Grabbed a quick video as I strolled from the Boon Lay MRT to the adjacent bus interchange. It was about 10:00PM and life was happening. I was on my way back to NTU after having dinner at my favourite haunt in Chinatown.

Arrived in Singapore last night for a week of workshops. I am staying at Nanyang Technological University.

Scenery at Nanyang Technological University

Today I shall be going across to St Joseph’s Institution [wikipedia entry] to share some ideas with a number of teachers regarding blogging and other read~write tools. It will be a busy workshop. Too much to do but I am sure we will all get there. I have uploaded some resources for the participants here.

Saw a tweet by Al Upton this afternoon. As follows:

alupton HELP … need help to validate the Fiery Red Leather http://tinyurl.com/6c28v7 margarita … needs to be googleable

I followed the link and discovered that a Wikipedia entry will be deleted if Wikipedia cannot find the term or listing in a Google search. The exact wording is as follows:

It is proposed that this article be deleted because of the following concern: Cannot find mention of drink in a Google search. Seems to fall under WP:NFT

Now, I find that unusual. The Wikipedia entry is for a Fiery Red Leather, which is a type of drink. See the entry below.

I never realised that Wikipedia used Google as one of its verification methods. I wonder if that is valid?

Let’s all save Al Upton’s Wikipedia entry by blogging about a night out drinking a Fiery Red Leather or two down at Al Upton’s Bar and Grill. Perhaps some of you more experienced drinkers could mix up one or maybe two Fiery Red Leather drinks, take a photograph and upload it to the Wikipedia page.

This morning I blogged about Swurl. I praised the tool. It has a clean, uncluttered interface and the timeline is stunning. The manner in which it updates is mesmerising. I was also impressed with the manner in which Jonathan, one of the developers responded directly via email to my problem regarding Flickr feed subscriptions. I added in my post that Swurl would not suit my needs and I was also concerned that anyone could comment, for example spammers, on any of your aggregated feeds as published in Swurl.

Both developers Jonathan and Ryan commented on my post. That is excellent. I am always impressed when developers respond in this manner. I would like to re-publish the comments here as a tip of the hat to Jonathan and Ryan. Swurl is a clean and easy to use tool and it deserves mention. The comments are as follows:

Jonathan Neddenriep Says: 

Thanks for the post about Swurl!

The badge idea is interesting – we’ve talked about that although up to this point we haven’t had time to work on things like that. We’d love to implement this in the future, although a third party developer could also use our API to do this.

As far as comments – yes, spam is an issue we’ve thought about. To this point we haven’t had a problem with it, but we have some safeguards in place to easily delete spam if it gets to be a problem. Also, you can simply double-click a comment to remove it.

Thanks for trying out Swurl and stay tuned, we have more cool stuff planned!!

My reply

Thanks Jonathan. I am incredibly impressed with your response and the promptness of it. I am glad to see that you have your fingers on the pulse. I shall keep an eye out for a badge. I like the way the Jaiku badge has been implemented ~ hint, hint. ^_^
Best wishes, John

Ryan Says

A badge would be cool, but right now we designed Swurl to become your main blog. You should try it out, Swurl is actually a pretty cool blogging system. If you totally wouldn’t do that, let us know why, we would love the learn how to make Swurl good enough to become your blogging engine. If that turns out to be unpopular we could always try another direction.

My reply

Ryan, Thank you so much for your comment. I hope I have not stirred the pot too much. Please let me know.

That is an interesting idea that Swurl could be your main blog. In my case I do not think I could switch over to Swurl entirely and allow it to become my main blog or gateway. Like many bloggers I have invested a lot of energy in my blog and its associated site. I have set up a self hosted WordPress blog and obtained a domain name, etc.

If Swurl was to become my main blog I would like to be able to post to it directly, just like a blog. Self hosting would need to be a consideration as well. I never considered Swurl as a replacement for my blog. I was hoping it could augment my blog and act as a junction point for all my activity on my site and blog, much in the same way as the Jaiku badge.

Personally, I am impressed with the Swurl interface and the the timeline. The manner in which blog posts, tweets and the like update is impressive. Your design is clean and uncluttered.

Swurl would be great for new bloggers, but they would need to be able to post to the Swurl blog directly. Yet, most users with Twitter, Flickr, and similar feeds probably already have a blog. There lies a conundrum. How to attract new users and existing bloggers to direct all their readers to their Swurl account as their main gateway on the net? Many probably will but not all.

Cheers, John.

Straight off the press. Lazy Sunday. Breakfast. Reading yesterday’s newspaper. Few blog posts read. Couple of my own posted. Tidied the sheets. A few  quick tweets.  Just had a shower. While I was in the shower Gary Stager popped into my head. I composed a song about Gary, while I was standing there in the shower, to the tune of the Beverly Hillbillies theme. Now, that’s a worry.

Anyway, I thought I would give Gary a bit of a plug here while my hair, what’s left of it, is still drying. I first discovered Gary on the net when researching podcasts back in late December 2004 or early 2005. He was compiling resources on podcasting almost from the beginning.

I like Gary’s blog ~ Stager-to-Go. He shows no fear. He writes how he feels. He is like a devil’s advocate in the edublogging world. Not all of his posts are applicable to the scene here downunder but I like to read them all anyway. I do not agree with all his stuff but why should I? Still enjoyable to read regardless. I enjoy reading Gary when he has a go at some sacred cows. He may not be everyone’s cup of tea but I think we need more bloggers like Gary Stager.