072570

I've pretty much ignored my blog as of late.
Isn't the first time that's happened. Usually, I change direction, blogging platform, or just abandon it for a while.
Lately, it's that I've been so busy and my life is filled with things that I don't feel need to be out there on the internets for all to see (privacy of the other party being respected, etc).
I do, however, partake in a lot of micro-blogging.
In a nutshell, I've learned to keep my "blog" entries to 140 characters or less. You can see some of them in that little green box in the sidebar.
For those of you afraid of hyperlinks, micro-blogging is defined on wikipedia this way:

Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually less than 200 characters) and publish them, either to be viewed by anyone or by a restricted group which can be chosen by the user. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web. [ed. - It's actually 140. Why? That's the limit of sms text messages on most cell phones]

Great for random thoughts, ADD and concise thinking.
What I'm tempted to do (hence the title of this post) is keep what entries I have here, but tweak the site so that my micro-blogging and moblogging ( aka mobile-blogging - pictures taken with my cameraphone) are the main focus.

Before I get that all rolled out, you can see what I'm up to on these sites:
gregnotcraig on Jaiku. Jaiku was the first real micro-blogging service (went live July of 2006) and was recently bought by google. Jaiku has #channels that members can join, like #overheardinpdx, #Nokia or #Australia.

gregnotcraig on Twitter. Twitter, though not the first (launched October 2006), is probably the most popular micro-blogging service.
The twitter community has come up with its own answer to jaiku's channels by using "hash tags" (e.g., #bacon or #beerandblog or #haiku) to make topics easy to find in a search.

gregnotcraig on Brightkite.com. Brightkite (aka bkite) is a location-based social networking site. In other words, a "Where are you now, what are you doing and who else is nearby?" kind of site. It's what dodgeball tried to be, before google bought them and fucked things up.

So how the Fuck do I keep track of all these things?
Not as difficult as it seems, really.
I used to have programs for each service, bookmarks for each service, or use one service, and have it's RSS feed sent to the others. Very cumbersome and messy.
Recently, I discovered ping.fm.

Ping.fm was created for the sole purpose of making it as easy as possible to share your posts with the world. Now you don't have to fumble around the web in order to post anymore, you can just post once, and be done with it.

One sms message (or one email, or one web site) to rule them all (twitter, jaiku, myspace, pownce, bebo, blogger, facebook...see what I'm getting at here?)

Ping.fm is The Shit.
It's dropped buttered toast that lands butter-side up.
It's...it's...well, let's just say that in the last few days (or week or so) a lot of people are discovering it and saying pretty much the same things I say about it.

Flickr is - and probably always will be - where I post most of my camera and cameraphone pictures, I also photo-blog them on Brightkite and on Twitpic as gregnotcraig (noticing a pattern here?).

Stop. Deep breath. Relax. _ Now that is out of the way, what _have I been up to?
I moved back to Portland.
St Helens, nice as it was, was very isolating and the place I was living was very claustrophobic.
My business is picking up and most of my clients are here in Portland. A 30-40+ trip to Portland several times a week was getting to be very expensive at current gas prices.
Let's see, what else? Oh, yeah, as my niece, "D2" would say, "Greg's got a girlfriend".
That's kept me busy, active and distracted as well. She's funny, beautiful and a Hell of a lot smarter than I am. She's also one of those people that, even though you havent known them that long, it feels like you have.
Beauty and brains. Very hot.
Sorry, no pics. That's part of the respect for the other person's privacy (personal and professional). If she says, "okay" I will, but not until then.

I guess, keep an eye here for the change up, but keep a closer eye on those sites I mentioned: Twitter.
Jaiku.
Brightkite.com.
Twitpic.
Flickr.
New one... Identi.ca as gregnotcraig See ya on the micro-blogging side (unless something realllly big happens).