Category Archives: Using Weblogs and Technology

The YouTube Power Law, and My Favourite Subscriptions

Posted on December 17, 2022 by Dave Pollard

When blogs were new and all the rage, Clay Shirky published something called the “Power Law” that said the popularity of blogs followed an exponential “power curve” that looked like a curved hockey stick — Y=mXb. That meant that 1% … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Using Weblogs and Technology | 2 Comments

None of the News That’s Fit to Print

Posted on October 8, 2022 by Dave Pollard

If you read blogs and other information sources regularly, it’s probably because you know you’re not getting the information you want from media publishers, either mainstream or alternative/independent. As I wrote last year, media publishers can no longer afford to … Continue reading →

Posted in How the World Really Works, Our Culture / Ourselves, Using Weblogs and Technology | 2 Comments

Do We Know Ourselves Only Through Our Relationships?

Posted on May 1, 2022 by Dave Pollard

Aaron Williamson‘s Model of Identity and Community, 2013 Most of us define ourselves in terms of our relationships — who we work with, who we live with, and who we consider to be in our ‘circles’. When we write a … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves, Using Weblogs and Technology | 4 Comments

Switching from Feedburner to Follow.It

Posted on June 15, 2021 by Dave Pollard

Google is abandoning its free RSS-to-email service Feedburner (that I’ve used for a decade) in two weeks. My brother Alan (thank you!) has arranged to transition my blog’s subscription service to Follow.It and that transition starts today. If you’re an … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 4 Comments

Weather ‘Tis Nobler

Posted on January 7, 2021 by Dave Pollard

I‘ve had a personal weather station for about four years. Living on a small island with microclimates, where the weather doesn’t quite match that of any of the nearby places served by Environment Canada (shown as red dots above), I … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 3 Comments

Blogging Without Facebook

Posted on January 22, 2019 by Dave Pollard

Cartoon from the New Yorker by Lee Lorenz Five years ago I summarized why I still blog this way: I keep blogging because I owe just about everything about my current situation to my blog. My writing and my readers’ … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 3 Comments

The Circles We Move In

Posted on December 18, 2013 by Dave Pollard

Seb Paquet put me on to a free (limited, demo) app called TouchGraph that analyzes all your ‘friends’ on Facebook, and colour-codes them depending on the number of connections they have to your other friends. Mine is shown above, with … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 1 Comment

Google+: On Communities, Circles, Friendship and Love

Posted on July 11, 2011 by Dave Pollard

A member of my community, visiting my yard yesterday I‘ve signed up, somewhat reluctantly, for Google+, the latest foray by Google into the quagmire of social networking. Given the failure of Orkut, Buzz and (the one I really liked) Google … Continue reading →

Posted in Our Culture / Ourselves, Using Weblogs and Technology | 5 Comments

The Ten Most Important Questions I Heard at Northern Voice 2010

Posted on May 7, 2010 by Dave Pollard

I‘m at NV10, the annual bloggers’ conference in Vancouver BC, and what has impressed me most so far is the questions I have heard. With dozens of rapid-fire simultaneous sessions, there is not enough time for thorough answers, but the … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 7 Comments

What Are You Going to Do When the Internet’s Gone?

Posted on May 4, 2010 by Dave Pollard

Cartoon by Jack Ziegler in the New Yorker. You can buy his stuff here. What are you going to do when the Internet’s gone? That is the question that no one dares ask. I’m not talking about Net Neutrality and … Continue reading →

Posted in Using Weblogs and Technology | 22 Comments