Morgan Wilson: blogs

ahh - trying a different aggregator has helped alleviate my information overload

Tue, 19 Aug 2003 03:41:19 GMT

Switching to TypePad will also involve getting a stand alone news aggregator. For the past week I've been experimenting with NetNewsWire, a fine Mac only product. I've been very impressed. Before I used to think that needing a new aggregator was a drawback to switching from Radio, but now I think it's a positive reason to try something else. I love its Post to Weblog feature - which replicates the one thing about the Radio aggregator which I really liked. More interesting, I find that the three-pane design makes it easier to get through all of my subscriptions. If I'm in the mood to see what's been on at one particular blog first, I can do this. If none of a blog's titles appeal to me, I can mark them as "all read" with one click and effectively ignore them. All this is much easier than needing to wade through all the entries of all my subscriptions. And I can arrange my subscriptions alphabetically or in theme-based clusters, rather than just by time (although I understand why some bloggers would prefer this). There are some blogs which I would like to check everyday, while others can wait a week or so - it depends on the quality and quantity of the words, as well as my mood. Anyway, here's something from the blog by NetNewsWire's makers:

Wired News: [base "]Maniacally wired netizens who read a hundred blogs a day and just as many news sources are turning to a new breed of software, called newsreaders or aggregators, to help them manage information overload. Many now say that their news aggregator is as indispensable as their e-mail client.[per thou]

Interesting article. I think I was slightly misquoted about sales of NetNewsWire. The [base "]five figures[per thou] part refers to the number of users of NetNewsWire and NetNewsWire Lite: the number of users is at least a five figure number. Just wanted to clear that up: not a big deal, really. [Ranchero]

a correction about AOL Journals - it's only useless for some people

Fri, 15 Aug 2003 04:01:04 GMT

Thanks to feedback from Jason Lefkowitz of theAnt's Eye View, I can tell you that AOL Journals will work with if you use IE 6 for Windows to create or edit posts. Using IE 6 will give you a built-in WYSIWYG HTML editor which will allow you to both link and have titles. So that's the good news. I thought that the way to get the most out of AOL features was to use its browser (the one based on IE), but I guess AOL 8.0 for Windows must be based on an older version of IE, because it had no WYSIWYG editor. Maybe AOL Journals will work properly in the upcoming AOL 9 for Windows. But the bad news is that yesterday's comments are still very true for Mac users. There is no equivalent of IE 6 for the Mac. The Mac AOL browser is based on Netscape / Gecko. I wonder why AOL would let Mac users use AOL Journals, knowing that it won't work properly for them? I suspect they never really thought about it.

By the way, you can read Jason's review of AOL Journals here.

AOL Journals and iBlog

Wed, 13 Aug 2003 12:14:08 GMT

OK, I was never serious about AOL Journals - but I was curious. Now I've discovered a flaw that makes it almost worthless as a blogging tool. In AOL Journals you must choose between making an entry with a title (which is essential), or making an entry which contains links (which is also essential). You can't have both - and this is an anathema to any self-respecting blogger. This is because you can make an entry with a link by using AOL instant messenger - but when you use AOL instant messenger, you can't designate a title for your entry. Now there is a way of editing an entry, when you could theoretically add a title, but if you try this, you will lose your link! Because the stupid editor only handles plain-text - it doesn't even support any HTML tags! So until this is fixed, it's quite useless as a blogging tool.

The trouble with iBlog is that I'm yet to find a iBlog blog which seems to offer a good RSS feed. This is crucial for a blog - your blog may as well be invisible if it doesn't have a reliable RSS feed (this was something which AOL at least, could get working). In no way have I surveyed all of them, maybe I was just unlucky with the ones that I looked at. So I'd like to support iBlog, but it's not quite ready yet either.

Besides, I've been playing around with TypePad some more and am still very impressed. Its elegance and functionality remind me of a Mac. Coming from a Mac user like me, this is high praise.

should I stay with Salon blogs or switch to TypePad?

Tue, 12 Aug 2003 06:06:06 GMT

I find it quite amusing and ironic that less than two weeks after I promised myself that I wouldn't switch this blog to MovableType, I am feeling very drawn towards switching to MovableType's TypePad. Of course, I did give a proviso to this undertaking - "unless Movable Type became idiot-proof." While no blogging software is truly idiot-proof, except possibly AOL Journals (see this amusing piece about them), TypePad seems way more user-friendly than standard MovableType and a lot easier to work with than Radio Userland.

