Toluu

social media and green horses

The theory of social networks and the evolution of the web. Studying the social web, network theory, blogging and privacy issues of the internet.

New timesJune 14 2008

New times are under development for changemod.

Blogging is a productive, thought-provoking experience; but it is also a time consuming experience. To blog does not only mean to write. It also means interacting, reading and participating.

This blog came to life within my Master Thesis and I find it hard to continue writing now that my studies are finished.

This means, that the changemod blog will remain online, but will be updated seldom.

Stay tuned though, because changemod will reinvent itself behind a new facade.

Game Philosophy Design to downloadMay 7 2008

I finished developing the design for the Game Philosophy Conference.

The look and feel is not my work - I just did the coding. It is a simple site concentrating on content. See it in action at gamephilosophy.org

You can download the xhtml version here. Its features include:

• valid xhtml transitional

• valid CSS 2.1

• GNU GPL Licence

There is also a wordpress version here, if you’re interested.

It is not built for daily posts and typical blogging usage. Instead it uses the Content Management features of wordpress to easily update the body of the pages. It is basically meant for static pages, but with minor changes you can use it everywhere.

The return of the individualMay 5 2008

I’ve been lately very busy with several projects running at the same time. Result of this overload was, that I didn’t get the time to write any posts or even follow my subscriptions. When I opened my RSS Reader today, I had more than 500 articles waiting for me.

What I did to surpass this overload of information and work was to concentrate on specific services, blogs and aggregators. Sources, that I trust for the quality of information they provide.

Since social media have evolved in such a massive form of knowledge with no secure quality filter, information sources are mostly trusted individuals or niche social networks.

The return of the individual: FriendFeed & Toluu

One of the most popular services that puts the individual opinion at the center of attention is friendfeed.

A couple of days ago I joined a new invite-only service, which also concentrates on the power of the individual. Toluu lets you share your RSS feed with your friends. Instead of constantly reading the same blogs denying any diversity to your subscriptions (the RSS

Two posts on bloggingApril 25 2008

A series of two posts has been published at pandemiclabs about blog posting.

1. The first one (how to attract more productive comments to your blog) has provoked an interesting discussion and suggestions. From surrealistic arguments on beer (!) by lago to a great tip from Nick about the intensedebate.com service.

2. On the second post about blogging, I argue about the negative effects of daily posts. It is a subject I currently experience first hand, since (as you might have noticed) I’m not posting that often lately.

Nonetheless the subscribers to my blog increase, although (naturally) the traffic has significantly fallen. In short I suggest, that daily posts may increase the traffic of the blog, but the subscribers will come once you don’t clutter their RSS Reader.

How to surpass social media overloadApril 23 2008

What happens when your time span becomes so narrow, that you can’t fit a couple of hours of social media browsing?

Which social media would you visit to check and submit latest news?

The problem of popular social media

I’m an active member of mixx and stumbleupon. I usually spend quite some time daily in these aggregators to read the latest news, socialize and submit worthy material. But April has been a busy month, so I don’t have time to concentrate on these social media.

I also noticed, that I really don’t have much reasons to spend much time in the popular social networks. Why?

• News usually iterate in other social media sites.
• Popular stories are not what I call news. Most of the time they are lists of firefox plugins, interesting pictures, comparisons of social media (mixx vs Digg) and so on. I enjoy that kind of news too, but in time shortage I prefer more “serious” news.
• They are a race of self-promotion. Either by self-submission, getting the right friends, commenting on the right article or promoting the popular-to-be post, self-promotion is sometimes in the back of our heads. Nothing wrong with that; but s