One coworker calls me “The Wizard” and it’s not because I have seen all the Harry Potter movies, read all the books and can recite all the spells by heart (none of which is true). I have the moniker because I can solve nearly any technological problem that comes my way. Software glitch: solved, video needs to be brightened: solved, CMS acting up: solved. I don’t list these to gloat, but to make a point, that the problems listed require three unique tools to solve, but all the problems can be fixed easily by one person because I focus on the technology not the tool.
blogging
Wait, what ?! (never !?)
Style is hard and it can take years to master. By “style” I do not mean a personal voice that reflects on the page how you sound in your own head (although that is equally if not more difficult) I am referring in this case to the other kind of style. Proper “style,” the way a publication consistently presents itself on the page.
Something is afoot[er]
You might have noticed something different on this site, and on some pages on my main site, JoshuaIAltman.com. Its not big change, just a few lines of text at the bottom of each page comprising a short bio and a picture.
A short bio and a picture, that’s what is visible to the human eye, but more important to the human eye in this footer is what is visible to the machine’s eye. To the machines at Google and other search engines this snippet contains a wealth of structured of data tagged to each part of that short bio paragraph.
Working Paper: The Public Author
I recently wrote and published a working paper on the “public author,” the historical and core function of the modern blogger. Read the full paper at JoshuaIAltman.com.
In publishing and media, nothing is truly new, every innovation builds upon those that came before, and even if unknowingly, uses the same tactics and methods employed by earlier mediums. In all cases, the same elements are necessary for taking a basic set of information and reaching an audience. Early printers, twentieth century publishers and twenty-first century bloggers all need to select their content and choose a way to distribute it.
Online publishing is not a virtual newspaper anymore than the radio is the newspaper being read aloud. Although the mediums are not the same the contributors share many characteristics that bind colonial authors with modern bloggers. Letter writers in the 1700s advanced, and at times created, a national conversation in the same way that twenty-first century bloggers spread national discourse and culture today.