monday

Fresh off of naming Techmeme my favorite site of ‘06, I’m switching to a competing service. After a few emails with Megite’s Matthew Chen, I’ve decided to at least give Megite the rest of January. From the looks of things so far, it seems like there is more content, a better design, some interesting features in the way of personalization, and you can license the software. I like Matthew’s proactive style, it’s worth at least a month of my pageviews.

On the topic of switching, I’ve also switched to Google Reader from Bloglines. I’m not sure why, but ever since I upgraded to FF 2.0 I’ve been having a lot of problems with bloglines. Unfortunately this makes me even more of a Google slave, as I now use Google personalized, Gmail, Google Docs, Google Calendar, Google Reader, and I’ve even set up a Google Custom Search. I believe the term is Gbitch.

Today I decided to map out my entire 2007. I drew up a month by month calendar of objectives, and goals as well as things and contacts I’ll need to help me achieve these goals. It was pretty intense. I will graduate from law school this year and I will most likely move out of Ohio for the first time in my life. I think moving really hit me the hardest. I know that moving is not a huge deal, and something I’m sure I’ll ultimately be better off for doing, but it’s still a little strange to think about (and there is a chance I will remain in Ohio).

Back to the point…
I made two calendars, one for everything non-web related and one for web related things. Where I am right now in my life, the web related things have to come after the non-web things are finished. That’s how I came to the conclusion that this blog is coming to an end.

I’m going to end the blog either because my future employer will not let me blog, or (more likely) because the benefit of this blog is running out. I first started blogging as a way to drive traffic to my sites, that went okay, but not enough to justify my time. Now, I blog more just for fun, and have probably benefited more. This blog has opened up the door to some new relationships, it’s helped me establish myself by getting quoted in different places, it’s helped with my sites (if you ever need some help with php just look through the wordpress source and you’ll find a lot of great ideas), and it’s helped me in some ways in the consulting I’ve done. So why give it up? Time. That’s really the only answer I can give. The blog doesn’t produce enough results for me to justify the time put in. So, starting today the phase out begins. The daily jda will go back to the old style of posting when the mood strikes me and I’ll be able to get more done. A full phase out will probably come around April (which coincidentally is when I turn 25) unless something changes and the benefit really starts to increases.

Until next time. Happy New Year.

Sorry for the delay, I’m still trying to recover from Finals. I’m skipping Tech News Tuesday for the week while I try to get back into the swing of things. The good news is, I have four or five new sites I’d like to talk about for Website Wednesday and a couple of other posts ready to go.

It’s kind of tough to do a MyStuff Monday when I’ve taken a couple of weeks off from the web. I don’t have any real announcements today, but should starting next week (though I doubt I’ll post on the 25th) - and they’ll likely be motask related. I didn’t want motask to be a distraction, but it seems like I will be adding a couple of new features in the next couple of days.

sidenote: I’m using IE 6.0 right now, I don’t how people do this. I can’t stand not having Firefox @ work.

I’m taking the next three weeks off from the daily blog and will instead post periodically as I did in the past. Sorry, Law School finals win out.

More often than not I read about scale in terms of scaling up an operation, but I’m thinking about scaling back. Looking at the numbers for that directory project of mine, it seems that there may be some definite advantages to reducing the size of the site.

The fact is, I need to take my own advice. The things I say to people often conflict with what I am myself doing with Lopico. If I tell someone that’s starting something new I say ‘just do it small scale and see where it goes.’ But for Lopico I’ve tried to cast the biggest net I can (almost) and the results are exactly what I’d expect. My problem has been thinking more in terms of page views and SEO and less in terms of the user - something I need to stop.

I really shouldn’t be blogging this, but it’s time for a change. A smart kid once told me to do this same thing and I didn’t listen, instead I kept going on the same track. The problem with staying on the same track is that nothing changes. And while things may be alright on Lopico, they’re nowhere near where I’d like them to be.

So this is what it means to try to get bigger by getting smaller and we’ll see if it works. No time table on the change, school, work, and life are sort of in the way - but you’ll be the first to know when things change.

Back from my week off of blogging and reading blogs - well okay I cheated a little, I looked at TechMeme a couple of times but didn’t read any posts just checked the titles. I know that Google bought JotSpot and Microsoft is doing something with Linux, but I’m not as informed as I would otherwise be. So that’s the bad end of it, I did miss out on some interesting events, but I saved a lot of time. I had around 900 unread posts from a mere 95 feeds - I cut back a while ago, but I think I can make some more cuts. Taking this week off from reading really helped me evaluate which blogs were really time wasters and which are really adding to my life. For example, I read Chicagoist because I’m thinking about moving to Chicago next year, but over 80 posts in a week is more time than I want to spend reading up on the wind city. My new goal is to cut the number of blogs I read to 30 of my choice, plus blogs of any readers that comment on my blog. Ultimately it’s about balance and time management, making this cut will really help me with that objective.

I started working again today, so far so good. I will likely be leading the charge on putting content into RSS and or blogging so that should be interesting – can’t really say too much more.

The new format of the blog seems to be working well. Readership is increasing and it’s easier for me to blog everyday. I probably prefer a less structured approach, but there certainly are advantages to the structure – and I will tweak the structure if need be.

Not much to say from the Motask, Lopico, or BCO front. I’ve made some minor design changes to Lopico but haven’t added anything new in a few weeks (I also found an error that I’m fixing right now, but I don’t really want to brag about that). I’m thinking I might try to sell motask in the coming weeks – I don’t have to time to do with it what I’d like but I don’t just want to shut everyone out that uses it. BCO needs some momentum – interestingly more people have bookmarked the event in del.icio.us than have signed up. I haven’t done much with BCO yet, other than getting it blogged on Brewed Fresh Daily – one of Ohio’s most popular blogs. If you’re interested pleas sign the wiki.

Newbs and Exes - blogs/feeds I have started reading or have stopped reading this week
In:
Mike Davidson
Threadless Weekly

Out:
AU Blog
Riding Rails
Marketing Vox

All that with 33 minutes left before Tech News Tuesday.

Starting off with BarCampOhio - the wiki is at least up, I haven’t done anything for this yet. Still trying to feel this one out. I’m reading up on best practices and we’ll see what happens. Anyone that would like to participate should go to barcamp.org/BarCampOhio

First Posts on BCO: Web 2.O-H-I-O | Wake up 2.0

On Commenting
Most of my blog readers are, well, readers, not participants and not commenters. That’s fine, but if you’re also a blogger you should comment. I have a new policy on the site: anyone who comments and links to their blog gains me as a reader. I upgraded WordPress and K2 the other day, which led to me loosing some style info and then eventually changing all of the style and updating some options - while I was at it I put my new blog reading policy in place. I’m only one reader, but if you write well enough I may just throw some links your way.

Speaking of me reading blogs…
I decided that part of MyStuff monday (still playing with the format) will be me linking to new blogs I’ve subscribed to or ones I’ve stopped reading. For this week:

In:
A Sack of Seattle
Center Networks
David Beach’s blog
Korea Crunch
Marketing Profs
Somewhat Frank
Tell Ten Friends

Out:
GigaOm

Actually an unusual week, I don’t normally add this many blogs in a week. I’m guessing some of these won’t be around long.