delicious – JAMES MICHIE

Housekeeping: The Value of Less

While my digital-self has been quiet over the last few months, I have not been entirely inactive. Having instigated a cleanup of my web footprint (I shared the initial stages in this post), I have continued this process alongside a number of subtle design/structural changes to jamesmichie.com and jamesmichie.com/blog. Also, I have made some changes to my online workflow – more out of necessity than choice.

Following on from decreasing the number of peripheral accounts that I had. I set about redesigning my second blog. I added a more pleasing theme and retitled it ‘Et cetera’. I felt, that what was my other blog, lacked a clear sense of purpose. As such I’ve added the tag line: ‘…riffs, ramblings, snippets and pics’. These were not extensive changes but add clarity to the role this blog plays in my online presence. I also wanted to draw a bit more attention to ‘Et cetera’, so I added buttons to both jamesmichie.com and jamesmichie.com/blog.

[Update: 27.07.12 Et cetera has been closed and the posts imported to this blog.]

This coincided with the removal of the Facebook page I set up to promote jamesmichie.com/blog. The page added limited value and very few additional readers. This also resulted in the deletion of my Facebook account. The continued uncertainty surrounding Facebook’s inability to take its customers’ privacy seriously, have left me under no illusion that it is better to be out than in.

I have made some minor changes to jamesmichie.com including adding a ‘bookmarks’ feed. Likewise, I have added the same feed in the sidebar of this blog. This change was prompted by Google’s decision to remove the sharing functions within Google Reader. The result? Google Reader continues to be my RSS reader of choice, however I laboriously reviewed the items I had shared (automated to Twitter via ifttt) and added any that I wished to keep to my Delicious bookmarks. I am now using this to both bookmark and share items – again, automated with ifttt. Initially, I was annoyed about Google’s decision but this has actually helped in the slimming down of my web presence – streamlining my sharing/bookmarking workflow.

What’s more, with the reduction of sources from which I am sharing information, I have removed the shared stream that was present on both jamesmichie,com and jamesmichie.com/blog.

Also, I have made some subtle changes to this blog, including the addition of text snippets in the side bar to further encourage people to subscribe to the blog and to also promote conference and events, at which I will be attending/speaking.

As I have taken each step, deleting accounts; cleaning up features; adapting my workflow, I have felt calmer, more in control, more focused. I can see that much of this has come as a result of the reading I have been doing this year – particularly the work of Leo Babauta. His books ‘The Power of Less‘ and ‘Focus‘ have had a profound effect in helping me to channel my energy into projects that matter.

I am not, now, opposed to trying out new tools or apps. However, I think it is important to limit your output – the more outlets that you are having to keep up is a form of distraction in itself.

Here are some of the selections I have made:

Twitter NOT Facebook (sometimes Google+).
Cloud App NOT Posterous, Twitpic, yFrog and Mobypicture.
jamesmichie.com/blog NOT Amplify.

Each of these choices have helped me to streamline my web footprint, reduce friction, and find focus – allowing me to fully appreciate the value of ‘less’.

I leave with this thought:

Most of what we say and do is not essential. If you can eliminate it, you’ll have more time, and more tranquillity. Ask yourself at every moment, ‘Is this necessary?

~ Marcus Aurelius

10 things I’ve learned in a year of blogging

I started this blog one year ago today. When I published the first post I was very unsure about whether I would be able to commit to blogging on a regular basis but now can’t imagine not doing it. It has become an extension of my brain – a place where I can explore ideas; share experiences and reflect on my learning. As an educator the learning never stops and a blog (IMO) is the best way to document and focus the learning experience. Along the way I have learned a lot about blogging and so I’ve decided to share some of what I’ve learned, today, on my blog’s birthday. Here goes:

1. It’s what you write that matters

The most important feature of your blog is what you write. I know that this sounds obvious but I can attest to the fact that it is easy to get bogged down in worrying more about the look and feel of your blog than the content you are putting out. My advice? Find a blog theme that is clean and offers your readers a clear reading experience. Stick to sans-serif fonts and a high level of contrast between the text and your blog background. Don’t obsess about images, buttons and other features. Focus on the writing and the rest will follow. After all, the people who will become regular readers of your blog will not care about the way your blog looks. In fact the people who become return visitors will probably subscribe by RSS and therefore not even read your blog via your actual site. Pick interesting topics to write about. Find your own writing style. And don’t be afraid to borrow from others while you are finding your own voice.

