onfocus

I was drawn to the Web early and I was able to contribute to some early tools for publishing online. I was part of a group of people in the late 90's who identified themselves as "from the Web" or "Web natives". We were building tools that took advantage of the new medium while questioning some of the old metaphors and ways of doing things. There were some common values like openness and sharing ideas. It wasn't all free (as in beer) information and hacky sacks, but it felt like we were making something different from the status quo.

Over the years, and with millions more online, my identity as a Web Native has faded. We're all a part of the Web now. But I often feel like an outsider in my own country. The personal Web feels a lot less personal these days (get off my lawn Facebook!) and the money horserace of startup culture isn't very exciting to me. So I often find myself looking around the modern Web thinking, "Is this what I helped build?"



Luckily the more personal Web is still out there. It just doesn't have its own press. Last weekend, Andy gave that community a voice. The XOXO Conference brought together people who have gone around normal systems to find an audience for their work. The message, 'get out there and make things' from successful outsiders is inspiring, and they feel more like the direct descendants of those early Web days which I'm very happy to see.

I thought the talks themselves touched on three main topics for creators: lifestyle, infrastructure, and problems to fix. Basically, people talked about the way they work, tools that help them, and problems that keep them from working as well as that could.

I'll just share a few quotes (well, paraphrases) that I jotted down in my notebook. First, life/work:

Work at something you're passionate about because if you're successful you're going to have to do it all the time. — Dan Provost & Tom Gerhardt (Studio Neat)

Emily Winfield Martin gave a great talk about working toward her dream of writing a children's book. Some of her thoughts:

• Do small things and put them out there.
• Audience is the alchemy that makes things happen.
• Misfits can make a place for themselves.

Along those lines, Dan Harmon (creator of the show Community) said that work and audience can be like two people who are separated. It's better to stay put than move around. The people who are looking for you will find you eventually.



Kickstarter and Etsy were the two most frequently mentioned pieces of infrastructure. (Those two are helping put over $1 billion into the economy this year.) I was also surprised to hear R. Stevens thank Apple, Amazon, and Paypal for figuring out micropayments. People are used to spending $4 here and $10 there for things online.

Newer pieces of infrastructure like VHX and CASH Music are working on solving problems for artists. Maggie Vail and Jesse Von Doom from CASH Music described those problems and why they're working on tools to help. Jesse mentioned that current systems exist for mass audiences. Some art is not going to be mainstream, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't exist. He also mentioned that disruption is easy; fixing things is hard. For them, disruption is about more than just tearing down what we already have.

Another problem that came up frequently is copying. The speakers seemed to think that was part of the cost of doing business. I liked the way Bre Pettis put it best: "How can we share in a way that encourages innovation over direct copying?" The underlying assumption there is that sharing is good. I'm encouraged that there wasn't more talk about how to clamp down and protect your intellectual property.



Beyond the substance of the talks, XOXO was fun personally. I got to catch up with friends in an inspiring atmosphere. Well done, Andy and Andy. You made me proud of the Web again.

I'll be in San Francisco next week for The Future of Web Apps conference/summit. Looks like a fun conference with great speakers. And it's always great to be in SF—see (a few of) ya there.

A week or so ago, a page by Professor Solomon called The Twelve Principles made the link rounds. The prof lays out a 12-step plan for finding any lost object. Most of the principles are mental tricks to get you back to the place you lost a physical object: your keys, your glasses, your cellphone, etc.

Unfortunately, the principles don't translate well to digital objects like URLs. You didn't stick that URL for the Xbox hacking How-To in your junk drawer, and it's not likely to be stuck in the "Eureka Zone" under your keyboard. But I lose URLs all the time. I remember something I saw on the web a couple weeks ago and I can't figure out how to get there again.

I don't have anything close to a 12-principle system for finding lost URLs, but I thought it'd be fun to examine my haphazard ways of re-finding web things. These are probably obvious, but I thought collecting them together would help me start a system for finding those lost pages, blog posts, and other digital artifacts that I'd like to see again.

1. Google - As you already know, Google is great at finding things, and I can usually get back to old URLs by remembering keywords for the document. Even if I don't find exactly what I was after, I can sometimes find good substitute information on the same subject. Unfortunately, a query like "SQL Remove Duplicates" will bring up thousands of documents, and if I'm looking for a specific bit of code I found once for removing duplicate records in a database the search has to go to the next stage.

2. Browse Browser History - Ctrl-H in the browser will bring up your surfing history and it can be a lifesaver if I know I visited the URL within the last week or two. It's especially helpful if I can remember the approximate time I was visiting the page I want to find, and I sort the history by date. But because browser histories only show the domain and page title, it's not very useful if I simply remember the subject of the page. I don't think of pages in terms of the domains they're hosted on, I think in terms of the page's content. (Searching your browser cache with something like Google Desktop might be better because you can search the full text of your browsing history, but I haven't started using this regularly.)

3. Revisit Web Haunts - Chances are good that I probably found the link I'm looking for at one of the sites I read regularly. Since I follow hundreds of sites with the news reader Bloglines, this can be a big search. Unfortunately the "Search My Subscriptions" feature at Bloglines isn't working for me, so generally I'll try to narrow down which site would have had the URL and then go back in time for each site individually using the "Display items within the last x" feature. Then Ctrl-F can help me find specific keywords within past posts. Google can also come in handy here. If I know I spotted a link about SQL on O'Reilly Radar, I can use the site: keyword like this: site:radar.oreilly.com SQL.

4. Search People - del.icio.us just rolled out a feature called your network that lets you track other del.icio.us members. There's no search yet, but you can browse back in time to see what people you know bookmarked at del.icio.us. I think this'll be handy, and I have gone back into specific people's del.icio.us archives looking for a URL. Having them all in one place is good for browsing, and saves time if I can't remember exactly who posted the link I'm looking for.

del.icio.us leads into my primary strategy for finding lost URLs: make links more findable before they're lost. Here's how I do it.

1. Use Web-based Bookmarks - I use del.icio.us (my bookmarks), but there are a bunch of web bookmark systems out there. When I come across a URL I know I'm going to want to get back to at some point, I'll click the del.icio.us bookmarklet and tag it. Searching my del.icio.us bookmarks is easy, but like your browser history, you're only searching titles, tags, and notes, not the full text of the site you bookmarked. Yahoo's My Web, and Google's Personalized Search both do better on the searching front—which leads to...

2. Turn on Search History - Privacy implications aside, I've found Google's Personalized Search handy for finding lost URLs even though I have mixed feelings about it. Once enabled, Google will remember every query you make and every search result you clicked on. You can then search just those sites that you clicked on in the past. Of course, that means everything you've searched for and every site you've clicked on is stored in a digital archive somewhere. I go back and forth, but privacy usually trumps findability for me so I might remove this option from my toolbox soon.

I should echo Professor Solomon's 13th principle: sometimes you can't find what you're after and you have to give up. The Web is ephemeral and pages come and go all the time. Even though it's maddening not to be able to get back to a document I know I've seen, that's life. What strategies am I missing?

You know all those political video clips you've downloaded over the past couple of months? The group of folks at Internet Veterans for Truth has a good collection of them in one place. Let's Blogroll!

More info at waxy: Internet Vets for Truth.