The more I explore this blogging business, the more I think we need some heavy integration, not only of CMCs and blogs (and whatever else), but also of the various systems.

For example, a "friend" in Me2U (Athabasca University's application of Elgg) posted a link to another a propos source and forum that led me a little further on to Weblogg-ed. I checked it out. It looks interesting, even promising. But I don't have the time to cruise and schmooze in all these online locales. I need to be able to tell the system what I'm interested in and find myself linked to everything and everybody everywhere that fits the parameters I devise.

I guess I'm talking about something like a search engine that kicks in everytime you log on, offering links that you can investigate and incorporate. Again, I think it's a matter  more of integration than of invention. Most of what I'm talking about in this community can be done manually to some extent, but, again, the time involved is debilitating. Please, someone, put it all together!

Chris Sessums (may I call you Chris?) tipped me off to a new Google interface that might be a step in the direction I'm facing. It's hard to tell. My quick follow up only led to the odd shrunken screenshot. Apparently the new interface pops up randomly (from the user's perspective).

I'm looking forward to the day when blogging and conferencing are combined and when different "landscapes" are crosslinkable, so that from my favourite landscape I can access other landscapes as if, or almost as if, they were part of my landscape. That's where the search engine would come in. I would have the option of instructing the landscape to seek particular tags, titles and text in other landscapes. The engine would compile, perhaps rank, a list from which I could choose likely leads. I could then go to those leads and integrate them into my landscape so that they become part of my "garden" and are accessible, through my garden, to other users who find or enter my garden.

Chris typed  the term spode as an acronym, SPODE. This got me thinking about another name for the kind of system I'm talking about: Search and Plug Online Discussion Environment.

 

A post by Nils Peterson got me thinking how a truly globally integrated SPODE would allow you to participate from your own site, or fully personal "web position". I suppose you would download or otherwise access software that would allow you to construct such a space, tailoring it to your fancy, linking how you liked. This idea is exciting to me because it expands the SPODE concept to webrings.

A post by Chris Sessums led me to take a look at Second Life. It has some of the features I'd like to see in SPODEs. Most importantly, there's a map. On this map there are symbols indicating three types of interaction (events, postcards and land for sale). A SPODE map would differ somewhat, probably looking less like a real world map for one thing. It would probably consist of spokes and nodes, the nodes indicating activity. I expect that little flags would flicker on and off all over the map, drawing your attention to the various topics under discussion.

I suppose the concept could be expanded to include more than discussion. Your personal interface could be instructed to display any combination of types of activity.

Ben, Dave,there's a problem with linking community blogs to Technorati. Since we can't change themes or otherwise alter much of our owned communities, we can't claim them in Technorati. You have to be able to insert the java script somewhere in your code.