses of the foregoing. (from Terms & Conditions)

As with many of these types of agreements, I understand why Oosah wants perpetual rights to your content - to do with it as they please forever - but it is not something I am interested in handing over to anyone; whether or not they are providing me of some type of compensation in return. This is the same type of verbiage that recently caused an uproar over Google's Chrome browser (i.e. in their first EULA, they received and retained ownership over any content created and/or uploaded via their browser). I'm not sure if the content I create will ever be worth something, but I do have enough foresight to know that by passing on perpetual rights to my copyrighted works, I give up the ability to control what happens to it. When I'm taking the time to create things on my own time, on my own dime, I at least wish to control what happens to it in the future. You never know what type of value your works may have as time goes on.

Perhaps you don't care whether or not you retain ownership of your creations. That is up to you. Before you sign up for a service, however, be sure to understand what you are giving up in return for what they are giving you. Good luck to Oosah. Sorry, though, its not a service for me.

Years back I asked myself the question of why I even try to maintain a weblog and host my own content. Obviously the topics I choose are random and span across the different interests I have (whether it be today's obsession with photography or tomorrow's problems with getting widget XYZ to operate the way I want), but when I do take the time to sit down and write something, I'm hoping that it will provide a tidbit of information or guidance to others. (That's the ego side of this venture.) Why do I put the effort, though, in controlling the bandwidth and machinery that hosts my site(s)? Why not use Blogger for my weblog, Flickr for all my photos, YouTube for videos, etc? Because they are all out of my control. I have no idea whether or not any of these services will be around in ten years. I've been blogging for over ten years. The internet archive only goes back to a site I had running in 2001, but this is quite a bit after I actually set up the first website and I'm not sure why the earlier ones don't show up. Every post I've made to my blog that has something to do with a picture or video requires that that specific picture or video (or whatever else) remains available to visitors. More importantly, because I use this weblog as a method of keeping a sort of exhibitionist diary, I want access to that content forever. If I were to take the time and go back through the archives, I'm sure I'd find many a place where I had posted something, linking to another site, and now that site is gone. That breaks the usefulness of this blog, in my opinion. What good is keeping the here and now intact and yet destroying the history? To me, that's a waste of the effort I've put into this all these years.

Today, I stumbled across a blog I hadn't visited for quite some time; jayallen.org, or more accurately, jay.vox.com. Jay linked to a hilarious video on YouTube that was a clip from Saturday Night Live's PUNCHED! bit. This is a screenshot of what I encountered:

Of course, this is not Jay's fault. How could he know that the video would be removed from YouTube? I encountered this all too often, though, when linking to articles, etc. If a website owner chooses to change their url style (which has undergone major shifts across the internet in blogging) - i.e. going from something like archive/category/000010.php to archive/url_now_is_readable_instead_of_cryptic - they break all of the links that were made to their website at one time. One solution I thought of is that instead of linking to specific urls, I should just link to a Google search term that will likely bring about the current url of the link I want people to access. The problem with this is the same as the problem with visual or audio content; what if Google disappears? Who would have thought in 1996 that Google was going to be a search giant monster and AltaVista would be nothing?

This is why I find it so important to host my own content. I hate it when things break. I don't understand why you would design a blog (or anything you put a lot of effort into) around a method that will naturally break as the years go on. If all you do is provide links to other stuff, then it is likely that some day, the content you worked to create will become meaningless. I like to have historical reference to who I am and what I do. Without working links, I can't. (This is my purpose, however, and I'm sure it does not match other's.) I limit what I put here even on the basis of whether or not I can quote or copy to embed someone else's content. I feel safe embedding the above screenshot because it is what I saw when I visited Jay's site and I'm not trying to blatantly steal his creativity. The line of stealing someone else's work becomes thinner, though, when you want to embed their complete thoughts and or creative works on your site. It is something one needs to be wary of. It is also the reason why the images I host on Flickr are there with the Creative Commons license of Share-Share Alike-Non Commercial (so is all the content I put on the web). I want people to feel comfortable taking and redistributing my works, as long as I am give credit and they do not use my works to make money. Why the last part? Because, I want to control making money with my content that I've worked hard to produce. It's that simple.

