Are blogs making Swaylocks obsolete?
Nope. Cause that’s the next change coming down the pike.
As was made evident with Mike’s reply to your questions, I don’t think he will ever let Sway’s become obsolete.
Not to mention, would you rather go to 2000 differnet blogs to get your info or would you rather come to sways and get all that information not only in one spot but you have all the greats feeding off each others energy (so to speak)
People have been visiting a zillion different blogs for fresh stoke, info, pics for quite a while now…
**Anti obsolesce**
coming down the pike
alternative allusions
search pike get pike st market
the pike in long beach
the pike bath house
and yet the lingering recollect
that a pike was an instrument
of battle in the traditional shape
of a spear. the definition of Pike found
=a large road…didn’t erase
the image of somthing
dripping down a spear.
that said ,
I feel just as outside as ever
I just have not bought the blog
I guess i am just not that kind of self starter
having sombody else’s comments or insight
as a point of departure ahhhh or topic to bend to
alternative view is perhaps a product
of the bar or the campfire
culture I was born into
I have not attended the campfire
nor the bar for some time as my
geography and social disposition
are no longer contingent on either.
camp marwedell in mendicino
had great campfires,
we often met my dad after work on payday
at the bar down the street from work
at fourth and bryant before they
moved the water department to Islas creek
by the new produce market.
there was always a bar where
my dad met with the guys from work
to shoot the shi0 or gather theselves after a wake
the blog has not struck me more than like an editorial
enterprise that dosen’t seem to have invited comentary inclusion like swaylocks.
the meeting of the minds over time has ranged comfortbly to include many
of repute and not.and coments can be made ,reacted , ignored , disected.
misinerpreted,argued , expulsed ,reconfigured…ad to that infinitum
and there you have it.
when we just get the cheu toob feature hooked up we will be in
the nex morph when we can be within the tube within the tube
like the
reflections in the reflections
all the while the blue campfire licks
mind sparks into the night sky
that turn to stars in distant
galaxies like magic…
these thoughts of ours are food
if you have the capacity to digest such.
Some people develop lactose intolerance
I kinda like this format,
never developed a taste for blog
maybe it’s just been the person cooking.
…ambrose…
blog
kinda sounds like
haggis
IMO blogs are indeed slowly choking forums. why is simple. they lend themselves to web2 comunittys better. forums become cliquey and institutionlized very quickly. thats up to forum owners to put the intrests of the comunity before there own. its a balancing act with so many using WEB2 comunitys for target marketing.
As they pertain to Swaylocks, for the visual candy, maybe, but for meaningful discussion or detailed insight, not at all.
Blogs are very much one-sided, in that comments aren’t a very good communication tool so the person who runs the blog tends to have the dominant voice in the discussion.
The other downside to blogs is that the information is very decentralized. It’s hard to find specific info without hunting through numerous blogs. That’s why Swaylocks is the best at what it does. It puts a huge resource of surfboard construction related knowledge and information all in one centralized place that is quite easy to find. Pretty much anyone who asks surfboard design related questions on other forums is usually pointed to Swaylocks as the end-all resource.
Well that’s a is a question each answers for themselves.
Blogs are hardly communities.
Heck had you posted your question on your blog, chances are I would not have read it, let alone posted a reply…
As for the clique-iness paul refers to, imho that is oft a question of perception, I have rarely if ever felt in or out of the swaylockian “in-crowd” I do see it pop up from time to time in the trainwreck threads but in the real stuff there isn’t that much of it and for the most part real questions get real answers, this too me, is the essence of a community.
folks also get in touch outside of the medium swaylocks, people hook up at swaydays, people join up group order gear, some of us order boards from other swaylockians, others still send kit to swaybrus to have them shape it and send it around heck… a online community is pretty much like an offline community in the sense that you tend to get what you give, and it’s just a serious as you make it.
As for change, well alot of folks think change is good thing nowadays… I for one do…
Can’t wait for the swayblog… great idea and it will take off like a rocket imho…
I don’t come here to look at pictures of surfboards.
I come here for useful build guidance and informed discussion on surfboard construction.
There is no blog that covers the content which makes this place the goldmine it is.
Forums made smaller and more personal websites obsolete because they made contributions of words and photos immediate- immediate response and contributions due to advancing tech. The pendulum swings always and then blogs came on…back and forth website-forum-blog-next? But like others said there needs to be a clearing house/focal point/hub on that informaton highway. A site like this can incorporate blogs and continue to grow, maybe even adding value to the blog universe.
Whatever will be “next” is perhaps in a pipeline somewhere but right now nobody knows what it will finally be: what will be revealed, what will work, what will be accepted.
Nels
My quick thought is - It could be many of the folks here who take the time, from time to time, to share valuable knowledge, may not have the interest, or time, to do a whole blog thing… E.g., Ask Greg L. epoxy, design, construction, questions… Who knows…
Sways is close, with some inquisitive work, to being that clearing house type of deal for info, with the bonus of the cyber-relationship possibility… I’ve met, communicated with, and “got” stuff from freakin’ famous people… Ha!
Gotta love this place.
