The WordPress 3.0 upgrade was the most painless software upgrade I’ve ever done. It literally took 30 seconds. No warnings, no errors, and my old theme even worked as if I did nothing at all.

Anyways… time to get tweaking. Ch-ch-ch-ch-changes…

The second version of my site was a lesson in trying to build cross-browser compatibility using frames. Over 10 years later, that’s still a pain in the ass.

By Version 3 I had built my own content management platform with CGI scripts and server-side includes. I was also doing nearly what we term today as “blogging”, although I didn’t keep a historical record. When you came to the site, you’d see whatever it was that was up there at the moment. It would likely be replaced by something else the next time you showed up. It was the antithesis of LiveJoural, where everything was saved. Ick. Who would want that?

I created a 4th version in 2003 when Amanda and I got married so we could share the site. That was the last version to operate on my homegrown CMS, as I jumped to WordPress in 2005.

So, after 4 years on WordPress, I’m starting to work on implementing a new theme. Actually, I started this a few months ago and just haven’t found much time lately, so in all honesty, it will likely be fall before anything new gets rolled out. I still do most of my HTML in a text editor, so even editing a pre-existing theme can take a bit of time.

It’s been a fun project to work on for all these years, and even though I don’t post here as often as I would like, I will probably always have a site up at Punaro.com. It just becomes a part of you after so long.

I can do without all the little annoying applications, and I need to figure out how to tie this here blog to my Facebook page (already linked in my Twitter account) but it certainly is an interesting website. I can see why Nancy called it “the internet crack network”.

Take Twitter, for instance. Twitter was originally developed as a microblogging platform – a counterpart to the unlimited length of text regular blogging allows. With that lack of restriction sometimes comes a bit of inertia to overcome, as some bloggers, myself included, often feel that short little posts about where you are or what you’re doing at that given moment aren’t “worthy” of hitting the blog’s big stage. Enter Twitter, where that’s the sole point of the service. It’s like broadcast instant messaging, where one can announce to everyone at once the thought that crosses their mind.

Twitter is often used by bloggers to do something I’m not crazy about – announce that they’ve posted something new on their blog. It’s not that this breaks any rules of Twittering, it’s that there is a much more suitable technology for following people’s blog’s – RSS.

RSS has completely changed the way that I, and many others, read blogs and websites, and I suspect that we’re really just at the beginning of this movement. RSS is to the web what DVRs were to television. DVRs made it simple to break free from the rigid schedule of programming supplied by the broadcasters and aggregate it’s content into a single location, allowing you to consume what content you wanted to see when you want to see it. RSS readers do essentially the same thing. Instead of me keeping a list of a bookmarks of my favorite sites and continuously click through them to see if there’s anything new, I can subscribe to each site in my RSS reader. When one of those sites posts something new, my RSS reader keeps track of it for me until I either read the article, or mark it as read if I’m not interested.

I’ve read some people’s comments that they’re not interested in using an RSS reader for a number of reasons. They like actually visiting the site of the person/publication to read the article. They start following too many RSS feeds and get bogged down reading too much. Sometimes they just don’t get the concept at all. Put your fears aside, folks, because syndication is the way of the web future. If you can provide quality content, the UI of your site is irrelevant. As more and more people start using RSS readers, the number of people actually visiting the site itself will decline (this will unfortunately lead to more advertising in RSS feeds, but that’s a topic for another day). Graphics designers might get a little nervous at the thought that the need for their services to design web site front ends might decline, but as always – content is king. Making a web site pretty who’s main purpose is to provide content, such as news sites, is really a wasted effort for the end product.

My RSS reader of choice is Google Reader, which after trying several has easily earned the top spot on my list. The main advantage to me is that it keeps my feed list centralized, as opposed to client or browser plugin RSS readers which are specific to the PC you’re using. This isn’t a big deal for the individual who does all their surfing on their home PC, but for people like me who regularly use two or more computers, having Google Reader keep track of the articles I’ve already read in a central location is a big time saver. Google Reader has a lot of other great features like keyboard shortcuts for power readers, the ability to share some of your feeds with other people, and a statistics screen that you can use to see what feeds have gone inactive or that you’re ignoring so you can prune your list of feeds.

