Scienceblogs.com is to Nature Network as Microsoft is to Apple.
You be the judge.
Richard P Grant
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Making the independent bloggers Linux?
Scienceblogs.com is to Nature Network as a local pub is to a member’s only golf club bar.
Well, you see, anyone can join NN. So that doesn’t quite work.
But I do like the Linux analogy. Buggy and irrelevant.
(OK, I’m running really really fast, now)
Oh and how fast can you run in your court shoes?
Anyone can join NN, but most people can find a golf club that will have them. I meant members only from the perspective of logging in to comment.
So you’re saying NN is a municipal golf course, not a private one?
I’d look quite good in a red hat.
bq. Oh and how fast can you run in your court shoes?
Well, you haven’t court him yet, have you?
I think Scienceblogs would have to be a pub with regular stand-up acts. We’re not allowed to be one of the acts, but we can heckle until we get chucked out. The bad news is that I think this might make NN the karaoke bar.
I likened it to a golf club because it has several features in common.
NN has a code of conduct and certain standards of behaviour. You can see this most often in the comments sections. Comments are more polite and accommodating of other views than ‘elsewhere’. If you have a dress code, I’d be worried. And you get to hit small balls with big sticks…no…wait…
To me it is more polite with civilized discussion and disagreement. The epitome of a private/restricted members club. Open this up to the wider internet, and the sense of community would be lost.
Scienceblogs.com is more sensationalist in some regards. There are some incredible bloggers there, and there are some attention seeking troll bait types as well. I wouldn’t dismiss the whole community on the strength of a handful of more outspoken members and would never generalize about their behaviour.
As for the independent bloggers, in some cases they weren’t invited to a party, in other cases they are doing perfectly fine and well on their own, and prefer it that way. As they are by far the larger group of the three (I’m guessing that it goes independent>scienceblogs.com>naturenetwork but please correct me if I’m wrong) it isn’t like they are somehow maverick or dwarfed by the collectives.
Bob – groan, that’s terrible.
You make it sound like NN is the refuge of those that scienceblogs.com rejected…hardly the case now, is it?
And if its Karaoke you’re after, well, do we get Gee and Grant singing a nice duet?
I’d say it’s Scienceblogs that’s more like a golf club!
Sure, you can comment on Scienceblogs without having an account there, but you can’t
golfblog there unless they invite you, and as far as I know anyone can start a blog at Nature Network if you just click some buttons.I guess Nature Network is like a mini golf course, where you still have to let them know that you’ll be coming this afternoon with a group of ten-year-olds to hit balls through a clown’s head, but – okay, I’m lost in the analogy now.
And if its Karaoke you’re after, well, do we get Gee and Grant singing a nice duet?
I don’t know why we didn’t think of that at SciBlog08. Or maybe we did, but suppressed the thought as too horrible to contemplate. Anyway, I’m sure I could do a convincing Bismillah to Grant’s Galileos.
Pimms & Lemonade to a Pint of Bitter?
Thanks Grant for rolling this particular
cigaretteballand as far as I know anyone can start a blog at Nature Network if you just click some buttons.
Not as far as I know Eva. Can a NN blogger clarify this please.
I fall into the ‘independent bloggers’ category.
and as far as I know anyone can start a blog at Nature Network if you just click some buttons.
Afraid not. We have a button which you click to submit your ideas for a blog. The site editors then huddle over this email and decide whether or not the blog idea is a go.
NN can’t be Apple – it looks dreadful on a mobile phone… 🙂
NN crashed my iPhone this morning. It won’t turn off, won’t take calls… my husband is rushing it to the iPhone doctor at this very moment.
iPhone update: hubby just called. He decided to do some other chores before going to the iPhone doctor, and meanwhile it ran out of battery power. Once plugged in to charge it started working again. But he is refusing to bring it to me at work, saying that I am an addict and need to learn to do without it for a few hours at a time…
“We have a button which you click to submit your ideas for a blog. The site editors then huddle over this email and decide whether or not the blog idea is a go.”
Ah, I see.
Still, that’s more accessible than what I’ve heard about trying to get on Scienceblogs. Although they get paid, so maybe that makes it more difficult.
I just got an iPhone, and NN is far too slow for it. It took my entire walk from house to tube station (a brisk ten minutes) to load the main global page on 3G. By comparison, the BBC website – which is very beefy – takes about 8 seconds.
NN also takes a long time to load on broadband at work, which is a decent connection. About 20-30 seconds on most days.
Seed Media’s blog site is much quicker, I’m afraid!
M@, we can has NN iPhone site?
Agh, I feel the draw of the iPhone more each day!
Back, back I say, foul temptress.
NN works pretty quick on my 3G iPhone for me, and that’s even when in Cromer. The spookiest thing is getting the GPS working while you’re on the train, and because the GPS is integrated with Google Maps, you can see your train, as a little blue dot actually moving through the landscape as you watch. Very, very strange. Cool. But strange.
‘eldritch’, perhaps?
“they get paid” – not exactly. I went to a NN pub night (first and only one so far), the first person I met was a SciBlogger (Mo of Neurophilosophy) who was telling a group of people that he got a few pennies depending on his traffic but it was not enough to buy a beer. Or something. On another thread somewhere on this topic I have seen it written that only two of the SciBloggers make anything particularly noticeable.
