Episode description

TOPIC: A Personal History of Personal Publishing

This week, Dan and Merlin talk about the constantly-changing landscape of online publishing. How we got from home pages to blogs to social media and beyond. Things move around, things get shorter (or longer), and things get super-weird and unpredictable.

How do you decide where your stuff goes and who do you expect it to reach in this whackadoodle environment?

You won't believe what happens next!

Links for this episode:

• Ep. 117: "Put on the Carrot Hat" - Roderick on the Line - Merlin Mann
  The Problem: John’s Siri just speaks to him in Welsh.
• Chrome Web Store - Library Extension
  
• Nerd Merit Badges - 02: Inbox Zero
  You’ve reached an empty email inbox. For extra credit, you maintain an empty inbox from Monday through Friday!
• Doomed to Repeat It — The Message — Medium
  There’s always some big deal in email—in 2013 it was Mailbox, an app that made it easy to sort and process email. There was a long waiting list for people who wanted to download and use the software. It was like the cronut of apps. Later, Mailbox was acquired by Dropbox for about $100 million. People stopped talking about it after that.
• YANSS Podcast 027 – The New Science Communicators with Joe Hanson « You Are Not So Smart
  I recently collaborated with Joe Hanson of the YouTube channel It’s Okay to be Smart and helped him write an episode about pattern recognition.
• 5by5 | CMD+Space #103: Everything in Moderation, with Matt Haughey
  This week Myke is joined by Matt Haughey. They talk about Metafliter's past, it's troubles with advertising, accidental crowd-funding and the site's future.
• I Never MetaFilter I Didn't Like with Matt Haughey (Episode 78) — The New Disruptors
  Matt Haughey founded MetaFilter, a well-moderated forum for discussions about interesting things that expanded to also answer questions. At just a few months over 15 years old, it's a veterans of many Internet lifecycles. In the last couple of years, however, MetaFilter began to face an existential challenge, which we'll talk about in this episode, along with its history, nature, and future.
• Title Recess - Because names are what we call things
  While the "Global Internet" has been a bonanza for tiny camera marketers and penis cream pitchmen, there's been precious little opportunity to create and share fake titles for Guided by Voices songs. That is why we now present TitleRecess.com. Please note that we also have a small but very real side interest in fake Dickens characters, fake Goth names, and fake terrible names for dot-coms.
• kung fu grippe | weblog by merlin mann
  Merlin's Kottke-inspired blog, circa 2003.
• Showbot
  Listener-suggested titles for this episode.
• Blogger Lunch (January, 2005) Damn. This... | kung fu grippe
  
• 43f Podcast: John Gruber & Merlin Mann's Blogging Panel at SxSW | 43 Folders
  SxSW ’09 - Gruber & Mann - HOWTO: 149 Surprising Ways to Turbocharge Your Blog With Credibility! My pal, John Gruber (from daringfireball.net), and I presented a talk at South by Southwest Interactive on Saturday, March 14th. We talked about building a blog you can be proud of, trying to improve the quality of your work, reaching the people you admire, and maybe even making a buck (in a way that doesn’t blow your deal). Here’s what we had to say:
• Daring Fireball: The Talk Show: Ep. 86: ‘Free Alcoholic Beverages’, With Dave Wiskus
  Topics include Samsung getting pinched from Apple on the high end and Xiaomi (at least in China) on the low end, Android and the importance of software differentiation, wearable devices, and more.
• Diesel Sweeties Store: Music & Pixel T-Shirts & Socks - "F*ck This." Ice Scraper
  
• Twitter / Search - justin follow me
  
• On Chasing the Right "Zero" | kung fu grippe
  Put to best use, Inbox Zero is merely a philosophical practice of learning to be parsimonious about which and how many inputs we allow into our lives—and, then, to responsibly but mindfully tend to those inputs in a way that is never allowed to hinder our personal commitment to doing the work that really matters to us. Once you’ve dedicated yourself to making the things you love, every inbox can and should become a well-monitored servant rather than a merciless master.
• Algonquin Round Table - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The Algonquin Round Table was a celebrated group of New York City writers, critics, actors and wits. Gathering initially as part of a practical joke, members of "The Vicious Circle", as they dubbed themselves, met for lunch each day at the Algonquin Hotel from 1919 until roughly 1929. At these luncheons they engaged in wisecracks, wordplay and witticisms that, through the newspaper columns of Round Table members, were disseminated across the country.
• Shirky: Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
  We are all so used to bell curve distributions that power law distributions can seem odd. The shape of Figure
• Ouroboros - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
  The Ouroboros is an ancient symbol depicting a serpent or dragon eating its own tail.

This week's episode of Back to Work is kindly sponsored by Lynda.com (7-day free trial!)