Positively Glorious!

Kyle Ritter, of Barfly Magazine has taken it upon himself to resurrect the ORBlogs aggregator in an effort called Ignoregon. Jack Bog broke the story faster than I and Kyle were prepared, so I wrote a quick post on the ORBlogs blog with the details. Check it out!

Not really sure the scoop, but with Twitter closed, I had a minute to at least spout off half cocked about what’s going on.

Within a half hour of setting up my new Chi.mp account, Twitter failed- and the Fail Whale was no where to be found. Instead, when logging into the Twitter website, I was greeted with this:

Production-Staging Access – Employees Only?” What’s this? Not something that I would expect to replace the cute whale.

When I (of course) failed this request, I was greeted with a 401 error.

Now, I’m not one for “research” or “patience” so I’ll just spout off half cocked and say the first thing that pops into my head.

Did Chi.mp hijack Twitter?!! Is it a coincidence that this happened just as chi.mp came up?

Or, something even more nefarious, perhaps??

Maybe THIS is what John McCain postponed his campaigning for! He’s not deathly ill at all! He’s cracking into Twitter to ruin all of our “screwing off” time! This is his big plan for fixing the economy!

John McCain wants us all to ACTUALLY WORK!

AAAHHHHHHH!

Google's new rival

Or Cuil, as the case may be.

Looks like Google may have competition on search front.

The question: Can a few ex-Googlers and something like $33 million kick-start a rival to Google?

Given that Anna Patterson, the internet’s foremost search engine rockstar, is on the case, that is very likely. Of course, even with $33 million dollars, Cuil is the equivalent of a tiny little yappy dog who’s trying to punk off some enormous American Bulldog. Continue Reading »

After being up for over a week, I thought that it would be a good idea to announce here that there is a blog about ORBlogs over at http://blog.orblogs.org. That is all.

Paul is one of those people who you talk to and just feel thoughtfulness flowing off of him.

I learned a lot of important lessons during my talk with Paul Bausch about ORBlogs. I wanted to get a feeling for how he felt about the current excitement, and about the possibilities for the future. Most of all I wanted to make sure that the excitement wasn’t getting out of hand to him, and if he wanted to be involved in anyway.

I don’t know what I really expected from our talk, but I got a whole lot more regardless.  Paul is one of those people who you talk to and just feel thoughtfulness flowing off of him. It’s in the very cadence of his speech. The thoughtful pauses that proceed each slow, measured reply tell you one thing: You got a lot to learn from this man. Pay attention.

Lesson #0: I may not be cut out to help ORBlogs

First thing’s first. Admitting you have a problem is the first step in beating it, so I guess I’ll come right out and say it: I talked with Paul about 24 hours ago!

I know, I know! You’re thinking:

“24 hours!? My god man, Twitter could have gone down, like,  16 times in 24 hours! What the hell were you doing in all that time?”

It’s crazy. You’ll never believe it. You see, unlike a Real Blogger, I made the selfish choice to go to sleep when my eyes were closing of their own free will. Again, I know what you’re thinking:

“Wait a minute, let me get this straight, you’re saying that you didn’t blog because you were tired? WTF? I mean, a power failure I could forgive, but fatigue? Geez man, what the hell do they make coffee for anyway?!”

I do realize that this raises serious concerns about my ability to help with ORBlogs. Look, all I can say is that I’ll try not to let it happen again. We all make mistakes, and I’m sorry. I’ll go to counselling, I’ll take the baby steps. I’ll do the hard work!

I hope we can work through this.

Lesson #1: Paul Truely Loves ORBlogs

Paul didn’t kill ORBlogs because he didn’t like it anymore, or even because he was ambililent to it. Paul stepped out because he loved it.

First thing I should mention is that he seemed really touched at the outpouring of emotion and excitement at the prospect of helping. He had a lot of note of encouragement and the fact that we, the blogging community, were contacting him means a lot. He told me that he’d do what he can to help us, because he still believes in the idea, but when I ask him whether he would want to stay involved, or help lead ORBlogs2.0, he declined. For the best reason ever.

