March 14th, 2012 suddenly became a historical day. Historical because of many wrong things would hardcore fans say. Historical because a behemoth joined the modern digital era, say fans of the online period. Historical because the Encyclopaedia Britannica announced that after 244 years the publisher had decided to discontinue its 32-volume printed edition and focus only on its digital properties. A main motivation for the giant, both in weight and in reputation, to switch its focus is the inability to constantly improve offered by a print edition to constantly improve. To operate more like its free, crowdsourced counterpart, Wikipedia. Read more
Category Online
Content Baby. Content, Yes
Now more than 25 years ago I first discovered the Internet. Soon it would start to take a main role in my life. I was only a kid. But from the first day I discovered the Internet I knew this was my thing. Never had I dreamed I would be able to make a living from the online world but today I realise it was an unknown dream.
A dream which became reality.
As a kid I have always been a reader. I would read more than 100 pages per day already when I was only 7 years young. I loved my parents’ Winkler Prins. On rainy days you could find me in my room, on bed with most of the time at least six tomes around me. I was a knowledge leech as kid already. My parents had a Wikipedia without online connection.
I was a reader with an unsatisfied hunger for knowledge. My life seemed complete. Read more
In Which I Have No Clue, Return to My Roots and Turn The Site Red
Blogging on iFranky hasn’t really been a priority in the last 18 months and design was only one of the reasons. The main reason though was because I really didn’t have a clue, not about the focus of the site or about my life.
The time at Emmaus Preston was rather limited and even though I was happy not to have to deal with that board anymore, it has taken me around a year to reorganise and refocus.
Refocus and return to the colours of my roots: Racing White Daring Molenbeek, the first club I played football for.
I am no person who stands still for a long time or will whine about how miserable life is, but as the years slowly accumulated I certainly needed some time.
Know when you’ve achieved something. Don’t settle yet, achieve more!
If there’s one thing you can learn from publishing online, especially in the news sector, it’s that you can’t let complacency set in. You have to grab things by the balls and do what you have to do.
The same applies to dreams, plans. They won’t happen while sitting there, waiting for a miracle. To be happy you have have to pursue your dreams and get active, get of that lazy ass of yours and stop bitching if that was what you were doing. Sometimes you might need a reminder, but when you have been lucky enough that someone woke you up… act! Don’t wait and talk about it, just do it!
Being Lucky Without Even Realizing It
Sometimes you are lucky without even realizing how much people would do to have the same opportunity you had. Today was one of these moments, the light shone on me, but not before I was reminded by Tyme White how lucky I was, after I had announced the acquisition of 9rules by Splashpress Media.
♣ How The Internet (And Blogging) Started
In times when blogging more and more seems to have become a media outlet, it always is nice to see what drove both the internet and blogging initially. Duncan Riley‘s words hit home for everyone who was already there years ago and did not just jump on the _online bandwagon_ in the last years:
KeegsMom
it was a scenario description, but I take your point, getting to even a couple of thousand a month is hard going. If you want to ping me on email duncan at nichenet.com.au I’d be happy to take a look at what you’re currently doing and share some personalized advice if you like. Always happy to help. [Emphasis mine]
Yes, that is right. Initially the internet was built upon helping each other. Whether it was by sharing links to awesome sites/content or by sharing tips and tricks.
And I remember plenty of moments when I hit up people like Duncan or Matt Craven and if they were online, within minutes, you’d have a Skype session with them.
Sometimes I wish the _next big thing_ would start and it would be a mix of the _old garde_ again. Back to the old style, the time when everyone helped each other out.
Hats off Duncan for still keeping up the old spirit!
Internet Fatigue, The Need For An Outlet
Blogging. The epitome of an introverted person enjoying the living spotlights.
The internet the best thing since sliced bread and before The Fifth Element on Blu-Ray.
The will to share, the possibility to share. The ease of sharing.
The eternal chase for that special invite to a closed, private beta. The fear of missing out on the next big thing, only accessing a new service when they launch publicly.
Visualization Graphs for Online Stat Nerds
I’m a geek, I love numbers. And graphs. Little is needed to make an online nerd happy, especially when it involves twitter and last.fm.
Two additional small webapps can make a kid an online geek happy.
LastGraph
LastGraph visualizes your music data, submitted to your last.fm account, in a unique way. Inspired by Lee Byron’s last.fm listening’s history graph the service pulls all (ALL!) your data from audioscrobbler and outputs everything in an awesome StreamGraph. Click image for larger graph (Original graph is 13000px wide).
Twitter StreamGraphs
What would a life be without the same, but for twitter? Exactly.
Worthless.
Twitter StreamGraphs does kinda same… but obviously _is_ restricted by the twitter API restrictions. And can’t be favourited in twitter either. Surprisingly the status of the service does not graph Failwhales or Failbirds.
To Comment or to No Comments Allowed
Since several years already ‘elite bloggers’ have moved to delete comments from their site. The reasons for this are often multiple and include, not limited to, more focus on the content, less (off topic) debate, the difficulty to highlight better commentary and many more.
This week saw another example of a respected blogger justifying his decision to not having comments on his site. Read more