jon.blogs.com

New Design

It's been 4 years(!) since the last re-design, so I thought it was time for a spring clean of my blog.

Expect things to change as I fiddle with the defaults further :)

Squint Illustrations & Animation

Great new blog of doodlings and illustrations, from my friend with the "accent no one can place". Visit it now and hire him!

MIT Weblog Survey 2005

Own a weblog? Complete this survey.

"This is a general social survey of the greater weblog community being conducted at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Our goal is to help understand the way that weblogs are affecting the way we communicate with each other. Specifically we are interested in issues of demographics, communication behaviors, experience with weblogs and other technology, and the meaning of various types of social links within the blogosphere."

ICQ, AIM and MSN Instant messaging trends

I used to be an obsessive user of Instant Messaging, back in the day when DOS based IRC was the only thing that would run on my cutting edge 486SX.

I've got back into it fairly heavily recently for a number of reasons, not least the great TipicMe application for my mobile phone that allows me to connect to all three networks (AIM, ICQ & MSN) from wherever I am.

Anyway, I've noticed two distinct differences this time round.

Firstly a large majority of people are connected 24/7, setting their status to things like 'asleep', 'visiting relatives', or 'homework bitches', when they aren't around. This must be due in part to the proliferation of always on connections and broadband. In the past it just wasn't technically or financially viable to keep your dial up connected all day.

Lastly it seems accepted, almost assumed, that everyone uses their real name. My tried and tested online nickname seems to raising more and more eyebrows. I recently sat in a meeting in London where one of the attendees who had chatted to me via ICQ just couldn't stop calling me by my online nick. (See also Matt Haughey: Growing Old Online)

Either way, both seem to indicate that Instant Messaging really is becoming an accepted form of communication for everyone. Not just geeks with odd nicknames.

Blogger Hoodie

Blogger Pro is now free - Yay!
Blogger Pro subscribers get a free hoodie - Yay!

Hoodie will take 4-6 weeks to arrive in the UK - Boo!

Google Ranking

Hello to everyone who is arriving here via the Google searches:

Half Life 2 Photos, happy birthday photos, blackout US photos and bizzarely Dwarf Tossing Photos

I hope you find what you are looking for. If not this post is just gonna make it a whole lot worse .... muuhahaha

Reading

I swear I find a great new feature of TypePad everytime I log in ....

See my bedside reading list to the left? That was auto-generated by TypePad, just by entering the ISBN numbers (easily available from Amazon). You can do the same for CD's, except I dont have any to hand.

Moving to TypePad

I've been beta testing TypePad recently and its ease of use and photo album features have persuaded me to move my personal blog over to it (thank god for the import feature!).

It's not as suited to more complicated sites IMHO, so I'll keep moblogging.org on Blogger Pro.

Salam's Story

Salam Pax, the Baghdad Blogger is finally tracked down by the Guardian newspaper.

It's great to finally hear about the man behind the blog. After all the discussion over his existence it's reassuring to find that he does exist in the flesh. It's also another great notch in blogging's (journalistic) bed post. Hell, my brother finally understood my manic enthusings about the blogging world after reading Where's Raed.