So I'm seriously considering defecting to TypePad. So here are my pros and cons about switching to TypePad -

Pros:
- I don't really like the Radio Userland software that much. Although it's easy enough to start a bare bones blog with it, it isn't very user-friendly IMHO. I find it difficult to understand for customizing and think that the documentation is poor - especially when compared with TypePad.
- I haven't really been following the flame wars associated with Dave Winer. But what I've heard makes me feel uneasy about the future of Radio. I worry that Radio Userland is isolating itself in the blogosphere.
- TypePad is web-based, so it's very easy to update from anywhere. No more being tied to the one computer!
- TypePad offers more gadgets for blogs - which are really easy to implement. This goes back to one of my complaints with Radio - yes, you can do a lot with it, but a lot of it is quite difficult and arcane to configure.
- I like TypePad's photo album feature
Cons (and there are quite a few):
- It's more expensive than Radio. I'm interested in the intermediate $8.95/month option.
- I'd also need to get a separate news aggregator (maybe this isn't all bad), which I may need to pay extra for if I want a good one.
- I think that initially, my readership would plummet. (but is this really an issue?)
- I would leave the Salon blog community, which I like a lot. I would get onto the Salon blog webring, but that wouldn't be the same. The issue is, if Salon blogs is on a sinking ship (Radio), do I show solidarity and stay until things get worse, or do I just seize what seems to be a good opportunity at this moment?
- It's not as if TypePad is the only option for me, either. Maybe Blogger Pro will get better under the ownership of Google. Maybe I should support fine Mac only software such as iBlog. And don't forget AOL - for which I'm already paying for. Nobody will probably take an AOL blog seriously, but it might offer a way of communicating with a wider audience.

Well there's no rush to do any of this. I'll give myself a least a week before I do anything rash.

curious about TypePad

Mon, 11 Aug 2003 07:03:26 GMT

MT Pro vs. TypePad. One thing I was expecting TypePad to have that I am surprised it does not is the ability to FTP... [LibraryPlanet.com]

a Tasmanian blog! (I feel homesick now)

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:55:58 GMT

PLACE-ORIENTED BLOGS.

You may have noticed that I (sometimes unfairly) group blogs in my blogroll into artistic, business/scientific, environmental, news, and political categories, with Salon blogs listed separately because...well, because they're my community. Recently I've discovered another type of blog that is primarily geographical in nature. These have been self-styled as 'place-oriented blogs' or 'blogs of place'. Although most of us write from time to time about what's happening in our physical community, place-oriented bloggers write almost exclusively about the history, geography, and current events (often with photos) of their community.

They're actually very entertaining (and sometimes educational) to read. Here are some of the best of the breed I've found:

London and the North - London & Yorkshire, UK
Faultline / Creek Running North - California
Lifescapes - Texas
Bowen Island Journal - British Columbia
Laughing Knees - Japan
Life at the Edge - Tasmania (whence the photo above)
Ecotone - A wiki with more Bloggers of Place, and more about them

Some of our Salon bloggers write more about their physical location than others, especially those living outside the country as ex-pats. What do you think -- is your blog a 'blog of place' or do you just write about home when there's nothing more urgent to write about? Is this a legitimate new genre of blog? I have occasionally posted about my home on the Oak Ridges Moraine in Ontario, but not with any geographic thoroughness. Should I write more about place?

[How to Save the World]

Dave Pollard on the blogging process

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:50:20 GMT

Another intriguing flow-chart from How to Save the World. My thoughts: This is a very detailed & helpful description of what's generally an unconcious process for me. It also serves as a best practice to aim for, because it's rare that I'm doing all of the things which Dave mentions.

another one year anniversary - Salon blogs

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:37:41 GMT

Scott Rosenberg reflects on one year of Salon blogs. I appreciate his candour.

Movable Type introduces TypePad

Fri, 08 Aug 2003 10:27:30 GMT

New Blogging Service Rolls Out.. If you want to set up your own blog you might want to check out TypePad (which is from the well-established folks at Movable Type). A shining example of the power of this new blog tool is the PVR Blog, which is a great resource for information on devices like TiVo and ReplayTV and digital recording devices in general.

There are 3 levels of service for TypePad, the lowest priced one is $5.00 a month, which includes hosting and a bunch of features (i.e. the ability to publish picture albums etc). Worth checking out.

[Ernie the Attorney]

Hmm, looks very interesting ...

tinkering with AOL Journals

Thu, 24 Jul 2003 23:54:24 GMT

The first AOL journal (blog) I've seen.

Via Hylton Joliffe I've clicked through to an AOL Journal called sound & fury. The branding at the top (below the generic AOL nav) reads "AOL Journals: Your Thoughts. Your Blog."

I was hoping I could find my way from that blog to other AOL blogs but there doesn't seem to be any central jumping-off point (or blogroll/sidebar, for that matter).

