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Aesthetic and Functional Site Changes

2 January 2009 4 Comments

With the arrival of a new year I’ve decided the time was appropriate to make some aesthetic and functional changes to this blog. My tinkerings in this area are ongoing as we speak, but most of the main changes have already taken place.

With this in mind I’ve prepared a screencast overview (embedded above) of several changes I made last night, including a theme change, email subscriptions, changes to commenting, status of Seesmic video commenting, and a roll-out of Google Friend Connect.

Google Friend Connect in particularly is an aspect I’d like to explore more indepth in the coming months. According to Google, “…Friend Connect means more people engaging more deeply with your website — and with each other.”

The idea is to enable readers to make themselves more conspicuously known to one another and provide means of establishing and developing relationships between one another. You have the opportunity to join the site using an existing Google, Yahoo!, AIM, or OpenID account. These accounts enable you to share information about yourself and your online spaces and sites with other users.

My hope is that this will help nurture and grow a network amongst the readers of this blog to the point where the TechTicker acts as a portal or node for our activities, but is not a largely one-directional information source. If knowledge is indeed distributed, and the quality of a network directly related to the depth and diversity of its connections and nodes, then maximising the scope and scale of each individual’s representation within the network benefits all parties involved.

For more information on Google Friend Connect please see their introductory video, or visit the information site.

Any questions, feedback or comments please let me know!

4 Comments »

  • Sarah Stewart said:

    I want to change my blog setting in the next few days so might grab you for some advice. cheers Sarah

    ReplyReply
    # 2 January 2009 at 2:52 pm
  • Mike Bogle said:

    @Sarah Stewart
    Absolutely! I’d be happy to lend a hand :) Just let me know what I can do to assist.

    Cheers,
    Mike

    ReplyReply
    # 2 January 2009 at 3:38 pm
  • Jim said:

    I like the new digs, and I’d be interested in knowing how Google Friend Connect works for you–sounds interesting and this is the first I have heard of it. Though, I have to admit I am increasingly scared on ho much I am depending on the Google machine.

    PS I also very much like the comment layout, very cool.

    ReplyReply
    # 3 January 2009 at 12:57 am
  • Mike Bogle said:

    @Jim
    Yeah I know what you mean. I think the concept of connecting friends in the Google Friend Connect sense is an interesting one that could be really useful. On the other hand, if knowledge is power and knowledge is distributed, then a company who has excelled at recognising and interpreting patterns and linkages between people and information will hold a whole lot of power and control.

    It may turn out there aren’t many takers on this, and if that proves the case I might remove the tool to conserve screen real estate – but we’ll see how we go. I’ll try to post an update on what I find :)

    Happy New Year to you!

    Cheers,

    Mike

    ReplyReply
    # 3 January 2009 at 7:31 am

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