Whatcha got under the hood there, fella? That a six-cylinder or the eight? What kind of gizmos and flibgadgets are you using on the front end? How's the mileage on the hozzle? These are the kinds of high-tech questions that we hard-core early adopter types have to field on a daily basis. We try to boil it down to layman's terms, of course, so that even the non-engineers can attain a vague grasp of the fundamentals. So now and again, we take a quick look at some of the more technical advances at Tom Watson: My Dirty Life & Times - a tip of the virtual hat to the massive team that keeps this blogmobile moving down the highway. Some new additions to the basic muscle car Typepad V8 powertrain:
See that box of head shots and avatars down the left side - no farther, the LEFT side. There. That's the handy little widget from MyBlogLog, a newish web service that Fred tipped me off to. It's incredibly viral - and for grownups, too. Kind of a MySpace for middle-aged people who write blogs. Basically it tracks other bloggers who visit your site, creating a kind of central community around blogs. I like it very much so far,and I'd love to see more of the bloggers in the B-roll join up. Here's a hint: it's already bringing in new readers. so please sign up and join my community. I'm curious to see what feature sets MyBlogLog adds down the line.
Also down that left column is the feed from my coComment account - a nifty service that I use to track my comments left on other blogs. Too often, I've found I drop a comment or two and orget to come back and follow the conversation. Then too, how will my own readers know what I'm commenting on elsewhere? In the open spirit of this conversation of ours - and with coComment's help - you can track my virtual footprints around the web and leave your own as well if you choose. I like this feature very much.
On the right side are two features that have been up for a while. The first is my Flickr box, which has been a feature here almost since the start. Love Flickr - an almost too obvious thing to say. But since it's recently been redesigned, I love it more. Keeps track of my pics, helps distribute photographs to a wider world, and lets me in on the lives of many friends and colleagues online. Visit my Flickr page. Tell me how cute my kids are.
Finally, there are the charts from Last.fm, a social music site that is really amazing - not only does it track what I'm listening to on my desktop (but not my iPod, alas) and report it back to me - and me to you - it offers up an infinite set of tag-based "radio stations" that allow me to discover new music and old faves. I use it all the time. Feel free to comment on my taste in music. (Strangely, my most-played track at work is Brand New Cadillac by the Clash - hmmm). That's what this sucker is for.
Part of the purpose of this blog is pure experimentation with the medium - of it there's anything else I should add, let me know. Features are liable to come and go, depending upon whether they work for me. But hey, it's my blog. I'm the digital grease-monkey here. Over and out.
UPDATE: Of course, as soon as I endorse coComments, the javascript for publicizing the service takes the site down for a couple of days for those of you stuck using the Internet Explorer browser. I endeavored to take it down - from the shore, via my Treo phone - and patched things together. Fred apparently suffered the same problems, and comments on his experiments with "blog bling." I agree with him - this is an experiment for me, and if a script takes my breathless writing offline for IE users for a day or two, well that's the price ya pay for living in a transparent world.