[Radio Free Blogistan]

I was playing around with AOL Journals yesterday. My attempt was very experimental & silly so I'm not going to link to it. As I expected, it was very easy to set up - there are various templates for choosing how the Journal looks and how functions it has. Updating is also easy - you just send an instant message to the AOL Journal bot. This means that you can use all the formatting that you can use in an instant message, which is quite a lot. But I also a discovered a bug with this. If I add an entry with AIM and then want to edit that entry in AOL to give it a title or information about my mood or the music I'm listening (like LiveJournal), then most of the formatting goes away. If I initially created the entry in AOL, then there's no option to use anything but plain-text - and no HTML tags for bolding, italicizing, changing colours or fonts. This isn't an issue, so long as they fix that bug about editing entries created with AIM - or allow you to give the title, mood and music in the instant message. Hopefully they'll fix this by the time it's officially released.

An AOL Journal does provide an RSS feed, but not any news aggregator functions. Because of this, I think that AOL Journals is more equivalent to LiveJournal (albeit not as good!) than software like Radio Userland or Blogger. And I agree that AOL needs to provide a way of locating other AOL Journals.

looking forward to Moreover's forthcoming blog database

Wed, 11 Jun 2003 04:31:14 GMT

So THAT'S what they've been doing.... News service Moreover has been spending a lot of time lately concentrating on the corporate market, and its free news service has suffered as a result. Now comes word that Moreover plans to roll out a database of over 17,000 weblogs, indexing more than 1,000 entries each day. [Inter Alia]

avoiding blogging burnout

Wed, 04 Jun 2003 13:17:06 GMT

Gone. Now Jonathon Delacour and Mike Cohen have stopped blogging, too. What's this - some kind of disease? How many more of my favourite bloggers will disappear in the next few weeks? ... [The Aardvark Speaks]

This is sad news. Will there be more of this as the novelty factor of blogging recedes? Or as the blogosphere becomes more stratified? My own way of avoiding blogging burnout is to be very undisciplined about it - to treat it as something I enjoy doing rather than a chore. It also helps to take a hiatus from it, whenever I feel like it.

my first impressions of iBlog: Mac-only blogging software with a news aggregator

Tue, 20 May 2003 03:02:47 GMT

Ever since I first heard about iBlog a few months ago, I've been wanting to take a look at it and write down my impressions. iBlog is Mac-only blogging software. It's built for OS X and sports the increasingly ubiquitous brushed metal interface. Because things have been kind of busy for me lately, I wasn't able to take a very detailed look at iBlog. I was half-afraid that the more I looked at it, the more likely I'd decide to dump my Salon/Radio blog for iBlog.

I was very impressed. iBlog also has a built-in news aggregator. What struck me the most is how easy to understand the iBlog software is. I took a quick look at the various files that it created in my Mac's library and I could actually understand how it worked. I'm sure that this simplicity would make it that much easier to customize a blog. As much as I like the Radio Userland software, it's taken me a long time to understand how it works, and I've been blogging with it since last August. But on the other hand, iBlog is like Movable Type in that you need your own server to publish your blog on. But this could be a .Mac account, which is becoming an almost essential subscription for Mac users.

Maybe it's because I'm a librarian, but I really liked the category feature in iBlog. It made assigning and organizing categories to be very easy. iBlog also generates an RSS feed - which is essential for blogging software, I think.

I do have two negative things to say about iBlog. The first thing is that although I like its news aggregator, it provides no simple one-click method of posting items from the news aggregator to the blog. Radio Userland does this - and I thought that was the whole point of having blogging software integrated with a news reader. It is very likely that this omission will be fixed in future releases of iBlog, so this is not a huge problem.

My other concern is more of a social rather than a technological issue, but it's real and is the major reason why I don't switch to iBlog tonight. It's that iBlog is so relatively new and has not yet established a community of users. I've talked about blogging communities before (see Digression2). Although I think one's blogging software is a very loose and less significant community, it does count for something. Maybe it's also because most of the time I feel quite at home in the Salon blog community.

Anyway, I'll finish by recommending iBlog to anyone starting a new blog on a Mac (OS 10.2). Because it's on a Mac and the software is very Mac-like, you won't waste as much time figuring out the technology and can spend more time being creative.

why I'm not interested in audio blogging

Fri, 09 May 2003 14:22:31 GMT

NPR Highlights Audioblogging.

Audio Blogs: Online Diarists Sound Off

"In the 18th century, people recorded the mundane details of life in diaries. Today, bloggers -- or Web loggers -- share their most intimate thoughts and opinions with the entire world on the Internet. The online journals, known as "blogs," are increasingly popular. And while they've been dominated by text and photos, they're now also going in a new direction, using audio as well.

