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J Angelo Racoma

I’m Dependent on Gmail. Are You?

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I’ve been trying to access my Gmail account these past few minutes, to no avail. It turns out I’m not alone. Gmail is, indeed, down. I guess one doesn’t really appreciate something until it’s gone or missing–or in this case, inaccessible. One would’ve thought that with Google being the big company it is now, would be invulnerable to downtime. I thought wrong.

Try again after 30 seconds? Yeah, right. Millions are probably doing the same it makes you wonder how many folks out there are pulling their hair out in temporary bursts of insanity. We need our Gmail, after all. We need to get in touch. And when it’s a matter of your business or your work relying on a single piece of online software to communicate, you somehow feel you’re screwed when you can’t log in. I even think I’m going through withdrawal right now.

Incidents like these have me wondering. How dependent on the cloud have we become? Some might argue that using Gmail for business correspondence is not a very wise choice. But come to think of it, even other communications providers can fail. You might forget to pay for your domain. You might forget to pay for your subscription. Or any other service could go offline, as well. Are you using POP or IMAP through a local email client? What if your hard drive crashes and you lose all your precious emails (and you don’t have online backup!)?

At least I can still send SMS my colleagues here and around the globe. The minute my mobile phone loses its signal, I would really feel disconnected!

Do You Get Nostalgic Reading Old Blog Posts?

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A feature on the Baltimore City Paper tells us why What We Pore Over At 12 May Be The Most Important Reading We Ever Do. This rings true, in my case.

It’s not just that these books, unlike adult literature, have been left unsullied by professors turning them into objects of tedious study. We love these books, dearly and uncritically, the way we love the smell of our first girlfriend’s perfume, no matter how cheap or tacky it might have been.

My fondness for reading books has somewhat been dulled by the fact that when one grows up, goes to work for a living, and supports a growing family, other things take precedence. Books become objects of leisure. You only get to spend time with them once every so often. Gone are the days when you can spend summer vacations finishing a novel or two or three. And then of course there are the books assigned as school reading. At school, I had to force myself to start reading stories like Lowry’s The Giver and Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. I eventually grew fond of them. Being required reading sort of takes the fun out of it! But in the end, these pieces of literature have found their way into my persona (perhaps it’s why I’m so rebellious, a la Holden Caulfield).

These, among others, are the very same books that I just picked up again a few weeks back. I find myself reading through them with a different perspective, and with a different depth of understanding. Somehow ten, twelve, fifteen years or so after you first read something, the words re-read stir up in you memories of younger days. Better days, perhaps? Or maybe simply that–fond memories of days before when the world was younger, and so were you.

Sometimes I wonder if these same feelings are evoked when one reads old blog posts. In my case, I sometimes wade through my several years’ worth of blog archives, dating back to 2004. Looking back at how I wrote back then, and how I thought back then, and the situations I found myself in brings back memories and feelings. Some are happy. Some are painful. All of them good, in a way, because it is these experiences that shape what we are right now.

Do you find yourself wading through your blog post archives and feeling the same way? If blog posts and lifestreams could be streams of history for the world then these would also make for excellent streams of history for one person. With much optimism, I would say that looking back at these tidbits of personal history should help shape us into better persons in the present.

The Big Drupal to WordPress Move: Any Suggestions?

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The great Performancing redesign is underway, and as I’ve been telling the team, it’s not only the redesign that will take much time and thought, but rather also the big move from Drupal to WordPress. I’ve been doing research on how this can be done. Unlike most other blogging platforms, the migration would not be a simple export-import operation, but rather, it would require some playing around with the database.

Sure, that can be learned and there’s nothing that cannot be accomplished with a bit of trial and error (of course, not on the live Performancing.com installation). But then I would like things to be as painless as possible, so if you have done a Drupal-to-WordPress migration yourself, I’d love to hear from you.

Also, one big question I’m facing is what to do with the existing content. For one, Performancing.com curently hosts thousands of blog posts and forum discussions, and this includes member-written blog posts. The team has decided to focus on importing into WordPress only the content written by the core Performancing editors and team members (past and present). The blog posts written by the community members would then have to be moved elsewhere. This is to make sure we don’t have an unwieldy amount of articles, which would definitely be against our intent of making the site more manageable.

Even then, this would require some discretion on our part. Firstly, importing articles would mean we have to preserve permalink structures (including paths) of these posts. Or would we rather just start fresh? One thing we could do is just keep just the more popular or the feature articles in their original path/permalink structures, and keep all the others under an archive. This might mean broken links and missing articles, which would be a pain for users who come across Performancing from the search engines.

Again, there are tradeoffs in this case. My question is whether we are willing to sacrifice some traffic for a faster, leaner site. And to what extent?

