Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to everyone! I wanted to make sure I led with that in case I forget by the end 🙂

Since the year is coming to a close, I wanted to write a post about what was going to happen in the next year. This is not a prediction post on what is going to happen in social media or the technology industry. That has been written about on many other blogs already. I am talking about what is going to happen here, on this blog.

Bringing the Geek Back

First, I would like to bring the geek back. I am a software engineer during the day, and most nights and weekends. So, I am planning to do more writing about how to hook some of this internet and social media stuff together. You can expect to see more about the semantic web development, using things like Ajax, Prototype, JQuery and any other tools that I find interesting and useful.

In addition to development information, I will take an indepth look at some of the technologies. What this means is that there might be a post about the semantic web, but it will present detailed information about Linked Data. Various APIs that get developed or other initiatives are also things you may see. So, expect to see posts about SUP (the FriendFeed update thing), OpenID and OAuth, Portable Contacts, Google FriendConnect and Facebook Connect. These are just some of the topics that have been in my head for a few weeks.

What About Social Media

I have been writing a lot about social media for the past few months. This is because I am heavily invested in it, as well as addicted to it. I am not going to eliminate these types of posts, but I am planning on changing the frequency of them. The Why Social Works series (Part I, Part II, Part III) was something I had to get out of my head, otherwise it was going to start affecting everything else I wrote. It was one of those things that I just had to write. It is also not finished yet, and has at least one more installment. I do not have any other grand plans for any social media writing at this time and I do not plan on changing the style of it either.

One thing I may be focusing more on is this blog’s brand. I am planning some design changes on the blog as it feels a little dated, and I want to clean it up a bit. I am also in need of a logo now that the blog is over a year old. I will be trying to create some myself, but if anyone wants to donate one I would appreciate it. I am willing to provide a link in the footer of the blog as well for credit. One word of caution, I will only link to a site that is a blog or someone’s design services, a social media account or something of that nature. So, if you are planning to link to porn or some money making scheme, don’t bother asking. If you want to donate a logo, send it to info at regulargeek.com in gif, jpg or png format. The other basic logo requirements are that the colors should match the theme of the blog, it should be about 380 x 60 or close to that size, and include the name of the blog as well as the tag line “Where programming, the internet and social media collide”.

New Year, New Opportunities

In case you did not notice, I have been writing more for Louis Gray. If you read that blog (and if you don’t you should), you will have noticed that there are several people writing there. Louis likely has a plan of some sort as he has gathered a fantastic group of writers. Obviously, I will be splitting my writing between this blog and Louis’, so if you want to follow me everywhere, keep an eye on his blog.

At some point this year, I will be announcing my availability for some part-time short-term consulting. I have not determined anything like pricing or even area of focus but I do have some options. I am thinking about 2-3 day engagements to start, typically nights and weekends, just to ensure that I really want to get back into some consulting. In terms of the type of consulting, I can provide basic development services, higher-level design services like application design and architecture, and even some social media consulting. If anyone wants a good idea of what I have been doing, you can look at my LinkedIn profile. For social media, you can look at this blog and my FriendFeed account to see what I am talking about. I will provide some sort of contact form for those types of opportunities, so if you know of a good contact form plugin let me know.

Finally, I am giving up trying to make my posts shorter 🙂 Even this quick note on what is coming next year is already over 800 words. Hopefully everyone had a good 2008 and will have a better 2009. Thanks for reading and making this blog something I can be proud of!