:: Event Horizon ::

:: Friday, August 01, 2003 ::

Mirror Site
As my loyal readers will remember, I've frequently grumbled about how many bloggers have left Blogspot hosting and gone on to other blogging services. I became discouraged with Blogger and began checking out alternatives (there are, it turns out, alternatives to Blogger). So, for a while now, I've been doing some beta testing for a company called TypePad, which will be a rival to Blogger once they open for biz. I have not yet decided if I will permanently jump ship, but you can at least drop by my site there and let me know what you think of the new look.

:: Joel 5:14 PM [+] ::
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Navigating the Blogosphere
I am worried that the blogosphere is becoming too large and that new navigation tools are needed to help us get around and find blogs that match our interests. How large is the blogosphere? In Blogging By The Numbers, the CyberAtlas notes that, "The blog revolution is well underway, giving every Internet user the opportunity to become an online journalist. While it is difficult to calculate exactly how many individuals are using Web sites as journals, Blogcount estimates that there are roughly 2.4 million to 2.9 million active Weblogs as of June 2003...Of this figure, Blogcount attributes more than 1.6 million active users to the top three centrally hosted services." And as I noted in a prior entry, we will add to this number all (or potentially all) the members of the AOL service once they roll out their new version that comes with blogging software preinstalled. I am worried that the navigation tools we currently have (or at least those that I'm familiar with) are not going to be able to keep up with the ever growing blogosphere. Take Eatonweb for example, one of my favorite blog indexes, and you find blogs that are listed under so many categories at once as to make the index nearly meaningless. If a blog is about everything, how likely is it that at any given moment I will find a recent entry that interests me? What is needed is a way to refine categories so that blog indexes can offer more specific recommendations. I'm also a fan of blogsreaming, loosely connecting blogs related to the same topic, though I've not found any software that makes it easy to create a blogstream. Perhaps that will be the next big thing?

:: Joel 2:45 PM [+] ::
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A Hobbit Home
I’ve always been interested in architecture and alternative design concepts. This article from the New York Times certainly sets off flights of fancy and inspires a certain optimism that maybe we can get away from designing bigger and better boxes to live in. I mean, who wouldn’t want a Hobbit home to live in?

:: Joel 12:51 PM [+] ::
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World War I
World War 1 began on this day in 1914, with Austria-Hungary declaring war on Serbia. As we today contemplate the allied war effort in Iraq, the unresolved war in Korea, and flashpoints between India and Pakistan, let’s pause for a moment to remember the war that started the sad and lamentable practice of numbering world wars, a somber acknowledgement of our fallen nature and an assumption, already proven, that there would indeed be others. Originally it was called The Great War, and the War to End all Wars. But in the end, it was not all that great, and it did not end war. The Great War is a PBS website that is a great place to research the war, it offers a maps, timelines and interviews. It is one of the better WWI web sites I’ve come across. What was WWI about? Good question, and one worth an answer, at least one from every generation.

:: Joel 4:56 PM [+] ::
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