So here’s what’s going on…

I’m writing this on my new Posterous blog. As soon as I hit the ‘publish’ button this entire post will simultaneously appear as separate entries on:

• Blogger
• Tumblr
• (and starting today) my formerly dormant LiveJournal account and the hallowed halls of my WordPress.com blog

It will also be sent as a status update to:

• Identi.ca
• Jaiku
• Plurk
• Twitter

And will show up in my feeds on:

• Facebook
• FriendFeed

… But isn’t that spam?

That’s certainly a valid question. Here’s my defence:

I. I need to cover my ass.

One feature Posterous doesn’t currently have is the ability to export data. Fortunately both Blogger and WordPress do — albeit in different formats.

I’m currently suffering through an exruciatingly tedious migration of an old ExpressionEngine blog to WordPress. Although I was eventually able to export my posts my comments didn’t make it out with them, so I have to manually transcribe three years of them. Never again.

II. Blogs are changing.

The clever folks who run Posterous and Tumblr realize that blogs are also networks. LiveJournal got this too, and I suppose Blogger and WordPress are on board with the idea to a much lesser extent.

And as I’ve written previously, traditional longform blogging is feeling very antiquated these days…

III. You need to hit people where they live.

I’ve learned from my love/hate affair with Facebook that if you want someone to see something, you literally have to dump it in front of their eyes. And I’d honestly rather interact with a reader in a space that’s familiar for them, seeing how easy it is for me to spread my stuff so far and wide.

Of course, I’d hate to be thought of as someone who generates needless duplication noise. What do you make of all this? You can reply wherever you see this — I’ll be watching!

Posted via web from Andrew Currie on Posterous

It’s been a while since I’ve done one of these… Here are the latest numbers for the top ten all-time posts on this humble WordPress.com blog:

1. Canadian Cellular Contracts: Just Say No - 10,073
2. Egypt According to Nokia Maps & GPS - 5,340
3. Battle of the Mobile Barcodes - 3,992
4. Nokia N810 – Can’t (iPod) touch this! - 3,374
5. Evolution – The Default Email Client for Ubuntu - 2,696
6. Vimio – The Mobile TV App Your Carrier Doesn’t Want You to Know About - 2,590
7. Bell Canada’s Mobile Browsing Bomb: What You Need to Know - 2,500
8. Nokia N82 Trial, Day 3: The Games - 2,254
9. My HTC TyTN: Two Months In and Back in the Box - 2,074
10. The Ultimate QWERTY Smartphone Smackdown - 2,033

A couple of notes:

• Lots of mobile users are hungry for news about Vimio (#6), an app that lets you watch broadcast television on your S60 handset. Unfortunately the service no longer seems to work and the company’s website has mysteriously vanished.
• It looks like I broke the law when I used GPS on my trip to Egypt last year (#2). Sorry.
• We has a new record! My review of Evolution for Ubuntu (#5) is now responsible for the most page views in a single day — 2,060 on Sunday, June 7, 2009. This is great news for someone who’s making the move to Linux and means that I no longer have to rely on irritating Mac fanboys for traffic.
• Lots of people are still getting schooled on the evils of carrier contracts (#1). Do you part and help spread the word!

I’ll throw up some more stats anytime there’s something interesting to report… Happy Stat-urday, everyone!

Sorry everyone, too wrapped up in my latest project to do any significant blogging this week. But if you’re without plans for Saturday night…

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE…

Mood Swing’s Second Night Blues

“Come hear the classics, butchered beyond all recognition…”

Featuring:

LAWRENCE FARWICK
Internationally-reknowned guitarist, if Hamilton counts as “international”.

KEVIN HILDITCH
Due to a hairline fracture in one of his feet his doctors told him he could never stand again… So we got him a chair.

AND YOURS TRULY
I once toured Europe playing the tambourine — jesus, why am I admitting this?

Saturday, May 10, 2008 from 9:00pm
Gate 403 | 403 Roncesvalles Avenue
416-588-2930 | info@gate403.com

View Map

… So put on your best black turtleneck and come on out. And because it’s jazz you don’t even have to applaud — you can just look on with disdain!

Forgive me for my single post this week; I’m finding that all my free time is being directed towards the Conservatory Grad Show that’s going up on the Mainstage this Sunday. Details can be read off the poster or by clicking through to the Second City site proper.

Hope to see you there, and I’ll be back to blogging next week!

Here’s a bit of blog trivia courtesy of WordPress.com, who now provide summarized stats for their users:

Top Posts for ALL DAYS ending 2008-02-09 (Summarized)

Feel free to bump up the ranking of those single-digit page views with a click or two!