I think it would be better for someone with fresh and new ideas to take it over.

You know someone loves something when they built it from the ground up, know it inside out, have lived eaten and breathed it for 5 years, and still want to turn it over because they think someone else might be better able to run it. Paul’s reason for not wanting to be involved is that he was burnt out and a bit cynical about the site and so he “thought it would be better for someone with fresh and new ideas to take it over.”

So, Paul is officially out, but it’s not because he wants the site to die out or fade. He is out because, by his own account, ORBlogs was fading out. The user stats were dwindling, the commitment was waning. People would soon be going to a site that was more frustrating than functional. To put it bluntly, Paul felt it best to put the horse out of it’s misery quickly than to let it writhe. It seems as though it was a long and very difficult choice, but one he had to make, and one that should be celebrated both for its wisdom and it’s strength.

Lesson #2: Not All Code Is Poetry

The second important thing that came out of our talk is that we are on our own with code. That, he convinced me right off, is a good thing.

Listening to his description of the codebase made me suddenly have vivid visions of eyeballs and needles

I know that some of you will be thinking “Come on, you can give us something!” But I have to agree with Paul on this on. Maybe he was just saying it this way so I’d stop nagging him, but listening to Paul’s description of the codebase made me suddenly have vivid visions of eyeballs and needles.

So be it, he doesn’t want that to go out to the world. From his description, I can’t say I blame him. I like my eyes without the needles. We need to build the site from the ground up, Netscape style. Fine. No worries. We’ve got his database schema and momentum from the community. This is an opportunity, not an obstacle. More on the codebase issue to come in a later post.

So, there’s a description of the code, schema, et al. that we can use. Development server is on it’s way, but nothing’s stopping you from fiddling locally. Have at it.

Lesson #3: Commercial Blogs Suck

Okay, maybe that’s a little strong and not really so accurate either. After all, Positively Glorious! started as a commercial site- at least as a site that was mainly a development testbed for a wannabe commercial product that is, without hyperbole, the coolest thing anyone has ever seen, ever- regardless of the fact that those angel-types don’t want to give me gobs of money merely because I don’t have a shred of marketing data! As if numbers and facts can illustrate the awesome power of this fully operational Death Star!

Oh… Eh hem. Sorry, got a bit carried away there. Where was I? Oh, Commercial.

Strickly commercial blogs can likely suck our will to live, and walk away like happy little vampires.

You see the thing is. When you have a site that’s super cool and people go to, it becomes a marketing bananza. Paul was apparently getting slammed by pointless commercial websites who saw slick How-To videos by Troy McLure like “How to market your pointless commercial website,” and “ORBlogs! Get a sucker to do your work for free!”

Seriously, by his own words, he felt as though commercial sites were actually making money on his work. Wedding photographers, real estate agents, you name it. He made them easy to find, and they paid 0.0 red cents for the backend coding and individualized customer service. Cynical? Yeah, I’d be cynical. Heck, I already am, and I haven’t even done anything!

So, a lesson here is that strickly commercial blogs can likely suck our will to live, and walk away like happy little vampires without a Buffy in sight.

Lesson #pi: Look to Aggregation at Multiple Levels

One notable thing Paul brought up is that he was happy to see a Portland blog aggregator forming. In his original idea, Paul imagined aggregators at multiple levels. One for Oregon, then multiple ones at the city level, neighborhood level, etc. This is something to think about- especially when super sensitive people like me get all whiny and pouty about PDX bloggers being so numerous. We should consider the possibility of pdx.orblogs, etc.

Lesson #4: One-Ended Candles Are “A Good Thing”

Paul’s final piece of advice was probably the most important. To put it bluntly, don’t burn both ends of the candle. It was evident throughout the conversation that he was just dog tired of everything that had happened.

Make sure there’s more than one person working it, So they don’t get burnt out like I did.