My number of feeds hovers around 200. Several groups of feeds I only read at work, like SharePoint or Lotus sites. Some I primarily follow at home, such as my political feeds. One of the great features of WordPress based blogs is the ability to follow the comments for an individual post. This is really useful when you comment on someone post and want to follow the responses. As an aside, one of my biggest pet peeves is when some WordPress templates do not include the link to subscribe to that post’s comments, however, you can work around this by taking the post permalink (URL) and adding “feed” to the end of it to add it to your reader of choice.

Some Twitter users only use it as a notification service that they have added a new post to their site, and I choose not to follow those Twitter accounts. Twitter is a great microblogging service, but a poor way to follow syndicated content. I personally can’t imagine trying to follow 200 Twitter users and use my Twitter Find & Follow screen to figure out what I have and haven’t read. It’s the wrong tool for the job.

Both of these technologies have proven themselves in today’s Internet and will likely gain in usefulness for years to come. If you haven’t yet tried either, now is a good time to get on board. Just keep in mind what the strengths are of each and you’ll have a better experience using them.

Thanks to Jennifer, I also hopped on the Buffalo Tweetup site. They have meets, kind of like the old Bloggercons. An evolution of the Bloggercon, perhaps? I dunno.

I’m just a bit confused about the whole terminology thing. I have a Twitter account. If I write something on Twitter, it’s called a “tweet”. Tweet can also be used as a verb, for example, “I tweeted about my latest blog entry.” Of course, that probably has it’s own term, like “twog”. Oh crap, then if I blog about tweeting, am I “bleeting”? Maybe I’d better turn this thing off before it’s too late.

• Go to Wikipedia’s random article page. The first article you get is the name of your band.
• Go to the Random Quotations page. The last four words of the last quote is the album title.
• Go to Flickr’s Interesting photo page. Third picture, no matter what it is, is your album cover.
• Put it all together to make your album. Either crop it to CD cover size, or just use the raw image itself … the only rule is you’re only allowed to add the album title and artist title.

Here’s mine….

Blogtoberfest, on the other hand, had a pretty piss poor showing. Other than Mike Miller and Michele Johnson, who are Terminal regulars, WNYMedia.net had no representation. Michele even made the effort to come after her mother’s wedding the same day. I had a few chats with Mike Rebmann and a nice conversation with Ms. The 716 (check out her post about her upcoming first photo exhibit) but that was the extent of the bloggercon regulars. In fact, the best showing was made by a group of e:strip folks. I spent some time talking to e:dragonlady7 about how e:strip is really it’s own community, and likely why it doesn’t get much cross-linking from the rest of the Buffalo blogosphere, and even introduced myself to e:Paul, who while meek and mild in person, predictably lambasted everything about the event in his post today. Regardless, I give them credit for actually coming out. A group of bloggers who e-vocally dislike the Terminal showed up the folks who are avid supporters of it, all in an effort to meet their e-peers. Let’s make sure we don’t publicize any more of these events without a designated coordinator and a concerted effort to get people to it.

Regardless, the event was another success for the CTRC, celebrating it’s 10th year of existence. Regardless of what you might read at certain blogs, the Terminal has come an awfully long way in ten years, from a grand mess to a unique event venue that continues to draw more and more people each year. Excelsior!

All Things Jennifer has made this one an annual event. It’s a Terminal thing, so we’ll be there. Will you? You don’t need to be a blogger! The Central Terminal’s annual Oktoberfest celebration is a party for everyone! Guaranteed to be a great time, as always. German food, German music, and German beer – both authentic and Flying Bison’s own seasonal brew. Rumor has it, there may even be a wench or two.

