Forum Blog

So this is like Day Twelve in my life as a blogger.

Today was the first day in over two weeks that I could post fairly normally in the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM - until like half an hour ago.

I posted for an hour or two in the IDF this morning (Berlin time, after midnight PDT). And again for an hour in the evening- until the server went down again.

However, even before that happened, quite a few odd things were happening. Like, after I posted in RANDOM INTERNATIONAL and clicking on YOUR FORUMS again I was not listed as hosting the IDF any longer. I had to go the list of all PUBLIC FORUMS to return to the IDF.

And the page view number was growing peculiarly fast as I was watching. Before noon the page views had reached already an unprobably high thirteen thousand.

I remember a single day in the last three years that the page views were above ten thousand on a single day and that was in January 2006, when the shit hit the fan in the IDF.

Worldcrossing

I spent the last hour posting in three forums of Worldcrossing. Quite a few things definitely still seem to be odd, but basically the forums seem to be working again.

INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM

Beethoven's Rage over a lost penny.



I can relate

One of the many things that bug me about this blog is that URLs don't show up as clickable links (see my previous post, the BBC article).

What is as bad is that so far blogger refuses to accept my embedded links.

What is mainly irritating me is that I never know if it is just my ignorance or some kind of dumb "feature".

There is one option in preferences telling you that you can add other authors to this blog by simply putting their email in a box.

I don't want to recreate the mess and strife I created in 2001 by putting anyone on the host list, but for now I'm willing to put anyone on that author list who puts a valid email address (preferably by Google mail??) in a comment to this post.

I'll see if that works out.

Google at ten

So it's ten years ago this month that two students from Stanford set up Google.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7598960.stm

But the real news of course is that three years ago this month *I* started to host the INTERNATION DIGEST FORUM.

(Not only is formatting a mistery for me, even putting in something as simple as a link is something I still struggle with in this blog. Sigh.)

> I am waiting for one that doesn't know you from Adam, couldn't care less about you, and leaves you alone.

Remember GNOTHI SEAUTHON?

Did you ever check out Google Web History? Tells you more about yourself than you would likely want to know.

I started my new online presence in the fall of 2005 with Google Mail (Moulton's invitation which was then still necessary) and soon Firefox. My Google Web history extends back to November 2005.

Since then Google tells me I did six thousand eight hundred and eighty-five Google searches. That's around seven searches per day. And they are all in my history.

forums and blogs

I used to be a lousy host, now I'm a lousy blogger.

> I think blogs as well as forums may soon be on the way out as there can't be much money in them either.

I don't know what will be in ten years, but for now I think blogs are here to stay. Blogs, in my uninformed opinion, don't pose the kind of problems on the software side that forums pose.

And everything that Google did and does, doesn't bring money directly, but indirectly. It's their business model.

The formatting in blog posts drives me crazy (among other things). Like, I copied in the above quote and it also copies in the format and I don't know how to get rid of it.

So can anybody still get into Worldcrossing and post there? Because I can't. I'm just glad that I failed to extend my yellow star subscriptionfor Worldcrossing in June.

What I was considering is to turn this blog more into a forum-like thingie by adding other authors to the author list.

Forum history of the day:. The INTERNATIONAL FORUM that I started in Worldcrossing in April 2001 grew out of Salon Table Talks International Issues folder. Hobbes and Blue aka Mentally Bereft collaborated in 2003 or 2004 to preserve the archive of this forum.

In the first two months of the INTERNATIONAL FORUM (IF) there were around a dozen hosts in the IF, among them most memorably for me Hobbes, Sukey, Claude, Wizdumb and Ruth. In June 2001 there was a schism, when Alex aka khaval alazman started the RANDOM INTERNATIONAL and drew Mod Sukey, Davenhill and Mod Lang among others on her side. For me that was a bit painful, because next to Ruth there was no one at Table Talk's International Issues there was no one that was as fun to flirt with as Alex. The ownership of RANDOM INTERNATIONAL shifted various times in the last seven years.

While RANDOM INTERNATIONAL split and the rivalry between the messy IF and the orderly RANDOM INTERNATIONAL created an interesting competition, EL Toro and his group discovered the IF. Within a few months that carried the concept of "Everybody should be a host!" further by making every pseud a host. In September 20001 the IF had more than 200 hosts. Then 9/11 struck and the desire to discuss the horror that happened greatly increased the traffic to international forums.

Also, within a few months the 200 hosts of the IF made the forum extremely unstable. It was deleted various times and it wouldn't have survived if not for hosts like Woody Gavotte, who cared for it.. In spring 2002, when the IF was back to eight or ten hosts, the second schism occurred when El Toro, Hobbes, Recycla, Bela and I don't remember who else started the "IF 2.0- the good one".

