TheWayoftheWeb

At a time when I’ve been writing about Mumbai terrorist attacks, and the way that Twitter is providing a place for updates, connections between local residents, and calls for blood donations etc, I’m particularly pleased to have seen some news on how social networking and bloggers may have helped to save the life of a young lady.

A few days back I spotted people on Twitter retweeting messages about the daughter of Twitter user and blogger @domesticdiva, whose was desperately trying to find a kidney donor for her daughter, Marielle. Turns out that after reaching out through Twitter, Facebook, websites and blogs, and ending up on TV news, a contact found via Ebay is likely to be a perfect match.

‘our transplant coordinators say we clogged the phone lines with requests for donor evaluation forms! They have received an unbelievable amount of kidney donor applications for my daughter from all over the world–Africa, Saudi Arabia and every state in the US!”

That really is the power of the network - now how do we find ways to help more people?

I’m looking for the wisdom of MY crowd.

A thought that occurred to me commenting on a Robert Scoble post.

• I use Google Reader because I’ve selected the inputs.
• I get news from the people I’ve selected on Twitter and Friendfeed
• I get personal news from the people I’ve selected on Facebook.
• I don’t use Digg etc as much as I might because it’s the wisdom of a random crowd I haven’t selected.

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.

I’ve just got back from a business event, and meeting some really cool people and hearing about some really cool things. Everyone agreed not to report or blog about any of the topics discussed to allow openess at the event, but I will say that there are loads of great things going on in the near future.

What I can talk about are two of the things that really struck me on my trip home.

1. I really need to kit myself out more effectively for the ‘digital nomad‘ role on trips. I’ve held off getting a smartphone for various reasons, but I’m more and more convinced about how much easier it will make my life. The other tool I’m really interested in is a netbook of some description. Notetaking etc is far more efficient when I can type away on something small and unobtrusive, whether it’s an Asus or one of the netbooks being launched by other manufacturers.

2. Amongst all the cool things happening in the wide world of the web, it’s sometimes easy for me to forget to mention some of the great work I’m involved with. I’ve tended to avoid blogging too much about my day job in detail, because I don’t want things I write to be coloured by whether I’ve had a good or bad day at work, or to refer to things I can’t discuss in full because of business reasons. But at the same time, I definitely want to mention things like Tim on Car Magazine not only encouraging the start of live review blogging from the road test of the new Ferrari California,  but also using Twitter to update with the latest news from the test.

I was out of the office on Friday when the liveblogging began, so I can’t reel off the facts and figures to show whether it drove a huge amount of inbound links or visitors to the site - but what i do know is that it’s a great example of using the most approrpiate tools to convey the excitement and thrill of being a journalist lucky enough to test a Ferrari.