MAGic

In the following days I will be putting up a number of tutorials that will be helpful to all new most veteran bloggers.

The tuts should comprise a package that enables an unexperienced would be blogger to move rapidly toward the total use of the tools necessary to get the blog up with pics, sound, and whatever media assists are necessary along with the facilitation provide by existing plugins, widgets and themes./>

Mind you this does not make a writer out of the blogger.

But, my friends at TheLitBit.com are inaugurating a blog called WriteWriterWritest next week. It does for web writing what Daniel Chandlers web published work of Semiotics et al did for academia imprisoned creatives.

Imagine a TV guide for the Internet. Assume this “IV” guide eliminated 99.999% of “channels” - assume the remaining percentage is the percentage that you would be interested in. What is on the other sites? Only the mother’s and financially “concerned” of the site owners care. No that is not. They don’t care what is on the sites. They care if the sites are turning a profit.

That is not a second level opinion, actually.
You may say, “Jack Boy, what ever I want to find I do it with a search engine, not a TV guide.” I would reply like this. Unless you have some magic trick with search arguments you are still going to come up with a search result list of 10,000 “channels”. And what you want may be any card in the 10,000 card deck.

My IV Guide newsletter streamlines, organizes, finds, directs. In short it funnels the feed you need to your trough. And that is good. After all, I am an info pig. What about you? Oink, Sis.

The IV Guide allows you to select the areas you want to get information direction about.

“But,” you say, “Google does that.” This may be a rude awakening for you. Grab a door facing. SC does not exist and does not come down chimneys. Search engines tell you what Google wants you to hear. Yahoo tells you what Yahoo wants you to hear. None of them is a totally eclectic, good goal oriented info slopper. Want an example? Who is going to point you to a user biased discussion of Google’s efforts to refine and control a national health records database. Will they not point you because they don’t know or it is to their advantage not to say.

Try this. Take the same search argument of keywords to five search engines. Compare the results.

OK - NO IV GUIDE EXISTS! YES, AN IV GUIDE EXISTS.

But it may not be, no, it dim well is not, as simply as the top paragraphs have suggested.

First I am not going to be sending you and those who are expecting a newsletter such a newsletter, not the old fashioned kind newsletter you probably are thinking of.

Remember the original TV Guide. Such a thing would be impossible today. Too much stuff exists when you consider all the possible sources and delivery options.

It would not even be possible in a multimedia delivery. TV Guide presents in their online version about 75 channels.

I am going to sidetrack here for a second. If you come along you will enjoy it. If you are in a rush for the IV GUIDE in your paws right this second, skip down to the big letters WHAT”S IN IT.

This is the kind of thing we usually approach in our USER FIENDLY MAG at userfiendly.com. Two kinds of people. Those who look at news details and those who look at trends. Applying that to technology, the trends become technological milestones that change our lives. My friend, Chris Petro once said “where would we be if technology had not engineered into products the “satisfying click?” If you think a second you will see that every gadget has at least one sound effect to reflect something about its operation. That is the satisfying click - it is built into every thing you use. So much so that you expect it.

Once I visited Lisa Coffman, a professor I admire, in situ. Live action classroom. Lisa uses the satisfying click. When an idea pops or a revelation is revealed or a change of topic is introduced, fingers are snapped. That is an ingenious education device.

Almost as important as the satisfying click was the introduction of random versus sequential. An example is the DVD as opposed to VHS tape. OR CDs as opposed to audio tape cartridges.
OR THE INTERNET VS TELEVISION

Essentially TV is sequential. IV is random (maybe a better term is ubiquitous because in cyberworld we approach the possible reality of being able to be everywhere right now.
THE RERUNS ARE LIVE.

WHAT’S IN IT

The IV GUIDE will come in a series of newsletters disguised as RSS notifications.

What the Tell is RSS? Well that is what the first newsletter or article is all about.

RSS is a way to accomplish the goal. The goal is WHAT’S IN IT? I want to know right now. Or, I know what I want is in there. Now, get it out here.

The goal is GIVE ME WHAT I WANT AND HURRY UP!

The IV GUIDE is more than a bunch of pages to turn. The IV GUIDE is a series of skills with which you can use some core information and principles to accomplish the goal.

RSS in a sense is an IV GUIDE.

Assume you like my mag, my blog, my site. But you don’t want to open it and dig through it all the time when you are just after that next article on building your own virtual IV GUIDE.

It sounds technologically crude when I say it like this but you put IV GUIDE in a directory and when the next article comes out a bell goes DiNgDiNgDiNg.