2. It’s okay to post at your own pace

Starting a blog can be intimidating. Particularly when you see that some bloggers post at least once a day, sometimes more. I originally set out thinking that I would blog at least five times a week but I quickly realised that for me this was unrealistic. I have settled into a far more organic rhythm publishing an average of six posts a month. How often I post is affected by a number of factors but mainly by my workload.

I write when I feel compelled. I shelve posts occasionally to let them simmer, returning to them with a clearer sense of what I wish to convey. Sometimes an idea for a post will go from first draft to published post in less than a couple of hours. Other times they will go through multiple drafts until I am happy. Remember that quality is far more important than quantity. If you would like to know more about my writing process and how I find focus check out the following two posts:

3. It’s important to post material that is provocative (from time to time)

I’m not suggesting here that you set your stall out to… but it will come as no surprise that many of my most read posts are the ones that were a little contentious, that focused on challenging issues where others will certainly have an opinion. And it is also good to pick up on topics that are being readily discussed. Here are some examples of posts that caught fire:

4. Make sure your about page is up to scratch

The about page on your blog is arguably one of the most important pages as many new readers who come across your blog will want to know more about it and the person behind it. Who are you? Why do you write this blog? How often can they expect to see new posts? These are just some of the questions a new reader may have. I am working on improving my about page at the moment, using this guide.

5. Minimal design helps your readers to focus on the content

I am at heart a minimalist. If this was nothing more than a personal journal it would probably look more like this. However, this level of minimalism is a step to far (less?) for my blog which is as much an online portfolio as it is a reflective journal. Therefore, I have found a compromise, balancing minimalism with important features that help my readers navigate my blog and hopefully keep them there. These include static pages listed in a menu under the header, a range of methods for readers to find interesting posts including: categories, tags, recent posts and a blog archive. I currently use the WordPress theme: Plainscape, which I have tweaked to my liking adding a few unique features, but these are minor and took very little time to put in place.

6. Harness social networks to spread the word

If you wish to grow the number of visitors to your blog you must harness the power of social networks. Twitter has been one of the most powerful tools in driving people towards my blog content and had helped connect me with many other bloggers who share similar ideas and write about similar topics. This has helped me to develop my blogging practice while also giving me a network who read and retweet my blog posts. I use Feedburner to manage my blog feed and Twitterfeed to autopost it to Twitter. After more than a year of sharing my disdain for Facebook, I have reneged on my principles, reactivated my account and established a Facebook page for my blog, here’s why.

7. Remember it’s not all about you

Let your readers know what blogs you like to read, this is very easy to do as most blogging platforms include a blog roll feature. I also use a range of tools including Google Reader, Delicious and Amplify to share things that I have been reading and I feel will be of interest to the people that read my blog. To make it easy for them to find this information I have installed the Lifestream plugin and generated a page on my blog to display this information.

8. It is about discussion

Most bloggers are looking to generate discussion around their posts. This is what the blogging thing is all about and it’s really important that you respond to comments from people. I would advise that you install the Disqus commenting system to your blog. It offers a wide range of management features for comments on your blog allowing anyone to log in and comment on your blog while being an effective tool in blocking spam. I try to reply to comments within 24 hours although occasionally life gets in the way.

