Your del.ico.us network

Afterseeing the likes of ma.gnolia or blinklist emphasizing their community features, it seem del.ico.us network is there tofill the gap missing in yahoo's service.  From the announcememt :

Your network connects you to other del.icio.us users – friends, family, even new people you run across while exploring del.icio.us.

You can manage your network and keep track of their latest bookmarks by clicking the “your network” link at the top of the page, or by visiting del.icio.us/network.

When you save new bookmarks, you can share them with people in your network simply by clicking on a username. That user (or users) will then receive the sent bookmark and be able to view it by clicking on “links for you” at the top of the page.

If you are a user of the inbox, please note that your network now provides the user subscriptions functionality previously found in your inbox. Your user subscriptions have been automatically transferred over to your network and will continue to work as they did before. The inbox continues to be the place to manage your tag subscriptions.

I have tried it and … well … i can't see any difference between this and the "inbox" feature that has already been there for a long time. I guess it's a reranding to draw more users to use the inbox features. However, it's still quite limited compared to other bookmarking services community services i've tried but del.ico.us remains my favourite because it's simply the most usable/suitable i have found.

Technorati tags : del.ico.us bookmarking

“Move your lazy butt” blogs

One of the most talked about subject on blogs (after cool technology gadgets) is life, especially how to improve it/do something with it.

There are a lot of very good blog out there that can help people share and learn about life experiences. Here are the few that i have come accross a few that i have come accross :

http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/  : By the makers of the "Heads First" java books series. You will find both technical and life related subjects. One of the latter, one of the latest excellent post can be read here http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/2006/04/angrynegative_p.html

http://www.bloodletters.com/hackyourself.shtml : Move , DO something now! It's good for you…

http://www.43things.com/ :  interesting concept where people can share their goal and experiences on how to "make it happen"

http://blog.lifebeyondcode.com/blog :  Rajesh Setty's blog, author of life beyond code. More targetted at IT professional, his advices would serve pretty much anyone who is looking for more in his career and personal life. He has compile his most ppopular articles here : http://www.squidoo.com/distinguishyourself 

http://www.stevepavlina.com/ : One of the most popular personal development site on the internet by Steve Pavlina. Clear and powerful writing. Also provide podcasts. 

Ok… So i will try to keep my online butt moving a bit too, by keeping this blog up to date

Blogger VS WordPress

Ok so you have decided to start a blog, and now you have to choose the blogging tool you love. One of the 2 most popular blogging tools are free and hosted for you, ready for you to use : Blogger and WordPress . It will just take a minute to sign up in both of them.

So lets go straight at the differences first and look at the details later:

• Worpress has categories and not Blogger
• Blogger allow full theme editing and not WordPress (not yet)
• Blogger, as a Google product makes it easy to access to Google services like adsense or google search
• Lots of usernames have been taken for blogger while much more are available for wordpress : it's lways nice to be able to choose the username (and by consequence the domain name) you like
• You can create pages with WordPress and not with blogger . It can be useful if you need to have parts of your blog dedicated to one subject. Pages provide you a very flexible way to build something that is a bit more like a site and not only a blog
• WordPress has integrated blog and feed statistics and not Blogger. But you can use the powerful google analytics with blogger by quicly modifying your theme.

However, it might not be as simple as it seems… Well you can have categories with Blogger although it's a it troublesome and although full theme editing is not available for wordpress , wordpress does provide a series of useul widgets for your sidebar like search, links, del.ico.us tags, statitics… that make it very easy to customize your blog.

So far i have been using both blogger (i have 3 blogs there) and wordpress and i feel that wordpress interface is suiting my needs better because it has categories and i need them as i like to post about a lot of different subjects. Another nice advantage of WordPress is that it is improving very steadily and regularly. Sidebar widgets have been introduced which allow some basic customization and more recently, blog and feed stats have become available too. It even seems that full theme editing will soon be available… So the verdict is go wordpress!

Here are some screen shots that will help show the differences between the 2 services :

Posting with Blogger
Posting with WordPress
Blogger Dashboard
WordPress Dashboard
Theme editing with Blogger
Blog stats with Worpress (yes you see a lot of zeros i know)
Widgets with WordPress

Note : I haven't talked about the excellent WordPress the software you install on own server here although it's obviously the most flexible option as it basically bring you the qualities of both wordpress and blogger.

Technorati tags : blog blogger wordpess google

Don’t be negative guys

Kathy Sierra has put together a great post which brought great comments in abondance. Her blog "creating passionate users" is one of my favorite by the way and you can see that passionate readers has a lot to do with passionate writers.

I knew that she and her "Head First" friends were extremely good at capturing and explainingtough subject as the excellent Head First books serie is showing , but Kathy is incridibely consistent at writing well thoughout and insightfull posts on her blog.

So this particlar post is about being aware of how a negative environnement can infuence your well being more deeply than you thought you could handle

one extract:

"If you want to accomplish something that demands determination and endurance, try to surround yourself with people possessing these qualities. And try to limit the time you spend with people given to pessimism and expressions of futility. Unfortunately, negative emotions exert a more powerful effect in social situations than positive ones, thanks to the phenomena of emotional contagion."

This sounds harsh, and it is, but it's his recommendation based on the facts as the neuroscientists interpret them today. This is not new age self-help–it's simply the way brains work.

If you have not switched to her blog alrady , note that there is much more to her article like an intersting look at happy people and how happiness and critical thinking are deeply linked.. have a good read!

The blog dimension

It has been quite a big topic recently, triggered by an article in the boston globe called blogs 'essential' to a good career. The fact of usefulness of blogging to help your carreer has been widely supported (obviously actually) by most proeminent bloggers like Scoble and others.

Well, it seems like a new trend where you will be expected to have some online presence kind of online presence , most likely via a blog, a bit like you were expected to have an email address 10 years ago.

On a more general discussion regarding blogging and how it can help your carreer. There has been a lot of good content recently on building your "personal brand" that will help you stand out of the crowd and get your dream job a Google.
One of my favourite blog coding horror pushes this idea where an active extra-work activity is essential to expand your -most wanted- skills outside your traditional area of expertise.

Mere competence in a technical discipline is not enough. That's the minimum required to keep your head above water. To have a personal brand, you must do something remarkable:

• lead a user group
• create a popular open-source project
• write a blog
• publish a book
• publish articles
• speak at conferences

Do whatever you like. Pick one, pick them all, or pick something that's not on this list.* As long as it's public, and it advances your skills, you're creating a personal brand. And that will help your career far more than technical chops ever will.

A good way to get started for those of us who don't have yet a book under print or a patent a our name is the blog of Rajesh Setti who pusblished the book life beyond code

Bu as he puts it:

Distinguishing yourself is your answer to rapid commoditization that is haunting almost all professionals in this global economy. Not distinguishing yourself is to subject yourself to the risk of eroding your market value almost on a daily basis.

The most important will be once again the hard found commitment.

Technorati tags : blog career

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