Great quotes by the always interesting Jason Calacanis:

“Blogging is largely dead.”

“There are a lot of stupid people out there … and stupid people shouldn’t write.”

“There needs to be a better system for tuning down the stupid people and tuning up the smart people.”

He goes on to describe a new phase of social media, Web 3.0 (I hate the term already!):

“You have to have a deep understanding to be a blogger,” Calacanis said.

Calacanis thinks that Web 3.0 will be the “Age of Expertise.” Blogging brought about the era of Web 2.0 where people who may not have had a voice before could publish whatever they want. The rise of kittens on the Web, for instance. Add the ability to comment on stories and then share them through social media and Web 2.0 was the Age of Interactivity.

“The concept of journalism is going away,” Calacanis said. “It is not enough to be a writer. You need to be a writer and an expert.”

Fascinating thoughts…

What do you think? Are we reaching an age where both blogging and journalism become less important, to be replaced by a demand for intelligent, reasoned and well researched expert analysis and comment?

Please, oh please…

Enable full posts in your RSS feed!!!

Especially if your blog is one of those published on PlanetLotus!

I can perhaps have a teeny weeny bit of understanding for using truncated posts if your blog bandwidth usage is a critical issue for you, or if your financial viability depends on getting readers to click through ads on your site.  However, I can’t believe that this criteria impacts even 2% of those in this community, so if you’re not one of those folks, why on earth don’t you let readers consume the whole of your posts via PlanetLotus or their RSS feed readers?  

After all, isn’t the whole point of Web2.0 and collaboration in 2008 to enable the supply of information to the user “in the context of the work they do every day” rather than forcing them to visit 20+ blog sites each morning? Heck, if you have done enough to engage them they will still visit your blog to comment on the post anyway…

PS. I wish the Domino Blog template would have full posts enabled by default for just this reason – I am sure than many bloggers don’t even realise this setting is there to change…
PPS. Sorry for the rant 😉

Many of you that run your own Domino blogs will already be aware of Google Analytics – a free online service to provide high-quality statistics on web site traffic.  I have used it for my blogs and other sites for 18 months or so, and really couldn’t imagine life without it.

Well, Analytics came into being when Google purchased an existing company, Urchin, about 2 years ago.  Urchin made their name from the package that they sold to ISPs and hosting providers that could be used to offer stats to their customers.  Google took that package and made it available to all for free, which you can’t argue with!  However, there are still plenty of situations where you may not wish to trust Google with your site traffic data, or else where it is difficult to get the site to send data to the external Google servers (e.g. Intranet sites, or in very security conscious locations).

Therefore, Google is going to release an updated version of the Urchin package:

Today we’re happy to announce that the Urchin Software from Google beta is now available for download at urchin.com. Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

The downside? The price:

You can download a 90-day version of the beta here. Once Urchin Software from Google comes out of beta, you’ll be able to purchase it for $2995 through the Urchin Software Authorized Consultants. Please visit the FAQ page on the Urchin site to see details on pricing, previous version upgrading/importing instructions, system requirements, and differences between Urchin and Google Analytics.

Still, might be worth downloading the beta to see if it offers any major benefits to you or your organisation?

It’s the right hand route, and a very long wait for me 😉

I was beginning to think along these lines anyway, but Matt Wood over at Merlin’s great 43Folders productivity site says it really well…

This is the time of the year for everybody to make lame, half-hearted resolutions about how they’re going to lead a better life in the new year: lose weight, stop smoking, eat less fried cheese, take a ceramics class, etc.

[I]t is a new year, and it’s not a bad idea to at least try to alter some of your bad habits, pick up a new skill, or do something to make yourself happier. My suggestion for this year addresses a problem I suspect many of the people who read this site have: the sheer number of online commitments—that is, blogs, social networks, message groups, IM accounts, Flickr, Twitter, and any other online time sink that ends with an R—that we try to maintain.

A couple of my posts in the past few weeks dealt with the problem of trying to consume too much information. What about how much we try to produce? At one point last fall, I realized I was trying to run five blogs, two Flickr accounts, and a del.icio.us page, all the while keeping up a constant patter on Twitter, IM, and email. Only two of those things were strictly necessary for my work; the rest just made their way into my life somehow. Sure, I was doing a lot of it because it was fun, but I knew I had to scale back or else I was going to end up speaking only in 140-character, hyperlinked sentences.

My problem, and I suspect this will resonate with many of you, is that I felt like I needed to do many of these things to keep up with the techno-jonses.

Well, my tally is currently 6 blogs, Twitter, Jaiku, Facebook, del.icio.us, Flickr and numerous others… I think it’s time to cut back.  I’ll let you know what gets dropped…