Marshall's Web Tool Blog

A Podcast About Tagging

2005-10-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

I've just posted a podcast about tagging over at my new site, MarshallK.com.

Feedback Sought

2005-10-01T17:59:00.000-07:00

If anyone feels up for giving me any feedback on the beginings of my new site, MarshallK.com, that would be great. The primary issue in question is the image at the top. What do you think? I'm not happy with the caption of the picture, but feedback on that would be great too. Thanks.

Thinking About Tagging and Web 2.0

2005-09-29T12:57:00.000-07:00

There's a great write up of the thinking proccess behind tagging and (as I read it)the supperiority of tagging over catagorization when it comes to the digital world over at Rashmi Sinha's blog RashmiSinha.com.

There are lots of pithy points made in a short article, and the discussion in the comments section is great. If there's anything in particular to excerpt, it's these two illustration and the article's conclusion.

These two images sum up much of what's written in the original article, but I really suggest you find the time to read it yourself. (And check out the author's bio.) It concludes with the following words:

To conclude, the beauty of tagging is that it taps into an existing cognitive process without adding add much cognitive cost. At the cognitive level, people already make local, conceptual observations. Tagging decouples these conceptual observations from concerns about the overall categorical scheme. The challenge for tagging systems is to then do what the brain does - intelligent computation to make sense of these local observations, and an efficient, predictable way to ensure findability.

When you tag your digital objects well (for you and others to find) and when the underlying programming of the tagging systems is good (rich, interoperable and portable)...then we're really getting somewhere in Web 2.0 world. Understanding how the thought proccesses in Web2.0 (like tagging) work is essential to pulling this new media experiment off.

So attempting to remix the above quoted article is going to be my contribution to the blogoposium1 event this week. Part of explaing Web 2.0 can be to say the following:

Web 2.0 is in part about using new technology to bring our web-use more in line with the free-form and hyper-efficient working of the human mind. Old systems of communication are inflexable and based on either/or thinking: an object is either type A or type B, people are either information producers or they are consumers, a particular use of an information-object is either the way it was intended or it's not. Now in Web2.0 we have the tools to mark and retrieve objects with an open number of signifiers (like tags), the line between information producer and consumer is far more blurred and transversable than before, and every information object can be reappropriated in as many ways as you can imagine (e.g. podcast audio-search-to-RSS, blog posts tagged into an attention stream, graphic illustrations pasted into a wiki ecosystem's history, etc.) Our brains are capable of amazing things, and now we are building the tools to transcend the logistical boundaries of the information past.

Not exactly an elevator pitch, but when that's what's needed I say: Web2.0 is about moving beyond static web-sites and into web-services that support the creation and consumption of remixable multi-media products by a much larger number of people than have been considered "proffesionals" in the past.

It's complicated, but it's not. The hardest part of adopting Web2.0 practices is breaking old web-use habits that don't serve us well anyway.

Resources: Cognitive Analysis of Tagging article, Blogoposium1 attention stream, explaining Web2.0, Articles I've written explicitely about Web2.0, items online that I've tagged with Tagging and with SocialBookmarking. Article on cognition of tagging found via Elearnspace, another good site.

Technorati Tags: tagging, web2.0,

Explaining Web 2.0 to Non-Geeks

2005-09-26T08:28:00.001-07:00

Thanks for visiting my site. I hope you'll stop by my front page and check out more of what I'm doing. Keep your eyes peeled too for a much needed site redesign!

In a simple, but inspired move, Ken Yarmosh of Technosight has made a call to use tagging and synched blogging to create what he's calling a blogoposium. The topic is 'Communicating the Ideas Behind Web 2.0'. The ideas being that we need to find effective ways to explain what we mean by this concept to people who are still learning the basics of the web - and that we'll be able to best come up with those explanations together. I'm excited about it, as this is something I could really use. I hope that some of my Nptech and portland Network associates will participate as well; just technorati tag your blog posts between this on the subject "blogoposium1" and/or submit articles online by tagging them blogoposium1 in de.licio.us. For further details, and information about how to get a free book, check out this post at Technosight. If Web2.0 is a new concept for you, one place to start is through Technosight's post on the blogoposium...check out the folks who've posted links to their sites and you'll discover a whole new world out there.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, nptech, blogoposium1,

New Podcasts are Emerging Everywhere

2005-09-25T13:37:00.000-07:00

Here's just a sample of some of the newest podcasts I've discovered in the last few days, a list selected to demonstrate the breadth of organizations beginning to employ this new medium of communication.