It was only after the second schism that Yllabian Blue and Kitty and klaatu and also Harry Rutland as far as I remember, discovered the old IF.

In the fall of 2002 I grew tired of hosting the IF and posting in forums.

Arthur Rubinstein plays Chopin:

Frederic Chopin
Piano Sonata No. 2 in B-flat minor, Op. 35
Part 3/3

3rd Movement "Funeral March"

To bury the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM may be a bit premature, but here's a bit of history (I love history!):

I first started hosting a forum in Worldcrossing in 2001, the International Forum. Claude participated and cohosted from the beginning. In the fall of  2002 I gave up hosting the IF.

Three years ago, exactly three years ago, in September 2005, I returned to Worldcrossing and  after checking out some other forums like ALL THINGS INTERNATIONAL and RANDOM INTERNATIONAL for like ten days I started the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM.

Now the question is: is this the end of an era? Are blogs the new medium because there's not enough attention and money in forums? Moulton aka Barry tried to get me into blogging three years ago already, but I was too hooked on freewheeling forums.

My favorite blog this year so far has been Nicholas Carr's roughtype. This is his post on Google's new browser Chrome, which has been released this week:

http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2008/09/the_clouds_chro.php

Quote: "Although I'm sure Google would be thrilled if Chrome grabbed a sizable chunk of market share, winning a "browser war" is not its real goal. Its real goal, embedded in Chrome's open-source code, is to upgrade the capabilities of all browsers so that they can better support (and eventually disappear behind) the applications. The browser may be the medium, but the applications are the message."  

--- Nicholas Carr

In a comment yesterday Easy Licorice mentioned that he could get into his or her Worldcrossing forum. Barry Schwartz posted something similar last week.

However, I just checked Worldcrossing's front door www.worldcrossing.com and they still seem to be down.

I appreciate hints about how to get into Worldcrossing forums through any back doors that I am not familiar with.

At the moment I feel like I'm reinventing myself as an online personality. It's been almost three weeks now that I could last post in the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM. Until Labor Day or so Siobhan Halo's RANDOM INTERNATIONAL seemed to be functioning, now it's down for me.

Could anyone post there in the last three or four days. And if so, how did you get in?

So now I'm using a new browser, Google's Chrome, and a new medium, Google's Blogger.

I appreciate any comments. Glad that Claude and Himmelfahrt found this place. Did we meet before, Easy Licorice?

I read today that Google's new browser Chrome has already a market share of 3 %.

If I'm any indication it will grow. I'm hooked already.

For the third time as far as Google is concerned. In 1999 Google made me like search engines after thinking for three years of surfing the net that I'm better off without one.

Second in 2005 when Google Mail turned email into a new and better experience for me. 

Chrome is personalizing itself to the way you use it by displaying the sites you visit most often. That way you can discard the bookmarking business in a similar way that Google Mail did away with that silly folder business in your email application.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/5668cd82-79d4-11dd-bb93-000077b07658.html

The story behind Google Chrome

Watch a video from the development team on the thinking and features behind Google Chrome.

I'm trying out Google's new browser Chrome. I could hardly be described as an early adopter with regard to most technology, but I was an early fan of Google Mail in 2005 and it looks like Chrome might be made for me.

One thing that pissed me off about my much appreciated Firefox browser recently was that when I finally allowed Quicktime to install an "update" I suddenly had a new Yahoo bar. I hate this kind of unwanted "services".

I'm definitely still in beta as far as my life as a blogger goes as you can see from my previous post.

But it may be time to write an obituary and/or a history of the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM.

Or make a myth out of it. It's tempting, you know.

I've hosted the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM for three years. Three weeks ago was the first time that I put someone on permanent READ ONLY. The Caucasus War had put me on edge and I was fed up with a very old drama.

So I banned someone.

And what happens? One week later the Worldcrossing server which hosted my INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM goes out of business. Today it seems like this was only the prelude for ever bigger trouble for Worldcrossing. The only old forum which I could still reach in the last week, RANDOM INTERNATIONAL, hosted by Siobhan Halo is now unreachable too.

The world is crumbling!

And
Google presented a new Web browser: CHROME.

Today it seems like the servers wc1 and wc0 are down as well. I can't even get to Worldcrossing's starting page.

One of the threads I miss most from the defunct INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM is the Consolations thread.



Glenn Gould Plays Bach's prelude and fugue in E major

Worldcrossing's servers wc5 and wc6, which host the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM and the INTERNATIONAL DIGEST FORUM 3.0 are still down, as they have been for the last two weeks.

There are rising doubts on my side that Worldcrossing will go back into normal business.

Presently I'm considering what the options for the future of the IDF are. One could either shop around for another forum platform.

Or one could try out hosting a forum on a blog, since at this point it clearly looks as if blogging is the more common and more stable technique.

- archosIDF