NPR's Ari Shapiro reports on "audio blogs" -- online audio diaries that can make anyone's life a serial drama. New technology allows them to be updated via a simple phone call....

Moorehead predicts that once the novelty of audio blogging subsides, it will become just another tool in a blogger's repertoire.

Since audio blogs are relatively new, they don't yet cover the range of their written equivalents. But some people are already using audio in creative ways. A site called The Quiet American provides audio travelogues submitted by people around in a feature called 'one-minute vacations.' " [NPR, via weblogged News]

I agree with Will that this article is already behind the curve by not even noting moblogging ...[The Shifted Librarian]

I heard that segment too. Basically I'm not interested in audio blogging because of the following reasons. I would umm and ahh too much - unless I had written down everything that I was going to say, which would make me wonder what was the point of audio blogging. Yes, I would be providing my readers with the novelty of hearing my voice with its weird/cute blend of accent. But that novelty couldn't justify how stressful I would find the whole thing to be.

my links page

Mon, 05 May 2003 12:58:47 GMT

Well, I have finished my page of links to other blogs. I expect that I will be the main person who uses this page. I will now be able to keep track of my favourite blogs whilst at work. Although I love news aggregators, and am back to liking the Radio Userland news aggregator which I use, it is very interesting to view the actual blog and see all the design changes which bloggers are constantly making. Like everything else in the blogosphere, this link page is a work in progress. It is just a selection of my favourite blogs. To list all would be information overload. I do hope to maintain a featured blog of the week/month - highlighting a recent discovery or another blog which I view in my aggregator.

This page also serves as a bridge between the exploded library and my quite rudimentary personal web page at Hamline.

blogs that I read

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 13:46:15 GMT

I just added a link to the blogs that I read. The permanent location of this is at the end of the navigation links in the left column. This links page is very much under construction. I'll let you know when it's finished.

4 motivations for blogging, with 2 digressions

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 04:46:20 GMT

I’ve been ruminating about this topic for several weeks and now I feel inspired to write about it.

So why do people blog? For some people, it fits in very well with their day job. This is partly the reason why I blog. As I’ve explained in some of the essays I’ve written about blogging, maintaining a blog is a good way of keeping up with the latest news and technology concerning my profession - being a law librarian. For some people, this goes further. Blogging is becoming a parallel way of publication, which is so important in the academic world. Of course, self-publication will never be as prestigious as peer-reviewed or paid publication. But does this distinction really matter when blogs are offering the most innovative and accessible (read cheap) content and form? I’m sorry, but if I only have x hours per week for professional reading, that time is better spent reading blogs than journals or trade magazines.

<Digression1>

Of course, I’m a Very Naughty Librarian for saying this. We always push getting the best of both print and online worlds. So why have I turned heretic in this way? I know that blogging is far from perfect. It can be a breeding ground for rumours, half-truths and bad scholarship (I’m guilty of this at times, so I’m allowed to say this). It can be very circular or self-referential. On other hand, established publications aren’t perfect either. They can be expensive, full of ads, and print only publications don’t have hyperlinks (and rarely do their online versions) – footnotes aren’t quite the same. I think that reading online materials with hyperlinks is a more active and engaging process than reading articles in print.

Most importantly, more often than not, I am simply not interested in the content which has been selected by publishers. Reading blogs, I am in charge of what I’m reading. I choose which blogs I put in my aggegator, which posts to skim over and which ones to read in detail. This is one of the benefits of information overload. I know that there will always be more things to read than I have time for. I can use this situation to my advantage by letting myself focus in what I’m really interested in. I’m not saying that publishers don’t add any value. They do by paying professionals to write and sometimes selecting interesting articles which I wouldn’t have read otherwise - Salon being a case in point for me, for which I’m very willing to pay. But other bloggers can do this too - and they point me to interesting articles in other publications which I would never read otherwise.

All that said, I still do read print journals and trade magazines - because I'm also a bookworm and feel that I should.

</Digression1>

Some blogs greatly compliment the blogger’s paid career. I know of instances of people being offered real jobs because of the quality of their web logs.

Another reason to blog is that it’s good for the ego. I don’t mean this in a derogatory way. For people who think that “ego” or “egotistical” are invariably bad things, think self-esteem instead. I think that most honest & self-aware people who aren't saints would be hard-pressed to deny that the ego boosts can help. It’s nice to read your blog being praised. It’s interesting to see the number of hits & referrers to your blog increase. Of course, I must mention the BlogShares (truly, life is too short to be fixated by such things). Of course, depending on their sensitivity, a blogger’s ego can be hurt by criticism, being delinked or receiving reduced readership. Some people have a thicker skin and are not bothered by this. Other people reduce the likelihood of negative reactions by not going out on a limb or expressing opinions which would be inflammatory to members of their particular blogging community.