GM Fastlane podcast The VP of General Motors has been blogging for quite some time. Now he's doing a podcast too. It just makes sense.

Praisecast An online community for religious podcasts and sermons recorded as MP3 files.

American Experience The super popular PBS show is now podcasting.

Feedburner Podcast This is probably the least surprising on the list, but the awesome RSS feed creation/monitoring service Feedburner is doing a podcast. The first episode is up and I really enjoyed it. It's pretty technical at points, but it's a great example of a tech company podcast. Some news about new developments, an interview with an employee and an interview with a big client about their experiences using the service. Simple formula that creates a solid product.

As I've mentioned before I am working on or considering several podcast production gigs right now, but I'm looking for some more small projects to be hired for. What I'd really like to do is teach YOU how to create, record, distribute and promote podcasts about whatever work you are doing. Almost anyone has great podcast material hidden somewhere, waiting to be recorded. And yes, I'll start podcasting myself as soon as I can.

Technorati Tags: podcasts

Wow! Ping Automatically With Feedburner!

2005-09-24T11:22:00.000-07:00

I have been totally excited for the last 24 hours since I read about Feedburner's new automatic pinging service! Here's what it means: Feedburner is an RSS feed creating service. They track your subscribers, make your feed groovy, etc. Pinging means to notify search engines, RSS readers, and other interested computers that you have new content on your website that needs to be indexed. It's a key part of getting your content read, searchable and lots of other things.

Now Feedburner will automatically ping services of your choice every time you make a new blog post! Previously, bloggers had to manually ping using a ping clearing house like Ping-o-Matic or Pingoat (my favorite). Several of my clients were not pinging these services manually because it was just one more semi-complicated step in the blog posting process. (See this post on maximizing your blog traffic.) Still, I really like the folks over at Pingoat and I'll miss them. I guess we'll see if Feedburner's perfomance is acceptable, and if not then I'll go back to Pingoat.

I am very excited about this. I will be transferring the clients who aren't using Feedburner over to a Feedburner feed, and with pinging occurring I will be able to insert a Blogdigger search box. Blogdigger won't index new blogs on accident very easily, it needs to be pinged. And if it doesn't index your blog, you can't use its search box (see my left sidebar) to search inside the blog. Blogdigger is far preferable to Technorati, which is slow and only searches the front page of your blog! So this is very good news.

This is a great example of the kind of application integration that the big guys are focusing on in "enterprise software" suites or "busses." Us little folks have to find the same types of functionality in our end-user web applications if we're going to keep up.

Technorati Tags: feedburner, ping, rss, blog, integration, web2.0, search

Word of Blog, a Promotion Service for Change

2005-09-22T10:12:00.000-07:00

Word of Blog.net is a simple, but potentially powerful service that provides a place for non-profit groups and others to display a linking promotional graphic, or badge, and the code snippet that supporters can copy and paste into their sites to display that badge. Promotional badges are something I've been planning on working on, so I'm glad to find a public repository for them. I'm sure some do gooders are adding lots of the badges at once.

The badges are organized by organization name and by tags, which is very nice. If you select browse, then by tag, you'll see an example of a tag cloud system put to very good use. A tag cloud is an alphabetized list of tags used in a site, but with their sizes varying according to their frequency of use.
Thanks to the Full Circle Online Interaction Blog for pointing to this resource. I found their via the NPTech Meta Feed, a cross-platform RSS feed I created for items tagged nptech, the tag for non-profit technologists.

Technorati Tags: WordofBlog, badges, promotion, nptech

Networked Learning: New Presentation Tools

2005-09-21T12:33:00.000-07:00

The Networked Learning Wiki is a great example of using new tools to flesh out a conference about new tools themselves. Created for a presentation titled Cool Results: Engaging Clients in E-learning, this wiki describes and gives examples of a large list of Web2.0 tools. The presentation itself is available as an audio file and the conversation now continues on the wiki. It's a good overview of the field and a nice looking wiki. I think readers of this site will enjoy checking it out.

