1/02/2005 01:42:00 PM

January 2nd: The Ninth Day of Christmas
Presenting Oneself: Of Snaps, Notes and Profiles, oh my

The ninth day of Christmas already. I'm tired of writing these so you must be tired of reading them. Only three more days my friends. Three days and this blitz of beta software pontification will have passed and you can come back for the normal drivel and presumption. Until then we have some ideas to cover...

Snaps ~ SmartCommons is built to be a flexible tool for self-presentation within the limited scope of private interaction that it seeks to facilitate. Part of this flexibility is in the arrangement of your Start Page. You will notice when you log into SmartCommons that each of the modules on the first page can be moved and minimized so that they present your information in a layout of your choosing. You will notice in the picture on the left that I have moved the profile Snap over the main image Snap and minimized it (given my disdain for profiles). I can save this layout by clicking on the "Save Layout" button in the left navigation. Now whenever I log in or when someone looks at my Start Page the layout will be set to have the minimized profile module on the left instead of on the right.

More Snaps are on the way along with the flexibility to remove individual Snaps from the Start Page and host more Snaps in all three columns. There are still anomalies, but I like the flexibility.

Notes ~ Blog.Notes are currently meant to give you the chance to scribble ideas to people in your commons. It is not a real blogging system. There are no permalinks or public pages, RSS or rich editing tools, but there are simple comments and archiving. Projects also have blogs that are private and that only members can read and post to.

Profiles ~ Profiles are nearly useless. They are truly the least interesting thing about social software from my perspective. This is partly due to the rigid nature of profiling and partly because the only people I really want to interact with through such systems already know me. The one benefit of profiles is FOAF connections. This is a legitimate function of an online profile, but is such an ancillary feature that it should not take up the central place that it does right now.

Connected to profiles, but more interesting from my perspective, are the auto-generated FOAF files. You can generate yours at the bottom of this page and link to it from your website or blog. These FOAF files, unlike most others, are 100% opt-in and all email addresses are hashed.


-------The Twelve Days of SmartCommons Christmas-------
The First Day of Christmas: A Share Something Christmas
The Second Day of Christmas: Cataloging the Christmas Sh*tstorm
The Third Day of Christmas: Social Ownership
The Fourth Day of Christmas: Compatriots
The Fifth Day of Christmas: Selective Disclosure
The Sixth Day of Christmas: Doing Stuff Together
The Seventh Day of Christmas: Happy New Year
The Eighth Day of Christmas: Resolutions
The Ninth Day of Christmas: Presenting Oneself
The Tenth Day of Christmas: The Future: Part I
The Eleventh Day of Christmas: Watch Lists and The Future Deferred
The Twelfth Day of Christmas: Just the beginning - The Future: Part II