Diigo and the rise and fall of Delicious

December 17, 2010

One of the big bits of tech news yes­ter­day was a leaked slide show­ing that Yahoo was clos­ing down Del​.icio​.us,
the social book­mark­ing sys­tem that helped define. Yahoo must not do
Twit­ter because it took them till today to final­ly respond. They now say
that Del​.icio​.us does­n’t fit their strat­e­gy and that they will be sell­ing it.

Do
we care? Should we care? When it start­ed in 2003, Del​.icio​.us was something
inno­v­a­tive and quirky. It helped teach us that our online behavior
did­n’t need to be secret and locked away on our hard dri­ves but could be
shared. Indi­cat­ing that you thought a web­site was wor­thy of a bookmark
could be a rec­om­men­da­tion to friends. Even peo­ple book­mark­ing a site was
an indi­ca­tion of it’s real world val­ue. For us techies, Del​.icio​.us
opened our eyes up to a world where every­thing could be an RSS feed and
in 2006 I jig­gered the social aspects to cre­ate a human-powered
edi­to­r­i­al aggre­ga­tor Quak​erQuak​er​.org.

When Yahoo bought it we
were all a bit ner­vous but it seemed like a good move. Yahoo could bring
serv­er resources and a user­base and take Del​.icio​.us to the next level.
When cor­po­rate decid­ed to rename it Deli​cious​.com, it stripped the
quirk­i­ness but per­haps sig­naled a will­ing­ness to take this more into the
masses. 

Diigo Import
Screen­shot of my revived
Diigo account, show­ing
Deli­cious imports.

Alas, it did­n’t turn out that way. Deli­cious set­tled in
and stopped inno­vat­ing. Even­tu­al­ly the founder left Yahoo. Things got so
bad that it seemed excit­ing when it essen­tial­ly got a design make-over a
few years ago. Com­pet­ing ser­vices sprang up but none were different
enough to make many of change our habits.

So yes­ter­day’s news is
per­haps a good thing. I’ve been look­ing at those oth­er ser­vices. Diigo​.com looks real­ly fab­u­lous. I tried it when it launched in 2006 but wrote it off at the time as a Deli­cious clone with high ambi­tions. But they’ve been work­ing hard. They’re onto ver­sion five now and they’ve been
adding the kind of cool fea­tures that an inde­pen­dent Deli­cious might
have pursued.

For exam­ple, you can add a note to a web­page that you’re book­mark­ing and then send a spe­cial URL with the site and note. They make it real­ly easy to Twit­ter this. Last night I book­marked and tweet­ed about an online radio ser­vice I’ve been using: 

Lis­ten­ing to a lot of Radio Par­adise late­ly. Good back­ground work music, inter­est­ing selec­tions: diigo​.com/​0​e​8gw

That Diigo link will take you to Radio Par­adis­e’s home­page with the note I added. That’s real­ly useful. 

Diigo just a few moments ago put out a Tran­si­tion to Diigo FAQ. Export­ing from Deli­cious is real­ly easy and import­ing it to Diigo is easy too – though not instant, it was about twelve hours. I’m con­fi­dent enough about Diigo that I’ve upgrad­ed to the $40/year Pre­mi­um account – part­ly chip­ping in since I imag­ine they’re being hit with lots of new accounts today.

Catherine Lockwood MFT

December 15, 2010

Catherine Lockwood, MFTCather­ine Lock­wood is a ther­a­pist in the Los Ange­les area who had built a site in the since-discontinued Google Page Cre­ator ser­vice. It had a nice design but she could nev­er get her domain point­ing to it and she was frus­trat­ed that Google had closed the ser­vice. She wrote me say­ing “I would like to have a web­site address that WORKS. I have nev­er been able to give any­one my address because appar­ent­ly the address is not con­nect­ed to my web­site. So instead I have to tell peo­ple to google me!” 

We rebuilt Cather­ine’s site using the ever-trusty Word­Press. The col­ors and con­tent were brought over into a fair­ly stan­dard design. And now Cather­ine can print Cather​ine​Lock​woodMFT​.com on her busi­ness cards!

