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Tagging would fix Twitter and make it more useful

Nova Spivack likes to differentiate interest networks, like Twine, from social networks like Facebook. The problem is that people also use social networks to follow their interests, especially as in the case of Twitter. The result is that if we want to follow, say, Dave Winer’s thoughts on RSS, we also have to follow his interest in baseball. Microbloggers like Robert Scoble have begun to create separate Twitter accounts for their aggregation of Links and comments. Others use hash tags. But most simply continue to send all their tweets to the same into the unified stream. If Twitter had a tagging option, we could fine-tune the service to follow only Steve’s RSS related tweets, and Robert wouldn’t need to make all those different Twitter accounts. Twitter would suddenly become much less noisy and more useful. The same formula should be adopted by other social networks.

Streaming vs. Blogging

I just finished reading Louis Gray’s blog post about streaming versus conventional blogging, With the example of Steve Rubel’s Posterous. Then had another look at Rubel’s writings. Rubel conceives a situation where content producers might abandon traditional websites – the “hubs” of today’s web – in favor of placing their content on services like Facebook (the “spokes”, from which content emanates outward from blogs and websites).

Whether or not this proves to be true, I think that it requires no less writing acumen to produce an interesting stream than to author a traditional blog. Parts of Rubel’s Posterous are quite boring, Successful streaming and microblogging require stylistic adjustments in order to create interesting content.

I’d love to see greater stability in Google Docs

I have found it possible to create documents in Google Docs that it is impossible to convert to MS Word docs, or download or email. In such cases you can only copy and paste. Some Google docs can’t even be opened by Google Docs. If these are things that I’ve come across, as a fairly light user, it means that there’s a nest of other bugs waiting. Google needs to spend time stabilizing its Docs platform more than it needs to add new features.

But if Google is thinking of new features, user-customized templates should be introduced to standard edition Google Apps or regular Gmail users, and it would be nice to see shared folders. For both of these features I found workarounds*, but these shouldn’t be necessary.

* The workarounds:

– for templates, create a “Templates” folder, create a new template. Open the template as a document, and just remember to change the name to something else. If you make a mistake and change and save the template, you can always revert to a previous “version”.

– as a workaround for the absence of shared folders, I create folders in a shared Google Site, then place links to the documents there. Update: Google has just introduced a shared folder feature (see The Next Web article from October 12) This shares a folder with all of its files. But does it allow another user to place files there? If so, it isn’t clear from Google’s explanation.

Tags in document organization

Just noticed the tags feature in Windows 7, which corresponds to keywords in Office 2007. It would be possible to forego folder organization and just use tags. Folders are an old fashioned way of organizing files, and we really should no longer be using these today. With tags we could also bring together files which would normally be stored separately, like photos and emails.

However it isn’t possible to add tags to other formats like pdf, rtf or odt. Although keywords can be added to Openoffice files within Openoffice, these are not recognized as tags by the file manager in Windows 7. That’s a pity.

Win 7 file manager

Experience with Windows 7 dualbooted with Ubuntu

Yesterday I installed Windows 7 in the empty partition of my laptop hard drive – the one that had held Windows Vista.  The latter stopped working a few months ago, as did HP’s rescue partition.  It was very simple to install Windows 7.  The only difficulty was finding the Windows boot manager after reinstalling the Linux boot manager grub.  Windows had placed it on the former rescue partition, for some reason.

My next difficulty was to get Windows 7 to work with my Ext3 Linux home partition, where I keep my data files.  Previously on Vista I’d been using Ext2fs.  It turns out that this works inadequately in Windows 7.  You have to go into the program on each startup and re-identify the drive letter.  I tried compatibility mode, etc.  Eventually I placed the program file in Windows startup folder.

The Linux partition was then recognized.  Windows file manager identified it clearly, and Itunes was able to find my music there.  But Picasa didn’t recognize it.

I had difficulty getting some programs to start on Windows 7.  Chrome and Flock browsers wouldn’t install.  With Flock, I changed to compatibility mode before the install, then it worked.

