Matt’s Daily Diigo Post 07/19/2007

LeftsiderTop 5 Reasons why the iPhone is not for you

• Figgin’ hilarious! - post by telecommatt

Micro Persuasion: Wither Blogging? Not Yet, But Perhaps Soon  Annotated

• The question has been raised before. Is the blog a form of new media or simply a phase in its development? It could be that long-form blogs (does mine really qualify as long-form?) are a transition from the research paper and article form of the “old” internet to the microblogging of SMS, Twitter, and Facebook. Personally, I hope this is not the case.
   - post by telecommatt

What, wither blogging? Not quite. I believe blogs remain extremely powerful and I plan to be a multi-format contributor. Still, a perfect storm is brewing that could one day mark the decline of the long form blog as we know and love it today.  BL Ochman and Michael Tangeman are two that are pondering the same trend.

The demands on our time, be they work, family, shiny objects or all of the above loom large. This is changing our media habits.

• This is very true. I look at my own habits– It’s easier to throw in a short post here and there than to sit down and write a feature length article. A feature article will take me about 4 hours to write. Since I blog on the side, that is a lot of time spent away from my wife and my books.  - post by telecommatt

On my next short trip I plan to leave my laptop at home in favor of my iPhone, especially if I can plan it all so that I am around wifi.

• I rarely travel with my laptop any longer. Between my mobile phone and my Nokia 770, I rarely miss it when I’m on the go. It does shorten my the length of my communications, especially since much of my posting and comminicae are done via SMS.  - post by telecommatt

Last but not least we have social networking. These sites and services make it easier for us to tune into “signals” – e.g. people and topics we care about – and tune out noise.

• I see where he is going, but I think that social networking has created more noise rather than less. I care about my Twitter and Facebook friends, but it’s mostly background babble that I tune out.

  I think that RSS is really where we get to tune out the noise. And RSS works best for blogs and other news sites. I have a suspicion that once people get tired of hearing everything that everyone of their friends is doing, people will revert back to blog content because it is noise-free. - post by telecommatt

We will unsubscribe from low quality blogs written by strangers that we truly don’t have time for, in favor of tuning into friends and their mobile streams.

• I sort of agree here. I think what will happen after the social networking frenzy is over is that people will start clearing out the clutter. Yes, low quality blogs will get the ax. So will friends from elementary school who found us on Facebook. What’s left will be quality content that people find value in. While he is right about content becoming shorter, I don’t think that this will lead to the demise of blogging. Rather, it will create a challenge to bloggers similar to the challenge faced by newspaper editors today. Content must be short enough for the readers attention span, but must contain enough valuable content to convince the reader to keep reading. In the end, it’s not going to be a blogging vs. social networking thing. It will all come down to the value of the content.  - post by telecommatt

NPA.RMLABS.NET – Phone Number Geolocator  Annotated

• Not quite certain how this would be useful, but it’s fun to play with. I was not able to locate my home phone, probably because it was issued by the local cable provider rather than the incumbent telco.
   - post by telecommatt

USA/Canada phone prefix location lookup tool

MOO | Stickers – Print stickers using your images

• Free shipping in July
   - post by telecommatt

Sentenc.es – A Disciplined Way To Deal With Email  Annotated

• Wow– this is a great idea! I think that it depends on the email and the situation. Updating my grandmother on what I’ve been up to should take more than five sentences. After all, she’s my grandma and she deserves more than five sentences! Emails in the workplace, however, often don’t need even that much of a response. “Will you contact this client?” “Yes.” I think this is a great way to clean up the office inbox clutter!
   - post by telecommatt

E-mail takes too long to respond to, resulting in continuous inbox overflow for those who receive a lot of it.