Consider this a “guest blog” post for RTTC as it’s author is taking a deserved sabbatical. And for those who do not follow RTTC, just give me some slack …

On the drive home today, the sun was low and right in my eyes. Back in Boston, the traffic reports would call this a “solar slowdown”. That’s the “glass is half empty” in my book – it’s also my typical response. Today was different. I can’t say exactly why.

The sun was low on the trees and the golden rays break thru the branches and caught you with astonishing power. You slow just a bit to be safe. there is an old gentleman, on a riding mower, making passes back and forth on his lawn. You wave, even though you have never met. He waves back. Further on, a young woman is jogging. Again, you wave – not franticly, but with a kind of “hope all is well” attitude. You check your rear view mirror to see a brief break in her stride as she waves back.

The stress of work and “things gone wrong” are less important than the present moment.

In these rare times, when the universe seems to be in harmony (even if only for an instant), capture the image, the feeling, the random thoughts that pass thru your mind as like those soles waving hello.

– Major Tom, signing off …

I was talking to some people over the weekend that are still stricken with the dreaded “dial up”. It got me thinking about the performance of my blog again. I found a very helpful website for determining the bandwidth needed for a given web page – for instance my blog’s home page.

It turns out my blog’s start page averages about 200KB is size. Over the past few weeks it’s been as high as 225KB and as low as 180KB. I then looked as some blogs I enjoy reading. One has a current page of 525KB. Another is currently over 2MB.

Back to my blog for a moment, at 225KB, a person on a good 33.6 modem needs 78 seconds before the page is loaded. That does not include any network lags, rendering time, script execution, etc. I’ll be honest, if it took well over a minute to view a page, I’d probably give up. I hope my readers on dial-up are more patient than me !

The analysis recommends reducing the amount of HTML and definitely reducing the number of images. I could post with fewer images but as I already optimize the size of those images considerably, I’d rather not give up on them. The easiest way for me to do that is to reduce the number of posts. Currently, I show the past 6 posts. I could reduce that to 4 posts and list the next 4 older ones. On average, that would cut the size down by as much as 1/3 or about 60-75KB.

I’d be interested in how many posts make sense. What do you (the readers) think ?

By the way, if you are curious about sites you own or visit frequently, check out the web page analyzer at WebSiteOptimization.com

I am in the midst of packing to move. I have decided *not* to get DirectTV when I move (and there really is no other way to get a TV signal). Thus, I will go without TV. This is not some crazy plan. As a matter of fact, there are a number of bloggers who have lately declared they are without TV.

This evening I packed the media PC. Hence, the “no TV” clock has started. Anyone taking bets on how long I will last ?

I’ve gotten some comments (or complaints, depending on how you hear them) regarding the time it takes to load my blog. I’ve tracked it to the external JavaScript includes I have for making the maps of visitors. While I like seeing where in the world visitors reside, I don’t feel that is the purpose of this blog and is of very little use to readers.

so, to make this block quicker, I’ve removed the two methods of mapping visitors. My apologies for those who liked the feature, but I feel it is better to focus on the content. I hope most readers will agree and find the optimized blog quicker to load and navigate.

So, for one last time, here is the ClusterMap that was generated 3-June-2007 …

I was very interested in how similar the BBC usage of social software tools maps to the feature-set of Lotus Connections. In the case of the BBC, they were ahead of the curve and so they “rolled there own”.

Euan Semple talked about his experiences implementing wikis and social software at the BBC. The forum is now used by 18,500 of 23,000 employees … 89 bloggers collaborated to produce a corporate blogging policy. There are now around 3,000 wikis in use in a variety of scenarios from creating corporate policy to developing programmes. They have a social networking tool to bring together like minded individuals. Euan favours separate tools, loosely joined rather than trying to tackle the problem with one corporate combined approach. Source: Euan Semple speaking at the London Wiki Wednesday (21-Feb-2007)

One obvious message from how the BBC leveraged the various aspects of social software is:

1. adopt one feature at a time; make it effective for your organization; get people using it
2. determine what problem you are trying to solve; determine what tool you will use; document a single way to use the tool; educate (turns out I interjected my own opinion on this one. Thanks Euan for correcting me.)
3. don’t go overboard – blogs, wikis, etc. are not the solution to all problems; proper use of the tools is key (reflects back to #2)