There’s a lot of coding and a lot of management that we’re in for. That suggestion that we need to take seriously. Luckily, the community is already taking his advice. There’s already an @ORBlogs Twitter account manned by one person, regular community shout-outs and rallying by at Silicon Florist, a server coming online sponsored by Louis & Clark, an email listserv complete with an RSS feed, and a development site on Google Groups. The community is out en masse, join us!

The Finale

There were a few other lessons learned. Non-standard formatting is a pain, aggragation across topics is a pain, etc. Most of these will come out as development proceeds. As for the domain name: Once again, in his measured cadence he grudgingly noted that the domain is very connected with him and his name right now, so there’d be problems both ways in giving it up. Once again, I agree with him.

Given that response, I felt pretty stupid about registering ORBlogs.org, and asked him if he wanted me to take it offline immediately, which is the least I could offer. He noted that there could be a problem of dilution with ORBlogs popping up everywhere. That said, he didn’t see a problem with orblogs.org being the home of the new site. I told him that if he discovered it was a problem, let me know and we’ll take it down and work around it.

Paul has done something amazing. He deserves our thanks and appreciation. It’s our turn, now, to get moving.

ORBlogs is dead! Long-live ORBlogs!

Man, nothing has fired me up like this for years. I’m riding the crest of the excitement wave for community building and seeing the vision of the possibilities for ORBlogs!

Can you believe anyone would be so presumptuous as to register ORBlogs.org and just assume that people would accept it?

I did.

I’m sorry, I’ve been feeling dizzy lately. I must’ve slipped.

Barely enough time to eat lunch- but there’s enough time to get a quick and dirty wiki going as a place that people can post desires, specs, thoughts, offers of help, etc. I’m paying for that server, might as well use it.

It’s not a replacement for ORBlogs.com. It’s a place to discuss rebuilding ORBlogs.com. It’s a wiki. The idea is that we can get software specifications, organizational structure, and general feelings about other aspects of the site and the community. Make it what you will.

Yes, it’s a crappy site right now. I did it over my lunch break- and I had to save enough time to steal the ORBlogs Twitter account too. That’s just a placeholder because whomever takes over ORBlogs is certainly going to need it.

If everyone hashes everything out tonight over beers and doesn’t need the wiki, that’s fine.  The $10 is less than I would’ve spent on beers anyway. I just thought it would help.

If it’s useful, I’ll be back next week to build something more substantial- and appropriate. With user accounts because The SPAMmers are undoubtedly on their way.

Pingbacks and shout outs for blogs covering the issue:

• Silicon Florist
• METBlogs
• TechnoEarthMama
• KXL
• KATU
• OregonLive

And I’ve already got my first idea for an ORBlog specification- in the form of a plugin/widget. We need better inter-site connectivity and easier linking.

I spent all last night trying to sleep and found myself instead thinking about what we can do to save ORBlogs. This sort of thing always makes my wife happy, because it’s just not challenging enough if I don’t toss and turn all night! It was interesting to wake up, and find that Jeff Martens had similar thoughts, and an equally difficult time sleeping. He posted them on The Silicon Florist. This morning there are even more blog posts and even KATU has weighed in on the matter.

I’d thought I’d add more of my thoughts to my previous post, hopefully in time that they are processed before the Beer&Blogs meeting tonight- which I can’t make.

Step 0: The Scoop

For those not quite up to The Speed of Twitter- or those lucky/smart enough to have been sleeping last night- ORBlogs, Paul Bausch underappreciated beauty for the last 5 years, is closing down. Read The Statement for more details. You can also hop over to the FriendFeed page started by J-P Voillequé and check out ORBlogs search results on Twitter.

Step 1: Talk with Paul

As a first thought, I think we all need to get together with Paul, whether in person or virtually (for those Oregonians who don’t live in PDX- Remember us?). This would be merely to thank him, if it comes to that, but mostly to see what his thoughts are on the matter. He’s been the man, alone, for 5 years and none of us really have any right- me least of all- to spout off about the future without his input.

If we’re going to rally funds and offer someone a Job, Paul should be candidate #1.