<Digression2>

It’s very hard to define what a blogging community is. I don’t mean anything monolithic such as - “Trent Lott’s racist remarks caused such furor in the Blogging Community that the mainstream media could no longer overlook them.” There are many different blogging communities. They include the formal attempts to establish a blogging community - e.g. Salon blogs, the blawg web ring, various LiveJournal communities etc. But these formal constructions only help facilitate a blog community, they are not essential for a community. I would tentatively say that a blog community consists of those formal or informal relationships between bloggers who frequently read each other’s postings and occasionally point to or comment on them. I would guess that relationships are based on shared viewpoints and personalities.

The blogiverse is like the night sky. Stars all over the place, in every direction. Some are bright while others are very faint, some have different colours, and they arranged in constellations. Now, imagine a series of Venn diagrams overlaying these stars.

And so the image changes to light rain falling onto a pond. The water's surface is covered with interlinked and concentric circles. Some circles are larger than others, some circles intersect with others, some circles are wholly contained by others.

So each blog falls into a number of different communities, some of which may be large, other which might be small or narrow.

For example, if it is very important for me to be included in the mainstream law blog community or the library blog community, it is not wise to rant my particular blend of left-wing politics. Because I may alienate myself from the members of these broad communities who have opposing or neutral point of view, and I move to the fringes of the community. On the other hand, my rants may bring me closer to the centre of the smaller communities of lefty lawyer/librarian bloggers.

</Digression2>

So if you aspire towards the centre of a large mainstream blog community, you can’t be too controversial, particularly about issues which are outside the main focus of that community.

Before I finish about blogging and the ego, I must point out this discussion by Jonathon Delacour.

Another reason to blog is simply for self-expression. Blogging for self-expression is similar but different from blogging for the ego boost. It’s not hard to imagine situations where self-expression will get you into trouble and cause you to be criticized, delinked or removed from aggregators. The people who blog purely for self-expression are not interested in their readership or number of links, so long as they are saying what they want to say, in the way that they want to say it. Of course, ego can be important to even the most idealistic / artistic bloggers, because what is the purpose of self-expression if nobody is going to read it? But now I’m approaching into questions which have challenged philosophers and artists for centuries, and I don’t want to add another digression.

Finally, there are some people who blog for money. I suspect that this will become a trend, as blogging becomes more mainstream. Depending on the financial relationship, this could seriously undermine the ability for self-expression. On the other hand, being paid may confer extra legitimacy and visibility, which could help the ego. Finally, blogging for money could conceivably become a job – which returns to the first motivation I that mentioned.

I’m writing all this to understand my own motivations for blogging. I think that I’m motivated in part by my career, my ego and my need for self-expression – but not for money :) I wouldn’t be opposed in principle to blogging for money, so long as it didn’t interfere with my other needs, particularly self-expression. I’m not going to rank how important these three different motivations are for me, because it changes on any given day. I can say that the self-expression motivation is getting more important, but I doubt that the other two motivations are going to disappear.

from How to Save the World's survey of Salon bloggers

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 03:59:39 GMT

Q6 How do you gauge the success of your blog?.

Most popular answers, in declining order of importance: personal satisfaction, compliments received from others, having fun, buzz (number of hits and ranking), opinions from people I know, number of new visitors, consistency of my writing, number of people who've blogrolled me without my asking, therapeutic value received from blogging.
Several of you commented on how easy it is to 'cheat' in number of hits, and how number of hits can sometimes be misleading for other reasons. A few suggested that for that reason the right-hand (number of hits since inception) Salon Ranking column list should be eliminated, or at least cut back to latest-30-days ranking.
A few people said the Salon 'community' really hadn't gelled and that we as a group need to do more things proactively to welcome and include fellow 'sloggers', and make Salon blogs a real community.

[How to Save the World]

Too bad I missed out on that one - my blogging was in a hiatus at the time.

"why I blog" - my thoughts on this are forthcoming

Thu, 17 Apr 2003 03:55:57 GMT

PUTTING THINGS IN CONTEXT: WHY I BLOG.

