TheWayoftheWeb

Back in April, when I moved to Wordpress from my old Blogger home, I also started up a new blog, 140Char, to focus on microblogging, and Twitter in particular.

When I started it, it was partly due to the fact I seemed to be writing more about microblogging than marketing, and I hoped to enlist a few contributors to focus on the topic in one place.

Now nine months later it’s grown to a reasonable size, and is about equalling this blog in terms of traffic, but it’s essentially an additional solo project – and running two blogs in addition to my day job and my family has made me start to wonder whether it’s the most efficient way to work.

So I’d like to know whether as a reader here, you also visit/subscribe to 140Char, and whether you’d rather see microblogging covered here, rather than in a seperate location?

Or do you, in fact, prefer what I’m doing over there? If given the choice, which would you rather see me concentrate on?

(I’m not suggesting I’m about to drop either blog – I really enjoy doing both, but I really want to get an idea of what you think. Incidentally, if you’d be interested in guest posting, or collaborating on either blog, let me know!)

Just to end off the day, here’s some stuff that caught my eye from my Google Shared Items page.

Interesting interview on Venturebeat with futurist Paul Staffo. It’s about the 40th Anniversary of Doug Engelbart’s demonstration fo the first computer mouse (among other revolutionary ideas). And it’s got some great quotable ideas:

For instance, on why the mouse has lasted 40 years: ‘I hadn’t thought about it. There is an intrinsic conservatism behind our media devices. They last a lot longer than we think they ever will, once they are accepted.’

Or on what visionaries should do today: Someone like Doug would be working on exactly what he was working on in the 1960s. He didn’t set out to invent a mouse or a display for editing. His goal was to augment human intellect in the service of giving human beings tools that were the equal of the growing challenges humans were facing.

And it turns out Doug Engelbrat is still pursuing his goal today with the Doug Engelbart Institute.

From Gigom came the news: Brits get broadband bill of rights. It’s from Ofcom, and although it’s only a basic code, at least it’s a start. Now can someone please find a way to get cheap 20Mb+ broadband to every house in the UK, for an incredibly low cost so we can kickstart innovation and industry for the coming 100 years?

Tim Windsor references Martin Langeveld in writing about how ‘What it means to transform to a Digital Enterprise‘ – specifically if you’ve been putting daily news on dead trees for a while.

And in the midst of rolling out Google Friend Connect, a redesign for Youtube, a redesign for Google Reader, cutting back on data center investment, and killing Lively, it’s good to see someone is still pursuing the important things at Google. Such as tracking the eternal battle between pirates and ninjas.

My favourite piece of data?

Top Queries of 2008 related to “Ninjas Are…”

1. ninjas are there
2. ninjas are everywhere
3. ninjas are better
4. ninjas are awesome
5. ninjas are sexy

Oh, and I don’t think I’ve done my usual cross promotion – my first report on the response to using Magpie advertising on my Twitter accounts is online over at www.140char.com, along with a review and interview with the man behind Twilert – a monitoring service for Twitter similar to Google Alerts.

Being recognised on lists and rankings isn’t the main aim of my blogging – but not only can it be a nice validation and boost, but it can help with my main purpose – sharing ideas and conversations, and making new connections.

So it was great to get an email earlier today to say that I now have three listings on popular topic aggregator site Alltop.

TheWayoftheWeb has made in into the Social Media listings: http://socialmedia.alltop.com/

140Char has made it into the Twitter listings: http://twitter.alltop.com/

And most shockingly, I’ve made it into the Twitterati listings: http://twitterati.alltop.com/

I’m in some quite impressive company in each of those cases, which is great. And if just a few people happen to scroll down and end up visiting me and connecting in some way with one of my ideas, or they comment on a post etc, then I’ll be even happier!

Lake Finja by dandownunder on Flickr (CC licence)

The news is probably somewhat underwhelming, but I’m going to have limited internet access, if any, for the next 7-10 days. I didn’t want you anyone thinking I’d given up or vanished! It’s come at a good time as I’m re-evaluating the purpose of www.140char.com to offer something which is unqiue and complimentary to other microblogging sites, and how I best use the spare time I have to keep both sites running when I’m happily getting involved in more and more at my day job.

The good news is that I’ve had a chat about getting some guest posts on here and possibly 140char over the next week from someone new to actually creating blog content, if not to the internet, journalism, or multimedia. My good friend and colleague Angus Farquhar (his tumblelog) has said he’ll try to write a few things, and hopefully by calling him out publicly, it’ll mean he has to do it!

He’s a specialist in video production, having shot 100s of videos for Motorcycle News (Look at the honours on Youtube, man), including the ill-fated MCN Daily News show, started with yours truly. So if you have video queries, from webcams and Qik to professional set-ups, now’s the time to get them in the comments and get a response.

But in return, I’d like to ask a couple of things of the wonderful people who read, comment, converse, share, digg, stumble and interact in any other way with the content I throw out into the world.

Firstly, I’d really appreciate it if you’d show some love for Angus’s posts. He might be a paid journalist and great video specialist who observes my blogging efforts with interest, but I’d love for him to experience even 1/100th of the great interactions and comments I’ve been lucky enough to have.

Secondly, if you like this blog even just a little bit, but have comments, ideas, thoughts, offers of help, or you’ve spotted 100 typos and want me to get a dictionary, it would be a great time to get ideas and suggestions for improvements to here and www.140char.com. Although I might be offline for a bit, I will have a couple of days when I can sit down and think about what I’m doing here, and how I can improve. The best way to reach me is thewayoftheweb at googlemail dot com.

I’d be really interested in anyone also asking questions, or suggesting topics/sites/industries/things they’d like me to cover?

And if you want something to read in the meantime, a kind person has not only compiled a great short paper on Twitter (probably the best and most comprehensive guide yet!), but also referenced 140char in it. More details here.