The other, most important reason for meeting with Paul is that there’s a lot of talk about other people carrying the torch of ORBlogs. I’m one of them, so I’m not saying that it’s a bad thing. I do feel, however, that if we are all going to finally Cowboy Up, and if that involves us getting some real-ish funding for a site manager, that Paul should be the person who gets this funding. If anyone is going to be offered the job of ORBlogs Admin, Paul should be candidate #1.

That is, if he wants the job. I’ve been in his position before, and there comes a time when even the prospect of glory doesn’t surpass the fatigue of battle. Paul might just want to end, and he might even be at the point where he couldn’t care less about the future of the site. I don’t blame him if he does, and wouldn’t qwell my admiration.

Looking at Twitter, I realize that mail server is probably crashing right now, so I wouldn’t necessarily recommend sending him Yet Another WTF Message, but we should be responsive when he chimes in.

Step 2: Find a Point Person, Now

If Paul can no longer devote the time, or doesn’t want to be a person. It’s absolutely critical that we get a point person on this. I’ve seen scores of similar endeavors fail because “everyone could help.” There’s got to be someone who’s willing to take the responsibility and the risk associated with working with this- and at this point, both of those are likely to be more than Paul himself took on. Why? Because there are suddenly a couple hundred people needing management- interest is a double-edged sword.

ORBlogs needs someone, now, to work towards organizing it and getting it back live.

ORBlogs needs someone, now, to work towards organizing it and getting it back live. That someone will be unpaid, do a ton of work, get little, if any credit, then probably have to hand over the reigns to The Oregonian at some point with little more than a “Thanks for your cooperation.” Yeah, it sucks as an outlook, and it might not be the case, but it’s what’s likely.

So, here goes. I’ll do it. There are probably others who will too, but I’m formerly offering. I’m willing to take that risk.

Perhaps there should be a meeting place for other knee-jerk idiots like me to gather, so that we’re all in one place and can hash out who’s actually willing to be so stupid.

Step 2b: Make a Panel

Of course, I’m not exactly qualified to choose myself. There should be some sort of vetting process. The community is not structured enough yet, but there are names like Rick Turoczy that have enough history in the community to be a leader. A few people like him should get together and vet out this point person- mainly to make sure they are not a flake. It’s not a perfect solution, admittedly, but it’s a combat-tested approach that works. You get a couple of strong people with guns (reputations in this case) to say “He’s the new leader,” and I guarantee you that the majority of the people around you will say “You know, I was just thinking that he’d be a good leader!”

Whether it’s me or someone else, we need someon to stop The Buck. Seriously, I’ve tried it with the “Let’s all do everything” approach, and it always breaks down. Something bad happens and everyone suddenly finds their feet tremendously interesting. If there’s no responsibility, there’s no responsibility. Period.

Step 3: Get it Back Online

As Jeff Martens said, this is a critical first step for us. It may even be critical enough to skip Step 2, but I’d caution about headless leadership in an untested community. We’ve got people who’ve offered their servers, we’ve got Paul’s code. It would be trivial to get it back up and running at least at a state where it is functional-if-static.

All of the previous steps could be done within days, if The Speed of Twitter is any gauge.

Step 4: Market It, Seriously

None of us want to believe it. We all want to think that the programming alone will do the job, but ORBlogs needs to be marketed- Period. It’d be best if we can do it as lo-key and as simply as possible. K.I.S.S. is definitely our friend on this one. Here are a couple simple ways.

Linkbacks

Linkbacks are a pretty subtle and accepted way to give credit and kudos, and I think we should use them more. I first found out about ORBlogs because I saw the sweet, tiny little image on Silicon Florist’s sidebar. Is it too much to ask that a site link back? Here are some thoughts.

I found out about ORBlogs because I saw the sweet, tiny little image on Silicon Florist’s sidebar.

