Wow, blot looks amazing. Have you run into any issues or concerns? Any sesnse of their business model?
Some ideas about how to grow your business without stress or overwhelm for people who feel that they’re spinning plates 24x7x365. https://www.chrisbeaumont.co.uk/ideas
In short, no issues, and the business side of it is as awesome as the rest of it. David Merfield’s been running blot.im since 2014, I think. The About page is really informative and transparent. It even includes a list of similar alternatives (including which ones have since stopped functioning).
I particularly like the answer to the question “How long do you plan to run Blot?”:
Decades, at least.
Last, David’s reputation for thorough, fast responses seems to be kinda famous. I’ve asked 5-6 questions since I started on it a few weeks ago and haven’t had to wait less than a day or two for a response—he usually replies in hours, somehow. See this Hacker News discussion for further evidence.
Also, the whole thing is open source and you can roll Blot on your own server if you want.
I don’t mind being a cheerleader for this thing. As I said directly to David in an email, the whole thing’s a role model for how products should be built and run. I’m excited!
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I’m a cognitive scientist, entrepreneur, adjunct professor, and author. I focus on cognitive productivity with macOS (cf. books) and integrative design-oriented models of mind.
- at CogZest, I blog about cognitive productivity (using knowledge to become more cognitively productive), learning from stories, cognitive science/AI, and related projects,
- at Hook Productivity, I blog about the Hook productivity (app) for macOS;
- at mySleepButton, I about sleep onset and insomnolence, and our mySleepButton app for iOS (which implements the cognitive shuffle, based on my theory of sleep onset and insomnolence (extensively covered);
- on the CogSci Apps blog, I write about issues related CogSci Apps (productivity and health apps for macOS and iOS based on cognitive science);
- at Sharpbrains, I occasionally blog about cognitive fitness and tech (for instance, I wrote one of the first reviews of the iPad, and even exchanged emails with Steve Jobs in Feb 2010 about the article, iPad , Mac OS and cognitive productivity, which led me to write a white paper for Apple); and
- at Simon Fraser University I also occasionally blog.
Hook perhaps represents the most significant discontinuity in personal information management in desktop computing since Spotlight (equal in importance to folders, actually), focused on cognitive productivity. It’s the first app that enables users to instantly re-access the contextually relevant information they need to get the job done right, now. It’s based on an analysis of knowledge work that suggests that most knowledge intense work revolves around disjoint clusters (networks) of related but diverse information (diverse: on web, in the cloud, in files, in apps; and of different types, e.g., email, OmniFocus tasks, PDFs, etc.). Imagine the web without links. Would be pretty bad, eh? Well, a Mac without link is what you have without Hook.
MPU doesn’t seem to have noticed the above. Will Forbes Magazine get there first, as it did for mySleepButton?? 
Regardless, I’ll be writing more frequently about Hook on the Hook blog and elsewhere.
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Oh hey, I encountered Hook before. I love the idea of it but spend too much time on iOS. Anything in the works to bridge that gap? 
More on point with this thread, though—I’m often surprised by the gap between cognitive science and this productivity world. (The same is true for information systems, I think.) I can’t blame non-researchers—it’s hard to know what you don’t know. But more of us need to be publishing and creating tools like you are in order to make sure the research has impact.
So, kudos!
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Thanks, Ryan!
We are indeed working on some iOS bridges. It’s a multi-pronged approach. We’ll say more on the blog and Hook productivity forum.
I agree. I certainly wouldn’t blame anyone. There is so much to read. And the fact is that cognitive science does not focus on productivity.
The Cognitive Productivity books are the first systematic attempt to develop a concept of productivity that is grounded in cognitive science. In the first Cognitive Productivity book, I used the expression “broad cognitive science”. Earlier this week, I published a draft manifesto for integrative design-oriented (a blog post on it here). “Integrative design-oriented” (IDO) is a more apt expression. I’m hoping the IDO concept will get significant traction in cognitive science and AI. The recent (very important) book, Rebooting AI addresses a subset of what the manifesto’s about.
Thanks again for the words of encouragement.
