Applying all my philosophy, strategies, and techniques to nurture the next generation, the result is teen-ventures.com, which will invest in the human capital and generate the leaders of the future.

1. Mail and News: Slashdot | Google | Gmail | GNews
2. Tech: GizMag | PopGadget
3. Explore: Whois | Furl | Metafilter | Delicious | simpy | Baidu
4. Blogs: Multiply.com | JoeUser | Blogdrive | MindSay | Blogger | BlogSpot | Plastic | BlogChina | mblogger.cn | Flickr
   
5. e-salon: salon | utne | The Well | TMN | ECHO
6. Shopping: Froogle | PriceGrabber | half | Library | Netflix
7. NHF: forum | NHF-1 | NHF-2 | Admin
8. My Groups and Forums: Y!Groups | ibmwcc
9. Personal Page: Geocities
10. Online Free Storage: Yahoo! Briefcase - List View
11. My Blogs: BDlog | BlogDrive manage | ModEditor
12. My Wikis: WebNotes | JotSpot |
    
13. My Furl: MyFurl | FurlIt | '+''+escape(el.innerHTML)+'');fi.focus();">FurlFull
14. Online virtual-estate properties:
    various intersections of my major dimensions: Chinese Christian Technologist in Community
    1. tech-spirits.community | new article
    2. wjzhu.tech-spirits.com
       1. tech-spirits.com:2082 - Control Panel
       2. tech-spirits.com:2086 - WebHost Manager
       3. tech-spirits.com:2095 - Web Mail
       4. login using full email address: wj@tech-spirits.com, pop3 uses: wj+tech-spirits.com
    3. designful-living.community
    4. smart-communities.com
       
    5. Chinese-Christians.Community
    6. ministry-technologies.community
    7. Care-and-Share.Network
    8. OpenCommentary.Community
    9. Hua-Lian.Network
       1. 80-20 drupal
       2. casb drupal
       3. ibmwcc phpbb2
       4. hlt invisionboard
15. Free: SquareSpace $4/m | mBlog (MovableType) | Ofoto
    
16. Defunct: Blogger at Blogspot | BlogNotes | BloggerThis!
17. Hosting: 1and1.com | bgfweb
    
18. Financial: EtradeBank | ScotTrade | HVFCU | USAFCU |
    
19. Cheap LongDistance: BigZoo now PinCity
    
20. For prayer-telemeeting: FreeConference

For independence from computer, browser, and format, I post my Personal Favorites online.

1. Mail and News: GMail | MSNmail | YMail | GNews
2. Explore: Slashdot | Furl | Metafilter | Delicious | simpy | Whois | Baidu
3. Blogs: Multiply.com | Plastic | JoeUser | Blogdrive | Blogger | BlogSpot | BlogChina | mblogger.cn
4. Products and Media: Froogle | PriceGrabber | half | Library | Netflix
5. My Groups and Forums: NHF | Y!Groups | ibmwcc
6. Personal Page: Geocities
7. Online Free Storage: Yahoo! Briefcase - List View
8. My Blogs: BDlog | BlogDrive manage | ModEditor
9. My Furl: FurlIt | MyFurl | '+''+escape(el.innerHTML)+'');fi.focus();">FurlFull
10. Online virtual-estate properties:
    various intersections of my major dimensions: Chinese Christian Technologist in Community
    1. tech-spirits.community | new article
    2. wjzhu.tech-spirits.com
       1. tech-spirits.com:2082 - Control Panel
       2. tech-spirits.com:2086 - WebHost Manager
       3. tech-spirits.com:2095 - Web Mail
       4. login using full email address: wj@tech-spirits.com, pop3 uses: wj+tech-spirits.com
    3. mail: designful-living.community
    4. mail: Chinese-Christians.Community
    5. mail: ministry-technologies.community
    6. mail: Care-and-Share.Network
    7. mail: OpenCommentary.Community
    8. mail: Hua-Lian.Network
       1. 80-20 drupal
       2. casb drupal
       3. ibmwcc phpbb2
       4. hlt invisionboard
11. Free: SquareSpace $4/m | mBlog (MovableType) | Ofoto album sharing
12. Defunct: Blogger at Blogspot | BloggerThis!