One of the great challenges in knowledge sharing, and in asynchronous communication, is to provide your audience with enough context to understand where your message 'comes from' -- what mental models, preconceptions, hidden agendas, historical baggage and motivations filter and taint what you say. Conveying this context makes it easier for the recipient of your message to internalize what you're saying more accurately and fully. It can also prevent misconceptions that lead to argument or disparagement of your point of view. For that reason, I thought it might be helpful to let you know not only who I am (in the sidebar About the Author ), but also why I blog -- what motivates me, on top of a heavy business workload, to spend at least 25 hours a week reading blogs and other resources, and writing my own blog posts. So here goes:

I do this for three equally important (to me) reasons:

Improve My Writing Skills: I love writing, and always wanted to make a living at it. By reading a lot on many topics, and practicing incessantly, I hope to learn to:

write powerful, persuasive essays (like this one of Toby's) that stake out radical positions without sounding strident,
write humour (like Dave Barry ), once I figure out what makes humorous writing funny,
write clear, motivating, informative and actionable business essays,
incorporate these 39 steps from Frederick Barthelme in my fiction writing, and
broaden my eclectic intellectual reach so I have more knowledge to draw on in my writing (the way Mark Woods can).

Institute Weblogs in Business: As Chief Knowledge Officer of a large professional services company, I've been grappling with two major cultural obstacles to knowledge sharing - employees' reluctance to contribute their knowledge, and the absence of context sufficient to make knowledge that is contributed easy to assess, internalize and re-use. I think employee weblogs might solve both problems.
Environmental Activism: Although the title of this blog is ironic, I am a hopeless idealist and really would like to make the world a better place. I'm about ten years from retirement, and plan then to dedicate my life full-time to environmental activism. I'm dissatisfied with existing environmental activist programs, which seem to me rear-guard, ineffectual, naive, inadequate, and often too little, too late to have major, lasting impact. I'm equally dissatisfied with the lack of coherent and actionable blueprints for environmental action, and I'm hoping that by blogging environmental manifestos like How to Save the World and The Third Way, SETI-like, I will be able to find like minds with whom I can work to drive a powerful, effective, broad-based environmental movement.

For those that have read my posts before, is this helpful? Should we make it part of the blogger culture that each of us provide some context for our writing with both a bio and a 'why I blog' summary?

[How to Save the World]

a few more helpful bloggy links

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 04:22:58 GMT

Some links on weblogs taking over:

Weblogs At Harvard Law
Hosted by the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/

News Aggregator: This page lists the most recent stories from news feeds that the Managing Editor of the site has subscribed to. Each hour the news aggregator scans subscribed feeds for new stories, which are displayed on this page from newest to oldest.
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/aggregator/

The Feed Room has a list of a variety of RSS feeds on a number of topics
http://www.feedroom.com/rssmain.jsp

The Penn State Portal Project
http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/new_users.html
http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/index.html
http://www.psu.edu/portalproject/tools/index.html
https://portal.psu.edu/

Dave's immediate to-do list (development, over time, in public, for the blogs.law.harvard.edu project)
http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/stories/storyReader$132

Some sites are moving to weblogs as the backbone of the whole Web site:

Kern County Superintendent of Schools main website is a Manila weblog.
http://www.kern.org/
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/03/26#When:2:43:58PM

http://www.bryanbell.com/2003/03/26
This completes the transition to Manila[dot accent] we started 2 years ago. The homepage was last on the list, because we decided to do it back to front. We converted every department in the organizations and nearly all of our client schools. I must have trained 300 people on how to manage their Manila[dot accent] site.

Web Logs as Web Site
http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2003/03/19#a533

Ms. Leake's Classroom News
Buckman Arts Magnet Elementary School - Portland, Oregon
http://buckman.pps.k12.or.us/classrooms/leake/

Butlerville Elementary
A Nice Place to Be
http://manila.cet.middlebury.edu/butlerville/

School Blog or Not
Should Bryant Elementary implement its new web presence using Web log tools?
http://schoolblogdebate.blogspot.com/

Regular usergroup sessions
http://scriptingnews.userland.com/2003/03/23#When:1:15:07PM

What are weblogs?
http://www.weblogs.com/about

Understanding weblogs (The Tweney Report)
http://www.tweney.com/writing.php?display22

A vision for the Web at Webster (me): "let a thousand weblogs bloom."
http://xraynet.editthispage.com/stories/storyReader$435 [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

blogging as an act of defiance: "I'm tired of being resigned to accepting a country that is governed by warmongers, religious extremists, and corporate lapdogs."

Tue, 15 Apr 2003 04:11:53 GMT

'I don't know all of the answers but I refuse to be quiet anymore'.

I think Rebecca at Suddenly Routine has one of the best explainations yet for having started a blog - and I have a feeling that, at it's root, its not that different than the reasons many bloggers took the plunge.