I think it will all boil down to user expectations. On the team’s part, the reason we’re doing a reboot is because we think Perf is due for some shakeups. We need fresh perspectives. We need something new. It ain’t broken, per se, and that’s why we’re breaking it, so to speak.

And so on your part, how do you think we can best handle the big move?

Three Reasons Good Ideas are Like Kidney Stones

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I’d been going through what was possibly among the most difficult days of my life, or so I thought, as I cringed in pain on my bed the other night. My kidney stones have recurred. And kidney stones are something you wouldn’t wish on your worst enemy. The pain doesn’t go away. Actually it eventually does, but I can’t guarantee it won’t be without bloodshed. Seriously.

And so after a visit to the doctor, a few pills prescribed, and much liquid intake, I’m optimistic this will all come to pass (pun intended) soon. Otherwise, I might have to face surgery, which is something most people would dread.

Note that when the doc says to take it before bedtime, make sure you do, unless you want to be a groggy slobbering mess all day, like I probably am right now. And then the fun of it all is that I’ve started to think of great ideas as like kidney stones. Let me outline the reasons.

First, like any ideas, good or bad, great ideas can just come out on their own. Your conscious mind might not know it, but your creative genius could have been creating masterpieces right under your nose. It could be a great business idea. Or it could be a really useful web app. Or that link-worthy blog post. Or yet another reinvention of the wheel. It has happened. Most of my most active blog posts (traffic, discussions and links) were those written on a whim–on topics that I didn’t really think were very serious.

Stones can pass out on their own, too. They probably have free will of their own. So can ideas.

Some great ideas, though, could use a little nudge before you can fully harness them. Sometimes you need inspiration. But most of the time, you need to put up with some perspiration. You have to really look deep to see what great things you can come up with if you put your mind to it. Maybe you’re creating a new plugin or some new software, but you keep facing roadblocks in development. Maybe you’re writing a feature article, and you get writer’s block. Perhaps you just need a little nudge toward the right direction and you’ll be on your way fine.

Some stones are probably stuck somewhere inside your body, but are still small enough to pass. But with some medication, lots of water and a bit of faith, these will run their course and leave your system when the time is right.

However, some ideas aren’t as easy to come around. Maybe you do have great things in mind. But some of these might require vast amount of resources to execute. Perhaps you need VC funding. Maybe you need to buy tons of equipment and hardware to execute it. You might even need to hire a handful of people to help you with conceptualizing, developing, designing, marketing, and whatnot, just so your project would get on its way, and your ideas would reach fruition.

Sometimes kidney stones are just too big to pass naturally. You need more than a nudge. You need to have them crushed into millions of little pieces. Laser usually works. So do shock-waves. But the worst case scenario is that the doctor would have to slice you up, open up your kidneys from the outside, and then pull out the offending build-up of calcium, struvite or whatever it is that makes up those darn stones.

At the height of blogger’s block, I often feel like I want someone to crack open my skull and extract ideas directly from my brain so I can start writing about these.

This is probably a crazy analogy. I think my meds are getting to my head.

Has Blogging Taken a Toll on Your Health?

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A few weeks back I had a severe bout of hyperacidity. Prior to that I had developed this habit of consuming about five to six cups of coffee per day. And that wasn’t your usual creamy, sugary coffee, as I often prefer my coffee black. And with two heaping tablespoons of ground beans in every cup I brew, one would think that’s a recipe for disaster eventually.

Add to that my habit of staying up to the wee hours of the morning, emailing, writing, tweaking designs and doing blog fixes. Stress gets to you. And it sometimes takes a toll on your life when you least expect it.

And so after that episode, I have cut back on my coffee consumption. I stopped my caffeine habit for about a week (much to the chagrin of the lady who sells me beans, I think). I eventually started drinking one to two cups a day after that, but these days it’s mostly as a morning jump-starter, and to help with after-dinner digestion.

I’ve also tried to get more sleep. I’m usually most productive in the first two to three hours past midnight, because of the peace and quiet. And so the loss in sleep I try to catch up for by napping in the afternoons (along with the kids). It’s still a big adjustment, and I’m still having a host of other health issues (like kidney stones recurring). But I think giving oneself a break is essential to productivity, especially for those of us who write.

Has blogging–as a hobby or as a business or career–taken a toll on your health? In what way? And what are the things you do to keep healthy and sane?

WordPress Security Audits, Anyone?

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How secure is your WordPress blog?

This is one question that usually escapes bloggers until that time when you wake up and see that your blog has crashed, gone offline, or–worse–been vandalized. While you can always revert to backups, you’re not sure those are recent. And it’s not always a walk in the park to restore from backup. And need I mention the downtime?

