So, um, I have a pretty unpopular weblog. 10 hits per day. Not the stuff of legend. One of my major goals in 2006 is to change all that. That means I have to link to other blogs, comment on interesting posts, and actively attempt to get people interested in my ideas. I’ve done none of that, ever, in my 3+ years of blogging.
Anyway, I’m pretty proud of the stuff I’ve come up with in the last year. One ingredient to a popular wblog is quality content, and I’ve had that covered pretty well, I think. Maybe an underappreciated yet high quality 2005 can help lead to a mildly appreciated and high quality 2006 output. Here’s a recap:
- Created CTA Alerts: In August I launched, along with my brother Kevin, CTA Alerts, a wireless notification community that is now a major source of public communication from the CTA itself
- Coined the term Open Source Emergency Response: this is a broad term I coined in August to describe the general movement throughout the world (Flickr 7/7 images, then later Katrina), of people who are not content to merely be managed by authorities after a disaster. The key for the future is to for governments and other organizations to make their resources more available (similar to the way the internet and code bases are available to open source software developers) for development of better emergency response tactics
- Published the Derivative Works Art Manifesto: This is one of the founding essays of my weblog and a major theme for 2006. I’m turning my attention from tools (weblog systems, APIs, cool new toys) and focusing on what it is that we do with them. Also, there is so much hysteria about plagiarism and I think we need an honest way to structure our use of previously created content
- Published Emotional Geography in January: A good idea that still doesn’t exist, despite the mashup craze
- Coined Trut: the malleable concoction of facts employed for an ulterior purpose. Contains 4/5 of the truth. I actually coined this word a while ago in my book Economics, but I posted about it here and put it on Urban Dictionary to try to popularize it. I think it’s better than "truthiness", coined in October on the Colbert Show. Trut is more vulgar, more sublimely like, truth
- Y!Q Link Generator: simple form for adding Y!Q links to weblogs and web pages. Y!Q is a super-powerful way to annotate text, create layers of meaning, and add fresh relevance to your text no matter when someone reads it
And some other web content I’ve helped other people with this year:
- St. Benedict High School, Elementary School, and Preschool: I created a huge weblog system for these schools. Dozens of teachers and coaches are actively using it to communicate with parents, students, and each other, making it a shining example of the power of weblogs
- Queen of Angels: I made a couple hundred posts here this year.
- Catherine Cook School Admissions Weblog: showing how easy it is to integrate a weblog tool with an existing well-designed website
- Castle Restoration & Tuckpointing: pretty nifty site
- Internet Life Services and Weblogconsultant: codifying some service offerings
- Tons of training development
New for 2006:
- Inject some new life into my sites www.housingfroth.com, www.welseywillisart.com, and www.poetryandtechnology.com
- A redesign for the immensely popular CTA Tattler
- A secret project that will make a splash in the City of Chicago
- A weblog strategy and large-scale blog for a large legal publisher
- Community-based training for DevCorp North
- More here
Happy and healthy 2006 to all.