What to put in a first post?

Well, I’ve succumb to the lure of self promotion and registered my very own name/surname [dot]com. The next step would be to write my first post. This may seem like a simple task, but writing a post about writing a post is rather awkward. Rather than rambling on about the great things I will write about, or telling you how great I am, I thought I would dig up a few ‘first posts’ from well know blogs as well as a few local personal blogs I read every now and then. I would have liked to have added more but to be honest it was a crap job. Most blogs don’t have decent archive systems and many long standing blogs seem to have lost many posts though some or another technical difficulty. Anyway, hope enjoy what I did find.

Richard MacManus, 20 April 2003 - The Read/Write Web

The World Wide Web in 2003 is beginning to fulfil the hopes that Tim Berners-Lee had for it over 10 years ago when he created it. The web was never just supposed to be a one-way publishing system, but the first decade of the web has been dominated by a tool which has been read-only - the web browser. The goal now is to convert the web into a two-way system. Ordinary people should be able to write to the web, just as easily as they can browse and read it.

In 2001 Dave Winer built a website called The Two Way Web, which articulates a vision of publishing where the “content and the editing environment (are) totally integrated”. My vision of the “Read/Write Web” is similar, but I like the read/write metaphor for a couple of reasons. Firstly I like to read books and I enjoy the art of writing. The other reason is that read/write as applied to the computer industry tradionally means “capable of being displayed (read) and modified (written to)”. For example a floppy disk drive. So the term “read/write” cuts across both computing and journalism/literature.

In the early 90’s Tim Berners-Lee envisaged an editable browser that would not only allow people to surf the web, but to modify it. First Mosiac, then Netscape, then Microsoft all produced web browsers that accomplished the browsing part - but did not allow editing. The browser manufacturers also made it difficult for people to publish to the web because each browser had its own web standards, which were incompatible with each other.

If a non-technical person wanted to publish to the web in the 90’s, they had to use a separate tool to the browser - such as Microsoft Frontpage. Then there was a technical learning curve to overcome. OK so HTML isn’t hard to learn, but throw in curveballs such as conflicting browsers, quirky webpage creation tools (Frontpage webbots anyone?) and competing usability ideologies being preached by the likes of Jakob Nielson and David Siegel. You begin to see that “writing” to the web wasn’t as easy as it could have been, and certainly fell short of what Tim Berners-Lee envisaged.

Chris M/iMod, 2 Aug 2007 - A New Beginning

Good evening everyone,

I have decided to turn over a new leaf, and restart iMod, this time powered by Wordpress as I no longer have the time to continue writing my own engine.

I hope to have things up and running as soon as possible, so please stand by me.

Thank-you!

Coda, 11 April 2002 - Site is back up

Well, my site is back up. I’ve shifted things around, and am still working on the backend. Try adding news, links, etc… let me know what you think. Experimental as always.

Colin Daniels, 2 Febuary 2006 - YoungBLOOD rises from the ashes

After being down for over a week after our web server was stolen (no jokes), I have finally managed to set my new blog up.

Over the course of the next few days I hope to try and upload some of my old posts that may still be floating around on my hard drive as I feel it is a bit of a shame to lose a year’s worth of blogging in a heartbeat.

The moral of the story folks… BACK-IT-UP!

(and make sure nobody ever steals your web server!)

Rafiq Phillips, 1 December 2005 - What does Saluton Mondo mean?

First thing learnt in almost every programming course I’ve attended. Displaying “Saluton Mondo” to the terminal/screen/monitor would be practical lesson one. As this is the first post to my blog, why not? I’m starting this out very, very ‘programmer’ like. I’m sure this is to evolve like life has.

Saluton Mondo is Esperanto meaning Hello World…

What is Esperanto?
Esperanto is the most widely spoken constructed international language. The name derives from Doktoro Esperanto, the pseudonym under which L. L. Zamenhof first published the Unua Libro in 1887. Zamenhof’s goal was to create an easy and flexible language as a universal second language to foster peace and international understanding.

Posted in: Odds & Sodds

Tags: bloggers, first post

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