Twazrs for Coworking nomads

The enthusiastic response to Conor O'Neill's post about coworking clearly points to a demand for social supports among webworkers.

I previously said that Twitter brings telepathy to the web but Chris Messina puts it better - "Twitter is a global consciousness app". More importantly, from my point of view, it helps mitigate two of the problems associated with freelance web working (as Chris puts it) -

1. Finding social energy while you work and
2. Knowing that you’re not in the slog alone

I can certainly agree with this. I'm subscribed to (following) a number of Twitter users but I definitely find a kind of virtual kinship with the other web workers in particular. With that in mind Chris has an important feature request; he wants...

"... publicly joinable groups, in the sense of collated geographies of people. Additionally, it would be nice if you could move into an “earshot group” as you migrate from one coworking space to another — automatically subscribing to non-friends as you travel."

Ah! That 'earshot' bit certainly rings a bell. That's what feed grazing is all about! In fact here's how I described it over a year ago -

"When you walk down the street do you subscribe to the thousands of sensory feeds in the information ether? Not at all. You're scanning, skimming, sampling, glancing. As you pass a group of people on the pavement you briefly graze their converation. Each one is transmitting an auditory feed, a podcast you might say. The nearest to you comes into earshot first and then a second. Your Reading List (dynamic OPML file) now contains two feeds. Then a third voice comes into focus. And finally the fourth. As you pass by the first voice wanes and disappears from your Reading List. And eventually they all fade."

So I'd suggest to Chris that we can hack this even before Twitter get around to supporting the feature. In fact here's a Twitter Grazr (below, OPML file here), or Twazr as we're now calling them, for coworkers (web workers) in Ireland. I've included Conor O'Neill, Tom Raftery, Ken McGuire, Bernie Goldbach, Walter Higgins and myself. I'm subscribed to other Irish twitter users but  I'm not sure they're freelance web workers (please let me know if you'd like to be added). Now Chris and other international coworkers can easily engage in Ambient Socialization, Digital Overhearing or even virtual telepathy when they travel to Ireland. (Tip: remember you can pop the twazr into a full size window by clicking on the icon at top right and then choose 3-pane view from the View menu).

Comments

[Ken McGuire]

Gets my thumbs up anyway James, like the idea of it all.

[Conor O'Neill]

The blended feed is the winner for me James. Love it.

In general with Grazr, how hard is it to do that blending? I know there are sites which allow you to merge feeds and obviously Pipes is the killer app there.

I'm not a hierarchy kinda guy, I get lost in them. I just like taking sub-set X of Y and lumping it all together just like you've done there.

[Conor O'Neill]

Oh, I'll be blogging more about Cork Coworking when I get a chance.

My gut is telling me that OpenCoffee may be the initial stepping stone we need before we jump straight into Coworking. But I'm going to follow up in any case.

[James Corbett]

"I'm not a hierarchy kinda guy, I get lost in them."

Thanks for the feedback Conor. Just interested to know if you've tried all three views in Grazr - slider, outline and 3-pane? I know some people find slider a bit slow (it's really for newbies who grok iPoddish interfaces) but I personally find outline and 3 pane view intuitive and really not much different to Google Reader or other aggregators. Also, have you tried it in full page view? Makes it easier to navigate too.

As for the blended feed I actually used feedblender for that. Mind you, Grazrscript will soon include the ability to sort, select, and merge items from multiple feeds into a single feed.

"Oh, I'll be blogging more about Cork Coworking when I get a chance."

Excellent, I'm looking forward to following that. I've a feeling the time is ripe for such an initiative here and would love to avail of coworking facilities myself.

[Niall Larkin]

Hi James, Signed up to twitter as soon as I read Conor O'Neills post. And would be honoured to join the twazr list for coworkers. Well done.

[James Corbett]

Great, I'll add you to the list asap Niall. Thanks for the shoutout :)