Where’s the love?

I’ve been blogging on WordPress for almost a year now. And I think it’s great. The software is easy to use, the themes are nice, and I’ve got options to upgrade. I appreciate the combination of simple and flexible. But I think there’s one thing lacking: community.

I’m not saying there’s no community here at WordPress.com. If you visit the support forums, you’ll see some bloggers who hang out there quite a bit. And I’ve had a chance to interact with a few others myself.

What I am saying is there’s no major effort to connect bloggers to each other. And that’s ok because the developers are focusing their efforts on making the best product possible. So, it’s in the hands of the users to develop the community. I’ve got a couple thoughts.

Use the Dashboard

There are a couple features built into the Dashboard that give you some connectedness. Under What’s Hot you’ll see some of the most popular blogs and posts on WordPress. You can see latest posts as well. Check out some of these sites; this is the closest you’ll ever be to most of them. Don’t wait for something to become popular to check it out. Help make it popular.

Tag Surfer

Also on the Dashboard is the Tag Surfer. This feature often goes unknown, but it has great power. Just go to the Tag Surfer tab and enter some categories you’re interested in. Then, each day you’ll find new sites that (supposedly) talk about the topics that interest you. You’ll be able to read those posts right from this page. Then, you can go comment on them.

My Comments

Also on the Dashboard is the My Comments tab. This one is exactly what it sounds like: comments you’ve left on other WordPress blogs. The neat thing about this feature is that subsequent comments also show up here. It’s great for keeping track of feedback and for keeping the conversation going.

One more great idea

Internet Duct Tape is the hub for a developer with some great ideas. Recently, he published a Greasemonkey script that helps to facilitate community here at WordPress. It allows you to open 5 random WordPress.com blogs at once. And it alerts you to blogs that have a Recent Comments Widget installed. You know, for some link-love.

Remember, use your blog responsibly. Don’t just rant; join in the conversation. Every one of us wants some kind of feedback. Start by offering some and maybe you’ll get some, too. And don’t forget this: It’s in the upper right-hand corner of your screen (if you’re a WordPress member.)

Print to 3 x 5 cards in ThinkingRock

Problem

About 2 months ago I had a near GTD meltdown. I was using Outlook pretty effectively but I lost the meaning in my lists. Every item on every list looked exactly the same. Part of the problem: I am always near a phone and a computer, so those contexts became meaningless. Plus, it was just too easy to process all my thoughts into their neat little e-cubbies and not have to look at them again. I became awesome at processing my inbox and terrible at getting anything done. I needed something new.

I figured I needed better lists and a good way to manage those lists. And, I needed to keep those lists in my face. So, I decided to use paper lists each day. With that in mind I went in search of an app that would help me manage my lists so I could print out exactly what I needed, when I needed it.

One other thing: I hate redundancy. I wanted something that was flexible enough to move a thought between projects or contexts without having to type it out again.

Solution

I found a great solution in ThinkingRock. It’s simple, straight forward, and built with GTD principles in mind. I can run it from a USB drive which means I can effectively us it at home and at work. And I love that I can run a variety of reports and then print out the info I need to keep at hand.

Although…

But, I own an HPDA and ThinkingRock’s reports don’t have a 3″ x 5″ format. I’m sure they’ll get around to it someday. In the meantime, I did some looking around myself. It appears the reports are some flavor of XML and so I was able to tweak my favorite report to print nicely on a 3×5 card. I’m not a programmer, so this won’t be a perfect solution. But it is a suitable work-around. Here are some of the details.

I like the “Actions by Context” report. I found the XML file for that report in the C:\ThinkingRock\extract\report directory. I just opened up “actions-by-context.fo” in WordPad and tinkered with some of the arguments used to format the report. Of course, I saved the original report in case I really messed something up. Then, I just made sure my new .fo file had the name of the original so the app would see it. Now, when I run my report, I specify all the same parameters as before and it prints to a 3×5 card.

Ah ha!

I believe just about anyone can do what I did. But if you don’t think you can, or you don’t want to, I’ll email you the report I’m using with more detailed instructions for deploying it. Just shoot me a note here or leave your contact info in a comment.

Update 7/23/07

I forgot to mention earlier, I’m using v1.2.3.  I don’t have a solution for v2.0.

But, //engtech told me to!

(Engtech issued a challenge and I feel I must step up. Brave words for an unkown blogger from West Michigan.)

I’d like to spotlight a fantastic application I’ve been using for several months now. It’s called Newshutch and it’s the best web-based RSS aggregator I’ve found. So good, in fact, that I’ve stopped looking.

For those of you unfamiliar with the concept, an aggregator (or newsreader) brings you the web on your terms. Let’s look back at plain old, print newspapers. You read the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal. And they show up at your door everyday. All the news you want, right?

Well, now imagine that each night somebody clips out the articles you really care about and groups them by topic. Then they paste them into one paper, resize all the fonts so they match, and take away virtually all of the ads. If that weren’t enough, they also take letters from your relatives, the latest strip from Calvin and Hobbes, search results on Google and that auction on eBay you’ve been keeping your eye on and roll all that into your morning paper. How much would you pay for that kind of service?

You couldn’t afford it! But with RSS feeds and a reliable news aggregator you can get it for free. For reliable, start with Newshutch.

Newshutch is simple. Your feeds are displayed in the left column and the reading pane is on the right. There are just 4 tabs on the whole page. “Read” is where you’ll spend most of your time. “Manage” is where you’ll create/assign categories and import/export your feeds. The “Options” tab gives you some choice over how your feeds display while reading. Finally, the “Flagged” tab takes you back to posts you want to read all over again. It really couldn’t be easier!

The interface is crisp and clean. No bells and whistles are a good thing when you want to concentrate on reading. (That’s why you’re here, remember?) It’s even a nice shade of blue. Very soothing.

If you aren’t sold on Newshutch you’re a geek, you’re on your 3rd newsreader this year and you’ll be ready for a change in 3-6 weeks. Come back then. If you are sold, pay them a visit, sign up for an account, and start by subscribing to my feed!