lowcountryblogs

Blog aggregators

I don't like to use the term "aggregator" too often because it just seems to turn people off, but "blog aggregator" is a term all of us should understand, whether we use it or not. In its most simple terms, it's a web site that keeps up with a group of blogs. Most do so with some amount of tech magic.

Lowcountry Blogs is, in the words of Billy Jones, a human blog aggregator. Billy has added this site to his list of blog aggregators around the world, making us the first blog aggregator from South Carolina to be so mentioned.

In comments yesterday, there was some discussion about how we could use RSS feeds to read blogs, plus mentions of blog aggregators that keep track of postings automatically. Could we do that here? Could we create a site that keeps track of who has posted and points readers to where the interesting conversations are taking place?

Absolutely. It's a coding issue, and what it would probably involve is asking each of you to add a bit of code to your site (like you do to enable a third-party traffic statistics program). With that in place, our robots would notice activity at your sites and automatically note it on a public page.

The problem with such a site is that building it requires some cross-departmental development time and management discussions. With our web guys already up to their eyeballs in developmental issues, putting up an automated site would have taken us months.

We put this site up in about 36 hours. Sometimes simple is good.

That doesn't mean that the format we use now will always be the format we'll use. In fact, I hope that the versions that replace this one will offer users all sorts of tools I can't give you right now.

But here's the thing: When we get around to having those in-house discussions about what this site could be, you guys need to have a seat at the table.

So take a look at some of the other blog aggregators on Billy's list. See what you like. Take notes.

Over at Xark: Uplifter Charleston

Here's something that might interest this crowd: Last night I posted an announcement over at Xark about the first Charleston meeting of the Uplift group. The Holy City meeting will be held on Saturday afternoon, April 29, at Kudu Coffee, more or less simultaneously with the Uplifter Seattle meeting.

Some background: Uplift is the brain child of Conway blogger/podcaster Dave Slusher (The Evil Genius Chronicles), whom Janet and I met last fall. Great guy. Anyway, Dave thinks big, and he got the idea that he'd do some good in the world if he could link up people who know how to do technical stuff with people who want/need to learn how to do technical stuff.

I figure that would cover most of us.

Dave started talking about this on his podcast, which gets thousands of regular listeners, and next thing you know, people were organizing themselves into Uplifter groups around the country. The first round of meetings took place March 25 in Minneapolis and Conway, and Charleston/Seattle are the second round.

Before you get the impression that Uplifter is limited to arcane, high-end geekdom, hear this: While the Do-It-Yourself movement includes that stuff, the leading edge of Uplifter seems to be about spreading do-it-yourself media. Blogs. Podcasts. Vlogs. Websites.

As a blogger, I figure this puts me in the Uplifter sweet spot: On the one hand, I know just enough to help newbies with their Blogspot accounts, cit-j projects and basic Audacity editing; on the other, I'm  enough of a newbie that I learn stuff just by sitting around with Dave and the other techies.

So you don't have to show up and declare yourself a volunteer or an expert or a student or a newbie. You can literally be all of these things at once. Plus, since the format is drop-in informal, you can show up, drink some great coffee, and just treat it like a social hour. There's no program.

Another thing: As Joan and Mike have mentioned, the Charleston blogging community is probably in need of a bloggercon. This isn't that, but then again, it could be an opportunity for us to talk about hosting a bloggercon.

As to where Uplifter will go from here, nobody knows. Which I kinda like.  If it goes anywhere, it will be because we decide to take it there.

Disclosure:  I'm wearing three hats simultaneously here. I'm blogging this here on behalf of my employer; I announced it at Xark as a private blogger; and I'm organizing the event for Uplift in Charleston. Just so y'all know. Because I could look really silly wearing three hats at the same time.