Building Robots (for World Domination)

Image (cc) Cameron Daigle

I happened to chance upon the brilliant Twitter bot @doskvolscores and it prompted me to start thinking about bots and automation.

I had been playing with some of the old automation stuff the blog was set up with long ago; it seems the feed aggregators are mostly gone, as RSS has gone out of fashion, but the feeds are still going strong. They're what power a lot of the links in the sidebar as well as the blogroll, so I started seeing what I could do with them.

5 Ways to Support The Blogosphere (And Why You Should)

Image (cc) Ivy Dawned, on Flickr

Way back when, round about 2010, there was something called the RPG blogosphere.  It was awesome. It was like some kind of interconnected network of blogs, a web that went worldwide. Then with the increasing uptake of "social media" the blogosphere dwindled - but now it's back I think it's important that we keep it running.

Comment
We like comments, that's why we have them enabled.  These blogs are public spaces to share thoughts, ideas, and resources where feedback is always welcome; nobody likes to think they're just shouting into The Void.  As a bonus, comments on blogs add links back to the author's blog and links mean a) more curious traffic shuttles between them and b) better SEO because it counts as a word of mouth recommendation as far as search engine spiders are concerned. It was part of the original design philosophy and it's why spammers spam and why some blogs have limitations on who can comment, or require moderation.

This is a social medium, so lets be social.  And it only starts there...