The commenting does not end there though. As I have already made clear, it is not all about you. If you want to drive people towards your blog and encourage them to comment on your own posts then you must comment on other people’s blog posts. It raises your profile amongst the blogging community and will encourage people to look up your blog when they have seen you comment on their own posts. Be careful though and avoid committing any commenting faux pas, use this post as a guide about what not to do when commenting on posts.

9. Understand SEO and analytics

Without going into too much detail, if you are serious about blogging and see it as more than an opportunity to collect your thoughts then it is worth taking a bit of time to understand ‘Search Engine Optimisation’. In very basic terms this is making your blog more visible to search engines like Google. I could end up writing an entire post on this and only scratch the surface in many ways. Instead I will simply say that this post is a good place to start and if you are using WordPress then you can make a decent start by installing the following two plugins: All in One SEO Pack | Google XML Sitemaps

To really get a handle on how your blog is doing it is also worth signing up to Google analytics. Again there is a very handy WordPress plugin to help with this.

10. Learn a little HTML

This one is going to be a bit geeky but for that I make no apologies. When it comes to my blog I decided from the outset that I was not going to compromise when it came to way that my blogged worked and looked. I knew that if I was going to really have control of my blog I needed to learn some of the basics of HyperText Markup Language (HTML). Having started this blog initially on Blogger there were not as many features in the editing window as WordPress and one thing that niggled me about my posts was that links would open in the same window. This resulted in me learning my first bit of HTML. To get the links I was including in posts to open in a new window I learned to add the following HTML tag: target=”_blank”. From there I gradually learned more HTML so that I could effectively tweak my blog’s theme and code my own buttons in both my blog’s sidebar and under each post. I have blogged and shared the HTML/Javascript for two buttons that I addapted the code for:

This site is an excellent place to start learning HTML and it allows you to test out your code before you go and try it on your blog.

And with that I will bring this post to an end. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed the last twelve months of blogging and I’m very excited about the next twelve. I’ve got some fantastic projects underway at the moment and I’m also right in the middle of my MA, so expect lots more posts over the next few months!

—

Image: inf3ktion on Flickr

Lifestream

I’ve added a lifestream to my blog. I had read about the idea via an article [Working on the web – Joss Winn] that Doug Belshaw shared back in November. However, being particularly busy at the time I was unable to act on it. On Saturday, Doug mentioned the article again explaining that he has added a lifestream to his blog. This prompted me to re-visit the article and I decided that I would follow in Joss’ and Doug’s footsteps. Why? Well, it’s important for me to be able to access my shared information and being able to bring it together into one space (that I have control over) is excellent.

Adding a lifestream to my WordPress blog was very easy as there is a plugin that can be installed from within WordPress itself. I have collated the following feeds:

You can access my lifestream from the links bar below my blog header.

I hope that you will find it as useful as I will.

Image by Stuck In Customs.

Share with Delivr

I’m taking a break from writing a post about QR-Codes to share a little HTML and offer my first impressions of Delivr – a new tool that has been making the rounds on Twitter this past week. In a nut shell, Delivr combines the URL shortening/tracking services of a bitly.Pro account with a QR-Code generator such as qrcode.kaywa.com and then adds a couple of extra functions for good measure.

For those of you who have not heard of Delivr or have not tried it yet, here is a brief look at what it offers.

Signing up to Delivr gives you a variety of features including a profile page. However, unlike many other URL shorteners, rather than a simple text based list of the links you have shared, you get a series of thumbnails. I like this a lot as I am a big fan of the visual web. What’s more, it potentially offers a unique opportunity to share a series of links in a quick and visual way. For example you could create an account for a presentation and have all of your links on one page. This could then be shared with everybody in one go by displaying or tweeting a single URL. Others can easily share the links and when you load each one up their is a QR-Code that people can scan. I think this could be a very interesting way to present and with some events coming up early on next year I may give this a go.