Here’s a last-minute plug for a very worthy event in downtown Toronto tomorrow, courtesy of my superstar financial advisor…

… Are you concerned that the companies you spend money with don’t reflect your values?

… Are you worried about Canadian mining companies’ impact on the environment and their actions overseas, or even in our own country?

… Are you feeling helpless in this age of globalization, and are unsure where to turn?

Join us for a day of energy and activism as we bring together a wide array of specialists to discuss and promote human rights in business.

As a participant, you’ll hear from two expert panels:

1. Leaders in the field of Socially Responsible Investment
2. People with direct experience and perspectives on Business, Human Rights, and the environment.

You’ll also have the opportunity to explore some areas in more depth in a smaller group, and will learn about these issues in a keynote address from a well-known speaker. By the end of the day you will be empowered, and will have a clear direction on how you can personally take action against companies that don’t align with your personal values.

From the micro to the macro: An exploration of how our money—through investing and taxes—creates ripples; and whether or not it supports human rights and the environment. Presented by Amnesty International’s Business and Human Rights group.

Saturday, February 9, 2008, 9:30 am – 4:00 pm
Metro Hall, 55 John Street, Toronto
Keynote speaker: Bruce Cox, Executive Director of Greenpeace Canada
Lunch will be provided
Cost: Free! Registration fees are being supported by various sponsors (to be announced).

Space is limited, so register today!
To register please e-mail: business@aito.ca

If someone you didn’t know invited you into their home, would you immediately start knocking things over on purpose and then complain about the mess? Of course you wouldn’t — and yet metaphorically speaking, this is exactly what has been happening in the comments on this blog…

It’s one thing to take exception to the opinions expressed here, but to question my integrity or flat-out insult me? In the interest of free speech I’ve allowed it up to this point, but the relentless attacks by Apple cultists and gun-toting day-traders has proven to be too much. Thus, as of right now, I must insist on personally approving each comment submitted to this site.

I sincerely hope this won’t deter any of my regular, loyal readers from posting comments (or even corrections!), and I hereby pledge to publish the rantings of the biggest nut-jobs for their entertainment value alone.

Merry Christmas!

While I’m hard at work on my next blog post (yeah, that’s it…) I thought I’d take a moment to invite feedback on my new look — courtesy of Eli Foner & WordPress.

I’m liking the clean, minimalist look with the handy blue “bumpers” at the top and bottom of each page. But what about you? Feel free to give your feedback as a comment to this post. I’m especially interested in the following:

1. Is the content easy to read? Is finding it a hassle?
2. Are the two sidebars helpful or confusing? Do they provide too much additional information or not enough?
3. Is the distinction between the Quick Links and my Blogroll (formerly My Internet Legacy) clear?

Feel free to chime in on these and any other usability concerns. I’m all ears…

Well, it’s been a good three and a bit years… But now it’s time to say goodbye to both my blog host and the software running this site.

The software has become a bit overwhelming for what I need to do. I was going to follow the masses and switch to WordPress , but then I found out that. like Blogger, they have a free hosted blogging service of their own.

So kindly update your bookmarks and RSS feeds to acurrie.wordpress.com. There’s already a new post waiting for you there!

In the meantime I’ll get to work on switching hosts, building a start page and making the switchover as seamless as possible…

Friends, I’ve some bad news. This web site is broken.

To the casual eye everything seems hunky-dory, I know. But deep within the bowels of MySQL-this and PHP-that, something has gone fatally awry. If you’re interested you can read my cry for help here—suffice to say, I’ve better things to do than troubleshoot lines of code!

A previous entry on the subject of free web stuff has got me thinking about moving my blog over to a free blog hosting site. There are lots of them out there, but hopefully you’ll agree that the two current heavyweights are Blogger and WordPress.

Blogger was the engine that brought blogging to the masses. Now that it’s been gobbled up by Google the new owners are working on a bunch of new features, like categories and posting via text message—features that I’ve had around here for quite some time.

This is what my site would look like on Blogger. You’ll notice that I was successfully able to integrate my badges from del.icio.us and Flickr, but I’m not wild about the template, and in my mind it’s the nicest one they’ve got.

WordPress.com is a free, hosted install of the very popular open-source engine available at WordPress.org. You can’t install the myriad of plug-ins or themes on the dot-com version, but you don’t risk wrecking your blog by doing so, either.

This is what my site will look like on WordPress.com—I say will because I’m a sucker for a good design, and WordPress’s implementation of my sidebar stuff is in my opinion much easier on the eyes. WordPress also gives me the option of a static start page, where I would put links to all my breadcrumbs spread so far and wide across the internet.

Now I just have to figure out what to do with all the stuff I’ve got here…