8 Ways to Sunday

I quit smoking a couple of months ago, because it’s bad for me and because I was getting way too wheezy for a 29 year-old man. I’ve put on weight since quitting, but I feel better in every other way so it was worth it. I quit instant messaging many months ago, because it was a huge distraction and time sink for me. I’ve been more productive since quitting IM, so that was also worth it. I will not, however, quit blogging.

I have been a bad, bad blogger. Two months; no posts. Even worse, many of my distant friends keep in touch by reading and commenting on one another’s blog posts. Not only have I not been posting here, I also haven’t been keeping up with my friends’ blogs. I could do the usual “I’ve been so busy yadda yadda yadda” thing, but the fact is that isolating yourself from your friends is an asshole thing to do. For this, you have my apologies.

Updates are going to be more frequent here in the future. I’m also going to start blogging about Web-related stuff over on Zenscope.com. That means fewer posts about geeky Web stuff here, and more posts about things like music, politics, and hot chicks. You know, the important things in life.

Stay tuned.

Per Søderlind has created ImageManager 2.0, an amazing WordPress plugin for uploading and editing images to use on your blog. It would fit right in with my existing workflow for such things… too bad it’s only for WP 2.0 and I haven’t made the leap yet. That upgrade is looking better and better.

To get an idea of everything Søderlind’s plugin can do, check out his demo movie.

Search giant Google has purchased blog statistics upstart Measure Map, and gotten Jeff Veen as part of the bargain (Veen was Product Director for Measure Map when the site still belonged to Adaptive Path). The deal was announced on Valentine’s Day (awwww) on both The Official Google Blog and on Veen’s weblog.

One has to wonder what this means for Google’s existing web traffic analysis tool, Google Analytics. The official line from Veen’s post on the Google weblog seems to indicate that not much will change. This makes sense, given that Measure Map is so thoroughly focused on weblogs. Certainly, any integration that does occur will be optional and will take some time to achieve smoothly.

(Props: Jay Allen’s The Daily Journey)

“Structured Blogging” is a content mark-up methodology that uses XHTML microformats and RDF to impart more machine-readable meaning to your blog posts. This means that they can be aggregated and searched in new and interesting ways, as described on the effort’s benefits and about pages. Better still, the classes added to markup created to Structured Blogging specifications provide great hooks for adding a new level of presentational richness to a weblog.

Getting started with Structured Blogging seems easy enough. Blogware plugins to automate the creation of SB content are available at the Structured Blogging web site. The plugins are in beta testing for now. With PubSub and others lining up behind the effort, however, development will hopefully progress quickly.

(Props: Oliver Thylmann — Thoughts)

Updates

• 12/19/2005 @ 12:03 PM — Paul Kedrosky is convinced that Structured Blogging will flop. (via)

I’m back at the keyboard after a week of computer failures, repairs, and health care drama. More on the health care drama this evening, when I expect to have some time to sit down for a genuine update. Meanwhile, some tasty tech tidbits are forthcoming during the lunch hour.