• Require a Linkback: One way is to require all blogs listed in the directory to link back to ORBlogs. A bit ham-fisted, perhaps, but useful. Even if it’s not required, it should be considered bad form to not link back.
• Improved Linkbacks: Positively Glorious! has a rotating headings banner that links through Feedburner. Lots of us have Feedburner accounts to manage blog stats. What I’ve speced out is a Feedburner-like image that links through ORBlogs. We could then compile local stats and feeds, while allowing people to maintain their Feedburner, or other stats. Sounds complicated, but it should be fairly trivial to code up.
• Improved Graphics: Personally, I think it’d be pretty cool to have an Oregon-shaped banner rotating my headlines- that would grab attention.

Funding

Yeah, I don’t want to talk about it either, but funding is key. Here’s something I thought of and posted during last night’s fray. What if there were a Blog2Blog funding campaign. I’m not into adds on my site, and I’m sure most people are with me on that. What if there were a way to do subtle and/or appropriate ad banners on blogs where the proceeds go to running ORBLogs? No-one except Google is making real money on these ads anyway, but the collective accounting could be enough. I’d work with that.

There’s one major problem with ad-based funding. In a word: Google.

One problem with ad-based funding… In a word: Google. It would be best if there were a non-Adwords, Oregon-centric way to create and distribute marketing. I don’t really care to advertise for some company in Arizona if I can post an ad for South Bank Kitchen and keep things local to Oregon. This may not be possible right now- but perhaps we can work through The Oregonian and other corporations to make it work.

Subscriptions

This is something that I think we should explore as a last resort. It would probably work, but it would have to be a seriously value-added site for me to be willing to pay to include Positively Glorious!. I’m not saying that as a part of the community, I’m saying that from the perspective of a blogger who’s just hit the scene. There has to be a lot of value to the service- and we have to provide an actual service- if people are going to pay.

Research

We need focused research in two areas that I can see. Funding sources/opportunities and scalability.

1. Steve Woodward of The Oregonian was in the middle of the Twitter discussion, and The O might get involved, but it shouldn’t stop- or necessarily be centered- there. There are a multitude of different venues that should be explored, not the least of which are the smaller regional media outlets. I’m in the middle of setting up a meeting with Hood River News on the very matter of BlogSpace and Internet Presence (I’m partial to Hood River, as you might notice). We shouldn’t ignore such possibilities.
2. Someone- again, this goes back to responsibility and management- should be actively searching for new blogs. Ideally, I wouldn’t have been able to have Positively Glorious! unlisted for these past two months, because the ORBlogs team/person would have hunted me down. We should respect people’s desire to not list; however, the value of ORBlogs would be in it’s being the central clearinghouse for blogs, so we need to find them and make the “clearinghouse” part be valuable enough.

Step 4: Back to Management

Having funding, improved research, and sweet looking linkbacks that are so cool that they make your grandmother want to start a blog just so that she can have the right to get the banner, we need to go back to management. We need someone to stop The Buck. It won’t work otherwise.

Accountability and responsibility need to be fundamental. This is easiest if someone is getting a paycheck.

An optimal system is someone paid, perhaps through, if not necessarily by, a larger institution such as The O. This would make the position responsible and accountable. The O, or anyone really, needn’t own or take responsibility of the site- partnerships and sponsorships could work. However, accountability and responsibility need to be fundamental. This is easiest if someone is getting a paycheck, and easier if that paycheck is from someone with the clout to give them the boot if they flake out.

Step n+1: Coding

This is where most of us get excited, so I won’t even say anything. As a programmer, I know that many of us have ideas about coding. Making it better is something that we can all get excited about. This is a double-edged sword and where leadership is necessary. That’s all I’ll say on that matter.

Disclaimer

Zeroth, I’m an ass. I’m an ass, you’re an ass, we’re all asses because we’ve taken something for granted, given little credit where it was due, and now- possibly due to guilt alone in some cases- feel like we need to do something. Don’t try to get out of this ass-ness, either. With notable exceptions like Rick Turoczy- we’ve all been doing our own thing, thinking that ORBlogs was going to hang around forever. I’m an ass, Paul, and I’m sorry I was. You deserve at least that much of an apology.