After a few weeks of inactivity, and shifting of blog posts from Blogdrive to Tech-Spirits for improved organization, my blog here is no longer the top google spot for 'Blogdrive'.

I will continue to use BlogDrive, , but refined articles will be published at Tech-Spirits.Com.

Creating online communities is basically doing digital potluck. How can I do it better? Furthermore, in light of all the web tools out there, is it better to create new tools, or to glue existing tools? Nevertheless, it is about human activities using these tools. Hence the upcoming popularity of UIMA.

Though I had never intended to become popular, and even do my best to remain stealth, (never click public button in all my blog posts), a kind lady commented on June 5 that I was number 1 on google for "blogdrive". This is surprising, especially when I try to use all my blogs as a private notebook to sort out my ideas.

So I went on Google to check how the various spellings of my name fare:

• Wei-Jing Zhu : all my academic applications, papers, etc
• Wei-Jing : wjzhu.tech-spirits.com (my expt on CMS), and geocities site, followed by random Chinese sites
• weijing : random Chinese sites
• wjzhu : I dominate with all my blogs all over the place. There is another wjzhu in China with a few low hits.

Then I check how I do on a few sites:

• joeuser: I am top user, despite my only 2 posts.
• blogdrive: I am still top5

I am amazed with the Google Ranking effect on JoeUser. Perhaps because everyone else in JoeUser solely blog there, with no outside linking. (Most JoeUsers dont link to others anyway, but communicate by comments or feedbacks.)

Then I realize that Feedster keeps track of all my postings. That means no need to remain stealth anymore. Given that I have finally sort things out about my digital identity, time to set all my blogs in order, and invite others to interact with me, rather than trying to keep things to myself. To start with, I will write a series of articles and tutorials on using Web tools to sort their personal life out.

Now that I have several email accounts, and find it burdensome to log into each of them to check occasional mail, I looked into various pop3 mail handlers.

The freebies out there, best being web2mail, is faulty.

The best solution is to use Opera's Wand to remember passwords, and write the URL of the different email access, e.g. website.com:2095, on my frequent site blog. Then I daily go to the blog, and click on the various mail sites to access my email.

When I visited a site that has RSS newsfeed, I realize OperaBrowser's capability to automatically accept newsfeeds. Along that line, I learn that Opera's Mail Client is very convenient, and allows me to setup POP accounts to read all my email, as well as to write from it. So OperaMail will be my ultimate solution.

One note: the ability to read mail from any machine means that I should not download the mail to any specific machine. This means I must "leave mail on server" for unexpected access.

Update: 6/16/2004 Funny that after I address email seriously, other avenues started to open up:

• Terry extended an invitation to me for a gmail acct.
• Now I forward all my website mail to gmail.
• The next day, Yahoo improved its mail service: 100MB, search, no more graphics ads.

Among the several categories of CMS, in increasing levels of social interaction:

• personal blog
• multi-author blog
• article submission systems
• forum

The list of essential features that any CMS must have are:

• comment
• link management
• articles, personal blog, forum
• personal page

So the features that distinguish them are

• available layouts and templates
  • minimalism and simplicity of white background will stress the content, best for threaded discussions
  • stylish yet simple: professional look
  • cheap gaudy homemade (to be avoided)
• uploadable attachments: docs, photos, general files: if I cannot upload an attachment of important resources, the CMS is limited at best.
• user-defined categories:
  • is it hierarchical? In the long run, we want to classify concepts with a tree-structure.
  • multiple-categories for postings? That is essential, since any article will potentially be part of several concepts.
• email available for users: making it possible for users to feel the site to be a portal, enough to build a homepage with email options
• categorizing users: this is a new dimension. While most CMS focus on the categorization of articles, all users are single entities. A social-conscious CMS would recognize that users should be grouped as well, for contact, or just for privacy/security issues.

In the long run, the final feature of user-structure will be the defining issue. My experience so far: Drupal is too elaborate. SiteFrame is simple. Phpbb2 is most intuitive and powerful. So I would vote for Phpbb2, and search for the appropriate template to make it simple/stylish, rather than the current burdensome look.

http://whisper.cx/?Manual Reference: Whisper - Manual