However, in the past few weeks, my attention had shifted away from blogging. This shift is reflected on my latest site re-design and my switch to WordPress (see Swallowed my blog in a single gulp!). This shift happened when I signed up on Friendfeed and bought an iPhone. For instance, I’ve never used Twitter that much until I had an iPhone. SMS is very expensive here in the U.S. and mobile web browsing was a joke until mobile Safari (via iPhone) came along. Since then my blogging had slowed down, but my microblogging and FF activities exploded with a whole lotta linking!

My original intention with my blog is for personal expression and to share information. But since my attention bandwidth is limited, I find myself doing more streaming than actual blogging. That’s when I decided to shift my focus from blogging to (hyper)streaming.

An aside: I had a discussion on Friendfeed the other day. Someone suggested to get rid of the word “blog.” I think the word blog would continue to stick, and rightly so. “Lifestreaming” is the latest buzzword. Lifestreaming sounds hip. But I agree that aggregation is not lifestreaming. That’s why I coined my own term, (hyper)streaming, wherein (hyper) can be anything you want to stream.

But this doesn’t mean that I will no longer be blogging my heart out. In fact, I’ll be blogging more consciously. Instead of short bursts of blog entries, I’ll reserve my blog for longer posts–more focused distillation of the ideas, information, and opinion accumulated from my (hyper)streaming activity with some sprinkle of personal reflection.

Life is but a stream…

The next challenge is how to incorporate streaming activities into one’s site. Will it be self-hosted or will it be via a lifestreaming service?

For a self-hosted solution, WordPress users can use the Lifestream WP plugin. I gave it a try. It works great. I love the date-based aggregation, feed grouping, and customization. I’d recommend it to anyone who prefers total control of their streaming content.

As for lifestreaming services, there are a number of competing services out there (e.g. Socialthing, Strands [currently on beta]). However, I choose to ride with Friendfeed. Other lifestreaming services have better filtering options and interface, but the thing that attracted me most to Friendfeed is my interaction with a network of intelligent and conscientious users. This is reflected by the quality of comments and shared contents I see on the site every day. That’s why I’ve decided to incorporate Friendfeed on the main page of my site.

I even created a dedicated (hyper)stream page: http://www.c4chaos.com/hyperstream/

Why do I prefer a lifestream service than a self-hosted lifestream? Simple. It’s the social aspect. As I’ve mentioned in a Friendfeed discussion on Lifestream, it boils down to the primary intention of the user. Self-hosted lifestreams work best if the user is more focused on building a personal aggregated online presence (e.g. for purposes of personal branding, online resume, etc.). But if the primary intention is to connect with other “lifestreamers” elsewhere, then Friendfeed (or similar) services is the way to go. I find that comments and likes add spice and more value to my stream. There’s more serendipity that way.

That said, it’s a gamble to pick which service would outlast the others. Although I feel safe with Friendfeed, I’m glad that I can always activate my Lifestream WP plugin with a mouse click.

That’s all for now. Now excuse me while I hyperfocus on (hyper)streaming.

To pay this good karma forward my task is to nominate seven other blogs for this award. It’s a challenge to narrow it down. I read so many blogs I feel that they are one continuous stream. But since I have to, here are some not-so popular (i.e. not on the A-list) blogs I often read, in no particular order:

(Note: I’d nominate Integral Options Cafe and Buddhist Geeks too but since they already got nominated I’ll make room for some more.)

1. Indistinct Union – a mystical, theological and political blog with integral flavor.
2. Julian Walker’s Blog – one of the most intellectually stimulating and active blogs on Gaia Community.
3. Albert Klamt’s Blog – a blogger in Germany with fluffy European perspective.
4. Jim Paredes @ Multiply – musings from a well-rounded, uber-creative, and fluffy artist.
5. Numinous Nonsense – when Vince-dawg is not on looong meditation retreats he blogs brilliantly.
6. Integral Praxis – a group blog by Integral Research Group linking to interesting stuff.
7. P2P Foundation – researching, documenting and promoting peer to peer practices.

Note to nominees/awardees: When you read this post, here is what you are invited to do:

1. Add the logo of the award to your blog
2. Add a link to the person who awarded it to you
3. Nominate at least 7 other blogs
4. Add links to those blogs on your blog
5. Leave a message for your nominees on their blogs

Thanks and keep on blogging brilliant stuff!

My readers might be wondering why it took me so long before I made the switch. I have no excuse but sheer laziness and procrastination. I’ve been delaying the inevitable for two years now, but it only took me a couple of days to complete the transition.

I chose DreamHost as my web hosting service because it has everything I need at an affordable price (much cheaper than what I was paying for Typepad all these years). It took me less than 10 minutes to sign up and get WordPress running. I spent most of my time picking the right WordPress theme, and tweaking it to my liking. I wanted it to be simple yet flexible. Thank goodness for Simplr.

[A note on RSS subscriptions: If you're reading this on a RSS reader, you can check out my new design here.) If you're subscribed to my Feedburner feed (http://feeds.feedburner.com/C4Chaos) then you don't have to do anything. But if you're subscribed to my old Typepad feed, then I request that you update your RSS reader with the new feed URL.]

But the transition is not without its drawbacks. The biggest drawback is that all my permalinks in the past five years will soon be dead links. If you’ve linked to my entries in the past, my apologies for the inconvenience. My Typepad account is paid for until December. After that all the Google ranking I’ve built up would vanish in a heartbeat. I would’ve been able to preserve the permalinks if I had mapped my Typepad blog to my domain. But hindsight is 20/20. So I’ll start again from scratch. I’ll work my way up on page rank. Then leave the rest to my Google karma.

