It’s not all about you

A friend of mine recently sent me an e-mail asking what I thought about useful content on blogs.  His curiousity spurred from an article by Chris Brogan called Set Your Blog On Fire.  In the article Chris says: 

 

• Deliver USEFUL information, not just opinions. Give people something to focus on.
• But, have a strong voice, and an obvious opinion.

 

My goal here at A Silent I is to provide others with content that they can take something from.  I enjoy bringing new things to people’s attention and to help them use those tools.  While this blog isn’t the only place I try to do this, it’s a natural extension.  Sure, you could start a blog with the primary goal to improve your writing, but if it’s not about others you might as well keep a little pocket note book and scribble away on the train (not a bad thing – sometimes your best ideas come from here).  I don’t write many opinion pieces, but they are a great change of pace.  I think the most successful opinion pieces show up in newspapers and they’re successful because you have other things on the previous and next page to read about.  I would try to do that to.  Write a few informative articles and weave in some opinion pieces from time to time.

I think of it this way; if you met someone at a party it would be natural for you to start up a small conversation.  Imagine this person kept going on and on about what they thought, how they did this and that, and how something else was unbelievable because they just didn’t see it that way.  Meanwhile, you haven’t said a word, or been invited to say what you think.  That wouldn’t make me want to talk with that person in the future either.  A good conversation consists of two or more people with opinions.

It’s kind of the same on a blog.  Have an opinion, but make sure others have a chance to participate and heck, learn something yourself.  What’s your style?

Photo Credit: Jeff Epp

World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King

Here’s a trailer from the second expansion for World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King. Blizzard always gets cinematics right. I still believe they are so successful because they write great lore and show great restraint in their story telling over the legacy of their products. This expansion is literally years in the making. Enjoy!

Wrath of the Lich King Trailer

What The Dark Knight was to me

The Dark Knight is entering its fifth weekend in theatres and it has been number one for a month now. Christopher Nolan definitely got it right. I loved this movie (I saw it on opening night with some great movie goers). I realized years ago that I usually don’t know my explicit reason for liking a movie, but I seem to intrinsically get a feeling.

Unfortunately, that makes it easy for me to think that everyone else must also have loved this movie. This must be the case with its box office success, right? But recently, a coworker made me stop and think when she mentioned she didn’t care that much for it and that it was too long.

I realize now that I loved this movie because it wasn’t necessarily just a Batman movie, which I think may have thrown people. It was a movie of richer content and good, clear symbolism. My personal opinion; this was not a Batman movie. It wasn’t even a Joker movie. It was a movie, or statement if you will, about society and chaos and how we deal with fantastic situations in our day to day lives.

The elements…

This movie was heavily rooted in reality, which gave it even more credibility. Unlike Iron Man, which was really a technical designer’s dream in 10 to 20 years, the Dark Knight could have very easily occurred today. The technology used and the structure of the city of Gotham was very ‘now.’

The Joker was played perfectly by Ledger; his mannerisms, his movement, his wimpering voice transcending to a maniacal, booming, ferocious animal and his constant licking of his wounds all drew you in to his character. In fact, there wasn’t a poor performance in this movie. I believed every actor was their character.

The structure of the Gotham Police Department was well developed and I appreciated the display of all these officials truly trying to protect Gotham despite such chaotic happenings. Nolan created a true juxtaposition of society versus chaos and brought out the concept deliberately when all characters realize the Joker was truly just trying to “corrupt the best of us.” For any effect the Joker truly needed Batman, and ultimately needed Gotham City.

Ironically, I think the best demonstration of this was in a set design detail which included an 18-wheeler. The carnival truck housing the Joker and his goons originally had the slogan, “Laughter, the best medicine.” Someone (I assume the Joker) had changed this with a blood red “S” to “sLaughter, the best medicine.” This fine detail elaborates the chaotic symbolism and fragile balance even more so.

In the end…

So really, people didn’t see a movie about Batman even though it had to be advertised that way for needed buzz. Nolan wrapped a theme about great people in society fighting chaos around all his characters using character design and writing to its fullest. This, to me, is true use of character. It’s not about them, but what they represent. Society versus chaos; it was a statement in a Batman movie that I hope everyone, even just intrinsically, get.

Order your words carefully

Word choice is important, but so is word order.

Get Fuzzy by Darby Conley.

