Mathieu Tozer's Dev Blog

There are sometimes things that you read and you think, I reckon my friend or colleague would like this too, or that it would be beneficial to him. So most people copy and paste the link, and send it to them or a list of people via email. These days some people post links to other sites from their weblogs, with a short commentary about it. Then if their friends bother to check their site, they might get to the link and have a look, or they might not, depending on how good the persons introduction was.

People read a lot of stuff. Some of it good, funny, insightful, just good. Some (most?) of it is bad. The good stuff it worth sharing, the bad stuff is not, unless to demonstrate how bad it is.

Email doesn't facilitate the sharing of good links very well, because people already have too much email in their inbox, and most of all the unusual stuff gets auto-canned anyway in the spam collector. Plus you can't really write comments as a group persistently on the writing and have a, I know it's geeky but 'book club' like chit-chat over what the writing was like, and the ideas in it.

The weblog approach is to sharing good links is a better one though. The blogger can introduce the writing, but these intros are in-between all the other parts of the blogger's ranting, which mightn't be as good as the writing they're trying to get you to read.

People have blog rolls on their web-sites in order to introduce readers of their site to other sites that make the blogger think they're more intelligent for reading, but once clicked the link brings up yet another site full of writing, most of it bad, with the odd good one interjected between, that made the author of the original site think to link it in the first place. And that site too has a blogroll.

And yes, some good writing isn't even in blog form, and was written even before they existed! (How easy we forget).

What we need is some way to point not at the mouth itself, but at the teeth within it. Most teeth are chipped, mouldy and green, but some are pearly and even gold plated. We don't want to tare these teeth out, no, that would be a copyright infringement no doubt, so we should be trying to help each other out by pointing to them.

What spawned this idea happened while reading one of two things, during the second one, actually, after the first. Anyhow, they were Shirky's Situated Software and Douglas Adam's Riding The Rays.

Sharky's is about situation software, which set my brain thinking about smaller scale social software. It appealed because of, well, the advantages of it spelt out in that piece. I also thought of who I'd like to share it with, because I wanted them to have the same benefit from it as I, and learn the same insights (nice, aren't I?).

Then I kept reading (it was a bunch of text I have sitting in nooq called 'Librié', where I chuck interesting looking text that I'd like to read sometime but not now and on my Librié) and Douglas Adams went on telling a story about the dreariness of England, and how bright and wonderfully tacky Hamilton Island is, and, well a whole lot of other stuff that made me chuckle and spit all over my electronic ink.

I wanted to share this writing with my friends. I think they would enjoy it!

Sometime while I was probably wiping the product drenched sweat off a sunbed I thought of my idea.

Wait let me backtrack a bit. I had also been brainstorming of a new online reader that I would like to use.

I scuttle about the place, home, Uni, work, and I generally have internet access wherever I go (at work through the Wagamama walls. Well I AM a customer) except it's always on a different machine. And even if I could afford a Mac Book Pro I probably wouldn't want to be hooning on my bike down Fitzroy St and the Dandenong freeway with it in my backpack while sweating all over the place. So until they have a Mac Book Pro as durable as my eMate, I'm going to stick with my eMate.

(Which makes it a bit of a pain to get online, and to do any development work while away from location 1: Home, however that's not the main gripe of this piece)

I've been doing what I am about to describe here in a way with my uni weblogs. My notes, once digitised, are everywhere, although when I log in at work on my Clié the text is pretty small and it makes my eyes hurt, which you'll agree is not optimal. Scrolling is pretty shit too on that bright, but tiny screen.

But what if I could dump my 'read on Librié' text (sorry Librié) to my an 'online reader', which had viewing options optimised for each device? It would remember where I was up to with each reading so when I got back home I could easily take off where I started, and it would do javascripted page turning (why hasn't anyone done this yet? Flickr did it with those thumb images) so you don't have to wait for page refreshes.

But then I realised that I could pretty much do all of what I was asking for above with, yep, you guessed it, another blog, with a mere customised template, that I probably wouldn't even have to make myself, if I poked google enough for it. But where's the fun in that? The Ruby on Rails framework tutorial pretty much shows how I could make an online reader with pretty much NO code, although it would be very basic, but usable.

So I put that idea aside with the intention of having a crack at it. Standby.

While wiping down another bed, I thought again of how I wanted to share the funny, good stuff, not just keep it to myself. But it would be messy to just pass around my 'chunks of Librié' texts, saying 'read this'. There didn't seem to be much of a clear way to make my reader social. So I separated the ideas.

The main idea of this post is the idea that you have a small group of contributors (let's say, 5) that all think along similar lines, or at least have matching interests. They must (most probably) know each other before coming together in the system. (This is not another one of those beastly matchmaker social softwares) They might live in the same apartment, office (does anyone live in their office? I do - it's my bedroom), or work in the same small company. Thus the 'situated software' aspect.

And they, being the smart duckies that they are, read quite a lot and enjoy reading. They love the rich tapestries of thought ra ra ra (you know what's coming) that is woven in their brain - let's call it a loom - that reading brings, and the constant learning. Whicketty-Whack, bang chug bang goes that loom. Oh my! Reading brings so much astonishing colour to that rug!

If a persons brain is the loom, and the tapesty their psyche and collective knowledge then readings are the wool.

As explained above, some of the wool isn't very high quality, and it mars the softness and allure of the tapestry. But you put up with it because the good strings help you overlook the bad. What my software would do is create a basket for you to put your favourite and most pleasing strings into, much like a magpie does with shiny silver things that it finds in a dreary landscape. But unlike magpies, you could share your nest with your friends, and let them contribute also. Then you could beak through them and squawk, hoot, and tweet your own opinions on what constitutes a good bit of wool and what constitutes a bad one.

And with more good wool to work with, everyone's tapestries are more beautiful.

Then others, who also admire your tapestries, and the amazing work you have been able to do in the real world, can take a look at what it is that helps you whack that loom and print such wonderful tapestries of thought. RSS should do it.

Ok, so I know what you're saying, I've essentially described a book club. A fangled, online book club. Hooray. Yes. A book club, but for the sprawling, boiling ocean of the blogosphere and the WWW, and something that can tame it. I don't want to be the one to sift through all the bad to get to the good, I want to have a feed from a bunch of people who I can relate to and share the same interests to me (I'd have some software, fashion, and Japan ones maybe) and I want to have an RSS feed with introductions to each piece of writing and a link to it, and commentary about it from the contributors.

The Contributors become editors basically, of the complex, random world of the internet, and they make consumable magazines for us, by linking interesting content. NOT by linking whole other web sites, but actual articles.

This way, I might actually have time to go make the tea and cucumber sandwiches before settling down to book-club, although as an observer I might not be able to comment directly in the main 'contributor's clubroom'. (The writing's original comment areas are, however, open fodder).

We could get some really smart and influential people into the system. Surely smart people must read. People could have a 'recently recommended reading' roll on their lists instead of / in addition to their traditional blogrolls.

If Joel Spolsky got onto it, we all wouldn't have to fork out fifty bucks for 'The best software writing II' this year, because we'd all have read its contents already on his recommended reading list.

He would be contributing to a reading group and commenting on software writing with his online AND off-line socially connected people (a small group, to eliminate noise) to 'what WE think is the best software writing'.

Of course within those groups you can have rating systems in place to see if what one person thinks is good everyone else thinks is good, and then all us digits RSS into the Great Forum to learn something about what makes the big people big.