Up until recently I had no interest in Twitter. It's rare these days I have time, or even a subject, for my blog here. The concept of nearly constant micro-blogging just sounded like a complete headache, and an annoying one at that. My web site doesn't get that many hits, maybe a hundred or so a month, if that, and nobody comments on my blog unless they do so in person. I'm out of touch with 90% or more of my Facebook friends. Regular readers of Planet Half-Life don't care for me much, let alone my personal life. I'm wary of posting personal shit for any Something Awful goons to read. Also my career really isn't going anywhere at the moment anyway. So why add to the vacuum of my pathetic little cyber life with some micro-blog that no one is going to read except for a handful of people I talk with on a regular basis anyway. In fact most of them aren't even on Twitter themselves.

Then recently Facebook started this streaming bullshit. They took the status feed, something you would update maybe once a day at most, and retooled it so that you were prompted to write random nonsense every time you logged on, and now that gets streamed to all your friends live. Now Facebook basically is Twitter, only with a lot more junk on the side. Facebook apps clog the site worse than your arteries after a baconator.

Despite my aversion to Web 2.0, I've still been very much active with Web 1.0, which is to say I have my web site and a whole bunch of profiles on other sites, all unlinked and independent of each other. So every time I want to post a blog, like this one, I have to copy and paste it on other sites besides my own, like my Windows Live Space (which I only got because of a [failed] job interview with Microsoft, I don't know why I keep it). I don't even remember all the profiles I have across the net and sometimes I find one that's embarrassingly outdated. For example, I'm listed in a certain directory of pagans, witches and occultists I first joined when I was 15. I can't even remember the last time I saw it, let alone changed anything.

So recently I had to start designing the web site for Dharma Buns Sandwich Co. I was hit with quite a predicament. To this point, my web design experience had been limited to designing whole sites as a single Flash file, supplemented by the most basic static HTML page. This is web design at its laziest. It's also highly impractical and a pain in the ass to update. You limit your audience, you site immediately gets stale and anyone with any amount of web savvy can see right through the amateur bullshit. With dharmabuns.net I had to start from scratch. Thankfully I have Adobe Dreamweaver CS3, which made things a lot easier.

But I learned one very important thing in my work. Web 2.0 is nothing to scoff at. Dharma Buns has its own Twitter feed, as well as pages on YouTube and Facebook, not to mention an official listing on Google Maps. We have a mailing list, too. The front page uses a special Javascript that automatically updates a news feed with the RSS of our standard Tripod blog (like the one I'm using right now), and our Facebook page gets the same treatment. More RSS feeds from Twitter and YouTube can easily be added later as the site grows. The result of all this connectivity? Dharma Buns enjoys some pretty high rankings in Google search results, even those not looking specifically for it. Site hits are growing exponentially (thank in no small part to our window signage on Market Street, I'm sure) and so are followers of our mailing list, Tweets and Facebook. But the really topper is that now that it's up, this is the easiest site I've ever had to deal with. It practically grows and updates itself.

Yet despite this accomplishment, it's humbling to admit that I am way behind the curve on this stuff, which as been in use for years now. None of what I listed above is new or revolutionary, some of has probably already peaked by now (like the old school mailing list, which is easily the least popular way people are connecting up to our updates). Javascript is practically as old as the Internet itself and this is the first time I've actually understood how to use it. This is the first I've come to realize that Flash is supposed to be something to dress up your site, not be the entire site itself. This is also the first time I've ever used CSS and I was shocked at how simple it was (I always thought it was a complex programming script, not a super-basic HTML sheet). I almost feel bad getting paid to do this stuff... almost.

Part of my push into Web 2.0 was also the addition in my life of this wretched little machine that's destroying my last vestiges of privacy. I upgraded my phone to a BlackBerry Storm. Besides being a phone, this little fucker gives me all my e-mail live (I have four different accounts, all actively used, in fact I've been interrupted by a little ding about seven times while writing this), plus text messages, plus the Internet, plus a Facebook plug-in, not to mention my stocks, the weather, even AOL Instant Messenger. It's like I take my PC with me everywhere I go, with full net connectivity, and it's never off. This was a dream of mine when I was a child. Oh how childhood dreams come back to bite you in the ass. This phone will be the death of me, but like cigarettes, I just don't want to let it go.

With the BlackBerry it's super easy to update my Facebook status as well as Tweet in the name of Dharma Buns on the go, wherever I am, no matter what I'm doing. Now I understand the true power of these sites and the Web 2.0 technology that uses them. Set up correctly, your web site can be a constantly growing beast that refreshes itself, and all other sites connected to it, every time you tap a couple of lines into your phone or take a photo. Add reader feedback and now you're really cooking.

Now obviously Dharma Buns has one thing going for it that I do not personally. A physical business location (advertising our web address) and an actual product that's already in local demand despite not even having opened yet. I'm a film school graduate with exactly zero professional credits, so no matter how good I am at being a web monkey it's not going to make up for lack of public interest. Of course, once I actually have some decent work to show that all changes. Which is why once Dharma Buns takes off and I've put aside a little bit of cash, I'm investing myself into the full production of a short film under the Imaginary Friends banner, hopefully in October or November. In the meantime I'm still working on Great Mayor Shaun, or at least trying to, and then there's my proposed Dharma Buns commercials, which are going to be quite something if I get to do them my way. Expect a lot of vulgarity, violence and drug use.