[different strings]

my unlikely adventures in AOL

Thu, 27 Mar 2003 05:16:29 GMT

I’m the last person whom I’d ever think of as an AOL user. I’ve never really had a strong opinion about it, but AOL has never really appealed to me. It must be all I’ve heard about it being the dumbed-down internet on training wheels, that is expensive yet full of spam.

I’ve been bombarded with their CDs, and have always ignored them, thinking that I’d never try AOL and that it’s such a waste of resources to be distributing all those CDs. Well, maybe there’s some truth to that axiom of marketing about repetition, because I did end up trying AOL.

The circumstances were pretty exceptional. I was catsitting for some friends. I wanted to connect to the web with my iBook. I was using Qwest/MSN dsl, which gave me a certain amount of free dial-up access for this type of situation. The trouble was that their dial-up only worked if I used Mac OS 9.2 (apparently this will change when MSN for OS X comes out shortly). Basically I use OS X for everything now, and did not want to be working in the old operating system.

That’s when I decided to retrieve one of those AOL CDs from the garbage bin – literally! I knew that they had a relatively new version for OS X and thought that I’d try it. Besides, I was a little curious to find out what their gated internet world was like. Maybe there was something good about it and it was only snobbery that made me shun it. At any rate, this experiment wouldn’t cost me anything if I cancelled the subscription in time.

The installation went very smoothly and easily. No complaints there. AOL for Mac OS X has a very visually attractive interface. The animated browser icon looks very cool and liquid-like.

I’m a member of a number of different web “communities.” By communities, I mean spaces where you can discuss particular topics and hook-up with people with similar interests/views/experiences. LiveJournal is the first web community which I became involved with. There’s a bewildering number of communities, from librarians to shy people (guess what – nobody says all that much in it!) to all sorts of fan communities. Recently I also joined the Well, one of the oldest internet communities, which predates the web. I did this mainly to support to support Salon, which I do not want to see fold. The Well is a gated community which is centred on on-going discussions of various topics – from libraries again to TV shows such as Buffy to discussions on etiquette, not to mention the ubiquitous discussions on Iraq and other common events. Even blogs are a kind of community – generally way more open and diffuse and less organized than the others I’ve mentioned. But often certain bloggers pay attention to other bloggers, forming a certain loose-knit community. Then are more deliberate attempts to establish blog communities, such as the blawg web ring or the Salon blogs community, both of which I belong to.

I mention all this because I think that the main thing that AOL offers are some gated virtual communities. Because AOL has such a large user base, there is a very wide-range of topics and common interests. For example, there isn’t just one Buffy/Angel message board, there are active ongoing discussions about each of the regular characters in the two shows!

One thing that makes AOL stand-out is that they make it very easy to become involved in real-time online chats. For example, there are three different chat rooms about the Buffyverse. Of course, it is possible to do all this outside of AOL, but here I admit that it is much easier in AOL. This is one part of the internet which in my mind, needs a bit of simplification.

This assumes that one likes chat rooms, and I’m not sure if I do… In fairness, chat rooms are just a different medium which I’m not used to. Blogs and web discussion boards are hardly paragons of thoughtful, considered conversation, but they are when compared with chat rooms. Chat rooms more closely emulate a real discussion. They’re much faster and spontaneous. There can be a number of different threads of conversation operating simultaneously. Maybe if I were better at multi-tasking, I’d get more out of chat rooms.

Of course, AOL is meant to be more than just chat rooms, message boards and online communities. There’s all the “content” available – thanks to its troubled merger with Time Warner. I have to say that none of it really impressed me. Maybe one reason might be that Mac users can’t use the AOL Radio feature. But none of AOL’s other content struck me as any better than anything I could find very easily on the free web. But I guess that AOL’s content is simply there – it’s not even a matter of finding it.

AOL’s biggest short-coming is its rampant spam. With my previous email accounts (with the exception of hotmail), I was only spammed after I started making my email address available to the outside world – by buying things or filling out forms etc. With AOL, I started getting spammed almost immediately. Worse than that, when I was in chat rooms, I would get spam instant messages, which are even more annoying. I realize that because AOL is the biggest ISP, it’s also the biggest target for spam. I know that it has developed spam control features which I could probably use more effectively. Still, it’s off-putting to be receiving nasty sexual spam within an hour of initially signing onto AOL.

Because I had such low expectations of AOL, I ended being slightly impressed. Is it worth the extra money? If you just need internet access, definitely not. If you want the whole AOL experience, especially the chat rooms and other community features, possibly. Other online communities can also cost money, and if they don’t cost money, they may be more difficult to use or require more work.

my silly little obituary for bookmarks

Thu, 06 Mar 2003 02:10:04 GMT

When I first started browsing the web, I was infatuated with bookmarks. Bookmarks were always bookmarks then, never "favorites", because Netscape was the only show in town - unless you counted Mosaic. This was when Microsoft was still in denial about what the web was about.

