Category: Internet

Twitter and more

My favorite among the microblogs and tumblelogs is Tumblr. It’s been called a tumblelog (a sort of online scrapbook) and a microblog, but I’ve decided to use mine more or less like any other blog (many others do too). There is a difference, apart from the fact that it’s super easy to post media files. You don’t get categories, but you do get tags and there’s a customizable sidebar where you can add any info you like (html, widgets and so on). That’s a little harder to use than WordPress. If you’re familiar with LiveJournal, it’s a bit more like the free text boxes. Since I know a little (and I mean very little) html I’ve had fun custumizing the sidebar, but if you don’t know any of that, forget it. Just type in the info you want. It will be ordinary text, but that should be enough. Most of the themes have a little About box where you can tell your readers who you are or what kind of blog it is.

Soup – It’s another tumblelog. They make it very easy for you to post links, photos and other media files or – just publish your blog feed from LJ or Tumblr or Twitter. That means that anything you post on your LJ (or one of the other places) automatically gets crossposted to your Soup. It’s also very easy to set up. You don’t even need to sign up, you can try it right away. Then if you like what you’ve created, you sign up and get to keep your trial Soup.

Shoutem – If you’ve heard of Twitter, this is very similar. It’s what I’d call a microblog. You get to post short status messages, and you can add a link or a photo. It’s great. You can get your own microcommunity for free.

Twitter – Most people have heard of Twitter, but if you haven’t, you just post short status updates. It can be very simple stuff like ‘going for a walk’ or ‘having dinner’, but it can also be something more complex. Here are a few famous examples: Maybe you’ve read about how scientists monitor Twitter to learn about earthquakes before their institutes of seismology tell them. I think that’s true, actually. People are used to tweeting (posting) about anything that happens. For instance, someone tweeted seconds after a plane crash. The British actor, director, writer and media personality Stephen Fry got caught in a lift/elevator and a minute later all his fans knew about it. Then it made the news too…

You can post directly from the Twitter page or you can get a client. I’ve tried several and I didn’t like any of them enough to continue using them, though it was practical to just type into a little window and then have your status update posted remotely, as it were. Maybe if you only have one account it will work better for you. Thwirl is the one I’ve liked best. I’ve also tried TweetDeck and Twitterific and if I remember correctly, they were ok too, but not for someone with multiple accounts. If you don’t like the very basic profile page on Twitter, you can get a more extensive Twitter profile.

FriendFeed – it’s not really a blog, not even a microblog, but it works almost exactly like Soup or to some extent Twitter (though you get more features). You sign up (there are several different ways of doing that, all very easy), get a page of your own, where you can post like on Twitter or collect feeds from your regular blog or some other site you’ve joined. There are over fifty different sites that you can connect to your FriendFeed. This one’s the best feed site I’ve tried. You can also join groups – they’re also called rooms – collections of people’s posts about whatever interest the group is about. I love FriendFeed, it’s very convenient and you can customize your page so it looks nice too.

To market your blogs or webpages you can join blog toplists and blog directories. There are several. One of the best known ones is Technorati. They’ve recently changed the site and now they’re even more swamped with updates so at the moment I don’t think I can recommend it, but they’ll probably work things out and be back. Others are BlogCatalog, BlogFlux, Blogarama and Blogged. They’re quite easy to use, and there are instructions on the sites.

If you want to keep track of your visitors you can add a counter/tracker to your blog. I’m using StatCounter and eWebCounter.

More about blogs and homepages

A while back I posted about blogs, social networks etc and I suddenly realized that those old posts have become a little dated. New communities have shown up and others have disappeared. So I thought I’d tell you a little about my favorite sites online and if you’re interested, I hope you’ll enjoy it, or maybe even learn something. Of course, it’s always possible that you know more about this than I do and in that case, you’ll be disappointed.

1. Blogs, homepages

What’s the difference between a blog and a homepage? Well, you might say that everything you can find online are homepages, consisting of different things. Generally, a homepage is a static webpage (or a set of webpages) that aren’t updated very often. A blog is a sort of online diary, but can also be a homepage. The main difference is that a blog is usually updated a lot more often than a homepage.

