Posts from August 09, 2006

No-one ever asks me: Hey Norman, why dont you have a blogroll with 457 interesting, thought provoking sites for me to look at ?.

Firstly, while I find the reading lists of others interesting and a useful means of discovering new sources, I don't particularly want an lengthy blogroll adding yet more clutter to my (sort of) minimalist blog.

Secondly, my RSS reading lists are stored on a Netvibes server. I have separate tabs for 'Oracle', 'WordPress', 'Sport', 'News', 'Blogs', 'Tech', 'Software' and a small one called 'UK'. I would love to be able to publish these tabs and share the contents with everyone.

Ideally, I would like to publish all my Netvibes tabs somewhere which would always reflect my subscriptions. This would ensure that the lists are always up to date and reflect my current reading list so transient blogs (like World Cup 2006) and dead blogs would be removed.

Netvibes has a ecosystem for sharing resources but I am not quite sure whether this does precisely what I want. If I wasn't so lazy, I might investigate further.

One thing I like about Bloglines is the tight and seamless integration of the 'My Feeds' reading list with the Bloglines blog. The blogroll on the Bloglines blog is always synchronised with the Bloglines reading list. Automatically. No need to think about it. No need to export your OPML and upload it (again). Bloglines manages this for you. OK - it was the only thing I liked about my Bloglines blog but still.

This is exactly how it should be and what Share Your OPML is sadly lacking. Share Your OPML has some promising features for popular and common feeds, feed discovery, recommendations and match making. However, while I can share my feeds on Share Your OPML, this is merely a static, outdated list.

The onus is on me to remember to do something i.e. export my reading list from my current RSS reader and upload a modified OPML file at recurring, regular intervals.

This is a lot of tedious work for me to do. Computers are much better at this sort of stuff than humans. We are in 2006 and using Web 2.0 after all. Finally, please remember that I am very, very lazy.

So, that's why I don't have a blogroll.

A trawl across the blogosphere revealed that hardly anyone, with any sense, hosts a blog at Yahoo 360 or Bloglines which is very surprising indeed.

Or maybe not.

The Metro is a free, lightweight, disposable newspaper, aimed at commuters, which is solely funded by advertising revenues. So lightweight, you can finish it by the time you reach Waterloo but at least it saves you the embarrassment of staring at your neighbour for 27 minutes.

Last month, The Metro reported the exciting news that a quarter of all UK internet users maintain a blog. Hurrah !

However, the veracity of this claim is immediately subverted by the statement that '59% of bloggers choose to make it public.' So, this implies that 41% of UK bloggers are blogging in private, by invitation only, to friends and family or in complete isolation. I know the British are reserved but that is simply ridiculous.

The article then goes on to claim 'growing numbers of writers see [blogs] ... as a way to get their voice heard.' A little difficult to get your voice heard if your blog is not even published on the internet.

I don't think this superb journalism coupled with the deep, considered incisive analysis is going to challenge Dave Sifry's ' State of the Blogosphere'.

PS. Memo to self: Idea for Dragon's Den - a decent portal for UK bloggers.