Each link that you share also gets a unique page as part of your Delivr account (indicated by an asterisk at the end of the URL). This page is mobile friendly and contains a variety of useful material. In the top left of the page you there is a good sized preview of the link you have shared. In the top right you can see the URL of the link. The link is made up of two parts – your profile name and a Delivr short URL. You can choose to share the whole thing or simply remove your profile name and just share the short URL. For example, both of these URLs work and will take you to the same page: http://jamesmichie.delivr.com/11vfs or http://delivr.com/11vfs.

In the bottom left of the page there is a pannel that allows you to share to multiple places including Twitter and Facebook at the click of a button, meaning you do not need to open a new tab. In the bottom right of the page their is the QR-Code that has been generated. Below it there are a few options as to what you can do with the QR-Code. It is here that Delivr goes a bit further than qrcode.kaywa.com in that the QR-Code features are more extensive. Firstly, you are not as limited in how much text you can embed inside the QR-Code and Delivr also does some funky things with Flickr images, YouTube videos and Google maps.

Here is an example of a YouTube video I have shared with Delivr. Not only can I share the short URL and get a JPG of the QR-Code but I can see a preview of how it will display on mobile devices:

You can also embed the mobile view on a blog or website as a widget and you can print out this handy flyer with the QR-Code featured on it:

Included on the flyer is a still shot from the YouTube video and a description of what the video is. This is great for sharing info at school as the flyer exports as a PDF which can then be embedded on a blog/website, uploaded to a VLE or printed to be displayed in classrooms. I will be definitely making use of this feature in the coming months in both English and Media Studies.

Other features that you get from signing up to Delivr are very similar to those offered by bitly.Pro.

You have access to a dashboard which lists all of the links that you have shared. From here you can manage your shared links with the ability to delete, edit, read comments and access analytical data. Also, there is an RSS feed of your shared links and you can export all of your data stored on Delivr as an excel file.

The analytivcal information is useful giving you a clear picture of how the links have been accessed, shared and if the QR-Code has been scanned. As I begin to explore the use of QR-Codes more readily this information will be very helpful.

Another potentially useful facet of Delivr is that people can follow your account in a very similar way to following someone’s Delicious account, where by you can see an updated list of links that have been shared. Further features include the ability to host your Delivr account under your own domain and to personalise your profile page with extra information and a background image – making the Delivr experience even more personal.

What’s more the web based interface has been extremely well thought through formatting itself perfectly on my HTC Wildfire. I could browse mine and others shared URL’s with ease, follow back friends who had begun following me and re-share links straight to Twitter, via Email or bookmark to Delicious. Once again, as with many apps, it is ease of use that will keep me coming back, particularly as I am using my phone more and more to access the World Wide Web.

Delivr works well via the web based interface but even better via its handy bookmarklet which you can drag to your bookmarks bar in your browser. This allows you to share links directly from the page that you are on while surfing the web.

Having been instantly impressed, I wondered if I could add a button to my blog so that people could use Delivr to share my posts without leaving the post page. I took a look at the code and saw that it was very similar to the code used in the Instapaper Bookmarklet. As I did with Instapaper, I adapted the bookmarklet code and then found an image to act as a button. In this case I used Delivr’s Twitter Logo as the image source reducing it to 32 x 32 pixels. ~~You can see and use the button at the top right of this post.~~ If you would like to add the button to your own blog then grab the following code:

<a href="javascript:%20var%20newscr%20=%20document.createElement('script');%20newscr.setAttribute('language','javascript');newscr.setAttribute('src','http://cdn.delivr.com/js/bookmarklet.js');document.body.appendChild(newscr);%20var%20newcss%20=%20document.createElement('link');%20newcss.setAttribute('type','text/css');newcss.setAttribute('rel','stylesheet');newcss.setAttribute('href','http://cdn.delivr.com/css/bookmarklet.css');document.body.appendChild(newcss);void(0);"><img src="http://jamesmichie.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/Delivr.png" alt="Share with Delivr" title="Share with Delivr" /></a>

I’ve Been Chromed!

