The New Bloggers Dilemma (NBD)

In the fast paced world of blogging, just like nascar you build a following and hold on to them. If you don't you fall to the wayside and wither away. There are a lot of people who claim you should not promote your own website or submit your own stories to digg. The majority of those people have fallen to the wayside and are withering away. Promote your website, it is not SPAM, it is something you have worked hard to produce. Let quality determine if you succeed.
The new bloggers dilemma (NBD) is a catch 22. Those without exposure will not have a user base. However to get exposure you need a user base. You also need to provide quality content to retain a following. Again you need a following to ensure your content is quality. The last statement is a bit counterintuitive, so I will restate it. Having a consistent user base will offer contructive critisim on those thing which are good and bad, which will help create high quality posting and insights. This does not mean let everyone else hijack your site and opinions. It does however, allow you to gear your grammar, layout, and topics to those who use your site regularly. This in turn allows them to point others with the same interest to your site, which expands your user base.
The second NBD is what do you talk about. Talk about everything and anything, screw niche blogs. If you find one you love, great, one thats not over run with established persons, even better. But as a whole people have many interests and many subjects they know something about, talk about them. There is alot of expertise languishing in the minds of people who only write about one topic. IT WANTS TO BE FREE, so let it go!

2.0? Whats next?

The internet has had a birthday! Apparently the web turned 2.0 at some point in time and everyone decided it was time to party. So, interactive web pages, fully customizable profiles, and more ways to stay connected than you can keep track of, are now running rampant. Its all about the user experience and user generated content. Wait a minute! You mean to tell me that 2.0 is the greatest thing since well the internet? No, this can't be right. I have a theory.... Bare with me for a moment.
During the early days of the internet, the whole motif was information quickly. The problem was the user had no way of interacting with the expert. It was a single sided conversation, a lecture if you will. The exception being in newsgroups. And to be quite frank most websites then looked like crap, no curb appeal.
Then the internet hit its teenage years where everyone became an expert. More people had ways of sharing their own expertise. The problem was still in the interaction, It was limited. People could have real conversations through Irc, chat, and Instant messaging. The problem there was SPAM. Web design took a good look at itself and began to improve. The big problem was Everyone being an expert always said they could do it better.
So, now we have v2.0!!! Where do I start...

MySpace, FaceBook, and a slew of others. You said " I can design a better site than that." v2.0 says "You said you can design a better site, prove it."

Twitter, pownce, and a whole host of others. You said "Chat rooms have too much spam and bots." v2.0 said "I will block everyone to start, you unblock whoever you want." follow= unblock :)

Finally you said no interaction. v2.0 said "You asked for it!" Blogs, comments, twitter, qik, forums, wiki's, texting, expo's, and a vast array of way to get in contact or talk to whoever you want , wherever you want, how ever you want.

To be honest I know what the next step is in web evolution. its not 3 its 2.1.
2.1 differs from 2.0 in the how information is presented. v2.0 says you can create whatever you want and make it look how you want, but you have no control over how everything else is presented to you.
v2.1 changes that. User created content ,such as blogs, are transformed into simple text, link, and picture formats. The format and templates are defined by the end user not the creator.
This is the next natural solution, the information is then passed on more efficiently. As the end user I don't have to worry about your color choices or layout or template. I define them so information exchange is improved. If I don't like the choices then I can change them.

Twitter. What?

Twitter is a microblogging utility that lets you share little bits of information about whatever you want. Period.

I have been using it for a few months now and I have found it to be one of the easiest ways to keep informed and to de-stress. Twitter doesn't want a lengthy blog post or even something that has been researched and proofread. It wants to know one thing "What are you doing?" at least that is how it started. Now you can have conversations, polls, links, and opinions on virtually any topic that interests you. So you like underwater kniting of three toed socks, big deal someone will probably be interested in what you are doing. Or you might see someone who posts about the inner workings of lawn gnomes. Its all about you. It doesn't matter what when who or how, as long as its shorter than 140 characters.

Why 140? Too be honest I have no clue but it helps get to the meat real quick, no extranious words or flowery sentence structures. Its more of a get to the point quickly application. Twitter also lets you peruse alot at one time without getting too involved. For example say I like robots, linux, gardening, stocks, and music. Now where would I go to find out about all these things in one place? Twitter, I just choose to follow people who like gardening and some who like robots and some who like the same kind of music. Then anything they come across in any of those fields they share and I get to see what they do. I also get to know them a little better and they feel more like a person to me not just a website that wants to make money.
In effect I get to read about others who have the same interests I do, learn about different parts of the world, learn about people whom I have never met (and maybe become friends), read about things that interest me (from places that I may have never looked), get introduced to related topics and unrelated that I might possibly enjoy, all in 140 characters or less which takes about 10 seconds to write.