THAT IS IT???????????? Where is the other good stuff?

Let’s line some of it up in order of expected appearance:

• RSS - Defining what we see arranging for its delivery
• Starter lists
• Prioritization
• Using beginning search argument (keyword) packets to:
  • Get exactly what we’re after and
  • Use that practice to understand and build better search lists for ourselves
• Using the keyword prep wizard to prepare and launch the search
• Building our own real speedy bookmark assembly with our own bookmark program
• Building our own deep touch data sources

That seems like a lot, doesn’t it?

It really isn’t. Yet it really is in the sense of its ability to empower you.
Very quickly we rise to the level of feeling entitled to that level of empowerment.

Well you should.
That entitlement is based on having done the work to build the skills to assemble the tools and handle the function.

I began my first programming job in 1968.
A dreadful year in many ways. A King was slaughtered five miles from my birthplace.
A wonderful year in others. I had a profession.
I ticked off realities.
One of them was that I really needed a minimum of twenty percent of my work week to stay state of the art and beyond.

I realized I could do one of two things. Only one.

While I needed to be able to know everything, that was the one of the two things I could not do.

The other thing was the thing that was left. While I could not know everything,

I COULD KNOW WHERE TO QUICKLY FIND IT.

So I built a good collection of sources and developed access to them.

Every day I ponder the immensity of the content of the worrrrrllllllldddddd wide web.
It is bigger than a bread box. It is bigger than the library of ancient Alexandria.
I am two people. I am the librarian. I am the most frequent borrower of content.
If he who said “I am king of the world” had said “I am librarian of the world”
then being king would a mute point.

Ten years ago I placed the following lines in my first web site when it was a year old.
“The world is my oyster
The net is my cloister”

Shortly thereafter I added these lines from Goethe

Lass mich nur auf meinen sattle gelten
Bleib in euren hutten, euren zelten
Ich reite froh in alle ferne
Ueber meine mutze nur die sterne

Let me just get up into the saddle
Stay in your huts and tents
I ride joyfully forth into the unknown
Over my head just the stars

This is where we tell you that here and soon will be a point to a catalogue and a description of the software bells and whistles running MAGicly.

One, we want you to have a list and
Two, we are going to have to explain what some of this stuff does

…Because once my corpos colosum wakes up enough to fall into integrative mode, all the stuff I am thinking of creating,

not like an illusionist spellbinding you like a turkey
(forgive me - it is Thanksgiving)
at a turkey shoot
(not exactly a turkey shoot - here, they just let them run until time to go out to lock and load, shoot and cook - a feature of the capitol city of Consumerdom)

OK, forget turkies now.
Our goal is this. With our showplace magazines we intend to present some amazing (and amazingly useful) tools and we will have to catalogue them to make them available to you.

As I intended to explain, I am slaphappy with grandkids and the main discussion is corporate organization and how their ideas become MAGic realities.

I think the younger gaggle of grand kids (say 2-7) will be doing the feasibility and some of their ideas are so incredible they will have to do their own documentation.

Primarily the software engineers are in the 8-11 range and I guess will have to hang onto some of my dysfunction long enough to keep tossing them metaphorical bones to provide cute names to entice you to employ them for your fun and efficiency.

To be succinct (heh - heh - an inside publishing and personal joke) I live to provide great software tools and let’s see… (more like Google (as it is in 2006) than Windows (as has always been, mentally and awareness wise) I don’t want 50 billion dollars for software. It will flow to those we host and support and push and praise and want deeply to say to the world what they want to say, even if it is something nice about Bill Gates or the Redmond Contingent et al or et part.

I am, it is Thanksgiving, grateful to the US government and the MIC (Military Industrial Complex, OK, I confess we did make those fifty dollar data telemetry tools to fetch good stuff from the satellites. But we were able to do it as well and as cheaply as we did because we had the onus on us to apply the good development practices that we learned when oops was more a programming protocol than OOPS. Who now remembers Milestone Guidelines or Decision Tables?

To be succincter, as we learn about the online magazines that are under our wing, we will be developing cool software for them to use to do great things succinctly and at no cost unless we have trouble that month with the grocery bill.

I know it’s MAGIC. I just don’t know what the acronym is. I’m going crazy trying to find words to capture the extent of qualities, the vast body of information, organizational options and audience outreach possibilities, not to mention saving a few zillion trees from certain death. The instant accessibility of online media for reader, writer and publisher, plus the heh, heh, iconoclasting of publishing monoliths and behemoths - in a single acronym? I just can’t do it. So we’re simply calling this effort MAGIC, and letting it go at that - the magnetic Magic of online magazine publishing in its fast moving, fast changing, but beautiful, sighbereal currency.

