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Can I Show it To My Grandparents?

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Sunday, 4 May 2014, 13:02

This is the first blog I came across in 1998.

A few months later I was up and running. I couldn't code so had to wait for a generic platform to post to. This was Diaryland. Then along came LiveJournal. And five years or so ago I decamped to WordPress.

Millions of words, and millions of bloggers later and the world of self-publishing (we now call it user generated content) is a profoundly important form of global and universal communication.

I like the line 'can I show it to my grandparents' as if in 1998 they would be online and looking.

I re-found these pages courtesy of waybackwhen - type in a defunct web address and discover to your delight or horror that everything that was ever posted online is still out there.

If you thought that locking the pages would save you, you're mistaken.

One click and it's there forever.

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Design Museum

Wit, authority and a love for the subject

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Edited by Jonathan Vernon, Monday, 5 May 2014, 06:14

The analytics on your OU blog are none existent.

(47892)

This is my page views since Feb 2010.

That's all I get. Even 12 years ago I could learn every time I logged in the latest 'views' and the views for EVERY page in my diary ... with them ranked, and selected as favourites.

These are VITAL fuel to the blogger, especially the novice blogger who is desperate for signals that having offered their soul to the world that they are getting a response.

I think in my original 1999 blog I went through the 1,00,000 views three years ago (home page), the 170,000 on the favourites (a link into a category of pages) came next with some 18,000 or so on the most read individual page.

This is one indication of interest, the next is those pages picked out as favourites by other bloggers ... simple acts, no need to comment, just tick a box to indicate you're interest in what you've just said or expressed.

I have to say, my inclination to get in the Tardis and pick up on that 1999 blog is strong. It, they were better.

Back then it was a blank page. You needed some basic coding skills and a partner, a designer, always a total unknown, like a copywriter and art director working together.

I feel the loop has gone out far enough and us bloggers will welcome the return journey.

'Wit, auhtority and a love for the subject.'

This is all you need from a blogger you want to read, exactly what you'd like from a journalist. This is a description of the journalism of Sylvia Ryder.

I am first of all a diarist, then a blogger, also a writer and copywriter. I have decade of directing work (some on TV) to call myself a director. I have acted professionally. I even get up and play guitar and sing. I write for an audience. I would call myself an animateur, even a performer.

In this random, miscellaneous, uncatergorised world I am just the words I last put out. I am defined by then, Where they go, how I tag them ... I actually wish I could leave this to others. To wrap up here and say to my team ... you tage, you post, your spread my words where we've discussed is appropriate.

If I compose a song I want to perform it.

Listening to Sylivia Ryder being interviewed this morning (Radio 4, this Saturday) and mixing this up with 'Everything is Miscellaneous' David Weinberger I came up with my own conclusion.

We will no longer make do with the cherry on the top of the cake, placed there because those who know best have made this selection for us; we want all the cheries off the tree (let us decide) and all the cherries rotting on the ground too (it is for us to decide what to discard, not you).

We do and will discard the trash.

Therefore, we must offer at least a pummet of cheries.

This is easy to do.

Sony Flip, video and sound.

Cut in iMovie.

Turn an interview around with cut-aways in a morning.

Cost ?

Time of personnel ?

£100?

 

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