Waiting for Readers

The other day, I had a discussion with my sister about when it was
appropriate for a restaurant's waitstaff to clear empty plates.

The
topic came up because we had been out to dinner not too long before,
and she was stewing because she felt the waitstaff had been trying to
rush us out because they'd been clearing our empty plates pretty
quickly.

I don't really have an opinion on this, but she cited some sources. Apparently, this is a matter of some dispute within the hospitality industry.

Anyway, all the waitstaff talk reminded me of a blog I was turned on to a while back (I forget the source, sorry) -- it's Waiter Rant, which, as the name suggests, is the blog of a waiter (in NYC, as it happens).

It's
pretty well written, not at all a mindless rant, and for whatever
reason, it seems to have struck a chord with the blogosphere. He's developed quite a following, as evidenced by the number of
comments in his blog.

There are three lessons I want to draw from this:

1. You can write about just about anything, and as long as you write well, people will pay attention to what you say.

2. You never can tell what's going to get picked up and passed around.

3.
There are a lot of people in the blogosphere at large, which means
there's a whole world of potential readers and commenters out there.

Especially
with regards to the last point: I know that blogging is a personal
activity, and that we do it for ourselves and a close circle of family,
friends and people we've met and all that, but I also just got done
answering a ton of mail from folks asking "How do I get more people to
read and comment on my blog?"

My stock answer says something
along the lines of "Write for yourself, and everyone else who finds you
is a bonus" (which is true, but doesn't really answer their question)
and "Blogging is all about building relationships, so make sure you
participate in other people's blogs -- and really participate, don't
just throw around your URL like some kind of link whore" (I don't say that last
part, exactly), which is also true, but it's not very satisfying,
because it's not a quick fix.

Anyway, just food (booo) for thought.

Thanks. -- Joe

Sex, Lies, Murder and Blogs

Alright, so this wasn't supposed to be another jeremiad on the challenges we face with integrating blogging into society.

It was supposed to be a light-hearted followup to my "Won't Someone Think of the Children?"
entry, illustrating the potential risk of revealing too much personal
info online by pointing to one of my favorite comic strips:

This is an excerpt of Sunday's Pearls Before Swine, where Zebra explains how he blogs about avoiding the attacks of his crocodile neighbors, who are trying to eat him.

This information is very popular with other Zebras, for obvious reasons.

But what happens if the crocodiles find out? You'll have to view the comic to get the punch line. [Update: The comic is no longer accessible, so I'll spill the punch line: The crocs are too dumb to figure out how to use the computer, which is not necessarily a luxury you'll have when you blog.]

I was reminded of something said by commenter reachingperfect,
who explained how some teens he knew suddenly lost interest in blogging
when their English teacher started reading and commenting in their
blogs. (Presumeably, until they created password-protected blogs.)

Part of what's going on here is the old "look at me/don't look at me!" dynamic, where you want to be out there and you want people to see what you have to say -- you just don't want the wrong people
to see (where the "wrong people" is an ever-changing and growing list
of people that could include your mom, your mortal enemy, your friend
you made snarky comments about, your future employer, your parole
officer, your high school classmates who you made "terroristic threats about", etc.)

However, information is information, and it can be used by all kinds of people -- good, bad and indifferent.

There was a story last week (as seen in Blog Herald) about how a killer may -- very important, this is speculative -- have used info on his victim's blog to track her.

Now,
again, we don't want to overreact to things that could possibly happen
if the bad people see your blog. But we also don't want to understate
things.

I mean, the Terminator
used the phone book to slaughter a bunch of Sarah Connors, but you have
to judge for yourself if you want to get an unlisted phone number to
protect yourself from time-traveling cyborg assassins.

Similarly,
if you're a murderer, or at least planning a murder, you probably don't
want to write about it in your blog, unlike this Japanese high schooler and suspected mother-poisoner. (via Waxy.org)

Anyway,
I want to end this entry on a positive note, so I will also how the
blogosphere is also good at unmasking deceit, such as a David Cross impersonator,
who uses his resemblance to comedian and 'Arrested Development' star
David Cross to score free drinks and starstruck co-eds (though fellow
comedian Susie Felber notes that it was probably less the co-eds and more the drinks.)



Included for your reference is Gawker's Guide to Telling David Cross Imposters, featuring tips from the man himself.

Talk to you later. Thanks. -- Joe

Tag: Busted for Blogging

Journals Alerts: They're Fixed?

Hi folks, as the header shows, this is part question/part statement.

The
tech folks think they've isolated the cause of most of the recent
Alerts trouble (which was nondelivery of comment alerts), and fixed it
by bouncing (or rebooting) a balky server, which seems to have made things a whole lot better.

In fact, that may have been why I couldn't duplicate the problem on Thursday.

Anyway,
let me know if your Alerts situation has gotten better. The tech folks
are putting in some additional monitoring so we can keep tabs on that
server.

Note that even if this solves our primary problem with
comment nondelivery, there may be other Journals Alerts problems
floating around, so please let me know via comments or e-mails.

For example, I've seem some comments from people who have said that they have never gotten comment Alerts, which seems kind of odd.



One thing (and I hesitate to mention this, since you already know this,
so I guess this is for the other folks), is that you have to subscribe to comment alerts -- they're not turned on automatically. 



You can subscribe to comment alerts by going to the main page of your
Journal; up at the top (by your Journal editing buttons), there is a
link that says, "Alert Me as Comments are Posted" (if you're not the
owner of the blog you're looking at, it will say "Alert Me as Entries
are Posted."):

Click this link to subscribe to your comment Alert. 

