tingilinde

do you need a blog?

Typepad - the folks that host tingilinde - have offered a one year free blog subscription that I can give away.  If you want it, send me a note telling me why you want to blog and I'll send it to whoever makes a compelling case.  

Send your note by October 1 - use the email me link on the upper right side of the page.

blog tagging

Some time ago I found myself part of a game where you would find a sentence in a physically close book and post it (encouraging others to join)... the results were approximately random, but fun..

Now a variation of tag ... and I'm "it"

hmmm ... five things people don't know about me...

• I like the smell of skunks

• I like brussels sproups, but only if they have been frozen on the vine (it makes them sugar)

• When I walk I often entertain myself by visualizing points in front of me and "slaloming" around them following bezier curves. This is particularly fun in NYC.

• The best time of the week is 7:40 pm on Friday.

• I sing poorly, but like to stand in front of powerful singers and let them guide me.

and one more for good measure

• There aren't many vegetarians from Montana -- I'm one of them.

OK ... now I tap Fernando Pereira, Steve Cisler, Hanna Wallach, Greg Blonder, and Lynn Cherny.

how completely juvenile of me

learn a language with your ipod

Slate ran a piece looking at podcast language courses.

The verdict is that Chinesepod rules.

r.i.p. crandall surf report 2.0

About a year ago I stopped posting to my old blog, the Crandall Surf Report 2.0, and setup shop at tingilinde. Today is the last day of my old account and the CSR fades away.

The unusual "blog" was the original Crandall Surf Report. I started moving from shortwave radio dx'ing to recreational surfing in late 1993 and sent out email reports of my findings. The structure of the emails was very bloggish. It slowly grew from five to about three thousand readers and management of the listserv required as much time as surfing and writing.

The old CSR ran for about five years until the ISP arm of my former employer told me the content was theirs (I wrote it on my time using my computer, network connection and listserv ... ). A legal type suggested I stop and I did. The CSR 2.0 started shortly after I left that company and was in the form of a formal blog to reduce the workload and be part of the 21^st century.

moblogging mini fandoms

Mizuko is quoted in this article on moblogging. (she was one of the first people to point out that poor resolution may be a feature)

The concept of moblog fanclubs is just strange.

fresh tracks freshens up

Fernando has modernized the look of his excellent blog.

Always a must read!

if you need a blog with hosting ...

If you want to blog and are looking for one with hosting an minimal frustration TypePad may be on of the best choices.

I've been beta testing the service and find it devoid of many of the frustrations of some of the other competing solutions. Support is excellent (although it often is during a beta period) and several new features are planned.

They offer several levels of service. The $4.95/month basic service would probably be fine for 90% of bloggers and you get 20% off if you pay by the year. The Plus service gives you three blogs, more storage and the ability to photoblog (including the ability to blog and photoblog from your cameraphone).

TypePad offers templates for creating the look and feel for your page and some of the levels allow further customization if you want to write your own html templates.

The freebie that they gave beta testers is a limited number of discounts that can be given to friends and family. Get in touch with me before August 11 and I'll send you a discount "key" - it will give you a 20% lifetime discount. I don't get any kickbacks for signing new users so it doesn't matter if you use it or not.

They give you a one month trial period that allows you to cancel without cost.

scientific blogs

Here here ... Fernando is exactly right (as is Dan Gillmor)

A real issue is articulating the utility to those who haven't used good news aggregators. You can't describe the major with words or poorly designed tools and not everyone has used something has nice as NetNewsWire.

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This is a separate issue, but is anyone else getting a sense that quite a bit of really impressive software (Hydra is another example) is coming out on OS X?

so I may stay here ...

I was surprised and not unhappy that three people offered small contributions towards keeping the blog here - I was only joking, but won't turn down the offers which help bridge the gap. So it is likely that I will stay here rather than at the Crandall Surf Report 2.0 site.

I have some ideas for jointly authored music recommendation sites that might be fun and the TypePad tools make such things much easier.

so thanks to those who offered help!!

possible migration back to radio userland

I've been beta testing TypePad for several weeks now. I find little to complain about and much to praise. I like it better than Radio Userland and, if the price was right, I would stay here and continue to ignore my old (but renewed in June) account.

The Six Apart folks have just announced their pricing plan and, considering my current financial situation and the likelyhood that I would move to one of the higher priced services, I need to decide if I really am going to stay. If there are links you consider interesting you may want to harvest them now just in case...

Of course if you really like this and want to send contributions:-)

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For someone getting into blogging who wants a richer experience than freebies like the upcoming AOL service (and what MSN is working on) provide, this may be one of the best alternatives. With the discounts it is about the same price as Radio on the low end and is, imho, much nicer. Of course I'm already a radio subscriber and paying for two is painful.