My final problem was that Windows 7 seems to make greater demands on the CPU than does Ubuntu.  The machine heated up more, and shut down a couple of times.  That happened for instance when Picasa was cataloguing my photos, while OpenOffice was simultaneously downloading.  Probably the overheating problem means that it’s time to get my laptop fan cleaned.  However, it’s significant that Ubuntu never reaches the threshhold that causes the computer to shut down. 

All in all, I liked Windows 7.  It has a few nice additions that make me wonder why they never thought of these before.  Such as the concept of turning My Documents, My Pictures, into libraries that contain other locations.

I will use it once in a while to sync music to my Ipod, and maybe to edit movies (after getting my laptop fan cleaned!), since I’m still not as happy with the Linux options for movie editing.

At this stage, Ubuntu remains for me a better choice for general use – there isn’t a strong enough reason to switch back to Windows 7.

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Saturday sailed by

In recent days I’ve had this strange thing: a bitter taste in the mouth after eating food.   It’s a recurring condition that comes, lasts a few days, then goes away again.  Every few months I get this.  Besides the bitter taste, there’s a slight discomfort in the upper part of the stomach sometimes.  Reading on the web, it seems to match most closely the symptoms of what’s called a hiatus hernia or hiatal hernia.  I think I’ll settle for that explanation, since it doesn’t sound all that serious.

After researching my maladies I got on with cleaning the house, then read a little more of Divisadero.  I’m plodding along slowly with that – probably because I’m spending too much time on computers these days.  I love Ondaatje’s books and read so far The English Patient, Anil’s Ghost and many of the poems in The Cinnamon Peeler.

Then Deb came over.  She talked about the writing guide for activists that she is writing.  Later in the day we had a visit from two men from the German government who may be willing to help us with the Library project.  I met them together with Nava.

Dorit meanwhile had meetings with Frans and Hans from Holland.  Hans is director of an organization called Stichting Collusie, (translation to English) .  They aim “to advise socially and economically vulnerable groups in the area of sustainability, energy saving and environmental protection.”  Since they take volunteers and Yotam is currently checking possibilities for volunteering abroad, she also arranged an interview with him.

In between I looked at FriendFeed.  Found there a link to an interesting article and discussion to identity issues of Muslims in India. Some of the comments complained about the phenomenon of Indian college students rooting for Pakistan in cricket matches between the two nations.  That reminded me of the way Palestinian Israeli citizens often support foreign teams playing against Israel in soccer or basketball. 

On TV heard an interview with a speaker of Esperanto – a language that I would love to study one day.  It takes about 15 lessons by correspondence or through the web to learn the language.  The interview was with an astrophysicist, who appeared with his daughter, with whom he had spoken the language since she was a baby.  As against the popular conception, the creator of Esperanto, L. L. Zamenhof had never intended to replace existing languages, but to create a universal second language for everyone, which would be especially easy to learn.  The effect would actually be to preserve existing languages by not threatening them by cultural dominance.  This year is the 150th year of Zamenhof’s birth.  Too bad the idea never properly caught on.  But there’s a street named after him in Tel Aviv.

In the evening I looked up some more news feeds and links on Friendfeed.  Finally discovered a work around for my audio problem in the Flock browser.   There’s a Firefox extension rather pompously called “The Flash Video Resources Downloader”.  You click an icon in the taskbar and it finds the flash video.  You click another button to download the video in the suitable format.  Then I can open it in Totem.  Fine.  The only snag is having to wait for the entire video to download before listening.

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A new mouse


I purchased my third bluetooth mouse in a year today.  The first was a Level-One BLM-3000.    Quickly abandoned on grounds that it wasn’t comfortable, had poor battery life and frequently lost receptivity – leaving me wondering whether it was time to change the batteries again, or just something wrong with the connection.  The second was a Microsoft Bluetooth Notebook Mouse 5000.  A good mouse, but recently the middle button wore out – apparently from over-use (mainly from opening browser tabs).  It still works, but only when pressed hard and long.  Today I replaced this with a Logitech V470.  It’s a good looking two-tone grey and white, and is comfortable. One nice feature is that it takes regular AA batteries, rather than lower capacity AAAs.  I just hope this mouse stays with me longer than did the other two – Bluetooth mice or not cheap.

