NOTE: This experiment didn’t work. Instead – the initial post had the headline from my Google+ account but the body was just what you see below – a simple link back to my original Google+ post. So while I tried to be my own Santa – I’m still waiting for it to be under my tree.
from David Cohn @ Google+ https://plus.google.com/109410049853740963142/posts/NwZrdgLo7hM
(What I was hoping would appear)
Headline: If this works – it will be a Google+ public update and automatically create my December Contribution to the Carnival of Journalism on my personal blog.
BODY: For those that don’t know – the Carnival of Journalism is something I re-started in January (coming up on a year!) where a bunch of journalism-bloggers get together and write about the same topic once a month. The question is posed by the host – who rotates.
This month’s host is the Gaurdian’s developer blog and they ask:
“If you are a journalist, what would be the best present from programmers and developers that Santa Claus could leave under your Christmas tree?And, correspondingly, if you are a programmer or developer, what would be the best present from journalism that Father Christmas could deliver down your chimney?”
I go through various phases with my personal blog. When I first started in 2005 it was called “Adventures in Freelancing” and it was about just that – the various stories I was working on our published or other stories I was reading and found interesting.
Since Spot.Us started my blogging has laxed (at best). I use it for occasional big thoughts or announcements. Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook, Google+, etc take up a much larger space of my “online productivity” and to be honest – I wish there were ways to streamline my efforts.
Of course there is IFTT.com – which is what I’m using to repost this Google+ update to my personal blog. And from my blog it will then automatically be Tweeted. So that’s a start.
But there are things lost in the translation from Google+ to my personal blog and back out to Twitter. (SEE UPDATE ABOVE THIS IS FAR FROM PERFECT OR STREAMLINED – I HAD TO COME BACK AND EDIT IN THE WYSWIG EDITOR TO ADD A LINK, COPY PASTE THE BODY, ETC).
In a strange way I still think what I’m looking for was FriendFeed. What a brilliant site that was. Too bad they were bought (talent-scouted) by Facebook.
So if I had to answer the question succinctly: I want a frictionless blogging platform. Not Tumblr or Posterous (although they’ve done an awesome job). I think there is a way to make something even simpler. A platform where I can save something to Delicious and create the formatting once so that from hence-forth all Delicious links will be posted on my blog the way I want (ITTF does an okay job – but not perfect). A platform where I can post something on Google+ and format it once and forever my Google+ public posts will appear on my blog the way I want (what you are seeing on my blog is probably not perfect and can only contain one URL :(.
That’s my holiday gift ask.
It works.
Your system should probably be based on Markdown as your way of writing things. Markdown works perfectly for displaying as text.
What would be cool though is to find something that can transform markdown into something even more text friendly, with like annotations for the links or something.
Starting at Google+ is a bad idea. Someday, who knows when, they will have a write API. At that time you will want to start from your blog, the origin of content, to start the chain.
Personally, I love octopress.org, it’s been the easiest blogging platform I have ever used. I am a engineer though, so, mayby that’s why.