More NarrowboatWords

I've said before that I really do have a lot of time for the effort Tom Crossley puts into Narrowboat World, especially since he stopped being anonymous.  And it's the only waterways website that happily publishes ('aggregates') all the press-released canal news.

I was interested to hear NBW describe itself in its 'topical' section this week:

...our Programmer, Jason Crossley, dragged us away from Microsoft completely, and to the regularly updated Linux operating system, which together with web authoring in CSS, makes narrowboatworld the most state-of-the-art and secure waterways website in existence.

If you really want to see a state of the art Linux web site, try Nick Atty's Canalplan with its wonderful drop-down placenames in the Gazetteer (how cool is that? find a canal location as you type!), or perhaps peek over Richard Fairhurst's shoulder to see what he's homebrewing right now for Waterways World.  Or look at this story from the Manchester Evening News, which has readers commenting directly.

Or even look at Granny Buttons.  OK, perhaps not for the content; but for what's going on behind the screen.  Almost all waterways blogs are more 'state of the art' than NBW (and I believe that most of them - at least outside Microsoft) run on Linux.  We don't know how to program them ourselves, but we don't need to - it's just built in to the blog system. 

Of course, what's missing from all our blogs is the content of NBW, and the regular interaction by readers and contributors.  But how frustrating that it's running on such a primitive 'website', circa 1997.  No RSS feeds. No ability to add your own comments or trackback.  No permalinks.  No embedded video. No useful links to external sites.  No interactivity. No awareness of the 2007 web.

I'll say it yet again:  The contributors currently writing 'columns' in NBW are already blogging, but in a way that limits their audience.  They should be writing their own blogs and helping to reach out to a much bigger readership than even, yes, NBW.  It's a closed one-way discussion group, sucking in people's attention and not reaching outwards. 

Incidentally, I only just noticed that NBW is mirrored on www.whichcanal.com.   Why do they do this?  Just curious.  Perhaps having another web address is another way to be state of the art.