a new day, a new tool

a new day, a new tool

…in which we contemplate what it is to blog.

A bit over two years into this experiment, we’ve started to recognize how some of our habits fit into the Web 2.0 Zeitgeist. For example, a significant part of what we–the site admins here at wikigong.com–are doing online is blogging: talking about our projects, thought patterns, and postings. But even though we’ve maintained a blog page as part of our static site, it hasn’t lent itself to easy updates from hotel rooms or other aspects of our project lifestyle. So the blogging goes on as discussion on the wiki page or commentary on the ccHost pages: the most convenient, if not the most efficient, of our available tool contexts. Time, perhaps, for something new….
[Update 2020-04-23: Links have been removed as our wiki space and ccHost share site are being retired.]

Just as pop pundits are predicting the decline of the blogosphere–as social media take the main stage–why would we decide to jump on this particular bandwagon? And does our site really need yet another embedded tool? Isn’t it enough of a mish-mosh as it is? Well….

What we desire most is a quick and convenient way to get thoughts on the HTML page from anywhere globally, and using tools less desk-bound than our several computers. Updates from mobile phones and airport kiosks are not only possible; they’re assumed. So a technology platform that is web-accessible and republishes a minimum of content with each update has promise.

We’re also looking for a quick and effective means of reaching out and linking to others working in this vein, but they’re others we don’t know yet. Maybe it’s old school, but our own social networking habits today (I’m talking about the site admins, again, not necessarily “we the Web 2.0 community”) are channel-based. We use FaceBook mostly as a way to connect to friends we already have, many of whom are politely interested in what we’re doing here. But we’re not finding ready contributors in that space, at least not yet.

Finally, our site remains a toolbox knit loosely together by an idea. Will a WordPress blog context actually help us in the integration challenge? Can it help the design of our pages look a bit less fragmented? Well, how could it hurt?