If you want to check on your current Alerts subscriptions, you should go to http://alerts.aol.com,
where it will show you all of your active (and inactive) Alerts, as
well as the delivery method (online, e-mail and e-mail archive) used
for each one.

If you're still not getting your comment Alerts,
try unsubscribing from your comment Alert, then resubscribing (hey, it
can't hurt).

I've also seen reports of people getting multiple comment alerts
for a single comment, which is also kind of odd. Please keep letting me
know about these things so I can ask the tech folks to take a look.
Thanks -- Joe

Arrrr.

So, I was a little surprised to find out this morning that my picture was on the People Connection main screen:

Ron and company chose the photo (which I had used to illustrate a blog entry about Talk Like a Pirate Day) to anchor (ugh) a story about a cruise ship that escaped a real-life pirate attack.

Updated: The story gets even more interesting -- the writeup in BoingBoing links off to a Sunday Times (U.K.) article, which says that the cruise ship used a sonic weapon to repel boarders:

"The
liner used a sonic blaster to foil the pirates. Developed by American
forces to deter small boats from attacking warships, the non-lethal
weapon sends out high-powered air vibrations that blow assailants off
their feet. The equipment, about the size of a satellite dish, is
rigged to the side of the ship."

Arr. -- Joe

New Guest Editor's Picks for 11/4 (11/7 Edition)

Hi everybody. As mentioned on Friday, I had to hold off on some blog entries to tie in to a promo, so I'm catching up now.



In case you haven't seen yet, as posted in the Journals Message Board on Friday, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Our Guest Editor this week is Terra, whose featured blog is 8 Is Enough. Here are her top blog picks:

* Classy of 68
* The Hadonfield Myers Experience
* Dust Bunny Protector
* The Main Attraction!
* Emily's Purple Pages
* Public Thoughts

Terra
has no particular theme picked -- she's just got a mix of blogs that
she just enjoys reading. And that's just fine with me.



As noted, I owe you a bunch of updates, so let me get to it. Entries to come.



Thanks. -- Joe

Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

Won't Someone Think of the Children?

So here's a shocking fact:

Teens Like Blogs

A new survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project finds that more than half of all teens online have created content for the Internet. (Check out the survey [PDF file])

Being a content creator is a relatively dry term that includes posting photos, music or video, making Web pages, and of course, writing blogs.

As with any new-fangled technology, the young types have latched on in a big way: 19% of teens (12-17) have created a blog, compared to just 7% of adults.

So what are these teens doing with their blogs?

According to some recent attention in the media (including a few overheated accounts) they're engaging in risky business (embedded video) -- detailing their sexual exploits ("My kid would never do that!"), talking trash, drinking, drugging, thugging and in general, revealing way too much personal information.

With much wailing and gnashing of teeth, adults are seen crying out: "But what do we do?"

Sure, some of it may be overprotective parenting, but there is a very real threat of sexual predators and pedophiles.

In one famous recent overreaction, a Catholic high school in Sparta, N.J. decided to ban blogging outright -- not just on-campus and during school hours, but totally, on threat of suspension.

As I said in my earlier writeup on the blogging ban: If you know any teens, I'm sure you'll guess how effective this ban is going to be.

Like it or not, blogs & social sites, including MySpace, Facebook and others, are integral part of their lives, and they're having a big influence on the rest of society.

Wired has a feature story right now about MySpace's influence on launching bands, even to the point where MySpace is starting its own record label.

This is not to say that people: parents, politicans, policymakers -- you know, The Man -- won't try to regulate teen blogging. And why wouldn't they?

They're trying to regulate political blogging, by declining to exempt blogs from Federal Election Commission oversight.

Companies are trying to defend against perceived attacks from "digital lynch mobs."

China has just reportedly shut down a pro-democracy blog.

However, all is not lost.

The Internet in general, and blogs as a specific part of it, is a disruptive technology. When you introduce a disruptive technology, things change -- a lot. People, companies, and governments experience pain as they try to adapt. Not everyone can make the adjustment (like in the classic buggy whips example).

As we're discovering, the Internet and blogs are just way too darn useful to ban, because they're just too good at bringing people together in a meaningful way.

Of course, I would be lying if I told you how it was all going to turn out. So I'm going to stop now.  But I would love to hear your thoughts.

Thanks -- Joe

Update on Comment Alerts Investigation

Hi folks -- here's an update on the investigation of comment alert nondelivery.

I
just got done working with one of the Alerts people, trying to recreate
the nondelivery problem by posting a bunch of test comments on a few
different test Journals.

This is the same procedure I used yesterday, when I only got alerts for about half of the comments I left. That's not so good.

Today, with the tech folks watching? 10 for 10, across the board. No problems at all.

This
is what makes a problem like this so frustrating. We know it's out
there, but we have to be able to reproduce it consistently so they can
figure out what's wrong.

As the tech folks reminded me, even a 1% failure rate is unacceptably high
(because if something happens 1,000,000 times, a 1% failure rate means
it didn't work 10,000 times) -- however, that 1% means that it happens
infrequently enough to make it tough to reproduce and diagnose.

Anyway, here's what you can do:

* Please continue reporting
comment alert and entry alert problems to me, either in e-mail or in
the comments to this thread. (If you just post angry entries in your
blogs, I won't know about it....let me know, then post your angry entries in your blogs.)

* Any technical details
you can provide would be helpful: time and date, links to particular
entries, the type of alert delivery you usually get: online (IM),
e-mail or both, the number of comments (that you know of) that you
didn't get alerts for.

Thanks -- Joe