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I figured I needed to actually write something on my site before I actually claimed that it was somewhere I actually write
You can find my site at RhymesWithDiploma.com (or luo.ma if you prefer the shorter version).
And look! An actual post!
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Too many to list them all, but my main blogs are:
which is my dev blog and,
which is random, indeiweb stuff.
Too infrequent, but I’m on my way (it’s in German, because that’s where I come from)
So many good reads mentioned in this thread. Thanks for starting it @beck. I now have a new folder in Newsify for MPU blogs! Ryan, I enjoyed your Demon Haunted World post! It fit with something I was writing and I linked over to you.
Seeing all these blogs reminds me of the internet before social media. 
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I have a blog that I use to store instructions for difficult computer things that I do infrequently and therefore always forget how to do next time. I also post solutions to problems I have solved because I could not find anyone on internet who already solved it.
I update it a few times a year.
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Great! Looking forward to reading it.
It is pretty neat that some version of the “blogosphere” has survived this far. Which reminds me… one thing that seems to have lessened are the “ping back” mechanics common to pre-social network blogs, when WordPress and Blogger were more popular, relative to all our other platform options. I’ve heard that micro.blog allows blogs to feed into its social network system, which feels like pingbacks. I need to look into that.
On another tangent: how do all you bloggers feel about Medium these days? Do you cross-post at all? Happy to create a linked post to discuss off of this thread.
Ah, yes, blog-to-blog conversation via ping backs were/are fantastic. That’s one reason I’m still on WordPress as it still seems to lend itself to that kind of thing. And yes, Micro.blog helps as do various possible plugins for WordPress. It really helps to capture/promote/grow a sense of community between blogs which can be a wonderful thing.
I still have a Medium account but stopped cross posting to it a long time ago. Medium felt somewhat unstable to me so my visits diminished.
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Thank you for starting this thread. Lots of good stuff here. I’ll chime in with mine, 40Tech.com. I started it 10 years ago, and it was very busy back in the day, with a couple other writers writing with me. When I transitioned into fatherhood my writing trailed off significantly, although I still enjoy it.
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thanks 
.
this was a while ago and done by someone else. But according to <script src="https://cogzest.com/wp-content/themes/twentyfifteen/js/html5.js"></script> which would be Twenty Fifteen - WordPress theme | WordPress.org English (Canada).
This topic led me to write
Thanks beck for the inspiration! I had been meaning to blog about writing for quite a while!
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I’ve been wondering for quite a while whether to publish there. And I might. I became concerned about the possibility that it might shut down one day, or have further changes in terms of service, or the like. I’m already spread out on multiple websites. Still it has advantages, so perhaps later. But I think I’m more likely to write elsewhere (I got an invitation from The Conversation (the Canadian instance of that site) and have an article in the works with them; and have other publishers on my radar/vice-versa).
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This is an old blog. The blog only worked up to the point where I was unable to get people to agree to do the short interviews.
The Conversation seems like a great platform. I saw a presentation from the Canadian group (hello from Calgary/sometimes NL) where they talked about their traffic—huge reach because of partnerships they’ve worked out.
That’s the trick, really. Doesn’t matter where you publish as long as you reach whoever you intend to. Half the reason I publish quietly—on a blog with limited readership, that is—is not to have reach with every post. It’s more of a practice. I like trying on ideas. That said, I personally need to develop a better eye for when a piece of writing deserves a larger audience—and cultivate some places that will be interested and able to share it more widely.
To that end, Medium seems a bit odd for that purpose. Since they’ve developed more sophisticated curation tools, I’m not sure it’s a great place to publish generically anymore. Better to find an appropriate curator on Medium and partner up.
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Extremely low volume (My goal is 4 posts a year 
) & mostly farming related at
Desert Weyr Farm Blog
Also very low volume regarding LambTracker. Like all programmers documentation is my weakness and I rarely get it done.
LambTracker
And for more mini-blog irregular updates on farming life check out my twitter feed. The only regular updates are during lambing when each new lamb is tweeted with pictures.
OogieM on Twitter
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