As Google Chrome comes of age (in beta at least) I have kicked Firefox to the kerb, an act that I thought may never happen, for 95% of my web experience. The only thing that is keeping the Fox in my life at all is the poor integration Chrome offers with Moodle which is my schools VLE of choice. More info on Chrome’s shortcomings with Moodle and how to get past them (unless you only run Apple products like me) can be found on “Changing The Game” a Moodle-oriented blog written by @iusher.

I’m not going to dwell on Internet Explorer, Opera and Safari for very long. It’s a simple matter of security + usability + reputation that turned me into a Firefox user in the first place. IE as has been widely written about is simply not secure enough. On top of this it is a Microsoft product so is automatically put in the do not use pile for me. While I consider myself to be something of a geek, Opera is one step too far as Browser’s go; in much the same way as Linux is in terms of operating systems. What did surprise me was the fact that I didn’t turn to Safari as my browser of choice. Having started life as a Windows user Firefox came more naturally into my web based experience – or in other words the Fox did a better job of marketing itself.

When I started using Firefox, its reputation was already well established as a stable and secure browser. Then “add-ons” were introduced there was no turning back. Firefox was simply awesome contributed significantly to my “geek” development. As I sought ways to make my web browsing experience better the Fox taught me about user scripts via Grease Monkey and how to edit its’ functionality itself. See this guide on how to speed up Firefox. What I ended up with and used for the past couple of years never considering alternatives was a very fast, very user friendly (due to add-ons), very consistent web browser.

However the Fox had its limits. There were so many add-ons that I would want to try them all out. But Firefox was not always up to the task. Install more than 10 add-ons and even with the tweaks that I had made to speed it up it became more like “Smokeyfox” than Firefox – the metaphorical smoke pouring out when it fired up or tried to load a page with a lot of info. The experience that many of the add-ons were supposed to offer became limited when they were all packed in together. I ended up stripping Firefox back in the end to just a few add-ons and scripts. This made the browsing faster but the experience less rich.

Chrome on the other hand is faster than Firefox even with “extensions” and scripts installed. I was sceptical at first but I (like a good geek) did several tests to see if the claims were true. And yes, they were! My take up of the browser was stalled though as functionality was limited in its initial release for Mac. Bookmark integration was not fully sorted and there were no extensions available. I bided my time and waited for the first stable release to really get to grips with it. I fell in love immediately because Chrome embraces the true aesthetics of Mac – clean simple design. Use Chrome for a few minutes and I fail to see how anyone could not like the simplicity of the interface, it is beautiful.

Look closely at the picture above. What you see is what I want to see. I have a variety of scripts and extensions installed but many remain invisible working from within the browser itself. There is no need for clunky menus and the tab positioning and functionality is great. Chromed Bird, Instachrome and Delicious all use pop-out windows that float in front of the browser when you click on them. Finally, the Omni-bar is truly great – search, history and my delicious bookmarks are all integrated into one space. This makes the use of the browser so much smoother and cleaner.

I am currently using the development channel, this enables me to not only use extensions but also to install scripts from sites such as Userscripts.org. Chrome extensions make the experience as rich as Firefox but they have almost no impact on operating speed. User scripts load directly in to Chrome without the need for an extension such as Grease Monkey. The installation process of all extra Chrome features is very smooth and there never a need to restart the browser. Below is a screen grab of just a few of the extensions/scripts that I have installed.

Sites that I frequent load as fast with the extensions enabled as they do disabled, making the Chrome experience truly worthwhile. Whether a solution arrives through Chrome first or when Moodle 2.0 (Check out this brief tour here) is finally released I will kick Firefox to the kerb permanently. Until that day, the Fox will still play a small part in my life.

It will not be long though and the time will have come to say “goodbye old friend”.

Browser button image courtesy of Dekuwa on Flickr