Unlikely Messengers

December 4, 2010

blankIt some­times strikes me that the Lord some­times picks some might­i­ly unlike­ly mes­sen­gers. We are all flawed in our ways, true, but it’s easy to think there are those flawed more than our­selves. In part this is the whole beam in the eye prob­lem of per­spec­tive we find in Matthew 7. But the para­ble of the Lost Sheep record­ed in Luke 15 sug­gests that some are more lost than others:

What man of you, hav­ing an hun­dred sheep, if he lose one of them, doth not leave the nine­ty and nine in the wilder­ness, and go after that which is lost, until he find it? And when he hath found it, he layeth it on his shoul­ders, rejoic­ing. And when he cometh home, he cal­leth togeth­er his friends and neigh­bours, say­ing unto them, Rejoice with me; for I have found my sheep which was lost. I say unto you, that like­wise joy shall be in heav­en over one sin­ner that repen­teth, more than over nine­ty and nine just per­sons, which need no repentance.

One of the best-known exam­ples of the formerly-lost sheep is the apos­tle Paul of Tar­sus. We first learn about him as Saul, a Phar­isee who active­ly per­se­cut­ed the ear­ly church. The sto­ry of the the light of heav­en inter­rupt­ing his jour­ney to Dam­as­cus is real­ly key to under­stand­ing Friends under­stand­ing of the Light as judge and instruc­tor (it’s also the source of one of my favorite line in the John­ny Cash oevre “it’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks”!).

But I always won­der what the oth­er Chris­tians made of the post-conversion Paul. We get a lit­tle of their reac­tion from Ana­nias but I imag­ine there was lots of talk and anger, jeal­ousy and con­fu­sion all swirling with what­ev­er joy they could muster that anoth­er soul was saved. A man who had “slaugh­tered” them was soon to present him­self as a major leader, tak­ing sides in the great debates over how Jew­ish the Chris­t­ian com­mu­ni­ty need­ed to be.

How do we react when God uses an unlike­ly mes­sen­ger to spread the good news? None of my blog read­ers are like­ly to have seen their brethren slaugh­tered but it’s safe to say we’ve all been wronged and mis­treat­ed from time to time. One of the great mys­ter­ies I’ve expe­ri­enced is how God has seem­ing­ly used oth­er’s dis­obe­di­ence to do His work. Know­ing this requires a scale of love that’s hard to imag­ine. Peo­ple do wrong can still be some­how act­ing of God. Peo­ple who have done wrong are some­times espe­cial­ly cho­sen of God. Heav­en rejoic­es more for that one saved sin­ner than all the rest of us try­ing to mud­dle along in faith. Even secret anger is akin to mur­der.

We Friends are right­ly inspired of 17th Cen­tu­ry New Jer­sey Friend John Wool­man’s excep­tion­al com­pas­sion and abil­i­ty to see out­side the prej­u­dices of his day, but even this “Quak­er saint” con­sid­ered him­self the unlike­ly mes­sen­ger, the lost sheep of  the Luke sto­ry. He wrote of a dream:“Then the mys­tery was opened, and I per­ceived there was joy in heav­en over a sin­ner who had repent­ed [Luk 15:7] and that that lan­guage John Wool­man is dead meant no more than the death of my own will.”

How do we hold tight to love, even for those we don’t like? When we greet even those who have dis­ap­point­ed us, we need to bear in mind that they might have trav­eled their own road to Dam­as­cus since last we met. They might be one of those God choos­es to teach.

(Thanks to Esther Green­leaf Mür­er’s Quak­er Bible Index for the Wool­man connection.)

Easy Prey

November 19, 2010

This pas­sage from Ezekiel struck me this evening:

What sor­row awaits you shep­herds who feed your­selves instead of your flocks. Should­n’t shep­herds feed their sheep?.. You have not tend­ed the sick or bound up the injured. You have not gone look­ing for those who have wan­dered away and are lost. Instead, you have ruled them with harsh­ness and cru­el­ty. So my sheeph have been scat­tered with­out a shep­herd, and they are easy prey for any wild ani­mal. They have wan­dered through all the moun­tains and all the hills, across the face of the earth, yet no one has gone to search for them…

For this is what the Soverign Lord says: I myself will search and find my sheep. I will be like a shep­herd look­ing for his scat­tered flock… I will search for my lost ones who strayed away, and I will bring them safe­ly home again. I will ban­dage the injured and strenght­en the weak. Book of Ezekiel 34.

