Scoble, in his latest post, reflects on what a resource his link blog has become as a database of all things technological.
It has almost no noise, just much of the best blogging that’s been done over the past year in the technology field. But, whenever I think about moving feeds to a new reader I start thinking of that database and start thinking about the value it has to me as a way to search back on what caught my eye over the past year.
Then it struck me that since I’ve subscribed to said link blog over the past year, and since I use Google Reader, I can access that same database as well. The addition of search by the Reader team just makes it better. It has some invaluable stuff in it. I share stuff in it more than in all my other feeds. I find plenty of bloggable materiel in there as well.
Which brings me to the question: What is a link blog?
I know, it sounds idiotic, like something web 1.0 guys would ask. But think of it. Do you a use a link blog to share posts with others? Do you use a link blog as reference for yourself, to point to things that catch your eye? Do you use it a reference, but don’t mind if others share it?
The way we see the utility of a link blog determines what we will use a link blog for, which in turn determines the quality of our link blogs.
On the one hand if we take it seriously and only add stuff that is truly worthy of being shared, not just stuff loosely related to what we blog about. In other words:Are you in the business of simply observing the world go by, or is the welfare of your blog and link blog taken seriously? Do we/you intend for our/your link blog to be a resource – personal or public?
On the other hand, Scoble can be easy on his link blog – he’s posted cat photo’s there more than once. Do we fill it with stuff that’s not really useful ( and I am definitely a cat person)? Do we linkblog just for the sake of it.
Lets take a look at the old school link blogers I have in my reading list.
Larkware News: They put their links in blog posts. They’re up to 1227 posts today. lets see what yesterdays post post looks like:
- EZNamespaceExtensions.Net 2.0 – Yes, you can develop shell namespace extensions in .NET. (via Programmers Heaven)
- TFS: Check Out – Get Latest – Addin to make VS prompt the user to get the latest version on checkout.
- Smart FieldPackEditor.Net – A replacement for the DateTimePicker and a general framework for new edit controls.
- Introducing a Special Promotion for Small and Medium Businesses – VMware is pushing down the entry price on its highest-end products.
- Before you hire a tester (.net edition) – A list of things to do and tools to use to make sure your code is ready to hammer on.
- How to Write a Custom MSBuild Task – Tutorial from Keyvan Nayyeri.
- SQL Prompt 3.6 Early Access is now available – Incremental release from the Red Gate folks.
- Finding A New Job, Week 1 — Recruiters and the demand for .NET – Jim Bolla is chronicling his adventures in the job search world.
Simple. Clean and neat. The three categories are particularly useful allowing you to skip right to the meat of the post. The RSS Feed is here.
Christopher Steen. Same deal. His latest Link Listing:
LINQ to SQL (Part 9 – Using a Custom LINQ Expression with the control) [Via: ScottGu ] Obscure ASP.NET Problem – AJAX Control Toolkit, CollapsiblePanelExtender, Image controls pages loading more than once…….
RSS feed here.
Kent Newsome posts “Evening Reading”. its not so much a link listing as a running commentary of the stuff he’s read. An excerpt from his latest:
Larry Borsato talks about a recent focus group in which college students said MySpace is over, Facebook might not last much longer, and their best source for information is word of mouth. Paul Stamatiou is one college guy who has chilled on Facebook. Thank goodness there’s all those grown-up bloggers to keep the hype going.
He posts this in the middle of his other stuff in stead of a completely separate feed. I tend to give it is quick scan and see if there is anything interesting, or else ignore it completely.
RSS feed here.
Sam Gentile often posts his “New and Notable”. He’s up to number 180.
SOA/ESB
One of the things we talked about is the use of the term SOA which we both are perfectly comfortable with provided you go well beyond the 4 Tenents
Just as I was thinking of that, my good friend Harry has a post too on going beyond the 4 Tenents
Another subject was making the case for ESB as an Architectural Style
John Devadoss points to Joe McKendrick’s colum: Microsoft: When It comes to SOA, just Do It! as an excellent summation of Microsoft’s philosophy on SOA, which is the way we view at Neudesic. Microsoft also refers to this as “Real World SOA” and Nick calls it “Middle Out SOA“
See also John’s big SOA, little SOA – SOA in the Real World
How is Business Process Management related to Service Oriented Architecture?
My friend, Shy Cohen, has produced a valuable Ontology and Taxonomy of Services in a Service-Oriented Architecture
Nice piece from Christian: It WAS(n’t just) me: Extend Your WCF Services Beyond HTTP With WAS
WF
The great thing here is that they’re grouped by subject matter. You can skip right to what you’re interested in. RSS feed here.
After that review, I still much prefer Google Reader’s Shared items. All they need next is a taging for your shared items. ( I think someone’s already suggested that somewhere in Scoble’s link blog 🙂 ).
But one thing is sure – link blogs are invaluable tools to finding information because the information has already been used and promoted as useful.
There ain’t nothing like an oft used piece of information.
So. My link blog has a new lease on life. (RSS feed here)
PS Scoble says TechCrunch aren’t happy about linkblogs. I think this a first for a content producer to complain about link blogs.
Random Musings 