I'll also look at the term (and practice of) "blogrolling."
categories:
5:57:57 PM 
say what []
Marc Barrot sent me a link to this well organized overview of Radio's features and functionality. Starting to think about an information architecture for the non-blog parts of this site.
categories: metablog
4:14:07 PM say what []
I suppose that success breeds success, as new readers see the recently updated pages or look at the most-read list and follow those top links. I've wondered with Slashdot or Nuke type sites when you list the most popular articles, are you just reinforcing the trend and perhaps burying something that ought to be popular but hasn't crossed the event horizon?
categories: metablog
4:02:32 PM say what []
In fact, the Washington Post apparently has an article today about this Salon/UserLand collaboration that managed to piss me off by using the term "amateur bloggers" to refer to the people who Salon has invited to contribute here. We may, some of us, be amateur writers (though others of us in fact make our livings as writers), but we are none of us amateur bloggers. There is no amateur/professional divide among bloggers, unless you view this world from the journalist's perspective and only see the Andrew Sullivans and Mickey Kauses of the world as credible. I'd link to the article but apparently it's not online (yet?). Someone cited it in a Well conference today.
Back in the blogosphere, many seem to react to the Salon/UserLand experiment the way Usenet denizens reacted to the flood of AOL newbies in the early-mid '90s. As if it's a sucker's game. They essentially are asking why anyone would pay Salon and UserLand to start a blog when you can do it for free with Blogger and BlogSpot (and other solutions), assuming that only a clueless newbie would take that plunge.
They don't seem to imagine that, for example, a longtime blogger like myself who also happens to enjoy reading Salon (and has already paid for a Premium subscription) may see some value in the branding and the potential audience here. Then again, I haven't paid off my trail period yet, so we'll see.
There are also complaints (and mockery) about the "CompuServe-like" URLs (blogs.salon.com/0001???/) and some lack of understanding about the fact that you can FTP a Radio blog to your own domain if you like.
Similarly, some have asked "What happens if Salon tanks?" Well, unlike with LiveJournal, if Salon or UserLand goes south, I can redirect my content database to a new address readily, so I'm not worried about that.
Others simply see if at the continued dumbing-down of the medium. But if that's the case, then why wasn't Blogger a bad idea? My first weblogs were hand-coded and FTP'd "the old-fashioned way." On the other hand, my first real website, Enterzone, essentially ground to a halt due to the friction involved in manually updating a site that kept scaling up. I was too early for many of the automation and other time-saving tools that have emerged since (Enterzone started in 1994—it's all still there) and not clueful enough to custom-build my own content-management system.
I probably sound defensive but I'm more reacting to the stereotyping and the jumps to conclusions. I've heard good and bad about Radio. I avoided it myself when I thought that all sites had the same look and I somehow thought that making your own computer the server meant that you were hosting the blog on that computer, so I even understand the ignorance. But I also see a kind of reflexive xenophobia, the kind of "we got here first, shut the door behind us" attitude that I suppose we will always have with us. I remember when bragging that you started your website in 1992 or that your site used to be a Gopher site was the pissing contest of the moment.
I'm not deliberately leaving out links to this commentary I'm paraphrasing, I just read most of it yesterday and didn't bookmark anything, because at the time I didn't realize I would want to remark upon it. If I stumble on the posts again, I'll see about backfilling.
categories: metablog
1:52:36 PM say what []
William Grosso writes about the evolution of blogging in his O'Reilly Network Blog today.
categories: metablog
12:57:31 PM say what []
I think when all is said and done I'll compile this info into one of them "Stories."
categories: metablog
10:08:40 AM say what []
| Comments in response to this post: |
|
hello. i've been using radio since february, and i think i can answer some of your questions. i'm sure if i get some of it wrong, somebody will step in, 'eh? on the radio scripts, that all really happens on your desktop. you set up radio to do what you want locally, and it upstreams the site files generated by the local setup. the ru macros in conjunction with your templates create the site pages. if you wanted php pages, you'd either have to set your sever to parse all the html pages, or set radio to use a php extension (which i haven't investigated.) the local radio www directory is a mirror of your site directory, except that your html isn't there, text files with the content before being placed into your templates is there. radio puts them together and sends it to the server. the diy factor is, i think, one of the most interesting parts of radio. it's commercial software with an "open-source" attitidue. i fall somewhere in the middle of the spectrum. people that want to just type and click can use radio straight out of the box (so to speak) and be up and running in a matter of minutes. people that want a custom look can create their own templates. people that want to add cool widgets can install tools other people have written in the radio macro languge. (this is where i sit.) and people who are so inclinded can make their own tools and customizations. developers are met with enthusiasm, which is nice. overall, i am happy with Radio and i like the software, even though i was intially wanting something free. i would like to see the comments system improve (i use yaccs because it's more flexible and for the rss feeds), and i'd like to see radio generate standards compliant code of the shelf, and include a spell checker and a few other basic features. but all in all, i am happy with it. |
|
I just wanted to add something to what I wrote before. While I think Radio is great, I think that up until recently it's biggest weakness has been lack of documentation. There are a lot of questions I had when I first started that I really had to dig to find the answers for. Luckily, more has been written since then. |
|
The other big weakness of Radio is bugs. I have suffered a number of crash and data loss bugs. RU is feature laden, but buggy. If you want to know what I went through, check out http://radio.weblogs.com/0108719/categories/blogOnBlogging/. Thanks, Geodog |
and:
| Comments in response to this post: |
| Radio does have an FTP option in the prefs section. You can send your weblog to any server (Intranet etc.). Of course, when you do that, you miss out on the community features. Also: you can create categories to publish to multiple sites in different sites. Right now I publish to my blog on UserLand's servers and also to my blog on eVector's servers in Italy (I can publish to both at the same time by clicking both categories when I publish). There are instructions how to do this on the UserLand site. |
and:
|
all my posts show 0 comments right now, so I didn't even know I had any comments to read. That's probably a browser cache issue. Let me guess -- you're using IE on a Mac? It likes to cache the JavaScript that shows the comment counts. If you quit and re-launch IE, and then view your page then the counts will be up-to-date. |
| One other feature you missed in Radio: Tools. Radio is a whole development environment, and with a little programming, you can create your own Tools to do whatever you might dream up. Tools are integrated with the desktop website via the Tools page and links in the Status Center on the desktop website home page. As far as I know, no other blogging tool has this kind of functionality. |
| The advantage of centralised storage is that I can post to my LJ from any internet connection. It's impossible for me to do that with RU due to dial-up and NAT issues. |
|
Speaking of tools, I wrote one to post to LiveJournal. Using a custom RSS output style (since LJ's own RSS doesn't put post bodies in the description), the multi-author weblog tool should do the opposite. Though, of course, using both at once would be unfortunate. |
|
I've try Radio and Movable Type. Radio is cool, but subject to little bugs. But since I travel, and I don't wan't to be chained to my laptop, I prefer being able to access through a form on a server... "à la Movable Type". MT is a GREAT piece of software, but very difficult to install and maintain for a newbie (nobody's perfect) ;-). That's why I choose PMachine Pro (www.pmachine.com), another great piece of software, but easily manageable. And all the features are there. My two cents.
EmDee [le_scribe@no_spam_hotmail.com] • 7/27/02; 2:45:59 PM
|
categories: metablog
2:10:47 AM say what []
