I went to BarCamp LA this year, and had a blast. Since it’s an un-conference, I went with very few expectations, and that may have helped, but it also meant I was open for whatever might happen.

After breakfast AND lunch, the day officially began when the organizers had every last person introduce himself/herself (in a pleasant surprise, the male-female ratio was somewhat healthy – not the typical sausage fest, unlike most tech-centric events =P).

Each person was allowed only 3 tags, and I had some difficulty choosing mine. In the end, I went with “archivist,” “Django,” and “women2.org,” figuring one of these might stick in somebody’s mind. And as it happened, it was the second one! Immediately after introductions were finished, I met with several Django-ologists, and we convened for almost an hour, missing the first set of sessions almost entirely. Later, we had a Django BoF, and that was enlightening.

Anyway, one of hte big sponsors of the event was Dreamhost, who offered free registration and a year of hosting! So I took that offer this morning, and have registered my real, full name. I was even able to take advantage of their birthday promo, and now have unlimited disk space/bandwidth for the life of the account! Not too shabby.

So stay tuned for a change of address and a new design. Now that I’m on my own server, I’m no longer stuck with using the woefully inadequate Wordpress.com templates, or even stick to the…well, not woefully, but still somewhat inadequate Wordpress platform!

Really, now that I’m on my own server, the possiblities are endless. Realistically, for this maximizer, that means the change won’t be soon, but it is imminent!

Okay I’m going to adopt this triple feed reader strategy. Bloglines has served me well over the years, so well that I haven’t even moved to their new Beta version. I just love how simple, fast and easy the old version is, even better than the fancy AJAX-y expanding/collapsing in the Beta. So I’m going to keep feeds that I find to be of value, but which require some in-depth reading (ie. time), in Bloglines.

Unfortunately, Bloglines for mobile phones has a lot to be desired. Since Google Reader came out with a new implementation of its Mobile Reader, I’m going to migrate some of my feeds to that to try it out. Since I’d mainly be reading RSS feeds on my iPhone when I’m on the go, I figure it’d be nice to have access to news feeds and blogs that update frequently, as well as feeds that can be read and scanned quickly, so not too many pictures (Cute Overload and Cukisàg are staying in Bloglines!). I also really like the Sharing feature as implemented in GReader, which is miles easier and better than how Bloglines does it. So I look forward to being able to use that.

As for the third – I’ve been using iGoogle for some of the funner things, like Quotes, Overheard, and AppleInsider, since those stories aren’t urgent. I think I may keep those there. And I used to use My Yahoo! all the time, for Reuters and for “Oddly Enough” wire articles. But I haven’t visited My Yahoo! in months, and hardly missed it! So bye-bye, My Yahoo!

The only snag so far is that I haven’t quite figured out which feed would work best where. And del.icio.us popular is running on all three feed readers. I can’t decide where it fits! It might just stay on all three. (Check out del.icio.us 2.0 by the way, it’s nice).

sorry Googlenauts: this post is NOT about Windows Vista

as i learned from a phone call today, that first reason is totally true. moms are so weird!

This site: http://sxsw.ning.com/

makes me think Ning is all right after all (the name is still dumb though =D)

This site: http://sched.org

is beautiful. ’nuff said.

Both sites make me wish I were in Austin right now!

About “Inbox Heaven: The Ultimate Email Setup“: Im’ not planning on implementing this, but what the fellow says about Gmail is the truth:

Who cares if Google is smuggling gremlins to a secret bunker in order to launch a subterranean attack and take over the Earth in 2143? Not me! I’ll still be smiling when they arrive at my doorstep, happy in the knowledge that — yes — the gremlins might have come for my Hobnobs, the true source of all power, but at least I’ve got Gmail.

If it’s a Faustian bargain we’re making with Google, well, hey, it’s email! You’re supposed to assume the whole world can read your emails anyway (because they can)!