Firstly, let me freely admit that I have no more right giving advice on this matter than anyone else. Positively Glorious! Is not even listed with ORBlogs, both because it’s so new, and because it started as more of a business exercise than a personal blog (It’s personaly now, but that’s a recent change). Those are both reasons that I had chosen not to list it. However, as a programmer, blogger, and dedicated Oregonian, I do feel that I have just as much right as anyone to speak up. Community is only what we make it.

It is ORBlogs, not PDXBlogs, right?

Secondly, I’ll leave out the CV and merely say that many of us are qualified to do a lot, and not all of us live in Portland. It is ORBlogs, not PDXBlogs, right? Many of us coming out of the woods on this are just friends who haven’t met yet.

Thirdly, like a lot of people who’ve spoken up, I’m willing to put my time and money where my mouth is. If we had something together that can pay my mortgage, I’d quit my job tomorrow to make this shine. As I said before, that’s a risk I’m willing to take. Because I believe in this.

Every once in a while I’m reminded of the saying “You don’t know what you’ve got until it’s gone.” That’s certainly the case tonight.

Silicon Florist twittered that ORBlogs, the site for blogs about Oregon, is shutting it’s doors. Paul Bausch wrote a statement on the main page that it’s more than a hobby, but doesn’t pay enough for a job. I understand that- I have a number of my own pursuits that are similar.

Oregon Blogs is a small, under-appreciated resource that many of us used more than we realized. We won’t know what we’re missing until it’s gone. Positively Glorious!, being so short in the tooth, isn’t even listed yet (In support of the concept, I didn’t want to list until I knew it would last).

I’m up front with Rick in noting that this shouldn’t just die. We’ve taken Paul for granted for 5 years.  Its time for us to cowboy up. What can we do?

In a word: Work.

I’m heading over to Twitter and Silicon Florist to see what I can do. It’s time to roll up my shirt sleeves and get dirty. Are you willing to join me?

After getting Positively Glorious! up and running, I stumbled on to a new theme- and it’s the stuff of dreams.

Not much to write on this, because I need to spend the time to finish the change over. Also because I’m basically using this post as a test of the features anyway.

There are a couple of notable things. One is images. Working with images is a bit more difficult than with other themes I’ve tried. It turns out that the use of custom fields is something I’d not gotten in the habit of, and so it was somewhat unintuitive. Also, I found that the featured item image was not as I liked it. So I had to change that.

I like the frontpage layout similar to that on The Coveted, a site that I’ve become strangely addicted to.Over all, I like the frontpage layout similar to that on The Coveted, a site that I saw as an example of The Morning After, and which- despite my lack of fashion (I wear hawaiian shirts and shorts/jeans pretty much exclusively)- I’ve become strangely addicted to. The only thing I can think of is that I like the imagery, and so I wanted to have a similar feel.

The small “Featured Item” image (64×64) was not enough, so I changed the code so that there was only one directory hit for both “latest” and “featured” and then changed the “featured” image size to 440×164. Since I plan on making a 470x175px  image for the latest posts, any featured posts will automatically get an image that fits in the smaller “Featured” space below. I also changed the number of latest and featured items to 2 and 3, rather than the default one.

By the way, I notice there isn’t a pull-quote in the CSS (At least not one that I’ve found right away). If you’re interested, here’s the CSS I use for mine- along with TinyMCE Advanced:

.pull_right {
width: 200px;
margin: 5px 0 5px 15px;
padding: 5px 0;
border-bottom: 5px double #286ea0;
border-top: 10px solid #286ea0;
border-width: 3px 0;
font-size: 1.5em;
font-weight: bold;
font-style: italic;
text-align: left;
float: right;
letter-spacing: 1px;
}

Just change the left/right aligns and floats for a .pull_left style. Put it into style.css and TinyMCE Advanced will pick it up automatically.

Overall, I’m just thrilled with the layout and design. It makes Positively Glorious! go from somewhat squashed and busy to very clean and elegant, with visuals to beat the band. That’s it for now- I’m off to play with editing the CSS and making sure my OpenID delegation is clean.