It seems appro­pri­ate for all sorts of rea­sons. Last week the priest of my wife’s Catholic church shut it down under false pre­tens­es (see savest​marys​.net/​b​log), the cul­mi­na­tion of a long plan to close it and ulti­mate­ly most of the small Catholic church­es in South Jer­sey. There are sheep that will be scat­tered by these acts. I’m also just so acute­ly aware of reli­gious of all denom­i­na­tions who are so caught up in the human forms of our church body that we’ve lost sight of those who are wan­der­ing in the wilder­ness, easy prey for the wild ani­mals of our world­ly lusts. I take solace in the promise that the Lord’s Shep­herd is out look­ing for us.

St Marys

A traveling bus museum visits Quakerranter HQ

November 8, 2010

This week­end we’ve had a muse­um parked in our dri­ve­way. It’s the “BUS-eum” from the Traces Cen­ter for His­to­ry and Cul­ture in St. Paul, host­ing a trav­el­ing exhib­it on Ger­man POW’s in the US dur­ing World War II. We were hap­py to host the BUS-eum’s Irv­ing Kell­man over the week­end in-between stops in Cape May Cour­t­house and Vineland.  I asked him to give us the sto­ry of the Ger­man POWs on video.

As you might guess, there was a lot of Quak­er con­nec­tions in the 1940, with Amer­i­can Friends Ser­vice Com­mit­tee involve­ment. Traces’ direc­tor Michael Luick-Thrams is a Friend and did his PhD the­sis on the Scat­ter­good Hos­tel, a refugee camp set up at the then-abandoned Friends school in Iowa. Many of the BUS-eum’s stops are Friends Schools, with pub­lic libraries being anoth­er com­mon destination.

The vis­it was made with help from FGC’s Direc­to­ry of Trav­el­ing Friends. I think this is the first time we’ve actu­al­ly had a vis­i­tor after a decade of being list­ed there (most past inquiries have fall­en through when they looked at a map and real­ized our dis­tance from Pen­dle Hill, New York City or what­ev­er oth­er des­ti­na­tion brought them east).

Unpresenting workshop style

October 19, 2010

Non­prof­it blog­ger Beth Kan­tor often finds gems about pre­sen­ta­tion. Yes­ter­day she shared a “unpre­sent­ing” style of work­shop. She writes:

I do a lot of pre­sent­ing and am spend­ing to much time writ­ing bul­let points, cre­at­ing slides, and prac­tic­ing what I’m going to say. I think that this puts a stop to cre­at­ing con­ver­sa­tion in the room. I want­ed to learn some con­ver­sa­tion­al mechan­ics — so I could stop talk­ing at peo­ple and begin talk­ing with them.

Beth’s main link is to a Google Tech Talk “unpre­sen­ta­tion” by Heather Gold. Might be good back­ground lis­ten­ing today. I’m par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in this for two rea­sons: first, obvi­ous­ly, is that pre­sen­ta­tions are often very bor­ing and it’s nice to think about more inter­ac­tive ways of engag­ing with an audience.

But sec­ond, many mod­ern Friends have default­ed to a lec­ture style in their reli­gious edu­ca­tion. I’m not sure it works. I’ve met peo­ple who have par­tic­i­pat­ed in mul­ti­ple Quak­erism 101 class­es and still don’t know basic facts. I myself have rebelled against pow­er point pre­sen­ta­tions and pre-set cur­ric­u­la to be more engag­ing but I’m not con­vinced that this has made me a great pre­sen­ter. It’s always worth find­ing new ways to present in a clear and direct and engages them with the issues they expe­ri­ence day to day.

I imag­ine this would be of inter­est not only to lib­er­al Friends who give work­shops, but pas­toral Friends with a con­cern to stay open to imme­di­ate rev­e­la­tion dur­ing wor­ship–Cherice B has a great post about this yes­ter­day , a response to part four of Brent Bil­l’s Mod­est Pro­pos­al series.