If you’re interested in getting a blog (or a homepage) you’ll need to decide if you want to pay for it or not. Usually, if you’re looking for something that doesn’t cost anything, you’ll have to accept ads. They can be very discreet or extremely annoying and everything in between. I have a theory that some younger people (teenagers) actually prefer ads on their blogs. Pretty fashion photos anyone? Just remember that ads can feature anything, the company behind them might try to sell things that don’t have anything to do with your blog.

If you want more choices about your blog – themes, plugins etc, you’ll need to get webspace. There are providers of free webspace, but I wouldn’t recommend them. If you want free webspace, consider one of the blog sites below. It’s easier and your blog will look nicer. I’ve been lucky enough to find a web hotel that is extremely cheap, but offers very good quality. It’s also super easy to start a WP blog. (This is the kind you get from the WordPress.org site. You download the software then upload it to your web space (and you’ll need databases). Databases are extremely complicated, but I’m proud to say that my sister knows how to set them up. I don’t. If you don’t want the hassle, get web space like ours where you just press a button and the site does the rest. Otherwise, choose one of the free blog providers below.

If you’re going to have your own blog, you’ll want your own domain name. It will cost you a bit but not that much. I know some people buy them up like candy and keep them on speculation, hoping they’ll go up in value, but as far as I know very few people have become rich hoarding domain names. It’s a bit complicated setting the domain name up, but many registries can help, or your web hotel might.

If you don’t want to pay, there are several good blog providers to choose between. Different blog platforms are good for different things.

One of my favorites is WordPress.com, where you can get a free blog. The people behind WP claim they’re displaying ads, on the basic account blogs, but I haven’t seen any, so if they exist, they must be extremely discreet. You can also upgrade, and get more features. I haven’t tried that myself so I can’t tell you anything about it. WordPress is (as you might guess from the name) very good for text posts. You can also post photos and other media, and that works fine, but if you mainly want to post media files, then you might want to consider another provider. More about that later.

Another blog platform is TypePad. LiveJournal, InsaneJournal, Dreamwidth, Vox and TypePad are based on that. These are also very nice. You can do pretty much everything you can do with WordPress, but you don’t get categories or pages – static pages that can turn your LJ (or other journal or blog) into a homepage. There are workarounds, so, again, the difference isn’t that great.

What I like most about LiveJournal are the communities and the people. Don’t get me wrong, there are great people on WordPress too and you might get to know them if you comment on their blogs and they begin to comment back, but it’s not quite as easy to meet new friends there.

InsaneJournal and Dreamwidth are pretty much the same as LJ but newer. I haven’t managed to get to know any people there yet (except for ones I already knew from LJ or elsewhere).

Vox is a bit different from the others – it’s a media blog. That means it’s especially good at displaying media – images, movies etc. Text posts work fine too. There are also groups (not communities) but I haven’t made any friends there and haven’t seen any activity in the ones I’ve joined, so I can’t tell you about them. You get quite a lot of storage space for your media files, but there’s a limit per month. I’ve never reached that limit, but then I have a special photoblog (on Tumblr – more about that later).

TypePad is marketed a microblog, but I wouldn’t call it that. It’s supposed to be a basic version of their premium blogs. To me it’s like any other blog. You get categories, tags and a sort of links list (which you get on all the others too). It’s a bit like Vox, in that it’s easy to post media files (but it’s easy on all the free blog platforms).

Writing on Twitter

I’ve had this idea ever since I joined twitter to use the medium to write a novel. When I first had the idea, I hadn’t read about anyone that had done this. Now it seems like a lot of people have started on writing projects or have actually finished their novel. It might take some time for me to actually start my own project. Maybe I’ll never do, but it’s still a dream.

In my research on how to do this project, I’ve read up what others have to say about the subject. Some of the tips seem rather general and good for writing novels the traditional way too.

1) Plan the story.

This seems to be a very general tip. When writing a “normal” story you need to plan it. You need a good beginning and you need to know where it will end. It’s also good to have a few scenes in the middle of the story.

2) Decide the type of story

a: Twiction/twit lit

You have to decide what type of story you’re going to write. Twicton is twitter fiction (twit lit=twitter litterature) or novels written using twitter as the media. This is the type I was planning to write. What is different from “normal” stories is that it’s more direct. You need to get your message out in only 140 characters. They say you need about 3700 tweets to make up a novel.

b: Twisters

Twisters is a more extreme form of twit lit. The whole story is made up by only one tweet. I would find it really difficult to being able to squeeze a whole story inside a single tweet.