Join us in celebrating the arrival of a new player determined to publish, and more uncharacteristically than may appear to be normal, simultaneously serve those publishing and desiring to publish.

Examine this issue of MAGIC to see how we’re promoting low cost, ubiquitious online magazine accessibility, where publishers, writers and an expanded audience of world-wide readers, join in the hum of universal conversation.

Thanks, input-output ferrets for joining us- now let’s have some fun.

This is MAGic. That I would perform something, show you something wonderful, and explain the trick without tricking you, yet without destroying the spell, without diminishing your joy.

To make you want to see it again, or a variation on the theme. A variation just as wonderful, spelling you time and time again without destroying your appreciation of the mystical and marvelous.

Without rudely shoving you out of the magic into the bright light of “how did they do that?”

By bringing the lights up softly so that the MAGic spell subsides in intensity, the usefulness of the MAGic becomes subliminally apparent as you cascade into the next trick, the abracadabra almost unheard.

Welcome to the world of the online magazine, multidimensional, multifaceted, multimedia content sans know nothing glamour pusses. Ahhhhhhhh, but somewhere an anchor is busy sometimes indistinguishable from the magic.

But what is the trick?
Where did you put the coin?
How did the little rabbit breathe in that tiny box?

Eventually, we think, the magic ends when the mind turns to such questions?

And when we thing the simile, indeed, all the rhetoric, ends, then the MAGic of putting content into a magazine, in a particular layout, with a particular organization, ahhhhhhhhhhh.

The ease of getting it issued, available to the public, that is MAGic.

Somehow, the print thing we publishers just continue to hold on to, is seen as a money pump we cannot let go of.

We know that it is not MAGic. No one says wow, how did you do that?

Uhhhhh, we just ground up some trees, added some glue and stuff and there was the paper. We had a hard time getting that one colr of ink this time but we did. It was a lot of work. I would not call it magic. But we get $600 for that full page spread and hey, business is business.

Everywhere, people are holding on, holding on, to that paper magazine. Well, if you have to, you have to. But, it could be the difference between a mind set and a paradigm shift.

If I am going to a town to visit, I have all kinds of accesses to online mags. Pocket PC, telephone, notebook PC, laptop, GIS. What I call the never ending paper. And I never change the ink. EVEN ADVERTISERS ARE PRESENTING PODCASTS. THAI RESTAURANT - BEAUTIFUL VOICE DESCRIBING GREAT FOOD. COME ON DOWN.

But I want to keep the print mag for the old folk!

Dude! I am an old folk. I took the Mothershed podcast seminar on conceptual thinking and the one on getting past the user fiendly and turning it into user fRiendly. I am locked in and turned on to technology. And I never change ink! Now, excuse me, I want to listen to this podcast describing the resort and spa again. That is pure literature.

Well, if that is the way you feel. We’re hooking in Google Earth and the magic of Firefox and magazines are providing instant access to the whole wide world, Web.

And we can help you make your MAGazine perform MAGic.

There were moments. There were moments. Putting the brain all together, I had moments when I thought I must be crazy in addition to being damaged by the mountain hitting me in the head.

Many dissuaders, human and eventfully coincidental, but I would not be deterred for I looked upon being deterred with disdain. I pressed on realizing as I came to, the size of the project I had put in my path but lately Brezny said not to look at the obstacles because they were not really there. OK.

You are just strolling through the net. You hit on some keyword related to online magazines.

Perhaps you are thinking about one.

Yes, it was rough getting everything together together but I was even less willing than normal to delegate. I wanted this all to my own; knowing what I messed up I could blame on my rising out of the dysfunction. Scared? No reason - plenty of step-ins. No, not that kind of step-in. You must be old as I am. That term went out long ago. I mean plenty of help to step in and bury this project for me, if I winked.

But no, it means a lot. We all know that. Or will.

I need YOUR help. either as a content contributor, a magazine supporter, a financial contributor, and lots of feedback and suggestions would be OK.

But if beyond that you are looking for assistance, host, software, whatever to build your MULTI MEDIA ONLINE MAGAZINE, then you landed in the correct field. Here is some information. Follow on to the comments and I will react to the pursuit with assistance.

