When one asks a lot of bloggers how they blog, one must be prepared for the results.  Naturally, I was not.  Prepared for the results, I mean.  Answers to the question came in via email, via comments, via trackbacks, via posts on other sites.  Gathering this material into a few posts won't be easy.  Acknowledging with kind regards the work of everyone who participates will result in someone being overlooked.  Yet I soldier on, creating content from other people's work, the consummate editor, hobbled by tools like a spell checker that wants to change "Google" to "Go ogle," facing deadlines, and ultimately responsible for discovering an organizational principle that will make sense of the mountain of information before me.

I blog as if there are readers, listeners, viewers... people with whom I am communicating.  I blog as a member of a community. 

I use a few simple tools to create my blog posts.  I have blogged in four different environments, using Blogger, Radio Userland, TypePad, and WordPress.  Inexpertly, I use several packages to prepare post content.  I use

• SnagIt, to grab images from the screen.

I recently helped launch a new VoIP community online at www.realtime-voip.com. I won't post the whole announcement and description here, but it's online at Digital Common Sense (here) if you're interested in VoIP or curious.

I have a question for all the other DIYers around here. Are you doing DIY VoIP? I'm trying to determine whether a DIY VoIP forum and discussion area makes sense over there. How many of you all are doing things you'd classify asa DIY-VoIP?

Thanks!

With a little help from our friends...

Michelle Goodrich put the logo together at Mandarin Design in a table layout.  Chris Locke captured it as a graphic image using one of the tools he'll talk about next week.  Frank Paynter stole it because it looks cool and posted it right here on this blog!

Next week, I'll assemble responses to this question and I'll serialize them here and at Sandhill Trek.

How do you blog, how do you blog, how do you blog...

If you're a developer, and interested in finding out more (or contributing to) about what's happening with Identity right now — or if you're headed to town for the Syndicate conference and want to spend a productive morning before the Syndicate tutorials start, consider joining us for... (here's the email that's already gone out)...

The Internet Identity Workshop presents an Informational Morning for Developers 

Hosted by Doc Searls, Mary Hodder and Kaliya (Identity Woman)

Monday, December 12, 2005 9-12 noon, with lunch from 12-1

Canton Dim Sum 655 Folsom, San Francisco (close to Moscone)

Cost $20 for lunch (PLEASE RSVP HERE)

Canton Restaurant has been kind enough to give us the space if we all have lunch there, but we need an accurate count by Sunday at noon.

If you are a developer working on a application that has folks login - this is a morning for you.

Doc will open with an overview of the identity landscape, including larger topics like the Identity Metasystem. He and others will address the question:

Why do identity systems matter when building new systems and tools?

We are bringing together a spectrum of folks who have been working on developing identity systems and tools. Identity Developers will share their work, basics and best practices to date to get started exploring integrating identity into these applications. These should include (but not be limited to) YADIS, LID, OpenID, i-names/XRI and Sxip and InfoCard, among others.

Developers of applications who have included identity into their services and tools will share briefly how they've done it. Application developers will hear from and meet with identity developers to ask questions.

This is about user-centered identity, which those of us in the conversation variously call "independent identity", "Identity 2.0", the "Identity MetaSystem" and so on. This isn't about big companies sharing data about customers held captive in CRMs. It's about building applications and services around independent users and companies in a networked marketplace.

Hope to see ya there.

When we were driving back from Thanksgiving up North, I gave my wife the rundown on What's Up With Identity. She's not a techie, and she doesn't care much about the topic. But she does care about her anonymity. So, when she hears about more, or better, "identity services", she guards her purse. "I don't want more identity," she says. "I want less."

Specifically, she likes her anonymity, and prefers to keep that as a default as she makes her way through the world both online and off.

I think we're all like that. Sure, we can't help being unique. And it's clear that "identity services," whatever they end up being, will respect what makes each of us a sovereign, independent and unique individual. But they also need to protect our wish to remain Joe or Jane Blow, until the need to idenify ourselves becomes necessary.

All this comes to mind as I read Ross Mayfield's Freedom of Anonymous Speech, which was provoked by potential unintended consequences of changes to Wikipedia (following the Siegenthaler Affair), new anti-libel legislation and the consolidation of telecom (which I wrote about in Saving the Net). Ross fears a loss of anonymity, increased government interference with the Net (and our lives), and worse.

A few days ago I wrote Building an Open Source Home over at Linux Journal. Lots of great responses there. Meanwhile, a new question has come up: If we want to future-proof the house as much as possible, we'll want fiber, right? The question is, what kind? My electrician — the guy who's doing the installation — says there are many kinds to choose from. Me, I have no idea. I'm hoping one or more of you folks do.

Tired of the blue screen, tired of the monotony using the same OS with the same design and especially knowing that the founders is just one of the person who by his shadows he puts down the Amiga Era.
For the first time in 20 years using computers, from the ZX spectrum passing to the Commodores 64-128 to the actual x86-64, I’ve tried first the Suse 9.3 pro find it really friendly and appart from MS system, after installed the SuSE 10.0 OSS, Mandriva 2005 and RedHat fedora. I’ve fall in love on the Linux world more then my first love.
Well I’ve decide to give my own support by creating www.arameya.com, which is just a push dedicated to the Tux and I hope it will manage to give something to the Linux. Do not hesitate to contact me via my website or via the forum in case you got any suggestion to add well all your idea can help, please do not hesitate making any critics.