Jon Udell writes about the dozens of configuration tweaks he made to Radio.

A few weeks ago, I spent some time showing an InfoWorld colleague, Mark Jones, how I use Radio. As always in this kind of situation, I was reminded of:

• how much non-default configuration I depend on
• how little I remembered having done that configuration
• how hard it was to articulate, then transfer, that configuration

Another InfoWorld colleague, Steve Gillmor, was watching this, and he said: "You need a deployment descriptor." Exactly right.

How do you move newbies up the tweak learning curve? How do you standardize an intranet or community Radio weblog rollout? How do you assure everyone starts with the same tools, the same extra macros, the same ftp configuration?

Jon:

Given some configuration that varies from the default, enable the user to:

• ask for a description of the tweaks, in some standard XML grammar
• transfer that description (or a subset of it) to another user (or to another instance of the app owned by the same user)

While I'm dreaming, why not use peer-to-peer web services for this kind of thing? If I have Radio or Outlook behavior that you want, I ought to be able to grant you temporary access to my app so you can reach across using SOAP and grab the behavior that you need.  The mechanism  wouldn't be CTRL-; then QuickScript then Run in Radio, and something equally arcane in every other app. There would be a system-wide standard way to describe, share, and acquire application behaviors.

So, five things:

1. Publish this preference.
• Exclude passwords, IDs.
• Let me add notes by preference: why did I choose this? who suggested it? problems and lessons relating to this? prior setting?
2. Package all of my shared preferences.
• Make available in a published colophon page. 
3. One-click import.
• Something like the Radio coffee mug (espresso machine?) to select (old setting, new setting) and import a potential preference
4. Grab everything.
• My tools, macros, templates, preferences.
5. Follow my coach.
• Someone else keeps up on all this nerdy stuff more than I do. Let me subscribe to almost all of his changes, adopting them automatically or at least putting them in a queue for approval. This way I focus on my content and let my coach pick/tweak tools, macros, templates, style sheets, news feed subscriptions, etc.
• I can unsubscribe bit-by-bit (perhaps tweaking my own templates) as I learn more and follow my own path.
• This may be the default for a company, department, community, hosting service.
• Affiliate one or more coach URLs with a "Radio Community Server".

Advantages:

1. Lower learning curve
2. Lower IT support costs
3. Faster distribution of new/fixed components
4. Faster and wider dispersion of knowledge throughout the Radio community