This blog and Google+: division of responsibilities
January 6th, 2013 at 1:51 pmThis blog is certainly not a youngster, the first post in it being from May 2003 – almost 10 years ago. As I look in the earliest posts I’m filled with nostalgia – I was so different back then, but at the same time so alike. One interesting thing that immediately springs up is to completely different nature of my posts. Book reviews remained similar (although I started bundling most of them into quarterly summaries some time ago), but the rest has changed. In the early years most of my posts were short. more personal and not too technical. Lately, most of my posts are quite technical, long, and non-personal.
For the last 1.5 years or so, I have an alternative outlet for the shorter, more personal posts – my Google+ account. I’m pretty happy from what I get from G+, both for producing and consuming content. Producing is very easy from various kinds of devices, without arbitrary twitter-like restrictions, and it’s reasonably easy to search my old posts (which is very important for me). Consuming is also quite nice because G+ turned out to be a popular outlet for people who share my interests, and many of the programmers I follow post updates on G+ from time to time.
So if you think I’ve become a robot producing technical articles, and want to see some more casual “hey I spilled coffee on my laptop” posts or random rants, check out my Google+ page.
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January 6th, 2013 at 14:20
What about Quora? I know you have an account there (actually you follow only me).
Did you ever give it a serious try?
January 6th, 2013 at 14:53
My main problem with G+ as a small ‘publishing platform’ is that it generates terrible URLs with cryptic IDs. I wish they’d use slugs instead, like WordPress does.
January 6th, 2013 at 15:32
@Ron,
I still don’t know what to make of Quora. The only real reason I’m registered there at all is that sometimes stuff comes up in Google searches and they won’t let you read all answers unless you’re registered.
@Muhammad,
What do you mean by slugs? How would it make stuff better?
January 6th, 2013 at 21:07
To me, Quora is the best website in the universe after Google. It’s content is so interesting. Lots of cool people to follow. I use it to get my questions answered (Stackoverflow for everything).
It took me some time to “get Quora”.
I suggest you take 10 minutes, and just use them to browse the site, follow more topics (I’m following 625 topics – https://www.quora.com/Ron-Gross/topics), and follow more people – some really interesting people are there (https://www.quora.com/Ron-Gross/following).
Also check out https://www.quora.com/Quora-product/How-do-I-get-started-using-Quora
Once you’re set up, make sure the weekly digest option is on, and just wait. They’ll send you really interested content almost every week. Keep following more topics & people as you browse the site.
You won’t regret it.
January 7th, 2013 at 03:59
@eli A slug is human-readable part of the URL. Wikipedia has a nice explanation here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clean_URL#Slug
It makes URLs much easier to read, remember and share. You can figure out from looking at a link what the subject is. For example, the URL for this blog post is:
http://eli.thegreenplace.net/2013/01/06/this-blog-and-google-division-of-responsibilities/
If you’re sharing a bunch of links, you can easily figure out what this is about and when it was posted and by who (eli). On the other hand, this:
https://plus.google.com/u/0/103282573189025907018/posts/VncvVTvrBPc
..is about you spilling your coffee on your laptop, but there’s absolutely no clue as to what it is, by who, or when.
January 7th, 2013 at 08:37
@Ron,
I’m skimming through the weekly digest they send me of “topics that may interest you” and occasionally do hit something I read more in depth. Over that, I just don’t have the capacity at this point for another source of information
The lyf so short, the craft so longe to lerne.
January 7th, 2013 at 08:38
@Muhammad,
That makes sense. Well, perhaps it’s a feature you can suggest to G+. Being a relatively new product they may be receptive to feedback.