Here’s an example by @AStoryIn140:

The mom screamed, as the fin came toward her child. The shark’s mouth opened. Just before striking, it saw he wasn’t a seal. It veered off.

I don’t really see that as a whole story, but it’s still interesting.

c: Twitter as research

This isn’t a story type but a way of writing. Before you start your novel, you can start following accounts that might be able to give you input on your story. Then you can test out ideas and you can also learn about different subjects that you will need for your story.

3) Story is actions

Twitcons are action oriented as opposed to narrative. The twitter audience is a very picky one. If nothing happens in a few posts, then they’ll move on.

4) Keep it simple.

Because the story flows quite fast it’s complicated for the reader to keep up so it’s probably best to have few main characters.

5) Post regularly but don’t over post

Keep the posts coming, but resist the temptation to post “everything”. Even if you have lots of ideas, write them down, but don’t complicate the story by posting too much. Less is more when it comes to twitter stories.

6) Focus on one or two main themes

Again keep it simple. The twitter media is fast, interactive and slim, but don’t try to overcomplicate things by trying to cover too many topics and sub topics at the same time.

I think that most of the twitter novels I’ve read about online has a very “short” language, but still very similar to other forms of stories. Of course the medium only allows for 140 characters, but writing the story as a “normal” story, but only tell a little less doesn’t seem to be the solution. My idea is to use twitter as “window” into the main characters’ lives. What would he/she tweet about? Who would the meet? What are their likes and dislikes? Hopefully their actions (as shown in their tweets) would build up the story without any need for any narrative in between.

Hopefully I’ll be able to start this project soon. Wish me luck. Why not start your own twitter novel too!

Microblogging

Apparently, microblogging is getting more and more popular these days. As far as I can tell, the theory behind it is that people are busy, they don’t have time to sit down and write a long blog post. In a way, that makes sense. On the other hand, who says you need to blog ten times a day? A while back I read about some people doing ‘slow blogging’ – quality blogging, not quanity. That too, makes sense.

Being the sad, lonely misfit that I am, I don’t have that much to say, when it comes to ‘what are you doing?’. If I were to really microblog, it would be mainly things like ‘I’m sitting here at the computer’ ‘Just got back from a walk’, ‘Had dinner. It was delicious’. Boring. Pathetic.

That reminds me of an even newer thing – nanoblogging. One word at a time. Brilliant? Trendy? Cool? Poetic? Maybe, but pretentious and snobbish are words that spring to mind. Meaningless too. In my book. But maybe it’s something you get used to.

All this hasn’t stopped me from getting no fewer than five (I think) microblogs (not nanoblogs) and I’m doing my best to keep up. At least I will, as long as it feels fun.

What do you think? Should I give nanoblogging a chance too? Here is a nanoblog site (I haven’t tried it, but I found it when I did a Dogpile search.)

More about tumblelogs

Now that I’ve tried Soup, I can say that for me it works like a cooler version of FriendFeed (or Multiply – but without the annoying ads). It collects posts from other sites, which can be convenient if you have friends and family who would like to keep up with what you’re doing. Of course, it’s also possible to use it like any tumblelog. I haven’t had mine for long, but I’ll keep exploring it and see what else it can do.

Tumblr (for me) is a great ‘scrapbook’ – in my case a photoblog (though like I mentioned before, I also like to post links and other shorter entries). To be honest, it took me a while to figure out how to use it, but when I did, I fell in love with it. It’s so – creative and do-it-yourself, compared to more evolved blogging platforms like WordPress or LiveJournal. I still haven’t tried Publr or Plurk. In fact, I still haven’t figured out exactly what Plurk is and what use I might have for it, if any.

Tumblelogs

I recently read a blog post about what microblogging is. It mentioned Twitter and Jaiku. From what I’ve read, those belong to one type of microblog. There’s at least one other type, the tumblelog. A tumblelog is sort of a scrapbook, where ‘ordinary’ blogs are diaries/journals or even a sort of homepage (which in itself can be a lot of things, for instance a sort of business card).

I have a tumblelog on Tumblr, which I use mainly as a photoblog, but where I also post links and other shorter posts that I wouldn’t put on a ‘traditional’ blog. There are also others of roughly the same type, like Publr and Plurk (which is also a kind of social network, but then so are all to some extent). There’s also something called Soup, which is more or less a similar thing.

