Podcasts are often too long and predictable to hold my attention. That’s why I started making impromptu nanocasts this morning.
By definition, a nanocast is:
* 5 minutes or less in duration.
* Impromptu, not scrpted.
Examples:
Mark Oehlert on Second Life & Open Source
Mark Oehlert on the Future Look of Learning
Kevin Wheeler on Talent Management
Clark Quinn on incremental development.
Life in the blogosphere
Blogging is great but it’s not without its shortcomings. The last-in first-out sequence works well to keep current entries up top. The downside is that entries fall off the bottom, never to be seen again unless Google dredges them up. Monthly archives are useless; categories, too broad; and commentary, buried.
Starting today, when worthy items are about to fall off the bottom of my blogs, I will move them to my wiki. I’ll be able to keep the oldies but goodies alive, while at the same time giving main-page visibiility to comments.
2 comments ↓
Jay,
This is a very good idea. I write a blog on “Java Programming Best Practices”, and very often a post will be relevant for a long time after it was written. But once it finds it’s way into the archives it is usually buried.
Your idea of linking old posts from a wiki is a very good one. That way readers can find old but relevant posts quickly.
I have also been thinking about the concept of “starting points”. Many blogs have a wealth of information, but it’s flowing and elementary (but useful) information is in the archives never to be found. Very often when someone is learning something new, they need a “starting point”. For example if I want to know more about Ajax, I can find several blogs and resources on the topic, but they are not useful to me initially. What a new learner needs is a starting point. Most good blogs have the relevant information in old posts but it is difficult to collate it.
I think I will also start a wiki which has links to old posts and a series of “starting points”
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Parag
[...] Posted by Marg on January 16th, 2007 Podcasts are often too long and predictable to hold my attention. That’s why I started making impromptu nanocasts this morning. By definition, a nanocast is: * 5 minutes or less in duration. * Impromptu, not scrpted. Jay Cross @ Internet Time Blog on Nanocasting [...]
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