Oops, I Missed Myself In Print
One of the modern world's newest guilty pleasures is Googling yourself. One of the unsung virtues of blogging is that it tends to help you dominate the Google rankings for, uh, yourself. Anyway, I Googled myself tonight (Everybody does it. Really.) and found that I missed a mention entirely in Business Week online, in this article about "blooks", the cutesie name for making a book out of blog content. My logic for doing so is in the last section. I will save you the click:
Another benefit of publishing blooks on paper? Archiving. Warren Meyer,
of Paradise Valley, Ariz., first printed out the two volumes -- 400
pages each -- of his blog entries last November as a Christmas gift for
his dad, who is 83."He refuses to do anything online," says Meyer, who has been blogging for more than two years. Meyer
has also kept a copy of his blook, based on Coyoteblog.com, discussing
environmental problems, for himself: "Everything I've ever written is
online," he says. "I wanted to archive my writing, and I don't trust
that electronic media is a good archiving tool, because standards and
technology change so much." While few people now use floppy disks,
paper is here to stay.
I have tried to explain this to younger folks without much success. But for those of you who have used computers for a while, where are your old Compuserve emails? How about those old files from your Apple II? Does your current computer have a 5-1/4" floppy drive? Beware keeping data only in digital form. It may still be there in 20 years, but will you be able to read it?
Update: Forgot the link. Added it.
Ravi:
Googling friends can be a funny experience too. Sometimes you find out interesting things about your friends, at other times you see amazing coincidences. Once I googled a friend and the first link for to her namesake's porn site. It was highly appropriate considering the life phase my friend was in at the time - still is really.
August 21, 2006, 12:08 amDuane Gran:
On the matter of digital preservation, you may enjoy the following description of the sysiphean task the National Archives face:
http://www.technologyreview.com/read_article.aspx?id=14583&ch=infotech
You are wise to print it out if you want it to last.
August 21, 2006, 12:06 pmDanny Noonan:
"One of the unsung virtues of blogging is that it tends to help you dominate the Google rankings for, uh, yourself."
That depends a lot on what your name is. Trust me.
August 21, 2006, 1:50 pmLou Loomis:
Miss it! Noonan! Noonan!
August 21, 2006, 2:33 pmCraig:
You should sign up for a Google News Alert for yourself. Then, they will e-mail you anytime your name comes up in a Google News Search. I have alerts set for my last name and for Kinky Freidman, who is running for governor of Texas.
August 22, 2006, 12:10 pm