Have you heard the word?

It is with great pleasure I present gregword.com, my new personal blog. I've got a post up with the details as to what's up, so please head on over, give it all a look-see, subscribe, link, etc., etc. Satisfaction guaranteed, or your money back.

The Blogdigger Dev Blog will continue to update, but focused more on Blogdigger and blog search.

BrainJams in DC

DC is the happening place for all things unconference-like. Dylan Greene passed along information for BrainJams DC, which is scheduled for next Monday, Jan 30, at The DC Improv. From the BrainJams website:

A BrainJams event is an unconference which combines knowledge networking and confersations in open spaces. We strive to bring people together from Non-profits, Technology, Business, the Arts and Government to share our insights and experiences to accelerate the pace of postive change and innovation in the world. The organizing principle of each event is separate from the format. While each BrainJams event can focus on different topics, the principal focus of our conversations at present is on how real people are using emerging social media tools (i.e. Web 2.0, citizen journalism, blogs, podcasts, social bookmarks, open collaboration, etc.).

Sounds perfect! I've said for a while that the DC area needs to get organized and start having these kinds of events that bring the community together, kudos to Chris and co. for getting the ball rolling. There's a growing list of attendees listed on the BrainJams wiki; if anyone needs a ride down from Baltimore, let me know.

In addition, Stowe Boyd, Ken Yarmosh and Dion Hinchcliffe are organizing DC 2.0, to take place in March. It's all happening, DC!

BarCampNYC

I just signed up for BarCampNYC. I'm going to be in NY for the weekend, mainly to see O.A.R. and Matisyahu play Madison Sqaure Garden, but when I found out BarCamp was the same weekend, I just had to find time (my wife is going to kill me, but there ya go). And we're staying in or near Tribeca as it is, so it works out nicely. I'll be there Sunday morning, and apparently everyone has to present something, so I'll either talk about Blogdigger or Lucene or the disproportianately large number of white, upper-middle class Jewish kids from the suburbs that end up in reggae bands. I'm mostly just there to meet people, hopefully learn some cool stuff, and take notes on how to jumpstart BarCampDC, which has been languishing for quite some time.

If you want to meetup that weekend, let me know (if you want to go to BarCampNYC, you've got to register).

Good Karma

In one of my previous posts, I took a shot at Amazon, but said some nice things as well. Call it a coincidence, but just yesterday (Jan 4th) I placed an order with Amazon, chose Super Saver Shipping (which is free, but takes 5-10 days to arrive) and whaddaya know, I come home today (Jan 5) and there's a box waiting for me! No hard feelings!

So now I've got my copy of John Battelle's The Search, so I can learn all about being an arbitrageur. To add a bit of contrast, I also ordered Fight Club on DVD (I needed an extra $10 for the free shipping; it was that or O Brother, Where Art Thou?). Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you an arbitrageur.

Why I switched (back) to Blogger

You may or may not have noticed that I switched this blog over to Blogger. First off, if all went well, all the old posts have been converted to static files, so no links have been broken. Also, the RSS feed has not changed location (it's now in Atom, but I don't think that should present a problem for anyone).

When making the switch, I took some time to evaluate the available options. I tried out Wordpress.com, Typepad and Blogger. I had two main requirements: all URLs must stay the same, and no dynamic processes on Blogdigger's web server. The former because this blog has been around a while, and I don't want to suddenly redirect readers off some place else; the latter because of resource constraints on our web server. Wordpress and Typepad both seemed to work fine from a publishing perspective (I like Typepad better, probably because I've been an MT user for a while). But neither allowed for me to do anything more than a redirect off site for the base package. Another nitpick was that the templates weren't fully customizable, so I couldn't add a Blogdigger search box.

Blogger has the unique ability to publish via FTP, so I could host static files on our server without affect any of our other processes. I could also edit the template to fit my liking. I haven't used Blogger regularly for a few years, and in the interim they've made leaps and bounds in terms of usability, including things like comments and AdSense integration. I was pretty much sold. The only downside: I really like using categories for my posts. I suppose I'll have to resort to tags, which will be an interesting experiment to see if I can keep up with using them.

So Blogger it is. If you're having trouble getting to the blog, or the feed is messed up, or anything, please let me know, and we'll take care of it.

Pebble, the previous blogging tool I used, is still really great. At this point, our servers need every available cycle (we've had a bit of a traffic increase lately), and I wanted to minimize our overhead. Simon Brown, the author of Pebble, has written a really great app that's 100% Java and built with flexibility in mind; if you're going to start blogging and Java is your bag, definetly check out Pebble. Thanks Simon!

Happy 2006!

Wow, is it 2006 already? It's hard to believe that another year has come and gone. Blogdigger is coming up on anniversary number 3. Pretty crazy.

With every new year comes another set of predictions. I've seen lots, but none surpass those compiled by Pete, Noah, Greg and yours truly (seriously, we're all just trying to have a little fun, although Pete's predictions for Blogdigger don't sound half bad to me).

Happy New Year everyone, here's to it being a great one!