Journal – mainly about photo handling under Linux

I was somehow sick yesterday – woke up feeling very low energy.  In mid-morning I had loose bowel movements, throughout the day felt zift.  And it was also quite a busy day, with the annual test for the car, a visit from the guy that replaces our water filter, two trips to Modiin to take Yotam to work and back.  Then in the afternoon we bought him a new computer monitor.

Most of last weekend was spent moving files around and doing backups, in order to free a disk up for our new Nmix multimedia player. Then setting up the player itself.  I will talk about that some other time.  But the awkward thing is that somewhere during that process my laptop Windows partition, and even the HP restore partition got affected, such that I can’t use Windows, and have to use Ubuntu.  Previously I was flipping back between these every few weeks; probably eventually spending more time with Windows.

The data on the partition all seems to be there, and I was able to access and transfer it using Yotam’s Ultimate Boot Disk.  Just won’t let Windows start. 

So I’m stuck with Ubuntu, unless I get it fixed.  Truth is, I’m a bit worn out by the problems of both operating systems, and have found myself lusting for a Mac.  But, as my son Yonatan says, if I had a Mac I would probably find things to complain about that too.

Since I’m a bit of a fatalist, I took up using only Ubuntu as a challenge.  The most difficult thing for me under Linux is finding a way of working with photos.  Although photography is by no means the larger part of what I do, it is an area that has to be in order.  And the big obstacle to overcome is finding a Linuxcentric photo organizer and workflow.

I have done a major revisit to this subject in the last few days, trying the most commonly known applications and some less known options:  Picasa, Digikam, Gwenview, G-thumb, F-spot, Lightzone, Bibble Pro, as well as reading up on Geeqi and a couple of others.

What I need really, is actually what Picasa does rather well, except that Picasa under Linux chokes on my photo collection (it’s about 35,000 photos so far). I need something that imports photos from a camera, lets me organize them and handles light editing – preferably non-destructive.  I have a folder-based system, but also use tags (keywords).  I want to use both, and to be able to search for photos using both. I also want to have a quick way of uploading the photos to the web (I have been using Picasaweb.

All that turns out to be a tall order.  Picasaweb has the most elegant user interface I have seen for handling photos.  In a single screen, without any customization, it does everything I need to do.  It is super-fast, for browsing, searching, editing and sharing, and permits a brilliant workflow.   I think it’s a work of genius.  There are still a couple of things I don’t like about it, but all in all I’m happy.  But, as mentioned, the Linux version (which is based on the Windows emulator Wine) is less robust.

Under Linux, the best equivalent seems to be Digikam.  It has keywords, uses folders, can handle editing (not non-destructive as in Picasa), but, for some reason, on my machine it is almost unusable.  Slow and prone to freezing.  Again, the problem may be the large photo collection.

G-thumb does a reasonable job.  It’s fast and easy to use.  It uses a folder-based system.  It allows simple (not non-destructive) editing.  Instead of keywords, it relies on searchable comments.  Trouble is, the comments are recognized only in G-thumb, and it does not recognize IPTC keywords at all.  That means that any time spent in tagging (which is an exhaustive process) would be good only for G-thumb, or perhaps Gnome’s file manager. 

F-spot is just the opposite.  It relies only on tags, and does not allow a folder view.  It does tagging very well, and these are searchable.  The tags are generic IPTC standard, and are recognized outside of F-spot.  The problem is, that after you have invested so much time organizing a photo collection in folders, it just isn’t possible to go back and start tagging every single photo.

F-spot seems to be closest to I-photo under Mac.  I checked out I-photo in a display model in Office Depot today.  I don’t think that would work for me either. 

Lightzone and Bibble are two non-free photo managers and editors that work under Linux.  At up to $200 they are expensive.  But I would consider them if they did everything I want.  Lightzone does editing very well, and is supposed to handle Raw photos (which I don’t use).  Bibble seems to handle the photo-organization quite well and also allows editing.  Both programs are aware of and can handle tagging. Both do non-destructive editing, though they handle it in different ways.  Unfortunately neither have a search engine.  Lightzone has some problems navigating to my external hard drive.  Bibble has an interface based on dockable windows, which seems a bit messy to me.  A new version of Bibble has been promised for a long time.  I will wait and see what that offers.