I also like this funny image they use:

The very first website I ever visited was Yahoo.com, in 1995 or was it 1996? I was in the 8th grade. Yahoo was the only web site whose name I could remember when I first dialed up (14.4kbps, w00t!) and connected to the Internet. I think I was using Mosaic, or whatever the default Netcom browser was back then.

And I thought it was awesome. Because everything that existed on the Web was there, and it was even organized and alphabetized!

Hahahahahahahahahhahahahahahahahaah!

Anyway, I just hope Microsoft doesn’t screw up flickr and delicious. Please, please leave those services alone!

Lessee..

Qtrax has said its users will be able to download songs – making it potentially much more user-friendly, but also more of a headache for the labels, who want to be able to closely monitor what users are listening to.

Qtrax users have to download software to use the service, and are also encouraged to ‘dock’ their music player with their computer every 30 days so that the service can ascertain which songs have been played.

DRM-based music distribution that invades your privacy and demands actions from its users beyond “download and play”…

Yeah, this will do really well.

Well, to be fair, iTunes basically works off a similar model. The difference is that the iTunes music store sells actual mp3s now. So QTrax is only about a year behind the times. Also, I hate their all-flash interface.

I think the point I’m trying to make is that a music-selling model that remains mulishly focused on what the music industry wants and needs is doomed to fail, because what the music industry wants and needs is a model that’s long been obsolete. “More of a headache for the labels”? Do you really think consumers care?

I think it’s much smarter to focus instead on what those consumers want, and to reduce *their* headaches, like iTunes has been doing, and now Amazon, et al et al.

i’ve been using tumblr for awhile now, and while at first I thought it was superfluous, seeing as how i have this blog and del.icio.us, I really liked the bookmarklet so I kept it around, and the service has really grown on me. This is one example of how a good UI can mean the difference between dedicated use and total neglect.

The bookmarklet has really come in handy and it’s so easy to use. It works almost as well as a desktop app, and it grabs data automagically from whatever page you’re trying to link to – like links, photos, quotes. (One improvement I’d make is to make the photo-link instructions more explicit – it took me awhile to figure that one out).

I also set it up to export my posts automatically, via RSS, to my Facebook mini-feed (also an RSS app, AHEM). That way, I can automatically share all these cool links I’ve found with all my friends. (So, I guess I got you all hating Tumblr now. Hi!).

The actual tumblr page is customizable, jsut like one’s Twitter page, and they’ve got some nice-looking templates there too. And look how pretty is this visual archive – it makes all the crap I’ve posted look good!

So yeah, I’ve started to use that instead of my del.icio.us/share RSS feed, which is one of my sets of links over there on the right column (which is why that one hasn’t changed in awhile). Del.icio.us I now use primarily for research purposes.

I don’t remember where I wanted to go with this. Oh, right. The end.

Upcoming Facebook feature (according to their news page):

Sort out your friends.

We’ll let you organize that long list of friends into groups so you can decide more specifically who sees what.

Angie and I were talking about that article by Cory Doctorow, “How your creepy ex-coworkers will kill Facebook,” and about how when a service like that gets too big, it’s going to be less desirable to use because you’ll be connected to people who you might not necessarily have wanted to “friend,” but whom you also can’t really afford to not friend. That kind of thing is what keeps people jumping from one site to another. When you can’t differentiate between a real friend and someone who you added just because you didn’t want to snub them, well, the specialness of the network you’re building goes down just a bit.

So being able to sort your connections into groups, like, say, “People whose photos I want to see and whom I can grope via Superpoke” versus “Polite Adds” is one way to solve that problem. Flickr already has this tiered system, with its “Family,” “Friends,” and “Contacts.” And it works pretty well!

For a SNS like Facebook, what this would do in terms of reinforcing close ties and maintaining weak ties…it’ll make that divide stronger. If the idea of social networking is to bring people closer together, well, those weak ties won’t become stronger. Those people will be walled off, so it’ll be like having two social networks in one!

Actually, it’d be more like real life!