I’d love to see a blog engine that structurally encouraged editing old posts, much like a private wiki with an activity stream view. Readers would both be able to peruse articles/posts/entries either in order of creation or of last edit, but also view a timeline of edits, along with an easily-understood diff of the edits.

Yes, I know this is possible with github/jekyll-based blogs, but that’s not exactly friendly for a broad audience. I may build this for my own blog, since I’m more interested in building up a well-edited collection of essays than standard short-form blogging. Let me know in the comments what you think!

Last weekend, I became involved in a project called Tweak the Tweet. I wanted to put into writing my perspective on the project, its long-term viability, and the role I see it playing in the crisis-response tool chain.

In the broadest sense, I’m discussing the notion of tools built on the Twitter platform specifically for use in emergency response and crisis management. More specifically, I’m discussing the various technology efforts currently organized under the Tweak-the-Tweet banner. To be absolutely clear, I speak only for myself, not for the direction of the project.

I’d like to propose a form of online communication and solicit feedback on the concept. I doubt this idea is wholly original, so I’m hoping someone will point me to the place this exists. If it doesn’t, I’d love feedback on whether you think it would work.

I had a fantastic time building an application in 48 hours for Rails Rumble. I built ShareLocally, a site that helps people share things with their neighbors. Instead of promoting the app (which I still think is totally awesome and plan to keep hacking at), I’m going to examine some of the things I learned from my first Rumble.

I’m excited to announce the private beta of an application I’ve been dreaming about for a while now. It’s called selfstream.net and is a cross between twitter and a life log. Email me at jacob@selfstream.net if you’d like to participate in the private beta. I’m very excited because this project will push me in the direction of natural language parsers and automated data analysis.