Some inter­est­ing points from Heather Gold’s pre­sen­ta­tion on “tumm­ling”

  • The best way to tumm­le is to be a very big ver­sion of your­self. Tumm­le means to make noise.
  • If you’re hap­py, i’m hap­py. The num­ber one way to do that is to care and to notice them — espe­cial­ly the peo­ple who don’t seem that involved.
  • I’m notic­ing [the dis­en­gaged per­son in the back]. if i can involve him a lit­tle bit i’m much more like­ly to involve more of you faster than if i pick the per­son in the front row with their arm up. a tech­nique to pull every­one in is to go to the fringes. go to the peo­ple who seem on the end, who seem like they have low­er sta­tus in what­ev­er com­mu­ni­ty you’re in (speak less, more nervi­ous, know few­er peo­ple) and go up to them.
  • Some peo­ple will be mad at you. Some peo­ple will be schmucks. Some peo­ple will want to talk a lot. You have to let all that be okay. Tools and rules will nev­er ever do as good a job as your con­fi­dence that you can han­dle any­thing. It’s time con­sum­ing to run through fifty rules in your mind; it’s not so time con­sum­ing to just be there.

Mega-meetings and missional communities

October 18, 2010

On Twit­ter, C Wess Daniels (@cwdaniels) asks if this arti­cle on the future of Evan­gel­i­cal­ism in North Amer­i­ca by David Fitch applies to Quak­ers. Fitch writes:

The future of the tra­di­tion­al evan­gel­i­cal church as I see it is: a.) mega church­es con­tin­u­ing to grow, con­sol­i­dat­ing what is left of the Chris­ten­dom pop­u­la­tions…; b.) small­er church­es of under 200 slow­ly dying and even­tu­al­ly clos­ing, and c.) the birthing of new mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties through  either seed­ing new mis­sion­ary com­mu­ni­ties or tran­si­tion­ing (the afore­men­tioned) dying small church­es into vibrant places of mission.

On the face of it, it’s bizarre to com­pare lib­er­al Friends to main­stream Chris­t­ian evan­gel­i­cals, but there are sim­i­lar­i­ties if you scale back the num­bers. I think some larg­er Friends meet­ings have mega-church-like dynam­ics. They have strong fam­i­ly pro­grams and con­nec­tions to near­by Friends schools and/or retire­ment com­mu­ni­ties. They serve as the local pro­gres­sive lib­er­al hub of their com­mu­ni­ties. They’re not deeply root­ed in Quak­er spir­i­tu­al­i­ty and are proud of the spir­i­tu­al het­ero­doxy. They’re very orga­nized – name tags, “Friend­ly 8” din­ners, expe­ri­enced clerks. They stand in con­trast to the bulk of small­er meet­ings that are dying fast and won’t be around anoth­er generation.

Fitch clear­ly thinks the inter­est­ing work falls under the last cat­e­go­ry, “mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties” and argues that a “sig­nif­i­cant part” of church resources should be devot­ed to “efforts in train­ing mis­sion­ary pas­tors.” His big ques­tion is whether the small “b” church­es can evolve into the “c” mis­sion­al communities.

I’m not sure that we real­ly need train­ing pro­grams but for argu­men­t’s sake let’s say Fitch is right. Lib­er­al Friends don’t have any­one to devote church resources to train­ing (the clos­est ana­logue be the Earl­ham School of Reli­gion). We do have small mis­sion­al com­mu­ni­ties spring­ing up but so far there’s been lit­tle sup­port or recog­ni­tion from local meet­ings or larg­er Friends bod­ies. What would it look like to equip these efforts in an unpro­grammed Quak­er set­ting? Is it all but inevitable that they’ll have to rely on self-organized asso­ci­a­tions? Will they remain as wor­ship groups? Is that fine?

Tell them all this but do not expect them to listen

October 8, 2010

It seems to me that one of the cor­ner­stones of Judeo-Christian phi­los­o­phy is to remem­ber the sto­ries. I’m more than three-quarters of the way through the Bible (I’m stretch­ing my One Year Bible plan across two years) and that’s real­ly all it is: sto­ry after sto­ry of human’s rela­tions with God. Friends have picked up this method­ol­o­gy in a big way. Our pri­ma­ry reli­gious edu­ca­tion is the jour­nals elders have been asked to write to recount the tri­als and prophet­ic open­ings of a life lived in an attempt at spir­i­tu­al obedience.

blankThere must be a pur­pose to this con­stant sto­ry review, some way it deep­ens our own spir­i­tu­al lives. One gift it gives to me is per­spec­tive. I was just tak­ing an evening bath and found myself get­ting upset about a par­tic­u­lar sit­u­a­tion from my past and stopped to pick up my One Year Bible. The Old Tes­ta­ment read­ings for most of Tenth Month come from Jere­mi­ah. Here’s a bit of God’s instruc­tions to the prophet:

