Stop Blogging and Get Back to Work
I’ve been talking to my colleagues about the irony of writing a book about blogging is that I have to stop blogging to get it done. In order to write and not just post and read RSS, I go into the Book Writing Bunker, as I call it. I sequester myself from the scene. The 2.0s, AJAXes, and whatever else Flash has reinvented itself into.
In his post, [Web 2.0: Our Own Little Echo Chamber](http://loosewire.typepad.com/blog/2006/01/web_20_our_own_.html), Jeremy Wagstaff notes how outside of our echo chamber, the world goes on working and finds the Internet and blogs to be a distraction. At the beginning of last year, around [SXSW](http://www.sxsw.com/), I was still complaining about how exactly was [RSS making the world more productive](http://www.texturadesign.com/archives/fear_of_bold.htm) — are 1,555 unread headlines more valuable that scanning the Google news homepage?
Jeremy’s right and from my perspective, to grow business blogging beyond a marketing and conversation tool, it has to become integrated, mission critical, and less time consuming. Our book is focused on practical blogging and part of what we have to explain is how a company is going to prosper from their blog. I’ll talk with Shel and Scoble about that tonight at their [book launch party](http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/party_time.html) and will go back into the Book Writing Bunker on Sunday.
A few more items on the book
* As the publication dates nears, we’ll launch a new blog to support the book
* Shel posted [great advice to authors](http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2006/01/advice_to_new_c.html), including how to find the elusive common voice
* Publish and Prosper is showing up in Google, on [Peachpit's site](http://www.peachpit.com/title/0321395387) and [Amazon.com](http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=as2&path=ASIN/0321395387&tag=texturadesign-20&camp=1789&creative=9325)
{ 3 comments… read them below or add one }
I use a blogroll on my own blog, and a bookmark list, as methods for visiting select blogs.
I don’t need their content pushed at me like an email message, I would rather simply visit a blog, check it’s Recent Posts, maybe dip into an archive category and see what’s there, new or old.
But if I wish to track a specific topic across the blogosphere I have several mechanisms, including Technorati searches and Gmail alerts.
Will RSS formats and delivery options, summaries, graphics excluded, links included, or stripped down, and such variations become standardized into the most popular one or two versions?
Is the syndicated or aggregated blog content delivery system a uniform, diversified, or chaotic set of configurations?
Is reading blog content in a feed reader a different experience from visiting the blog to read the posts? Can a feed reader enable users to read comments? Post comments?
How can we re-conceptualize the blogosphere into its distinct zones and varying capabilities, inclinations, and admittances?
I’m sure there are programmers working on this, but what I’d like to see is an iTunes like application for RSS, where I’ve got smartlists that find me the topics I’m interested in and also graphically represent my feeds, so I can scan them visually and not just headlines. I mean, when I look at 900 headlines in a giant scroll its absolutely not easier, faster, or better than a 3-col layout, newspaper type. NetNewsWire is a great app, but same problem, those headlines get lost, after about 10
Oh how you hit home! As I sit here and enjoy blogging my book that has been written, but not cleaned up and finalized site idle.
Keep the blogs and tips coming.
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