I feel like a proud parent all over again.

Because of discussions at certain social web sites and this blog, along with the westXdesign blog, I have seen the following over the past few weeks:

A writer friend set up his own wordpress installation to host his blog and has been tricking it out almost continually since. It’s looking great!
Somerset Bob’s Place

A great Christian artist put up his site and album tracks on Virb.
Scott Wilder

ANOTHER great artist set HIS Virb up.
Sonic Real Estate

And a few other folks got on the LibraryThing, Meebo, Goodreads, BlinkList, Stumbleupon, and ClipMarks bandwagons.

I’ve had all kinds of new friend adds on all of these services, and in the process have met some really awesome people, discovered great new music, and even added a new podcast to my line up: Chaotic Christians.

I’m feeling the web 2.0 social love, and it’s great to have been able to play some small part in the evolution of each!

This 404 page is just too funny not to share it with you:

	This page cannot be displayed because you need some fresh air.
The page you are looking for is currently unavailable. Your ISP has told us that you’re on-line several hours everyday, and that just ain’t right.
Please, for the love of god, try the following: Don’t click the Refresh button. Go outside now. If you are about to spend another $100 at Amazon, then please contact Amazon Anonymous. To go outside, first click the Cyber Hypnosis menu, and then click Cold Water in the Face. On the Numb Ass tab, click Sedentary Back Pain. The Get Out of Your Chair settings should match those provided by your local area network (LAN) administrator. If your Evil Computer Addict persona has enabled it, we can examine your network and quickly discover a way to wake you up from your computer-induced stupor. If you would like Windows to try and discover them, click Detect Computer-Induced Stupor There are a host of things awaiting you in the outside world: fishing, skiing, skeet shooting, triathlons, PTA meetings, and dentist appointments, for example. If you are unable to get up, click here and your power strip will emit a large enough shock to scare you back to your senses. If that doesn’t work, then we give up. You are officially in need of some serious help. Dial 1-800-GET-HELP on your computer’s keypad to reach a mental hospital near you. Click the Back button to melt your computer. Cannot find reality files Internet Exploder

See the original

Over on the westXdesign site, I posted an introduction to the social uses of the internet. Sometimes I have a hard time explaining what this ‘newness’ of community on the web is all about. I forget that very few people started where I did, and all of this is new and novel and amazing to them. Networks of friends, interacting through comments, chat, sharing files, pictures, videos, information. But that’s what the internet has ALWAYS been about. The only difference is the way in which it is happening. Today, it’s easier, and more interconnected. People don’t have to know anything about computers or programming to take part, and that wasn’t the case when I started.

Well, when DID you start, you ask….
without dating myself *too* much…
My first online community was a dial-up bulletin board which I interacted with using an Atari 800 and an 835 modem. That’s right. I wasn’t part of the Commodore crowd. And never joined the Apple bandwagon. It was Atari for me, and continued to be Atari all the way through until I bought my first Windows based PC in 199-something. I don’t want to say what year I got that first PC because I continued using my Atari ST longer than I care to admit. By this time, I was dialing into a local network, and accessing the web using a text-based browser. That’s back when the web was small.

My first experience with true real-time internet-based networking and socialization was the MUD (Multi User Dimension/Domain/Dungeon whatever). Specifically: TCZ (The Chatting Zone). Which still operates today. It’s through TCZ that I got hooked on the social aspects of the internet. I had friends from all over the world there, and no matter what time of day I logged in, there they were. I still have fond memories of many conversations and shenanigans involving Predator. I was Pegasus in case any of you reading care to know….

I built on my BASIC programming skills, and just naturally migrated to CGI and HTML. It was all fun and games, I loved the challenge and the friendships. By 1996, I was fully immersed in the online world, and have grown and changed as much as it has. So the social circles we have today with MySpace, Virb, Jaiku, Twitter, Flickr, RSS feeds…it’s all natural. This is where we’ve been heading all along. It’s where I’VE been heading all along…