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 It is fascinating to watch Dave
Winer’s personal vision of where blogging
can go as it evolves on Scripting.com. As he implements the dynamic new
capabilities of Channel
Z, his next-generation blogging environment,
we can watch it take form on his own blog. For me, one of the most exciting
aspects of the innovation is that we, the visitors to Dave’s World can
have a say in the form it takes, and the way we want to arrange, view
and interact with the content.
The ability of visitors to arrange content and even form would resolve
one of the questions we had about Dave’s vision of a "seamless environment"
within which original commentary, other blogs, mainline news streams, and
subject
specific RSS feeds can be woven together into an explorable universe
with multiple entrances and exits.
The conundrum we saw was that, at least for the Dowbrigade, the impact
of any particular blog, or any web site for that matter, is dependent in
differing degrees on both content and form. In many blogs Content
is King, and the form is primarily a function of trying to make the content
visible
and accessible. But in other cases the form, graphic design, color schemes
and operable interactivity of the content are what make it distinctive
or relevant to users.
This dichotomy between form and content is also clearly evident in my RSS
aggregator. Dave is not the only one pushing the envelope of the traditional
Blog format; the air is rife with rumors and riffs of experimentation and
paradigm redesign. But you wouldn’t know it from my aggregator. Aggregators
are designed to aggregate content, and pretty much strip the form and formatting
out.
Now, aggregators are indisputably becoming smarter and more versatile.
Some of them (not mine) can handle a variety of attachments, including
sound files. But none of them can replicate the look or feel of a site.
Perhaps the expansion of the blogging functionality that is bursting out
all over will be the impetus for bringing aggregators one step closer to
what they should be: a smaller window into another world, as opposed to
a blog, which is a picture window.
But we feel strongly that to give a true picture of another world, the
view often needs to include more than content. The content needs context.
In our ideal aggregator, each entry would be a recreation of the original
feed including formatting, functionality and even soundtrack.
One of the great things about Channel Z is that it permits and facilitates
the sharing of taxonomy tiers, so that each user can construct their own
personal directory of the Universe, like Borges Library of Babel, borrowing
branches from here and there, sources ancient or prescient, other bloggers
or the
Library
of Congress,
and arranging and interconnecting them according to whim or intuitive genius.
However, does this mandate that all of this knowledge and content need
be delivered and displayed according to a single aesthetic?
Dave’s aesthetic, for example, is clean and clear. Lots of white space,
nothing messy or haphazard, evidence of elegant simplicity and integrated
functionality. However, in many Asian cultures white is the color of death,
roughly analogous to our black, which may imbue Scripting with an unintended
solemnity for certain readers.
Some of the information, knowledge and wisdom fruit we would like hanging
on our taxonomy tree would certainly spoil if separated from its own tree
and hung on ours. Some of the threads we would wish woven into our informational
tapestry could not be stripped of their colors or designs without altering
their meaning and effect.
It could be argued that if you want to get the full impact of another’s
site, just go there, see it in its full and authentic glory, and then click
back
to where you started. This works and is part of what makes cruising
around the ‘sphere so much fun. But the initial impact and sweeping success
of RSS and aggregators shows there is a real desire to grab disparate information
streams and synthesize something new from them. This blending can produce insight on news, finding
unobvious connections. It can produce art, utilizing harmonic echoes and cognitive
dissonance. It can produce literature, in ways we are just beginning to understand.
Yet another of the revolutionary ideas embodied in Channel
Z is its incorporation
of multiple content access and display modes. This can be seen on Scripting
News in a brand new but inconspicuous pull down menu near the top of the
home
page. Its current entries are: nightly email, recent cats, all cats, weblog.com
and on this day in history. Now, nightly email is just a way to sign up
for Scripting News by email, and weblog.com is the main blog hosting site
for Userland, but the other three are distinct ways of looking at the content
Dave has posted to his site over the years.
When we saw that pull down we saw a feature which could empower the visitor
to find and view content in the manner best suited to their needs, tastes
and information acquisition style. On Thursday night Dave asked us what
we would like on a similar pull down designed for Dowbrigade News. After
a bit of thought, here goes:
1) My current layout, reverse chronological order, latest 16 posts
2) Same content in reverse, that is, in chronological order
3) Just today
4) All of my cats, in alphabetic order (switchable at one click to order
of greatest number of posts)
5) The dozen most recently posted-to categories
6) Some kind of graphic representation of the overall taxonomy tree of
the Dowbrigade site
7) My aggregator
 A search window, allowing search by content, date or category and including
an option where visitors can choose TWO categories from pull down menus
and find items which have been cross-posted to THOSE TWO cats.
As for the this day in history, we don’t have enough history yet to make
that an option.
Someday we would like to allow visitors all these options,
and more. If possible, members at least could select a default layout which
would load every time they visited the site. The Dowbrigade figures if
we want you guys to stay awhile and absorb some of our ideas, we should
strive to make
you
as comfortable
as possible during your visit.
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