Mutapoem

Manchester-based blogger and poet Matt Dalby writes with news of a very interesting project: a poetry wiki. He says: "It is called 'mutapoem', and was conceived and launched (twice - in 2004 and again in improved form in 2008) in Manchester, from where I also moderate the site.

Mutapoem is a poem without final form or single author, it is a collaborative poem in the form of a wiki, to which anyone can add text, images, links, html, audio or video. More detail is available at the site itself - http://mutapoem.wikispaces.com/mutapoem - especially the page 'what is mutapoem?'

Basically the background is that mutapoem was inspired by one of Nobuo Sekine's 'Phase of Nothingness' sculptures, in which huge pieces of oil clay are placed in galleries for visitors to reshape as they like. They retain their plasticity and continually change. I was impressed by both the absence of any definitive form for the piece, and by the democratic process that enables everyone to contribute to the evolution of a perpetually unfinished work."

Pretty cool, eh? Get on there and start writing!

Manchester WordPress User Group

Loads of people have been telling me for ages how elegant and versatile WordPress is, but despite the best intentions I haven't gotten too far in exploring it - I'm one of those people stubbornly hanging on to Blogger because they know it well and have three years' worth of blog posts invested in it.

If you're one of the enlightened, you'll want to know about the brand-new Manchester WordPress User Group. Its first ever meeting is on Wednesday January 16 2008, from 5.30pm to around 7.30pm at MDDA’s offices.

They say: "Are you a blogger, designer or developer who uses the WordPress blogging platform? If so, why not come along to the first meeting of the Manchester WordPress User Group.The meeting will feature two talks – one on designing for WordPress and the other on security tips. The rest of the evening will be given over to ‘show and tell’ knowledge sharing and networking." Free, refreshments included. Full details here.

Social networking : enough already

"I've added you as a friend on Facebook". I'm getting lots of these emails lately, and I can only guess that every time someone signs up to Facebook, there's some button they click that sends these messages to their whole contacts list. Cut it out. I've got social networking fatigue. Between blogging and checking in with the MySpace (and how come the Log Lady hasn't added me yet?) do I really have time to invest in a whole new social networking platform?

Up to this point I've been a big champion of the new ways that technology has helped us collaborate, how it has juiced up creative endeavours and been generally a good thing for the way writers, artists and musicians work. But lately I feel like all this electroclutter, and these snippets of circuitry-aided pseudointeraction, are becoming a little distracting. When I'm checking who's written what on my wall, that's time I'm not accomplishing work (which also involves gazing at a computer, making me less inclined to do it in my free time) or having more meaningful direct interactions with real people.

I had a similar angst about signing up with MySpace, and delayed that until it was clear that, despite its general horridness, it was one of the most effective ways to keep up with cultural goings-on around here (in the absence of, oh, I don't know... a good listings magazine.) Because everyone else was using it by then. If the same thing happens with Facebook, and the benefits seem to be worth the trouble, I may decide to join up. But it makes me tired thinking about it.

Some of this social networking stuff totally turns me off from the get-go. Twitter seems to involve broadcasting inanities about my mood and whereabouts to a whole bunch of people and getting deluged with similar uselessly annoying updates from them. Why would I want to do that? Plus, the name is ridiculous.

Other stuff is more compelling. When I read the Tech section of the Guardian I sometimes regret not having a presence on Second Life, like I'm missing out on some virtual party. But there's something really sad about those pixelated pictures in the newspaper of busty/muscular avatars congregating on some imaginary island. And really, who needs a Second Life? I'm still quite enjoying the first one, thanks very much, and as it is I never have enough time to do all the things I want to do, read all the books I want to read, have actual conversations with actual breathing people, etc. That is not living.

(Image from Moriash Moreau's blog, which details his daily existence on Second Life)

Manchester Blogggers needs you

Listen up for a special Valentine's Day message from the Manchester Bloggers Aggregator:

It needs some love. It hasn't been working properly, mainly because the guy who was maintaining it, Lord Rich, moved back to Bradford and doesn't have time to do it any more. Poor sad, neglected aggregator. Surely there's a Manchester technogeek out there who can come to the rescue?

If you just read the above and are now scratching your head wondering what the aggregator is, and why you should give a rat's ass about it, I'll tell you. The aggregator grabs all of our blog posts in one big feed and puts them up there on the screen in one easy-to-find place. It's the place to go if you want to see what Manchester bloggers are writing about, but don't want to spend hours visiting blog after blog. If you've signed up, it's brought readers to your blog. It's a good thing for all of us.

Rich writes: "Right now, somebody else taking over working on it sounds good. I'd be happy to hand it over to anybody who has time to spend on it. However, I'd warn you that it needs more than a little maintenance work - I'm thinking starting afresh with some more robust software is the way to go, and I definitely don't have the time to do that."

Won't you help? If you want to help save the aggregator, email me on themanchizzle at gmail dot com and I'll put you in touch with Rich. I'd do it myself except that using blogger is about as far as I go with technology and that.

On t'wireless

If you've been wondering what's going on with all this wireless city stuff you've been hearing about, you can get the straight dope over at the Manchester Digital Development Agency's ONE-Manchester blog.

For those of you who are just tuning in, Manchester has launched an ambitious bid to create a free wireless network that would cover all of Greater Manchester (an area of some 400 square miles) and serve 2 million people. The IP- (internet Protocol) City project would be partially funded by the Government's Digital Challenge initiative. The MDDA just got their application in last week - oy, I bet that was a big stack of paper.

Big kudos to the forward-thinking folks at MDDA who came up with the idea of blogging about the process - this kind of transparency is all too rare in government.