Breaking News: All Online Data Lost After Internet Crash

I was also sad to hear that Random Thoughts 101 will be leaving the netpulse. I’ll keep reading his articles in the Hamburg Sun, though. Hope to see you back someday, Dan!

After cancelling my print subscription to the Buffalo News years ago, I used to just browse the articles online. Lately, I find that I don’t even do that. Without blogs or RSS feeds, going to the site and fumbling through the navigation to find the new articles I’m interested in just isn’t worth my time. With so many local blogs covering just about every aspect of the news that I’m interested in, if there’s an important story in the Buffalo News, one of the blogs will link to it.

Of course, we can’t expect blogs from the Buffalo News when they’re still doing their archaic, once-a-day online update. In an instant, digital age, waiting until tomorrow to get today’s news is simply not acceptable. I know that the writers at the News must be itching for some semblance of forward movement in their online department, and I’m sure many would love to have their own blogs. Trust me, we’d love to read them. Wake me up when it happens.

Update: It seems that I was successfully able to pressure the News and their union in only negative 15 hours! That’s a new record for my blog’s influence!

Derek Punaro blogs with his wife, Amanda, at Punaro.com. He says there are not interested in selling ad space.

“A lot of people incorporate ads into their site to defray their costs and bring in some income, but I think there are enough ads out on the Web,” Punaro said. “I’d rather not look at them on my own site.”

Yup, that’s exactly what I said. I’d much rather pay $7 or $8 a month for my hosting out of pocket to NOT have to deal with ads. These days, there aren’t many places you can escape advertising. Welcome to one of them!

After reading BuffaloPundit’s first posting on his discussion with WBEN’s program director, Tim Wenger, I really didn’t think too much about it. So they didn’t want regular guests on one show that don’t like their other show hosts. That’s his call. Even though the criticism didn’t come while the bloggers were ever on air, we have to assume that at least some of the people listening to the show will go to the bloggers’ sites, simply because they’re semi-regular guests. It would almost be like Bauerle writing bad things in his blog (oops – maybe we shouldn’t bring up that failed experiment) about Sandy Beach.

I was ready to dismiss the whole incident as just some hurt feelings between the new media guys and the old media guys, but then there was this update from BuffaloPundit today, following a Buffalo News story by Stephen Watson. Turns out that Wenger went and lied to a news reporter when asked directly about why they weren’t being allowed on the show. Now, come on. How stupid do you have to be to try and get away with something like that when the people at the heart of the debate are always itching to expose old media BS like this? From my perspective, Alan (BuffaloPundit) and Chris (BuffaloGeek) have far more integrity and honesty than some behind the scenes guy at an AM radio station, so I have no doubt about anything they’ve said about the issue.

I’m a semi-regular listener of WBEN. Mostly, I listen on my way to work in the morning to hear the local news and on my way home to catch a bit about what Sandy Beach’s topic of the day is. Honestly, I care more about the traffic reports than the AM show’s recap of what Business First has written in the last few days and what’s in today’s USA Today. Occasionally I’ll tune in to Bauerle while I’m at work, but ironically only if another blogger makes a mention that there’s an interesting topic being discussed. I used to listen to him more, but frankly I can’t stand the repeated rhetoric about cats and that idiot Doug Hagmann. Sandy Beach is more tolerable, but he does have a habit of hanging up on guests that don’t agree with him, which lend a lot of credibility to the “thin skinned” accusations made by Alan, and “no comment”-ed by Wenger.

Wenger screwed up. Instead of utilizing Kevin Hardwick’s show to help bridge the gap to the online audiences, many of which far more articulate than half the people that typically call into WBEN’s shows, he’s alienated them. WBEN has frequently failed when trying to make inroads into the internet. Their brief brush with blogging never really got off the ground. They had to take down their message board because they couldn’t keep it from being hacked. They haven’t figured out that podcasting shows like “Hardline with Hardwick” would greatly increase their audience, especially since that one is doomed to the churchgoers time slot. No, instead they’ve chosen to ban the people that have figured out how to reach online audiences, and utilize their network of fans for the good of the station. Sounds like a case of “If you can’t join them, beat them.” With a stick.

