Singpolyma

You have probably realised by now that I'm very interested in forms of communication and the best ways to go about improving them.  What about communications from those you *do not* know?  I can get telephone calls, SMS messages, emails, and Twitter @replies (among other things) from people who have not been whitelisted (aren't in my address book / on my friends list).  Is this useful? What forms of communication suit it best?  This poll started on Twitter, and I'm continuing it here and on PollDaddy.

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

I have released an update to my Picoformats plugin. This update changes the logic so that posts are not modified in the database (thanks, @aditya!), but on the fly. It will also link to the local profile/archive of a user (thanks, @als!) that has no URL set in their profile. Also, if you use an @ reply from inside a comment and use the (one-word) name of a comment poster, it will recognize this (if they have whitespace in their name, just take it out when writing the @ reply). @ replies in comments also do not check Twitter usernames anymore, since this is expensive and breaks common use.

Download the plugin

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

This plugin is totally an experiment inspired in part by @techcrunch, and in part by how useful I have found some of this stuff to be on @Twitter, and also just to see the different ways one can use Wordpress. (Update: this plugin seem to only work on WP2.5, so I've upgraded.)

If you haven't guessed already, you soon will. Yes, I've implemented @ replies for Wordpress. It looks in the local users (usernames and nicknames, like @singpolyma) first, then in the names and descriptions on blogroll links, the it checks if you are trying to use a URL (like @singpolyma.net) and, finally, if none of those yield a result it checks if the string is a valid Twitter username. It produces semantic markup for an @ reply and "person tag":

<span class="reply vcard tag">@<a class="url fn" href="URL">NICKNAME</a></span>

Then, the plugin sends trackback pings to the URLs, to let the people know you're talking about them. The plugin also implements trackback receiving on the Wordpress main page so that users can receive these pings.

Not to stop so short, the plugin also implements #hashtags. What that does should be fairly obvious.

These features work in posts *and* comments.

Download the plugin

#Wordpress #Plugins #Plugin

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

I have updated wp-diso-actionstream to 0.45, changes include:

• Fully tested WP2.5 support
• Fixes for Last.fm support
• Better microformats output

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.

I've been interested in different forms of communication for some time.  It's part of what makes social networking so interesting to me.  I've been reading about others' experiences too.  Of course there's Tantek's CommunicationProtocols page, which inspired my own Communication Protocols section on my main page (and, probably, @seanbonner's PreferedMeansOfContact).  Trevor Creech recently challenged me on my Twitter usage, calling it "Twitterfail" (in reference to efail).  I would like to discuss some of they ways I've started thinking about communication.

First, a tip from my own main page: If you find a solution, from me or elsewhere, blog it. Someone else may benefit.  I have come to think of my Twitter and Ma.gnolia accounts as blogs (especially since they began to manifest their updates in the actionstream on my main page).  If I find an interesting tidbit, or have a potentially interesting thought, I tweet it.  This lead, one day, to >20 tweets in 24 hours, the condition which Trevor complained about.  In response, I have tried to consider first if something is really useful at all before I tweet (I don't want to be the cause of a signal/noise problem) - but I have also started including better context in my tweets.  Interesting links go to Ma.gnolia.

Searchability has become key for me. This is one of the reasons I love my IM setup - everything anyone says to me, whether I'm online or off, at my computer or not, is archived in Gmail for easy search.  My tweets and blog posts are also searchable - in fact, if you just say "singpolyma" or link to me in a blog post, there's a huge chance that I'll see it.

When it comes to factors like immediacy, lifespan,  audience, bandwidth, and sychronity they are all important, but are different for different messages.  If I'm setting up a meeting or working on a project, immediacy and bandwidth are hugely important (thus, face to face or IM are best).  If I'm discussing something of interest to me, asychronity, lifespan, and audience are the most important factors (thus, mailing lists, forums, Pibb, and IRC are best).  There is no "perfect" communication form - all have their place.

I have requested that people use post/page comments for debugging/feature requests on my projects.  This is because a comment is almost as good as blogging something (it can be used by others who may benefit) and is searchable.  It also reduces the chances that I get asked for the same thing a bunch of times - others can see what is being discussed (which, incidentally, in the same reason I love GetSatisfaction).  Pages + comments are almost as good as (in fact, in many cases, I feel are better than) a wiki.

© 2006-2008 Stephen Paul Weber. Some Rights Reserved.