“Tell them all this, but do not expect them to lis­ten. Shout out your warn­ings but do not expect them to respond. Say to them, ‘This is the nation whose peo­ple will not obey the Lord their God and who refuse to be taught. Truth has van­ished from among them; it is no longer heard on their lips.’ ” (Jer 7:27)

And lat­er:

“Jere­mi­ah, say to the peo­ple, ‘This is what the Lord says: When peo­ple fall down, don’t they get up again? When they dis­cov­er they’re on the wrong road, don’t they turn back? Then why do these peo­ple stay on their self-destructive path? Why do the peo­ple of Jerusalem refuse to turn back? They cling tight­ly to their lies and will not turn around.’ ” (Jer 8:4)

Here we are, Sixth Cen­tu­ry B.C., and the spir­i­tu­al state of God’s peo­ple is in a ter­ri­ble state. It makes my aggriev­e­ments look pet­ty. And maybe that’s the point. The rela­tion­ship between God and His peo­ple have been in a rol­lar coast­er ride for mil­len­nia. Sure, Jesus’ new covenant brought about a lot of changes but did­n’t end hypocrisy or faith­less­ness. Protes­tants can point to the ref­or­ma­tion and Friends to the new peo­ple gath­ered by George Fox but both move­ments long ago floun­dered on the shoals of human weak­ness. His­to­ry has­n’t stopped. The tri­als of the spir­i­tu­al don’t stop. We don’t get a free ride of spir­i­tu­al ease just because we’re on the cur­rent edge of human history.

As ear­ly Friends were aware, a spir­i­tu­al life still requires lift­ing of the cross. It’s easy to let dis­ap­point­ments lead to despair, and to retreat into the many temp­ta­tions of the mod­ern world has at ready sup­ply. In that state it’s easy to put off wor­ry­ing about our duties to our fel­low humans, to life on earth and to God. Every once in a while I’ll get whiny about some­thing and my dear wife will say “get over it and do what you need to do already.” We’ve remem­bered the sto­ry of Jere­mi­ah for 2500 years for the same rea­son: “you think you’ve got it bad, you’re not being dec­i­mat­ed and enslaved in Baby­lon!” Perspective.

* * *

I’m still think­ing about one of the con­ver­sa­tions I had the oth­er week at Vineland Men­non­ite Church–about the dif­fer­ence between the­ol­o­gy and Bib­li­cism. I like the­ol­o­gy and I like learn­ing about the con­text of Bible sto­ries I read. I enjoy hear­ing new the­o­ries about old para­dox­es (for exam­ple, Mar­tin Luther King’s take on the sto­ry of the Good Samar­i­tan fas­ci­nates me in part because it reminds me that the sto­ry is set on a real road and is intend­ed as a sto­ry about real peo­ple mak­ing dif­fi­cult choic­es). But I’m also aware that it’s easy to spend so much time read­ing and talk­ing about the com­men­tary that I for­get to read the orig­i­nal sto­ries them­selves. If sto­ries are reli­gious ed, then we have to remem­ber to actu­al­ly read the sto­ries. Some­times when I stum­ble on the cool blogs of the clever­est min­is­ters I won­der if they stop to actu­al­ly read the sto­ries. So much ener­gy seems to be expend­ed on mak­ing up new words and giv­ing mes­sages of easy hope. I can’t see Jere­mi­ah join­ing them at the local church brew pub fest to hoist a Rolling Rock. The cur­rent New Tes­ta­ment read­ing in the One Year Bible is Paul’s let­ter to the Coloss­ian, which includes this gem:

Don’t let any­one cap­ture you (Colos­sians) with emp­ty philoso­phies and high-sounding non­sense that come from human think­ing and from the spir­i­tu­al pow­ers of this world, rather than from Christ.

I’m sure George Fox hoot­ed in joy when he read that line! The sto­ries remind us that all is not well and that all will not be well. Temp­ta­tions still nips at our best inten­tions. The great­est temp­ta­tion is self-reliance. Our test as indi­vid­u­als and as a peo­ple will be demon­strat­ed by how we patient­ly and faith­ful­ly we bear the hard­ships we encounter and keep our trust in the risen Christ.