The Garage Sale Blog Network

Evolving Decentralization

Folksonomy is a neologism buzzing around the social media world earning many sites brownie points. 

The way in which they display these folksonomies is what is of interest to me.  Flickr, 43 things, and we like books all organically display their biggest keyword "cities" by altering the size of the word as a means of indicating popularity. 

I use the word "city" to describe these keyword destinations because the masses occupying the streets of the internet highway should decide where to drive attention, where and what to build collectively so it makes sense and satisfies the person while they visit that "city".

Related blog entries here and here. 
 

OutRagEouS Jobs!

If your weekends are getting a bit boring, maybe you can employee one of our outrageous job seekers and call over some friends.  I mean a group of friends, some drinks and someone dressed as a gargoyle cleaning your chimney  makes for a pretty good winter day. 

Forces unite to combat spam

I'm not super techie so when I do figure out what the more tech adept are talking about I get kinda excited. I get super excited when it has to do with spam.  The buzzword is "nofollow" and this is how I would break it down: a component of your rank in search is your link ranking, or how many sites link to you.  Spammers don't necessarily care if you click on their links that they insert in all our blogs but that it's yet another website that links to them and boosts their notch on the link rank totem pole. 

So now you can add a specification after certain links that will dictate whether they deserve a link rank credibility or not (rel="no follow" is the specification).  My question is who does the work to assess merit, bloggers or the companies that are choosing cooperation over competition?



Crumpled Napkin to Superbooty

Saturday's tribe tv (new page up) shoot provided an excellent way to start my morning as "Crumpled Napkin" and their men in pajamas and uni horned viking suits and lead singers in lingerie filled "It's your move" with super funk and groovy moves. Kid Beyond then proved why the SF weekly named him best beat boxer of San Francisco. 

And then what beats an afternoon juxtaposing San Francisco's premiere pagan lounge ensemble, Rosin Coven, with Urban Ore's rows of toilets, bathtubs and a bunch of other stuff that probably requires a tetanus shot before touching.  Finally Slinky Minx  was the horse in the sunset with their cover of "Just like Heaven" to end the shoot. 

Definitely an eclectic mix of entertainers that should make for some good tv. 

On a side note on my quest to explore the city's venues and historical landmarks (or at least feel more noble about drinking with my friends), a group of us saw Superbooty at Bimbo's 365 club; super funk to put a jiggle in your trunk. 

. . . Alright enough, I promise to limit the amount of weblog entries that sound like SF Bay Area tourist pamphlets. 

Offline/Online Communities and Social Dynamics

Chapter 1

I lived in Davis, CA for six years of my life.  A big reason I moved to San Francisco was to quell my curiosity of what it was like to live in a city fraught with innovative minds and companies, extreme spectrums of thought, dress, and lifestyles. 

Having lived here now for 5 months one thing I dearly miss is the sense of community and the three degrees of separation that Davis provided within its social structure(The anonymity of the city sure has its draws as well).  You walk into a bar/dance scene in Davis and you see various people crossing group lines to say hi, signaling across the room a hello with a wave.  Because the milieu internalizes this, it foments an environment fertile for new connections.   People feel more comfortable to branch out and meet new people.

San Francisco is a bit different I've come to learn.  My experience has been mostly a friends of friends sort of social network model.  This can translate into meeting people out and about as well.  Especially pertinent in the city is the direct correlation between the size of your group that is going out and the ease at which you are able to branch out and make new connections (at least on the group's end). 

This all relates to a second chapter I'd like to write regarding the shared dna of offline/online communities and whether or not the people creating them (online) take this into adequate consideration. 

Have you got a message from the "Bull" yet?

Hmm. . . got this in my inbox today:

Hello,

   We're emailing you to let you know that with terrorism on the rise, a bunch of new jobs in law enforcement just opened up. We need smart and good people, like yourself, to join the team to protect America. If you're interested, we recommend that you sign up to get some information on how to get started in a Criminal Justice education program:

http://www.anyshipping.com/join_the_force/3289/18136453/r9p60604r7q5

   If you're already set in your current career, maybe you could pass this message on to someone else who is down on their luck, but is interested in keeping our land free from fear. This should be somebody you trust!

    - Eric "Bull" Sanders
      Counter-Terrorism Recruiter

Tribe TV second show now viewable online

At the risk of perpetuating the theory that six apart users are a pontificating, soap box seeking, me me me group, I shamelessly self promote the second show of tribe tv which features my first on screen appearance. 

I must say Shinobu's first song in this episode has been playing relentlessly on my playlist for the last 6 days. 

People who subscribe to this blog also like. .

When you input an amazon book search query you get the book and “books that other amazon users liked after buying it”. Essentially you are provided a map broadening the context of your exploration. I’d love for these algorithms to manifest their magic in other online facets.

 

Tribe.net has a feature similar to this in their tribes. You go to a “Bay Area hiking” tribe and you find a side panel of connected tribes again broadening the scope of your exploration. I suppose these contextual amazon/tribe.net features are out there but two concerns come to mind: There needs to be more of them and the manner in which search leads to extended context needs to be as organic as possible.

 

I envision an amazon book search sort of engine but for ideas, services, sites, organizations, products, etc. Couple this with wikipedia.org’s flexibility and you have my product. So your search query is “meeting people in San Francisco” and the page that comes up is one of wiki format, defined organically by the community, fraught with links that can extend the context of your exploration.      

A new leaf

One of my new year's resolutions is to read a bit more.  I already read plenty of online content but I'd like to detach myself a bit more from my computer and read books in pleasant settings.  This is why I was very pleased to come across (a bit late) technorati's book talk.

My only problem is I have book committment issues.  I read about a chapter a day of a book and that suffices.  I've been reading Dostoevski's "The Brother's Karamazov" for about 3 months now.  You almost need to temper Dostoevski's ponderous weight by reading something like the Bernstein Bears afterwards.   

Anyway now I am faced with a difficult decision as I peruse technorati's book talk and figure out how I want to spend my next five months of reading immersion.   

Techies beware

I was explaining to someone last night at a birthday dinner what I do for Tribe.net.  I think I did this about 20 times over the break and it's always interesting to see at which point I lose them.  I've figured out that "works for a website" is an eyebrow raiser.   "Produces a  tv show" really sounds cool and that is probably where I should stop.  I realize everyone has their specialization and it worries me that I may be susceptible to a tech industry inclination to widen the disconnect between tech specialist and those with whom you want to connect.

I don't know where it happened but somewhere over the last year and a half I became trilingual.  I think this realization was substantiated over the break when I realized this new language I learned doesn't really fit into a bantering context.  Here are some phrases, acronyms and words you throw around like a frisbee in the office but should probably refrain from using at a party:

Granularity-Unless you are talking about sugar.
B2B,P2P,ASP-This can actually fly if you are doing baby talk to your newborn niece. 
Wiki-People love the name and truthfully sometimes even the description.
Stickiness-I actually wouldn't refrain from using this one, it actually serves to do what it means and keeps people's attention.  We need more words like these in the tech sector!