Academic

As we developed our new blog design, we decided that we liked our modest, but functional, sidebar. Nevertheless, we have added two features:

• The first feature isn't new to our blog, but a couple of us wanted our del.icio.us linkroll back. We lost it a couple of months ago when it inexplicably stopped displaying bullets. Fortunately, it works with the new blog design, and you can find it in the sidebar under the heading "Random Walk." The idea behind the linkroll is simply that all of us read lots of stuff that is linkable, and we don't always want to write a full-blown post when we find something interesting. This sleek widget (even sleeker if you get the Firefox extension) allows us to share the best of what we find.

• The second feature is the Twitter widget. We realize that  lots of people have complaints about Twitter -- and many people are agog over Friendfeed -- but these two applications seem quite different to us. In any event, we are going to experiment with Twitter because  ... well, because something is happening with micro-blogging, and we are interested to see where it leads. Remember that bit about "thinking by writing"? This feature was added in that spirit.

Of course, those who access Conglomerate through a reader can skip these features altogether, so I will be watching our subscriptions to see if we get a sudden spike.

UPDATE: Ok, I am a little slow on the uptake here, but just after I posted this, it occurred to me that Friendfeed = del.icio.us + Twitter + more. In other words, it seems to me that Friendfeed might do both of the things we are looking to accomplish with the two features described above, plus allow for more interaction with readers. The two features are just us pushing content, but Friendfeed allows comments on that content. Any Friendfeed users have thoughts about this?