Lifestreaming and Personal Web Sites
One of my goals for re-vamping my site was to include all the external content I post around the web: google reader items, flickr photos, twitter posts, etc. After all, the traditional personal site is dead.
I've made a good decent first stab at the goal here.... but it's still not quite right. I want you to be able to read my comments about shared Google Reader items, see who's commented on my flickr photos, and see my favorite youtube videos all from my site. Most importantly, I want people to be able to subscribe to one RSS feed that contains all of this 3rd party content.
Dave, at Mezzoblue, is in the process of accomplishing exactly what I want:
"I’m merging my traditional posts with links from Delicious and Google Reader (which is what I was up to when I wrote about the latter’s API), photos from Flickr, and Twitter posts (or tweets, if you prefer). The home page, archives, and primary Atom feed all work on this new system."
Perhaps I could install a Wordpress plugin called lifestream to get me started along this path... but as someone pointed out in the comments re: lifestream:
"...two things: 1) I’d like to keep the number of ready-made plugins down, and 2) since it’s just based on RSS feeds, there isn’t as much information to play around with, so it kinda limits the possibilities. For example, in Dave’s system, with every Flickr post, it shows how many comments that photo has at any given time."
Instead, I need to use these tools' APIs to accomplish what I want. We just did something similar at work (our tag cloud on the "For Undergraduates" page is now powered by the Delicious API). I just need another Christmas break from work so that I can do some more tinkering.
My Holiday Project
I'm off work for two weeks, so my holiday project is to re-vamp my personal site. Whoop, here it is!
My goal is for this site to be much less stagnant that it's been in the past. Herego, I've installed Wordpress. My hope is that this site will serve as a gathering point for my web content, including blog posts, flickr images, shared bookmarks, etc.
The hardest part is going to be blogging. It's been a few years since I blogged on a regular basis, so we'll see how this goes. I'll probably post on a variety of topics that interest me professional and/or personally.
Word... please comment... otherwise this'll feel pointless.
Why I Left Eduspaces
I recently moved my blog from Eduspaces to Wordpress. Eduspaces is built on the Elgg platform, which enables you to create your own social network. The Eduspaces network is devoted to educators, which is a great idea... but it's not quite there.
Here's a few things I'd like to see Elgg improve upon:
- There's no way to separate quality content from the rest. As I said in a comment on the Internet Time forums, Eduspaces needs a way to recommend content. When you log in, you're normally greeted with a mountain of blog posts. A recent article on Wired talks about how Daily Kos gets around this issue. Users are able to vote, promote, and rank content created by the community.
- I couldn't see what my "friends" were doing. When you log in to Facebook, you can see that Friend A added Friend B to their contacts list. Friend C joined Group A. Friend D wrote a new blog post.... and so on. Elgg does allow you to view your "Friends' Blog", which compiles all of your friends' posts into one list. That's a good start...
- After trying Wordpress, adding the Wordpress app to Facebook, and joining a few e-learning Facebook groups, I really don't have much of a need for Eduspaces. Most Eduspaces folks are on Facebook, and they're much more active there (most likely for some of the reasons I've listed above).
I hope this doesn't sound too critical of Elgg. I think it's a great idea. I like that it's open source. I just think it needs some work.