Today, however, I launched something that’s as close to cutting edge as we get at Praxair – an RSS feed for Praxair.com.

Many of you I’m sure don’t know what RSS is, or how it’s useful. I know this because many people in IT don’t know what RSS is, or how it’s useful. RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. It’s a different way for websites to distribute their content, and more importantly a different way for you to consume it.

Bloggers and blog readers will love this as soon as they start using it. Almost all blogging software automatically creates an RSS feed for a blog’s content. Most bloggers not only write, but read a large number of blogs. Having a huge list of bookmarks to click through and check to see if there’s anything new isn’t a very efficient way to keep track of your favorite sites. This is where RSS helps out. When you subscribe, or add a feed to your RSS reader, it keeps track of what articles you’ve read and which ones you haven’t. Depending on your reader, you can click a button or even schedule it to automatically go and check all of the feeds you’re subscribed to for new content. This makes it very easy and very quick to see if any of your favorite bloggers have posted anything new.

I use the Sage RSS Reader plugin for Firefox. This enables me to never have to leave my browser. Firefox’s built-in Live Bookmarks feature is also a way of viewing RSS feeds. Internet Explorer 7 provides the capability to subscribe and manage feeds in the browser as well. Alternatively, there are several websites that will let you keep track of feeds, such as Bloglines or even the My Yahoo portal. Using Sage, I easily track about 75 different websites. If you use multiple computers, you can easily export and import your feed list, or choose to use one of the web hosted services.

For the Lotus geeks out there, for Praxair.com I implemented an agent to dynamically create the feed. For now, we’re only supporting one feed, but the way the agent is constructed I can dynamically pass in the name of a view and a feed will automatically be rendered for the documents in that view. The feed title is also passed in, but the number of documents in the feed (at this point) is set in the agent. For now, we’re only providing excerpts of articles since the content is stored in Rich Text and rendered dynamically by Domino. We’re looking to provide the full HTML of the articles in the future, which makes for better usability for mobile devices and low-bandwidth connections.

It’s pretty exciting for me to be able to 1. work on something fairly close to the cutting edge, and 2. actually have something that I can show people outside of Praxair. So I did.

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

This is important for bloggers to remember. Just because you don’t get a lot of comments doesn’t necessarily mean that nobody reads what you write. The comments you may receive are also not necessarily indicitive of the viewpoint of your total readership. Opposing opinions tend to result in stronger and more vocal responses than you get from people with consenting opinions. Specifically regarding blogs…

There are about 1.1 billion Internet users, yet only 55 million users (5%) have weblogs according to Technorati. Worse, there are only 1.6 million postings per day; because some people post multiple times per day, only 0.1% of users post daily.

Blogs have even worse participation inequality than is evident in the 90-9-1 rule that characterizes most online communities. With blogs, the rule is more like 95-5-0.1.

And what about Wikipedia?

Inequalities are also found on Wikipedia, where more than 99% of users are lurkers. According to Wikipedia’s “about” page, it has only 68,000 active contributors, which is 0.2% of the 32 million unique visitors it has in the U.S. alone.

Wikipedia’s most active 1,000 people — 0.003% of its users — contribute about two-thirds of the site’s edits. Wikipedia is thus even more skewed than blogs, with a 99.8-0.2-0.003 rule.

Nielsen goes on to say that participation inequality will always exist, but there are some things you can do to skew the curve. For blogs, making it easier to contribute will help. Sites where you need to log in to comment will significantly increase the inequality. Also, a commentor reputation ranking system will help promote less frequent, but higher quality commentors over the messages from the “hyperactive 1%”. This type of system is important for very active blogs with a wide readership, such as Buffalo Rising, which is probably why their upcoming platform will include such a feature.

There’s more people out there reading your site than you think! If you want more people to comment, well, good luck. Your best bet may be to just ask nicely for comments. Thoughts?