Wizard's Blog

This post is about the social aspect of software development, not the development of social software – I realize the title is ambiguous.

A few days ago, I came across a project someone had done to automatically append a Google Analytics campaign identifier to URLs shortened using Cligs so that you can tell what clicks came from that shortened URL.  It seemed like a really useful idea, but from my point of view the execution was less than ideal – it used a php file I had to host and a bookmarklet.

The only URLs I shorten are blog posts, and I already use the WP to Twitter WordPress plugin to do that.  So I suggested it to the developer of the plugin on his website.  The next day he’d added the feature to his plugin.

I was shocked – I’m still used to the old, monolithic model of development where you get a new version every year or two, it’ll have whatever features the company decides, you have no say in the matter and you definitely have no contact with the developers.

I guess the accessibility of home computers has increased the number of smaller companies and individual developers, and the Internet has connected everyone together better to make this possible.  It’s a brave new world.

Storytlr logo

I recently found a website called Storytlr.  It’s a lifestreaming service similar to soup.io, Sweetcron and to a lesser extent FriendFeed - it aggregates your blog posts, Flickr pictures, tweets etc. into one stream.

Like soup.io, Storytlr lets you set up a DNS CNAME to point to your lifestream from your domain, so mine is here.

What makes Storytlr different is that it has the concept of “stories” – for example you could group a blog post, some tweets and some flickr pictures together as a story to describe a vacation you had.  It’s an interesting twist, but I’m not sure I’d use it – I’m probably more likely to just write a blog post about my vacation, link the pictures and leave the tweets out.

• Lifestreaming Evolves with Storytlr
• Messing about with Storytlr
• storytlr the cool new lifestream
• Storytlr.com – Your Life Online
• HOW TO: Turn Your Photos, Videos and Tweets into Stories