Blog sites

Next lesson in my computer/internet school. This time I thought I’d cover blogging sites. When I first heard of blogging it seemed alien to me. Then I tried it and couldn’t make it work, but eventually, I got the bug. Now I can’t imagine not blogging when I feel inspired. Of course, blogging requires a blog site, or software and a website and most of all a blog platform.

My favorite blog platform is WordPress. Yay! I absolutely adore WordPress. WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

The difference is that WordPress.com is a sort of web hotel, where you get your WP blog hosted for free. It does mean you get fewer choices in blog themes, plugins, widgets etc. You might also have trouble directing your domain name to your WP blog. Domain name – well, properly that should be covered in a separate post, one about homepages, webspace and, well, domain names. I’m not going to do that though. This is it. Blogs and homepages covered in one single blog post.

The reason for that is that today, most people hardly know what a homepage is and have trouble creating one. Even as late as a year ago, I was stubbornly sticking to my homepage and wanted to program it myself, using an editor, naturally. I’m not that good with html programming. Then it hit me – why should I do all the ground work, when my ‘thing’ is writing, primarily, and to some extent, photography?

I have come to the conclusion, that while I would love to make a blog theme 100 % as I like it, there are so many themes out there, that I can be pretty content with one someone else made.

Anyway, back to the domain name. It doesn’t have to be that expensive, if you want one. There’s no reason why you should need one, but if you do want one, it’s easy to get and won’t cost you too much. Unfortunately, there’s a catch. When isn’t there? It could be a bit tricky, configuring it. I’m afraid I can’t help you there, but there should be help available online.

You can also get a domain name for free. It won’t be a ‘real’ domain name, but it will shorten your URL and make it easier to remember. Uni.cc and cjb.net are the ones I’ve tried. Both work fine.

For a homepage, you’ll need webspace and if you don’t mind ads, you can get some for free. If not, there should be web hotels that have reasonable prices. My family and I are lucky enough to have found one that doesn’t charge much but offers a lot of space.

You’ll also need a web editor. There are some available online for free. I can’t tell you how good they are, because I haven’t tried them, but I’ve been told they’re quite good. Finally, you’ll need an ftp program, unless your webspace offers a web based file upload option.

Let’s get back to blogging. You’ll still need webspace if you decide to get your blog software from WordPress.org and if you like, a domain name. The upside is you get to choose any theme you like and you can get plugins and widgets.

The main advantage of both WP types is the ease of updating, editing etc. It’s a breeze compared to editing in a web editor. That’s why I decided in favor of a blog, rather than an old-fashioned homepage.

Social networks

I thought I’d continue my computer/internet “school”. This time I’d like to get into social networks, the ones I like best.

Since I’m a vegan, animal and human rights advocate and so on, Care2 is one of my favorite sites. It’s a social network for people who ‘care’. Features include free email, messaging, free e cards that help save rainforest and free donations. There are also groups that you can create and/or join. There’s even an instant messaging service. You also get a personal profile page that you can customize, where you can add photos, movies etc.

There are several veggie related communities – CrueltyFree, Vegan World, VegSpace. They’re all nice, but don’t feel very active. Maybe I haven’t really gotten to know them well enough yet. You get a profile page, messaging etc.

For other specialized interests I can mention LiveJournal and Vox. LiveJournal is a community that evolves around blogging/journal writing. Vox is quite similar to LJ, but here you get to upload media – photos, movies, music etc.

Speaking of media – Zooomr is a very cool photo site. You get unlimited storage space and hotlinking is allowed – that means you can store your photos, then link to them on your blog, profile page, home page etc.

If you’re into animals there are several different networking sites intended for animal lovers. Petster is for people with all kinds of pets. Catster is for cat lovers and Dogster is for dog lovers. There are others – BunSpace is another example, but the basic level doesn’t really allow you to do anything, so I can’t tell you much about it.

For those of us who are passionate about our writing, there are online archives where you can post your stories and poems and hopefully get comments. Naturally, you can also look for things to read.

FanFiction.net is probably the main site for fan fiction enthusiasts, but there are others – FanWorks is another I can mention. There you can also upload artwork.
FictionPress is for original fiction.

Finally, I’d like to mention a language learning network – LiveMocha. I’ve only started using the site so I can’t tell you all that much, but so far it looks impressive. You can learn new languages or practice one you already know and get help from native speakers.