Most of my favorite bloggers, (Robert Scoble, Joel Spolsky, Mark Cuban, Gabe and Tycho, Tim Bray, Iggy, and Tracy and Trev) besides being authoritative, all share a focus and consistency of content that makes their respective sites worthwhile. Their adherance to a topic is one of the key qualities that makes their respective sites valuable.

I’m sure Scoble is a well rounded individual and is interested in many things besides Microsoft and related technology, but I don’t care. I don’t read Ongoing because I think Tim Bray is a good person and I don’t read his site expecting to hear about his newest hobby. I read their blogs because they give me focused info on topics I’m interested in and I don’t have to wade through crap.

So many bloggers would do well to remember their audience when they are searching for what to make of their webspace. I’ll do my best to keep this from turning into this.

Update: Forget this. I may not read “shotgun” blogs that jump around from topic to topic, but I realize that shouldn’t have anything to do with how and why I blog. I write for my own sanity, to keep a record of interesting bits, and to hopefully help someone else out.

Update 2: Don’t forget this, just forgive me for being to rash in both previous revisions. I just don’t think strict adherance is what’s going to make my blog good. More accurately, I have a need to stray every now and then from regular technological writings to keep my own sanity. To be a useful resource though, I have to stay on target. The best place for myself and brainscat is somewhere in the middle. End of navel-gazing. I promise…. for now.

Update: Oops, it looks like I deleted a bunch of comments by accident. Doh.

1. At bloglines, find your own blog.
2. If it’s not there, register and add your blog.
3. After searching by your blog url, click related feeds.
4. Select “include” feeds that you’re subscribed to, if that’s your fancy.
5. Post the top 5 (or more) on your blog.

Results for brainscat.com follow…

1. Joe Beda’s EightyPercent.net — never heard of him, but I’m subscribed now.
2. Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger — everybody reads him, no suprise here.
3. Alain Leroy’s view on our world — another wildcard, but I’ll give him a shot.
4. Nate Furtwangler — coworker’s blog. Brandon’s leetle brother.
5. brandon.furtwangler blog — Brandon’s blog, not a suprise at all, since we both started blogging at the same time.

So, in an open request to the illustrious Dave Winer and Adam Curry, I’m throwing my voice on the web, praying that these guys hear it. I’ve sent emails through their respective weblogs to them, but if you see this and you have their ear, kindly pass it along and ask them to listen to my iPodder peer-to-peer proposal.

I’m a huge fan of Bloglines, they’re the only aggregator I use currently. They’re without peer when it comes to having a web-client that deals in traditional syndication. I can see their technology as possibly supplementary to the new aggregator I’m going to take a poke at writing, as the new client will have a penchant for distribution of large media files, a task that seems incompatible with the Bloglines model.

Let these events stand as proof that pingbacks are useful, and allowed a Mark to know about (some small) buzz regarding his business and react quickly. While it’s refreshing to see companies that are accessable and have a more personal public face, it’s amazing to see a CEO respond so quickly in a blog. It’s really cool to see technology at work in a practical way.

As an aside, it’s interesting to see Mark’s blog about some of the recent hurdles Bloglines has had to jump.

“Keeping it simply styled” is my new mantra for this site. I’ve been working on this layout for quite some time, which is ironic, considering how little there is now. I’m confident this is a large improvement on this site as I am of the opinion that the default WordPress style is far too cluttered, and many of the “features” are not used 98% of the time, according to my request logs. To be more specific, I feel that the majority of the default features in the sidebar belong out of sight, stored in a drawer for the rare occasions people use them. Seafood forks, spatulas, and whisks are all very useful when I need them, but I don’t keep them mixed in with my every day silverware.

Small tweaks will probably happen in the coming weeks, and I’ll be adding a few pages that I’ve been meaning to put up for a while like advanced searching, an about page, contact form, linklog, and music log. I’ll even be changing this style a bit to comfortably fit on top of my PictorialisII photo gallery.

On another note, I’m indirectly thankful that Microsoft Windows’ fixed-width fonts look so butt ugly. You see, I originally hoped to use Courier New as the font for the site, because as a programmer I figured it really adds a flavor to the site that fits me. On OS X, Courier New and Monospace look pretty slick, and so I thought I would differentiate myself from other blogs with a fixed width font. Alas, there’s a reason websites don’t use fixed width fonts; they’re very hard to read. Such was almost the fate of this site, that is, until I checked it out in Internet Explorer… *shudder*.

So, those of you might be wondering what happened to Lorin and Justin…

The fact of the matter is that I got fed up with Simplog and also wanted to set up a more personal space where I could comfortably write about things other than entertainment media. Enter the new WordPress version of Brainscat. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve kept the old site at dev.brainscat.com the address of where I used to toy around with new ideas. After a conversation with Lorin though, I found out people asked him, “Why dev.brainscat.com?”

I was lazy when moving the site. Atmittedly, “dev” makes no sense, and has nothing to do with the content of the site. Not having the heart to delete their space on the web, I figure it’s a better alternative to give them more of a permanent place to stay at http://friends.brainscat.com. “Permanent” of course meaning as long as hosting costs remain reasonable. As you might have guessed, friends.brainscat.com is now the preferred way of getting to their site. Learn it, love it. The address dev.brainscat.com will continue to point to that site indefinately so as not to break anybody’s links or bookmarks.

Pingbacks and trackbacks show up as special comments on another person’s blog. They’re different from regular comments in that trackback and pingback comments originate on a seperate page on the Internet rather than the actual page that is the subject of discussion. In this case, brainscat is telling Brandon’s blog that I’ve written about his Super Mario Bros. tutorial, and his site displays a summary of my comments on his page with a link back here. Normally, a comment would be on the same page as the SMB writeup and exist nowhere else on the Internet.

Why would anyone use pingbacks or trackbacks if you can just leave a comment? Well, they serve these various purposes.

1. They bring traffic to your site, allowing for more people to see your blog.
2. Pingbacks and trackbacks let you keep your dialogue in your own space where you can edit and add to it as you please, without having to worry about the limitations of the subject’s software. This provides the ability to make a more rich commentary through the use of diagrams or other links.
3. You server, not the subject’s server, is responsible for the longevity of your comment.

Which method is better?

Pingbacks and trackbacks accomplish the exact same feat. It basically is a matter of what method your subject’s software supports.

Honestly, I’m attempting to figure out how in the hell trackbacks and pingbacks really work. Currently, I’m a bit baffled. Stay tuned for an update with an update to how it actually works.

I must apologize for the recrediting of all Lorin and Justin’s posts to myself. This was a side effect of the RSS import, but otherwise everything else went smoothly. It was quite nice to edit one line in a file and then have it suck in all the content from the old site. All of the content previously written will be mirrored there indefinetly.

One last note… If you were using the old rss feeds (which were crap), you’ll want to update to the new news feeds.

Update: I forgot to mention that you can now offer comments, or if you’re super advanced, pingback & traceback.

For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, this allows you to use a program to view when the site has been updated and a quick summary. Why is this useful? Well, because you can use these same programs to get an at-a-glance look at what pages you freqent have been updated, saving you the effort of having to go to all your news sites and seeing if they have new info that interests you.

Said programs are detailed on the xml feeds page, or can be googled for keywords like xml, news, rss, or reader.