Servant of Chaos

Blogroll Love

Often, when I am looking for a bit of hypertext loving, I jump from blogroll to blogroll, never knowing where I am likely to end up. This is part of the fun ... and also, often, part of the disappointment. It is fun when you don't know where you are going to end up ... what valuable gem you are going to discover ... but it can be disappointing when you end up where you started.

Mike Sansone has a nice categorised blogroll ... all focused around blogging, branding and business -- the three "Bs". A more random assortment of links can be found at Marktd ... but these can ALSO be browsed by category.

But what are the other opportunities for finding some obscure blog love? Where can you go to find something that is new? What is your favourite method? What search site do you use?

Where do you get your blogroll love?

S.

What the Hoff?

Sometimes when you are loving the hypertext, you can never tell where you will end up. That is one of the joys! But then sometimes you stumble upon a site that gives you a sense of purpose. A direction. So you feel that providing your email address is a small price to pay for a greater good.

And then you get this ... as a thank you ... and now I feel a little dirty.

Ok ... not as dirty as the dog. With thanks to Dino for the link.

S.

Good Ideas Keep Coming Round

One of the things that I find interesting about writing a blog is the way that good ideas keep circulating. They are like tides. You can be writing about a particular topic and then pick up on someone else's thread and drift off on a new tangent -- only to come back to that "old" idea a little later after picking up yet another thread days, weeks or months later.

So while loving the hypertext this evening, I was over at Ken Worsley's blog - Recognize Design and found a link through to the omni-present David Armano. The particular article Ken was recommending was this one on PR and the changes being wrought by the rise of social media. It reminded me of a great eBook that I read some time ago by David Meerman Scott called The New Rules of PR. David's approach places PR in the centre of an engagement strategy that keeps one eye on the STORY and the other on your key audiences. If you have not read it, it is certainly worth a read. If not now, then in a month's time.

S.

Welcome New Readers!

I just wanted to put up a quick post to thank all the new readers that have taken the time to visit and read through this blog over the past week or so. It has been great to receive comments from such a broad range of people ... and even more fun to take a look at their sites.
So, if you are in the mood for a bit of hypertext loving, check out these sites:

• Julia @ DatingPro -- daily tips on dating and relationships
• Jason @ Clarity of Night -- a site for writers and the inspiration that sometimes only comes late at night
• Remi @ The Falling World -- trying to make the world a better place
• Jarkko @ Loghomescabin -- we all need a goal ... and Jarkko is aiming for his own log cabin
• Dadan -- still battling with WordPress by the look of things
• Melly -- who writes a great blog on writing and publishing
• Rob -- a blogger who sees life as one great big experiment
• Razib -- blogging from South East Asia ... and interesting perspective on blogging, business and world events
• Kimson -- chronicler of the trials and tribulations of being Swiss and living in the UK
• Andrea -- the consultant who can help you become a consultant

Have fun reading! Oh, and come back again, soon.
S.

How Do You Know When You are Link Whore?

If you just can't help yourself --> click.

Good Sunday Reading

It looks like Sundays are becoming my blog reading night (sorry Russell, but this is another late night activity). I have happily found a heap of new sites as well as plenty of great reading at those I have on my blog roll. There is the user guide to Open Space Technology that Chris Corrigan and Johnnie Moore are so enamoured with (thought I would finally give up my resistance and take a look), one of my new favourite blogs by Mike Wagner and this thought provoking piece by Russell Davies on the future of media.

Russell follows this on with a link to marktd. What a great concept! Submit your own articles, or those of others you find interesting ... and the articles will be marked (ranked) by marketing professionals all around the world. Cool ... now that is loving the hypertext.

Oh ... and just following the hypertext over at marktd ... and found this. Not a bad wrap up of global creative work each friday.

Late Night Web Cruise

Being the lightweight that I am, I was in the mood for a bit of late night hypertext loving and found these guys through Russell Davies. I love the way that they talk about engaging people ... not as an end in itself, but as a form of relationship.

Too often we treat engagement or capturing attention as our objective. Can we use a smart line or  a strong visual to distract someone long enough for them to take notice of us? Well yes. But then, once we have that attention, what do we do? Do we make a particular point, or do we try to start a journey together?

Do we prompt an action or pose a question?

I am sure you know the answer.

S.

Every Page is Sacred

This is one for the Monty Python fans ... well not really, but when you think about it, the web really does force us to think in Pythonesque terms. The leaps of logic and associations of words that we loved in various sketches are the very memes that the Internet is based upon.

This struck me as I read one of Seth Godin's articles today. And while he was talking about someone who wishes Google Did Not Exist, he reinforced one of his key points about "websites". Often we consider our site as a discrete series of linked stories ... we don't really think about how they relate to the upstream and downstream stories that our online visitors read.

When I think about "loving the hypertext", one of the things I like most is the way that stories emerge from disparate websites. This means, that in building an article, a page or a section of a site, we should consider EVERY page as our landing page. But just as important, is understanding that this landing page is also a take-off page ...

So while every page is sacred, every page is fairly promiscuous. Oh, I suddenly feel a little bit dirty.

S.

Never Alone But Hard to Find

Every day there are more and more blogs out there. If you are a lover of the hypertext, such as me, it is easy to spend hours drifting from one site to the next. But what if you reach the end?

I remember years ago seeing a website that had a single page in flat HTML. It declared "congratulations, you have reached the end of the Internet". It came as quite a shock, and back then, there probably was an "end". But now, I see these as not just marking a terminal point, but as a kind of online millenarianism (ha that one got caught in the spell checker!). These false prophets are out there decrying the end and exhorting us all to "do something productive".

I much prefer a novel approach such as this, where you have the option (at the click of a button) to turn off the entire Internet! (OK if you tried it and freaked, try Alt+Tab.)

And while it is clear that there are many, many sites out there, many social networks to join or engage with, it can still be hard to find a group to run with. An online relationship is just like any other ... it takes time to develop and it needs to be nurtured. And you have got to keep going with it. So while you may never really be alone, sometimes it is hard to find others and hard to be found.

This is where the joy of hypertext kicks in ... a quick blast on Technorati and you are off and away!

S.

Loving the Hypertext

Now that I have noticed this is a recurring theme I have added a new category! In Loving the Hypertext I will be tagging articles about surprise websites found by madly (and sometimes carelessly) clicking on web pages.

This one is not bad (stumbleupon.com). It is a one-stop-shop for the hypertext addict. Just click the Firefox toolbar button and you get a random site. But wait ... there's more! You can even rate it ... thumbs up or thumbs down. Not bad -- a bit of random web love and the chance to have your say. Thanks to Seth Godin for finding this one!

S.