First spent time revisiting blog-theory anno 2002 (like Rebecca Blood’s The Weblog Handbook: http://www.rebeccablood.net/handbook/). I made some notes on yellow post-its.

Then went through folders on my harddisk in which I have stored webpages and pdfs ‘to read’; re-ordered the contents (I now have 4 different research folders), deleted some, printed the papers I really want/have to read this week.

After that I made an old-fashioned links-page, and visited (quickly) about 100 (?), 200 (?) blogs to see if I want to include them on this page (for further reference, to remember). I worked through VoodooPad-documents in which I had saved links, went though the linkslist of my ‘old’ blog, followed links on blogs that I was happy to revisit or rediscover, and, most importantly, used my own memory. I still have to go through the bookmark-files of both Firefox and Safari — I only bookmarks when I’m too lazy to do more than hit ‘command-D’ (so the bookmark-lists tends to be long and totally unorganized).

Will this compulsion to order lead anywhere?

I never really go to use delicious/ariealt. Although I do use the delicious-accounts of others, often to good result. What one uses or not, has a lot to do with, well, preferences. (What you like, what you’re good at, what fits your use if time and working methodology, how important design is, how important good writing, etc.).

I also don’t use RSS. (My blog does RSS though, and I know some people appreciate that). I used RSS for a while when I spent much time on trains. Before catching a train I would boot my RSS-reader, let the feeds stream onto my harddisk, to browse through on the train. RSS was / is a way to have online content when there’s no connection. (I hated blogs that only put a headline plus a lead in the RSS, or worse, only a headline). What I miss in RSS is the personality of the design, the typography, all that (subtle? — hopefully) visual stuff that adds to the ‘voice’ of the site.

Wrt design: there is a strange attraction to making all texts look the same: have it shown in the stylesheet / template of your choice. (But basically RSS-readers and services like Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com/) do not really look attractive).

I am put-off by really bad design. (That’s what I learned from visiting 100 blogs tonight, and quickly closing those which looked really ugly). But I’m not put off by generic Blogger/Wordpress/MoveableType-templates, as long as they are (a bit) clear.

Links-page and notes to come…

Here’s some of what I printed to read:
http://blog.lib.umn.edu/blogosphere/.