New robot projects. Coming Soon!!!

After building my rudimentry BUGbot last weekend, I find I can not stop looking for more projects to build. I think I may have single handedly increased the ranking of the keywords: Robot and robotics. Since I was looking for some pretty specific things and ideas to see if they had been published. I went over a lot of sites with a fine tooth comb, and certain places seemed to have a very good reputation. So I have included links to them in the bottom of the post.

Although I was looking for a very specific project to build (which I didn't quite find), I found a few other projects that looked like a lot of fun. These projects have pretty detailed instructions and have been built by a lot of people, I intend to do them with the help of my girlfriend and her two children, which I think will help them as an introduction. As I said they are well documented so any problems we run into should be pretty easy to solve and we have something to show for it after a few hours worth of work (important for small children). Ok, ok, and me too.

Now the first robot we built was the BUGbot which is here. For the second robot, I was thinking of the Sandwich robot created by David Cook. Which unfortunately means I have to buy his book Robot Building for Beginers, but I'm a good sport so I'll pick up his other book, Intemediate Robot Building, also. David Cook also hosts Robotroom.com, and that is where I saw his Sandwich robots to begin with.

Another place where I found the $40 and $50 robots was societyofrobots.com. Both have step by step tutorials online as well as parts lists. I almost decided to do these two before attempting Sandwich, but decided that I could probably learn a few things when I read the aforementioned books, and since I am going to buy them anyway, I figured I might as well read them too.

Now the other project I want to build is the Twittering Plants project. It can be found here at the Botanicalls.com. This project seems like alot of fun because it will, hopefully allow my plants to live longer and provide a voice to an inanimate object. I figure if I can actually get this one too work then the possibilities are endless. This one uses Twitter. If you have twitter you can follow me here.
Well now that I have a bit of an outline. I will post more as I begin and during these projects.

See you then.

Recomended Parts suppliers:
sparkfun.com
digikey.com
mouserelectronics.com
robotpower.com

More robot links:
robots.freehostia.com
mcmanis.com/chuck/robotics/tutorial
tedlarson.com
tlb.org/scooter.html
ridgesoft.com/articles/balancebot/buildingabalancingrobot.pdf
teamhassenplug.org/robots/legway
ben.jellybaby.net
geology.smu.edu/~dpa-www/robo/nbot

10 reasons not to blog

1. People don’t want know what is going on in your pathetic life. Unless it’s truly miserable, then they will ridicule you and your blog will be famous.

2. It is too much work, and you are lazy. So instead you should sit on your couch and play Xbox and call people n00bs.

3. The only person who cares, about what your cat did or what you saw today, already left you for someone who didn’t play on the interwebs so much.

4. When you say “PHP, SQL, AJAX, LAMP, Digg, Twitter, or blog.” All I hear is “Blah, blah blah.” If you say myspace. I am all ears.

5. Instead of blogging get back to work. We don’t pay you to write nonsense about your cat.

6. Blog like everything else in your life. Tomorrow.

7. You don’t even know how to use your phone, why would you try learning this?

8. Just because everyone else is doing it, means all the good topics are taken.

9. If it sounded like a good idea than you are doomed to fail at it.

10. Blogging means you will forget about your family and shave your head bald, like a cult

New To Technology

I'm new to the whole Blogging concept. This is my disclaimer, by the way.

First a little about my situation. In the past two months I have begun to try getting "up to speed" with the technological advances in the internet. And let me tell you its no easy task. I first began with Myspace, yes thats right I still use it. I have found alot of people despise Myspace, let me tell you it is by far the best introduction I could have asked for in terms of sheer help. Most would say they hate this or that about it, I say how many people whom are for all intents and purposes computer illiterate, can log onto myspace, change backgrounds, add music, and change pictures. People whom you would never be able to get in contact with otherwise people from high school or from your home town. Now again in not saying Myspace is the greatest thing since sliced bread, but how many casual users are going to switch networking sites just because a new one comes along. They will not, period. Once the new site becomes the social standard then they will look into it, but not before.
Now the next thing I actively looked into was Twitter. I found out about it through Newsweek, of all places. At first, I was not impressed by any means. And I spent alot of time on the public timeline. All i did was add people who seemed funny, or said something that interested me. Slowly as the amount of people I followed grew, I began to glimpse other sites that could keep me more informed. I was also introduced to things that I had never heard of. Wikipedia became my friend. HTML, PHP, Blog, Technorati, Digg, Geocache, Linux, Unix, and many many others, I had to learn what these were so that I could ask what to do with them. It was very frustrating. Luckily there were those who were kind enough to help a little even just in passing. Even now just trying to see if i can post a blog and if it suits me, I am scared. I have no real experience doing it and I am not a expert on any subject matter. So all i can do is try and read alot more.