So, if you have any concern about the longevity of the work you do, it helps to think about these things. I'm certain that even since I became aware of this conundrum, there are plenty of items here that are broken. Every week, I search a bit for them and try to fix them. Since I don't want to be forced to do this for eternity (fixing past content every time I decide to change something or someone decides to remove what they have done), I'm going to be more cautious about what I post here and how I post it. And, I'm going to continue hosting my own content so I can retain this control.

Sorry to those of you whose comments have been held up because I was sending notifications of those awaiting approval to a defunct email address. I fixed the problem and your comments will be published and responded to in a more timely manner.

Here's a random comment while I wait for Steph's flight to arrive at O'Hare:
I've been playing with Twitter and Jaiku again. At first, I had made the commitment to Twitter because so many people I enjoyed following were using it. The problem is that I like the way of mashing RSS feeds with Jaiku better and their application for Symbian S60 (v3) devices has made updating or sending 'jaikus' so very, very easy. Since I'm really doing this for myself and not so much because I think anyone would ever follow my posts, why do I feel dirty about using Jaiku over Twitter? Anyone else see that Jaiku is superior and yet continue to use Twitter? (All opinion, of course...)

snfettig @ twitter

stevenfettig @ jaiku

(Oh... and Jaiku seems faster. Probably because fewer people use it, but nonetheless, faster.)

Technorati Tags: jaiku, public+im, short+posts, twitter

I have really grown to enjoy the service (i.e. Twitter) - not because I like to use it for messaging, but more for the fact (as stated in another post) that I am able to make shorter postings that really are in a no-man's land between blogging and ... nothing. The one problem that has consistently prevented me from using it to the extent that I would like (especially when taking notes for c.ogi.to essays), is that posting can be dreadfully slow. I realize, and so do many users, that Twitter is experiencing a huge growth spurt that is taxing its servers (and apparently its ability to scale was not known in the beginning - my speculation), but it still causes trouble for those who would really like to use it as a tool. I find that if I am in the mode of tweeting a lot, I can't get the service to keep up with me. I've been thinking of turning it off for the time being and relying on another method of note-taking, but I still can't find what and how. I need/want something to which I can make posts using SMS and plugins to Firefox (or Safari) and those are tall orders to fill. I also have difficulties with the 140 character limits, but at the same time, it has forced me to re-think what I am writing, which is a good thing at times - it forces me to write concisely. With all of the niche needs that Twitter is able to handle for my usage, it is hard to find or come up with a replacement solution and therein lies Twitter's power. I agree with many that the uses of Twitter can be ridiculously superfluous, but so are weblogs (for the most part) and yet the cream of the crop tend to take the power of the tool and rise above the average junk. I think the same will happen with Twitter - or continue happening. I just hope they resolve the current issues pretty quickly or the tool is going to be more difficult to use than it is worth.

Technorati Tags: twitter, random, technology

For years, I've been planing on setting up a text-driven version of my websites. I never liked the fact that the design only came out correctly on full-blown laptops or desktops - i.e. something with the screen real-estate to handle a page that scales to a minimum of 800x600. Something occurred to me this morning, though: as long as I provide full rss feeds (where the feed includes the full content of the posts), does it even matter? If someone wants to avoid my design choices (e.g. they don't like my choices of layout and/or color), they can simply read the feeds from the sites and mangle/mash/change it any way they wish (trust me, I wouldn't be insulted). What about handling mobile or custom devices the same way? If I were providing content like a news source or selling items like e-commerce sites, then I guess it would matter whether or not my site was accessible across every imaginable platform. That is not the case, though, and I am doubting that the work would be worth going through (besides the academic exercise in learning how to do it). Anyone else with thoughts or comments?

Sorry - I have a css mess on my hands ;) I'll be back asap...

Update 24 March 2007: Well, the beginnings are done. I'm still working on better navigation and a background image for the header, but I like the plain, clean look. Comment if you don't (now having integrated all three blogs, commenting should finally work and be under a bit of control) or if you have any advice. (By the way, IMing me would be easier.)