Preferred form of communication

At Centennial in Media Relations, my classmates and I learned about a database of communicators and journalists that’s used to help keep everyone connected. A very privileged contents, it contained phone numbers, e-mail addresses and just about anything else you would need to keep connected.

One thing that I initially thought was unnecessary was “preferred method of contact.” I thought this idea was strange. Why would I want to know exactly how each person wanted to be contacted and why would I want to look this up? That’s when my own personal revelation came.

I do this myself, everyday, with everyone I know. It’s not a database, but my own memory. Have you ever had to get in contact with someone you know and the first thing you think of is how you will do that? Do I e-mail or phone my grandmother? Do I text my friend on MSN or their cellphone? We all have a friend who never checks their e-mail but always has their phone on.

It turns out every person I know has a “preferred method of contact” and I seem to know exactly what that is by memory instantly, both for their sake and of course mine, the person trying to get out my message.

Photo by: SplaTT

Delicious RSS feed change

More of a heads up for others who use Delicious tag feeds or other related RSS things from Delicious in their side bars; I finally figured out why I had an error with my “Popular PR” bookmarks. It seems with the recent ‘face lift’ there that they also changed their feed URLs on us.

For example the new PR tag feed is this: http://feeds.delicious.com/v2/rss/tag/pr

Be sure to check your sites if you use such feeds to display dynamic content.

An example of constant partial attention

I don’t recall where I first heard this term, but this a good comical example of “constant partial attention.”

Zits

By Jerry Scott and Jim Borgman

Facelift for Facebook

I decided to take a look at the “new” Facebook and, well… it looks nice. We’ll see how people go about using it in the next few weeks, but with the popularity of the socialnetworking website it will probably be just another update that users will remember as “always being that way.”

The new commenting on every newsfeed item feels a little like anything else on the Internet when concerning “new” features – we’ve seen it before. Friendfeed was my first experience with a newsfeed with a commenting feature. The one thing Friendfeed had over Facebook was that I decided what I would share based on other tools I used on the Internet, like Twitter, Flickr or my blog.

It was one place my friends could come and see practically everything I was posting/publishing on the Internet. I liked that control. Facebook now boasts that same flexibility as it will ask you on participating webpages (when you’re logged into Facebook only – I hope) if you want to share a certain event. It’s kind of like Beacon V.2 project with a passive questioning voice.

“Oh, Facebook wants to simplify my shared life and it’s even polite and asks. That’s okay.”

Whether or not the information stays unaware to Facebook if you click “no” is still a mystery. The question it seems these days is if convenience is worth more than privacy. Maybe I would feel better if I find out that Facebook allows you to import a list of sites you want Facebook to keep track of for you. For now I’ll stay with Friendfeed because it only watches what I want it to.

Getting back to commenting, I’m still waiting for the first, “OMG, ur frends wit him!?!?!!1!one” comment.

Identi.ca gets better

I’m excited. Identi.ca is a Canadian micro blogging solution gaining momentum. Recently, Identi.ca gained support on Twhirl and Friendfeed. This is good news and makes the service much more usable and friendly to your other social networks.

The following is why I like Identi.ca:

Identi.ca is an Open Network Service. Our main goal is to provide a fair and transparent service that preserves users’ autonomy. In particular, all the software used for Identi.ca is Free Software, and all the data is available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license, making it Open Data.

The software also implements the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, meaning that you can have friends on other microblogging services that can receive your notices.

The goal here is autonomy — you deserve the right to manage your own on-line presence. If you don’t like how Identi.ca works, you can take your data and the source code and set up your own server (or move your account to another one).

I successfully set up Identi.ca on Twhirl this afternoon after following the instructions here on the Twhirl blog. The main step I made up myself was that I downloaded Pidgin to use with my GTalk account as my Jabber account. This way I could easily add [update at identi dot ca] as a buddy to complete the verification process.

I missed Pidgin and will probably use it into the future once again. Previously, I used it with Ubuntu for MSN, Yahoo, GTalk and any IRC rooms simultaneously.

Busy Summer

A few things have happened over the last couple of weeks. First, my classes at Centennial have come to an end and even though the ’school’ part of the post-grad certificate program is over, my internship at OMERS has just begun! Second, I am in the middle of starting CC+PR, a blog here at WordPress for my fellow Winter classmates and I to have a central place to showcase some great articles we think you will all find useful. So, feel free to drop by there and maybe even add it to your RSS feeds of interest.