The bottom up.
We are on the fastest steadiest publicly available network backbone in the world.

We are on a secure, state of the art UNIX system which we may make a Linux system along the way.

We use Apache server, main language PHP of various flavors.

We have a real reliable mysql database supporting everything database supportable. It works great as it always has.

We started building our mags from Wordpress software. Why? It is there. It is open source. It works. We ran a couple sites on it for a year. It proved reliable so we can trust it for the mags.

We use skins that are open source and distributed through Wordpress. As we get to know skins, we get to know how we want to specialize skins of our own to do the best job for particular applications.

That is why you see the skins changing for our various home mags.

We have a number of skins in development that have not made it to the public template scene. Some of these are more XULish and high fast data load. We expect to be relating more and more to DEVMO’s brand of open source help share.

The future. The Now. Multimedia. We can communicate to all of the senses with electronics. All the electronics in smaller and smaller containers. Looking at it like that, i don’t mind the word ‘pod’ so much. And the more the senses are involved the more the likelihood we will grow the content to occupy the bandwidth and move further into an evolutionary rather than a devloutionary society.

rave on…..

The point is this. I am almost as infatuated with being plugged into the universe wherever I am as I am being plugged into the universe by being silently in cahoots with it.

It is tough being a hybrid. Hybrids are usually strong on imagination and not as strong on concentration. Obvious isn’t it?

Hybrids often ride alone. Few see that one maverick hybrid is both suffering and deliriously happy with a multiple personality of two or more.

For a hyrbid, however, a lot of time can be lost changing outfits so they match who is who at the moment. More time gets wasted when one of the hybrid twins has a facility for and takes great joy in creating more personalities to handle the various functions. So, the successfulness of a function can suffer.

The MP maker has to keep in mind that time deals off the bottom of the deck. The speed of the deal can get to be greater than the speed with which the hybrid can exhibit proficiency as a quick change artist.

Most of the time the quick change exceeds the ability to create real people to handle the various functions. And in this “most of the time” the quick change artist is incredibly pleased and happy in reaching for the evolutionary golden ring with twice as many hands as minds.

Time keeps dealing.

Sorry, 25. You bust. Yeah, but I am also three other players. Well, will a couple of you pick up the guy who just went bust and get him out of here. I think he just had a heart attack. We need the seat.

If you are, as I suspect, part of the majority adept at concentrating on being a uni-personality, none of this will make any sense and all of it will seem to be coming out of the mouth of one descending the tower of Babel Babble.

For the rest, consider investing in having one of your personalities investing in a resuscitation course. Revive Lazarus, get him functional. Have a meeting. Ensure all of your multiple personalities are there.

Whoever is the entrepreneur type can ensure the meeting has a pep rally high content, “let’s go team”, feel to it.

This is the message. This is the pep of the rally. Utilize the power of the uni-personality to be completely singular in each personality. The software person in you has to concentrate on software. The artistic person in you has to concentrate on being the best multimedia expert in the world. The entrepreneur in you has to concentrate on reaching out to one new arena at a time.

You cannot be a successful multi-personality if all of you are losing control over individual identity control.

Again, if you have primarily one function and you are very adept at concentrating on that one function while keeping in mind you are one person, working for one corporation at one office or one work station, none of what I have said will make any sense to you except the following. YOU ONLY GET ONE PAYCHECK. ENJOY IT.

If you are running an entire enterprise solo, so to speak, you know you love it. Even though you know the odds of success are slim. You know you are hooked on parlaying Napoleon Hill’s concept of THE MASTER MIND into a multiple personality so slick that it functions as a single corporate body and better. BY THE WAY, YOU GET ALL THE PAYCHECKS.

Enough gold bricking, Lazarus. We have a magazine to get out, a software system to debug and modify, some ideas and hunches to sculpt into reality(ies). We are SOLO.

That said, I (being the software person) suspect many open source enterprises to be similar to a hybrid. As I came into the use of WordPress first of year, I was ecstatic about creating multimedia magazines. (That is why Magic is the nickname for multimediamags.com) With the welter of new versions, multiple magblogs, I sensed a tide shift. Many must be still foundering with mixes of versions, ancillary system fit, widgets, plugins - all coming together to function for us - errhh, me. Strangely enough, in going away to do other things, like looking for another CMS, things seem to have settled out and even blossomed. Both in WordPress and in me.

Whatever we-I seem to be pulling it all together together even to the degree of having sufficent blhip to blog the net to death and then resuscitate it.

straight ahead,
Thomas Wolfe