Gwenview is nice mainly for viewing photos and is a bit limited.  Geeqi, based on an old “competitor” to GThumb, is in a very alpha-stage and is mentioned as being unstable and not recommended for serious use.  There are systems that use PHP and Appache, but these don’t seem a good option for work on a desktop computer.

So there I am – nothing really does everything that I need to do.  I will probably adopt a workflow that involves Picasa, GThumb and F-Spot.  Perhaps I will import photos in Picasa, use Picasa as an intermediate station, since it works quite well with a smaller number of photos.  In Picasa I can tag them, then archive them for later viewing in GThumb and F-Spot.  Sometimes, in order to work with photos in the archive, I can do the opposite – moving them to a folder that is watched by Picasa, doing quick editing, then sharing them from there by email or web.  There are a couple of things I’m still not sure about in this process, such as Picasa’s handling of keywords, and how best to use Picasa as a way-station.

Perhaps, in a few months time, some of my difficulties will be solved by updates to some of the programs I have mentioned.

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Confused by all my networks

I admit to testing tools just for the fun of it; so I find myself hovering between a dozen different networks, without much commitment to any of them.  Some of these I treat as news sources.  Facebook is the only one I look for any kind of social connections, but I tend to be stingy about them too.  The problem with this lifestyle of tasting different services is that my networking world becomes distorted in favour of geekdom, a domain to which I don’t really belong.  Some of the services I like best, such as FriendFeed and Twine, have readerships that incline heavily towards technical people.  I am still trying to figure out which of these networks I feel most at home in, and what I want to accomplish there.

I have just read some interesting, if terse, notes that came out of the SXSWi event, Beyond Aggregation — Finding the Web’s Best Content” [Louis Gray posted an interesting blog post after this same event:  Finding the Web’s Best Content – Do You Want it New or Trusted ] A panel of experts discussed their methods.  For me, I find a mixture of RSS news feed reading, supplemented by FriendFeed to be the most useful.  If I want to learn more about a subject, or what people are saying, I try a search on socialmention.com.  I don’t have the time or the patience to wade through reams of twitter tweets.

The next question is what to do with all the information I gather.  The first step, I think, is to get it organized in something other than chronology, so for this it makes best sense to use one of the social bookmarking sites – I use Delicious.

There is a serious question about the value of link sharing.  So many people are already sharing, and have greater expertise than me in every field.  I’m a dabbler; I don’t have the time to read everything about all the subjects that interest me, and other people who specialize in each knowledge field, are better at aggregating content for it.  Lately I have been thinking that the best approach may be to gather various stories about a given subject, then contribute towards the conversation by placing the most authoritative articles together in my blog, together with my own thoughts.   Besides mentioning these articles in the text, I will gather the links together prominently, so that readers can go directly to them and not listen to my blather.  In order to preserve a unique voice, I will speak mainly from my own experience.

In the last few days I have begun to reduce my linksharing across various networks.  In order to be efficient, it isn’t sensible to cross-post to various services.  I seem to have gone back to delicious for most of my bookmarking (rather than Twine).  Delicious enables finer control over the placement of the information, and their website also works very fast.  But most people, including me, seem to treat delicious just as a great reservoir of information.  I also want my links to enter a chronological “river of information”.  I like Friendfeed best for this.  I have decided to put into Twitter (using FriendFeed as the lever) only my original material.  On Facebook I have stopped sending all the Friendfeed information to my profile and news feed.  It can be found under the FriendFeed tab of my profile.  When a link seems particularly relevant to my facebook crowd, I can send a link directly to FB.

I have yet to consider the changes that have come to Facebook today (new privacy settings that enable profiles and newsfeeds to become public – see links below) and the other modifications that may change the way that people use Facebook.  But I will leave that to think about that another day.  For now, I have opened up my privacy settings.

Links:

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