Katherine: re your comments about logging on. I don’t see that the analogy holds. I have to log in if I want to make a comment on a Science Blog or on many “independent, stand-alone” blogs.
Another difference between NN, SciBlogs and standalone blogs is the “network” part of NN, where any users (not “just” the bloggers) can make each other contacts and hence see those people’s activity. How that relates to golf or macs is beyond me.
Apples and oranges, now…..
bq. I have to log in if I want to make a comment on a Science Blog or on many “independent, stand-alone” blogs.
it’s not ‘logging in’ as such—it’s giving your address &c. Which I find bloody annoying. I like that I only have to log in once for all time (or until I have to reboot after a system upgrade) at NN.
The ‘network’ part of NN is what really wins for me. I have some thoughts on this that are yet amorphous.
@Cath—that sounds like grounds for divorce.
@Jenny—NN is usually pretty zippy at work and at home (which is faster than work. I can has ADSL2+). Maybe it’s just London is some kind of internettish black hole from which pixels and electrons can’t escape?
NN is the slowest thing I read all day. No other sites have this problem, so the most parsimonious explanation…?
Yeah, especially as he bought me the phone in the first place! I should tell him that he should NOT make me choose between him and the phone.
Jenny, in that case, the empiricist in me says
Nature Network, you are the weakest link
“Agh, I feel the draw of the iPhone more each day!”
Have you looked at the cost (monthly cost + phone)? That pretty much quelled my desire for an iPhone. I think I’m getting an iPod Touch, though.
I got a ‘classic’ iPod about 6 months ago, the storage over the Touch winning out.
I could easily afford the iPhone, the prices look pretty reasonable… except in Australia, where the data charges/caps are
drossshite.@Maxine – I’m not sure the analogy holds simply regarding logging on! I just keep forgetting my logon details. Like everyone, I have so many usernames and passwords, I’m so tired of having to recall them all.
I have an iPod Touch and love it, although the most recent software update sent it into an identity crisis that I’ve not yet fixed. Storage is an issue though as it is 8Gb. I wouldn’t pay for the iPhone, however much I’d love one!
bq. On another thread somewhere on this topic I have seen it written that only two of the SciBloggers make anything particularly noticeable.
But they have to threaten poor innocent wafers to do that.
Eldritch.
Definitely.
The slow thing about NN, on any computer, is loading the Network Snapshot page. One can die of old age several times over while this is happening. Mountains are thrust from the ocean floor and are ground into sediment. Continents drift apart.
… Henry’s crocs decompose.
… Henry’s crocs decompose.
Actually, that process is quicker, if marginally.
Yeah, sorry I forgot the matches.
And your kilt.
That was a deliberate choice. Not enough votes in da house.
I’ve rarely had any problems with NN, but there are a couple of ScienceBlogs that load very slowly on my computer. They’re two blogs that I really enjoy reading (Bora’s, and Grrl’s)-otherwise I wouldn’t bother to wait.
Mmm, glad the scienceblogs being slow to load isn’t just me. I only look at Grrl’s these days—everything else seems to be politics. (And the adverts and gunk load first. Bah.)
Makes a change from ragging on Creationists, I guess.
The NN snapshot can be slow to load I was told by the denizens of such matters, if one has a great number of contacts. I suspect that Jenny and Henry might be extremely well-connected by NN average standards. Ruthlessly exterminate some of your unused contacts and a speedier access might result.
On the logging in: at NN I have to provide a username and password. But I have to do this on lots of sites (Facebook, FriendFeed etc). Don’t quote me on this, but I think it is the networky bit that means you have to log on (many independent blogs make you log on in the same way, but need not do so, it is either the choice of the blogger or the blogger has not changed the baseline settings that came with the blog when he/she set it up). I assume this is because these sites want to keep out spam and other pond life, in which case that is fine by me.
Every now and again one goes to one of these sites and has to log in again. On NN for example, I have to log in frequently if I go there at work because the company’s IT department has some setting to reduce spam (you would not believe how much spam floods into nature every second). Because I am on an IT network, I can’t control those settings and NN does not “remember me” from day to day. If I’m at home, I set my own PC so that NN remembers me when I go to it and so I don’t have to keep logging in. Possibly this “work vs home” effect is causing some of the experiences here?
It looks to me like if you log into NN on a different machine from the previous time, your automatic login on the first computer is lost. I’m in the wrong office today, otherwise I would check definitively.
I think that’s true, Bob – but in addition, I find that, say , if I’m on my home computer, which is a personal laptop used by nobody but me (not because I am fiercely protective of it, but because everyone in my house has a laptop of their own), NN remembers me for a while (a day maybe, or a few hours) then I have to re-log. Same for Google accounts or anything – they are only good for a while, even with “remember me” checked. (I know a lot about this, as I have no life apart from the Internet, so I log onto sites to do my weekly food shop, bank, etc – I see all the different registration systems in their glory.) At work, I have to log in far more often to Nature Network than I do at home because of some high-level protection system applied to the network of computers we use. Of course, I have no idea what it would be like to try to log onto an online shop or bank from work.
I also want an iPhone-friendly version of Nature Network. There are special iPhone applications for Facebook and LinkedIn, and the FriendFeed web page looks very good (and loads fast) on an iPhone. Reading RSS feeds on the iPhone also works nicely (I use NetNewsWire).
I just want an iPhone.