Good blog = one house in a neighborhood
Good forum = community
Put 'em all together and you get a nice place to be…
True that. Blogs are nice when it comes to looking at someone’s particular work, say ot appreciate their resin swirls or some aspect of their shaping. But here you have everything, and everyone else has it too. There is no way I would learn as much from sifting through hundreds of self-absorbed blogs as I have from skimming the archives and asking a few questions here.
…I do still spend time digging through the occassional self-absorbed blog though! 
There is undeniably some good stuff out there. But it would have to be one hell of a blog to make me check back every day and be stoked on something I saw/read every time…
My theory is that it’s not an either/or situation. I believe a site can have both forums and blogging. In fact, some of the best community sites gracefully combine the two. That’s my goal for Swaylock’s.
Forums are really good for discussing topics. They lend well to back and forth, conversation style communication. Great for posting questions, asking for support, working out an idea or problem amongst a group. Blog posts are more like articles – show and tell if you will. They’re better for an individual who has an idea, concept, or story to share to a wider audience. Back and forth, while possible, is not the main purpose.
In the context of Swaylock’s, blogs will serve as the platform for people to share more complete, polished contributions. A tutorial on how to sharpen a planer. A photo essay on the life cycle of a new board. An account of an event. A travelogue. etc.
This may change the nature of the forums, however, it shouldn’t change the nature of Swaylock’s.
Mike
I’ll take swaylock’s over blogs anyday. It seems that blogs and websites are for puffing the feathers of the author, or selling something. Nobody there to call them on a bad idea. No real way to converse.
I like swaylock’s because its a conversation with many. I’d rather go to a party with lots of interesting people than have one boor corner me and tell me his vision of the world. Anyplace where I can listen in and even participate in a conversation with true legends of surfing is a plus in my book! I’ve read the thoughts of a world #2 surfer (Cheyne Horan) and the guys who make the pros their boards. Pretty special to me!
Some blogs are cool if in context, meaning something I’m interested in as well as the poster. Generally, some strangers family vacation and his first attempt on making a fish don’t do much for me.
just a word of caution as we’re spending alot of time trying to educate our user base.
based on our information protection information security experts and what we’ve shown to our unknowning clients, blogs are one of the single points of malware contamination in the entire web.
If you browse alot around the blogisphere its most likely that you will get infected with a bot virus who’s only intention is to record and pass on your login information to all your financial and personal data or to compromise your PC to commit crimes elsewhere anonymously for the same crime syndicate.
We’ve demo’d how this is easily done as alot of blogs bring in contaminated linkages to videos or pictures and most blogs don’t maintain a level of security or monitoring that perhaps a community website might feel obligated to do.
That’s why most blogs are banned at most corporate networks now because they are just too dangerous.
unfortunately most of the off the shelf software the public buys can’t keep up with the growing sophistication of the malware/crimeware problem. Symantec would charge us $10k-$20k to do a full scale forensic examination on a customers PC for criminal or legal investigations should there be a compromise that’s led to a large loss of funds or data.
If most major businesses and other entities block such activities as well as those you trust your financial data with you will eventually find it more and more difficult to try and get your funds back which is now sitting in some account in an untouchable country if your PC was compromised due to your online activities. This push back to the source of the compromise is already happening in many places because the losses can keep being written off on behalf of “customer service”. Kind of like looking at your 401K investments this past 12 months.
This is not to say that the concept of what communities and blogs is not the future. Its just that the net in its current open architecture was never designed with this new criminal intent in mind and as such is only propagating this online aids-like epidemic of malware to more and more households and busineses…
registered device ids will eventually become the norm in the future and alias’s and trolls will have to become a thing of the past if the net is to police the crime incentive out of itself…The network will have to know exactly who you are and where your are all times during your sessions or else… Its too bad because it was a brilliant idea that was taken advantage of by many parties good and bad.
Just some hopefully helpful advice for all those perusing the net and posting on facebook, myspace, and other personal blogs out there…
the percentages of becoming a victim of one of these crimes are increasing exponentially… Be safe
Interesting post. And some things to keep in mind are that for one, your (mine) perceived anonymity is between you and me, the ISP and by extension the “law” (can) know exactly who and where we are. Additionally, the perceived anonymity is of no relevance to the cybercrime Oneula describes, these guys would still try regardless of digi-id’s or cyber-gestapo practices being bumped around. The main issue is the quality of the infrastructure, the internet is currently like a safe depositbox that uses a granola bar as the key. Imho gov’ts should not be too concerned about our individual perceived anonymity between private parties but more concerned with getting proper infrastructure out there. People who publish bunk code should not be allowed to simply run a business off it. Of course this in itself would never be possible because, amongst others, it would entail the disestablishement of microsoft corp. So it’s a pipe dream to think the true problem will ever be tackled and hence, the only outcome that gov’ts and regulators have is draconian gestapo-like measures that will harm private individuals like you and me. The freakin joke is that some gov’t dig-id programs are soo flawed they will spawn a new crime wave in and of themselves and there is NOTHING we can do about it…
Hey mister regulator ever hear about an MD5 collision?