It was so difficult to find anything on the web in those days. All the search engines seemed inadequate in major ways. So the trick was to dilligently bookmark anything you came across which could possibly be of use, because you never knew if you'd be able to find it again.

I was such a nerd (and still am) that a good set of bookmarks seemed almost like a little treasure. Sometimes to be shared, sometimes hoarded, always valued.

Things are different now. The only bookmarks that I care for are the ones that go along the top of the browser. I would only bookmark a small number of sites that I use a lot - which have URLs which are difficult to remember.

None of these would be other blogs, because I keep track of those in my news aggregator. I generally don't bother with blogs that don't have RSS feeds. It's just too much extra work. I know that I miss out on the some good stuff because of this, but there are only so many hours in a day.

There's nothing more annoying than accumulating so many bookmarks that it takes longer to find a site in your list of bookmarks than it would to look it up on a search engine.

One part of the problem is that I frequently use at least three different computers. My home computer, my main work computer and the reference desk computer. I know that there are services for storing your bookmarks on the web, but they seem kind of clunky.

Maintaining bookmarks is annoying. They get outdated so easily. It's the nature of the web. The whole idea/metaphor of web bookmarks is wrong. To compare a web page to a fixed page of a book that can be marked does not match what the web is really about. Imagine a tornado inside a library. Books and pieces of paper are flying everything. Sometimes new things enter the swirling maelstrom, sometimes things leave it, but things are always changing.

It is in the nature of URLs to change - except for the ones so stable that they could easily be remembered anyway.

I guess another reason why I no longer rely on bookmarks is because I blog. If I find something interesting on the web, I'll blog it. I know that the link will go out of date, but I trust to be able to find it again. Because of the symbiotic relationship between bloggers and Google, I know that my act of blogging a site will help keep it on Google's radar.

what happens when the US government can seize any .com domain name?

Fri, 28 Feb 2003 02:47:29 GMT

In Web disputes, U.S. law rules the world, by Michael Geist, in the Toronto Star. ... [A blog doesn't need a clever name]

The [Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act] statute, which applies to dot-com, dot-net, and dot-org domains, reaches that conclusion by referring to the fact that the domain name system's root server, the database that houses all domain names and their corresponding numeric addresses, is located in Virginia. The use of the in rem jurisdictional provision is a classic example of legislating outside national borders. For example, the provision surfaced in 2000 in a dispute between two Canadian parties over the technodome.com domain name. Although the trademark holder could have launched a trademark infringement action in Canada, where the courts have addressed cybersquatting issues on several occasions, it chose instead to launch an ACPA action in Virginia where it successfully invoked the in rem jurisdiction clause by suing the domain name, rather than its owner.

So it looks that at least for disputes concerning most important domains, all roads lead to Virginia and US law will apply. This is still going to be a contentious area. I remember how outraged people were that the High Court of Australia dared to assume jurisdiction in the Dow Jones v. Gutnick case - and dared to reach a different outcome than an American court would have. But that tussle over jurisdiction is miniscule compared with what could happen. This week the news has come out that the US Government has seized domain names for non-cybersquatting purposes. The Department of Justice has seized the isonews.com domain because of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The site sold mod chips and was a forum for people wanting to play bootlegged console games. In related news the DEA took over sites that sold drug paraphenalia.

So what do you get when ultimate power of domain names rests in the US, and a US government that is willing & able to use this power to advance its political agenda? This could be very messy indeed. If the DEA could seize a domain in the name of the war on drugs, imagine what could be done in the name of the war on terrorism or the war on Iraq? If the PATRIOT Act and PATRIOT Act 2 are any examples, I don't think that the US Government is interested in being restrained with this power.

journalists and librarians and information disintermediation

Wed, 26 Feb 2003 03:24:35 GMT

Scott Rosenberg's piece about the Davos reporter who got caught saying what she really thinks. [Scripting News]

I hadn't heard about this particular row (American readers might want to substitute flap or controversy for "row"). I found Scott's post more interesting for its discussion on the role of journalists in this world of blogs and information disintermediation. If journalists have a role in "digging out" what certain public figures "really think" about particular issues, I wonder if there's a parallel with librarians... Something special about the good old-fashioned face to face interaction between a librarian and the library user is that it often helps the library user clarify what she or he was really looking for in the first place. Of course, this can also happen over the phone - although it seems more difficult. I can't even imagine Virtual Reference software could put the spontaneity and free-flow of real conversation into toneless text messages. Maybe I'm wrong here.