This transition also marks a shift in my blogging. In the past weeks I noticed that I’m blogging less and micro-blogging more, via Friendfeed and Twitter. Then I read this ReadWriteWeb article about the future of blogging. That sealed the deal for me. I realized that I’ve been doing more “lifestreaming” than blogging way back before lifestreaming was hip. I needed to integrate the two. Hence, the new streamlined design. You’ll notice that I’ve incorporated my Friendfeed feed. I’ve grown to love Friendfeed like I love Flickr.

Lifestreaming is a buzzword nowadays. Services like Friendfeed and Socialthing make it easy to aggregate trails of our online activities. However, we don’t actually stream our “life.” What we stream are snippets of our awareness–our personal and social experiences, and any story on the internet that grabs our attention. We share our awareness with our unique self-expression in our quest to build psychic capital online. So I think a more accurate description is awareness streaming, or consciousness streaming. But those terms are not as cool as lifestreaming. So I’ll just call it (hyper)streaming, where “hyper” can be any aspect of our consciousness that we stream.

So starting today, my old tag line–”blogging with passion and compassion“–is now replaced with (hyper)streaming with passion and compassion. It’s still the same blogging, but with passionate and compassionate streaming!

To all new readers and visitors: Welcome! I appreciate you stopping by. Please stick around. Get to know me more by perusing my archives. I hope you enjoy my musings.

To all my long time readers: Thank you very much for your time and attention all these years. I have enjoyed every digital bits of our interaction. I hope you continue to find this humble online presence meaningful. I’ll do my best to stay true to my original intention: share my thoughts and reflections with passion and compassion. You’d be glad to know that I followed my own advice and swallowed my blog in a single gulp!

Here’s to more (hyper)streaming ahead. Kick ass be still.

Pardon the mess while I swallow my old blog in a single gulp!

Dear friends and visitors: Just want to let you know that even though I’m not blogging on my main rabbit hole, I’m out there in cyberspace microblogging and doing a whole lotta linking. If you’re interested to follow and share stuff with me, below are the links. Thanks!

Microblogging: http://twitter.com/c4chaos / http://coolmel.gaia.com/status

A whole lotta linking: http://friendfeed.com/c4chaos / http://coolmel.gaia.com/activity

Damn. I knew it. I guess I’m compensating for my not being too chatty in person. I think I should scale down a bit.

"Flaherty, who studies conditions such as hypergraphia (an uncontrollable urge to write) and writer’s block, also looks to disease models to explain the drive behind this mode of communication. For example, people with mania often talk too much. “We believe something in the brain’s limbic system is boosting their desire to communicate,” Flaherty explains. Located mainly in the midbrain, the limbic system controls our drives, whether they are related to food, sex, appetite, or problem solving. “You know that drives are involved [in blogging] because a lot of people do it compulsively,” Flaherty notes. Also, blogging might trigger dopamine release, similar to stimulants like music, running and looking at art." [read more]

Exactly. So I might be suffering (or benefiting) from hyperbloggia?

I’ve
been blogging for about five years now and I can say that blogging has
been, and continue to be, therapeutic for me. It’s so therapeutic that
I even came up with my own blogging manifesto (aka Kosmic Blogging). Based on my experience, blogging is more effective if you blog bits and pieces of you and if your intention is focused on blogging for personal growth. For the spiritually-minded, blogging can also be a form of spiritual practice.

But the bottom line for me is this: Like any activity in life, if you approach blogging with passion and compassion, serendipity naturally follows.

"A growing work force of home-office laborers and entrepreneurs,
armed with computers and smartphones and wired to the hilt, are toiling
under great physical and emotional stress created by the
around-the-clock Internet economy that demands a constant stream of
news and comment.

"Of course, the bloggers can work elsewhere,
and they profess a love of the nonstop action and perhaps the chance to
create a global media outlet without a major up-front investment. At
the same time, some are starting to wonder if something has gone very
wrong. In the last few months, two among their ranks have died suddenly." [read more]

I could relate to this because I also work from home. And I blog a lot too. Thank goodness I don’t get paid by the blog. There are other things I do on the job. Blogging is my creative and reflective outlet. It’s like doing yoga for me. I actually do my blogging on my free time, or from time to time when I’m compelled to share information or reflect on something.

Working from home is a double-edged sword. If you love your job (like me) you’re more likely to end up logging more hours than with a regular nine-to-five. The challenge is to organize and prioritize, and to not get lost in the stream of information bombarding us constantly online.

Oh rats! It’s way past my bedtime already, again!

Serendipitously, one of my favorite ScienceBloggers, Coturnix (author of A Blog Around The Clock) eloquently captured my own philosophy on blogging with his closing statements on his very compassionate and passionate take on science blogging.

"Building and keeping a community, making friends, networking,
proselytizing my pet causes (e.g., Open Access) and making good clear
explanations of basics easy to find by Google are reasons why I blog.
And I will never tell you how and why you should blog yourself. None of
my business." [read more]

Exactly! Just replace the pet cause "Open Access" (note: I’m for Open Access too) with "Integral Stuff", add blog for personal growth, swallow my blog in a single gulp, then this is the essence of what I call, Kosmic Blogging.

See Long Views: Decision: Blogs vs. The New York Times