Most experienced bloggers would know how to secure their blogs. It usually involves a more strict file and folder permission set, stronger passwords, updated software and plugin versions, and the like. But not everyone knows everything about securing one’s blog installation. More importantly, not everyone has the time to do so on their own, especially those who run multiple blogs.

I must admit that in one way or another, I’ve fallen into this trap of complacency and many of my blogs are not 100% secure. And so, with the prodding of David Peralty, and with encouragement from several colleagues at the Hive, we’re planning to offer WordPress security audits as part of Performancing Services.

Details will unfold soon. But from what I’ve outlined so far, the service would be two-pronged, much like our copyright management service. First would be the audit–where we scour your site for holes and potential problems, and we will give you a report containing recommended actions. Second, if you choose to have us do the actual legwork, we will then do it for you.

Does this sound like a good idea? I’m pretty sure there are tools out there that can practically do the same thing, but of course there’s no substitute to human judgement (and imagination).

Performancing Reboot Redux – February 2009 Update

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It took us a couple of months to get things kicked off, but we’re pleased to tell everyone that we’re getting into high gear with the reboot. Perhaps it’s best I referred to Ahmed’s outline in doing the first Performancing reboot a couple of years back, and let me quote:

Part 1: Performancing.com – what’s the point?
Part 2: Content is NOT King.
Part 3: If it Ain’t Broke, Break It.
Part 4: How can Performancing Make Money?
Part 5: 3 Keys to Blog Promotion
Part 6: Wrapping up the Performancing Reboot

And, of course, I cite my more basic (or generic) premise of getting rid of the bad stuff and focusing on the good.

Design

We’ve actually started with part #3, which is breaking it. In a way, it is broken. The current Perf infrastructure has made it difficult to produce content, and to establish lively discussions. And so that’s one reason we decided to go for a change in software.

In terms of visuals, we’ve commissioned Randa Clay to do a major design overhaul, and this is in the final stages. We’re trying to improve the site not only in terms of visual appeal, but also in terms of the user interface. What good is content when it’s not accessible, right? (This brings us to part #2, partly.)

Focus

What’s important to discuss and disclose, though, is part #1: what’s the point? I know Performancing has launched with stellar content, with a stellar cast and crew (if you can call it that), and with an excellent community. Somewhere along the way, things have changed. The energy has changed and the people have changed. But our focus has still remained faithful to our helping bloggers succeed motto.

But then this has made me think. Could it be time for a drastic shift in our focus, as well? It’s sure great to talk about blogging, and getting to help fellow bloggers along the way. But to some extent, blogging about blogging has become more and more difficult over the years, partly because the metablogging scene has become crowded, and partly because blogging has evolved, along with other new media. I think there is room to grow, and Performancing should not only cater to bloggers and blogging.

At least in practice, we’ve been catering to the rest of the social media crowd. We have been involved in non-blogging activities for some time, and this includes our various services, the Perfcast, social media push, dabbling in lifestreaming, and the like. It’s no longer confined to blogging. But the challenge here is being flexible but still knowing our limits, so we don’t spread ourselves too thin in the myriad of topics and niches that social media encompasses.

Community

I guess focusing on content, sharing information and ideas and all that has resulted in community taking a backseat. From what Jeff and I have been discussing, we feel that it’s best to let the Perf community take a more active role, to the point of leading the way, with us editors just acting as guides and moderators.

The community is a rich resource of knowledge and connections. Take for instance the Hive–it was originally envisioned as a closed set of movers and shakers in the blogging scene, and the place to be when you wanted to get into the minds of these thinkers and doers. Performancing.com as a whole should be a bigger community much like the Hive. It’s a bigger ship to steer, but that should make it all the more interesting.

What’s my point?

Performancing is one of our stronger brands at Splashpress Media. In some ways, though, the strength of its brand has been attributed to the people that have been involved. And this can sometimes be a brand’s weak point, particularly if different people take turns at the helm, so to speak. What of continuity? What of focus? What of the contacts?

The purpose of this reboot is to reestablish Performancing as a place–the place–where people go to to talk about social media as an empowering tool, and actually get to practice what is being talked about.

Now on to the details and the actual execution! We will keep you posted.

pMetrics Currently Offline: Growing Pains!

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Our apologies to folks who use pMetrics to track and analyze traffic. Due to a growing userbase, we recently added a new server to increase the capacity of the service. But due to some technical glitches along the way, pMetrics is currently offline and is displaying a 403 error.

We’re doing our best to resolve this problem as soon as possible. It would require just a few adjustments on our end, but as things go, it might take up to a full day for things to resolve (as DNS caches around the world refresh, and all that). Please bear with us.