Just about any presentation could be given greater depth, longevity and thus impact by working with an associated body of web based tools like this. Judging by the "history" button, participation post-presentation hasn't been huge so far, but things are set up great to foster participation indefinitely. Even if there aren't large numbers of people making changes to the wiki, the possibility of long tail value is certainly there (this blog entry, for example.) As users become more familiar with companion online resources, Web2.0 tools, etc. resources like the Networked Learning Wiki will become increasingly utilized.

Technorati Tags: networkedlearning, wiki, presentation, elearning, web2.0, nptech, multimedia, longtail

Audio, Video Search, Tagging and Community

2005-09-20T01:16:00.000-07:00

Just started exploring Loomia, an interesting looking multi-media search service/community. It seems to bring together many of the most interesting trends in the web2.0 world. Specifically: tagging, social bookmarking, collaborative filtering, automated recommendations (attention data), podcasting, video blogging, search and rss. It looks impressive. I'll have to check it out more when I can.

Thanks for the tip, Geek News Central.

Technorati Tags: search, Loomia, podcasting, web2.0, nptech, multimedia, vblogging, community

Update on my Work

2005-09-19T14:33:00.000-07:00

I don't usually post here about myself, but I've just been away on vacation and thought I'd provide a little update on what I'm doing now that I'm back.

First, my apologies for my broken blog. If you came in through any individual pages, you've seen how messed up they are, though this front page works just fine. I've got some coding problems I need to fix, but I may just switch blogging platforms (and thus URLs) while I'm at it. I'll let you know.

Second, I'm typing this on my new computer. For those of you in the know, I'm sure you appreciate how excited I am to have a little iBook G4 of my own sitting in my house now. That's going to make my work much easier and more efficient. Expect to see the difference, especially if you're someone I am doing work for.

Next bit of news, with my new computer I've gotten a Skype account. I can be called via marshallkirkpatrick on Skype. I hope some of you will drop me a line.

Finally, if you are wondering why I'm not in contact with you yet this week, I will be doing a bunch of work late tonight and will do my best to contact the folks I need to first thing tomorrow, but with some work having been done. My partner and I have taken some much needed time off together (4 days in the woods, 3 days in Portland), but I will soon be back in the action with some exciting new projects to share with you.

Thanks for stopping by! -Marshall

Podcasting Cops

2005-09-19T14:09:00.000-07:00

An interesting example of an organization using the new medium of podcasting to communicate with the public is the NYPD Podcast. It's traffic closure updates, public announcements and a little bit of info on, for example, avoiding identity theft. It's interesting, and just illustrates the wide array of possibilities. You can read about it in a story here, or download it here.

My archive of bookmarks regarding podcasting is here. I'm considering or discussing a number of podcasting ideas right now, ranging from sports to politics. I'd like to get in the habit of regularly podcasting about the work I'm doing. And what I'd really like to do is help some one else set up an organizational podcast for internal communication. So if that's of interest to you...let me know!

Technorati Tags: podcasting, police, cops, web2.0, internal_communication, nptech

10 Tips for Searching Effectively

2005-09-13T13:39:00.000-07:00

Update: The post below has gotten lots and lots of traffic, which is awesome and tells me I should write more like it. Lots of traffic has come from a repost over at Tipmonkies, a related site I recomend my readers check out.

This might seem unexciting to some readers, but I believe others will find it useful. Here's some of my tips for constructing an effective web search, ranging from the most to least simple:

Use quotes to denote a whole phrase you want to search for. Searching for (you know who you are) technology and community colleges will give you different results than searching for technology and "community colleges" or even "technology and community colleges" or "technology in community colleges." Specifically, putting whole phrases in quotes will give you far fewer results - hopefully better ones.

Use the word "not" or the minus (-) sign to exclude searches that have certain words in them. Look at your search results, do they contain lots of articles from the same, irrelevant source? Get better results by adding - and the name of that source to the end of your query.

When trying different search terms, think about the words some one would use to describe their work who is in the field you are researching. Different people use different language, depending on their perspective. Try multiple searches with different rhetoric, or focus on a certain perspective by using terms only its partisans would use.

If you find that the web sites or pages you want are no longer available at their original location - don't lose hope! First, copy and paste the URL into Google and see if the page has been cached. Second, try pasting it into the wayback machine at Archive.org. Finally, you might try the cache function over at Fagan Finder's URL Info.

Search in more places than just Google. Though it's often good enough if you are looking for something specific, gathering information about a general subject is best done with multiple search engines. Check out Jux2.com for a comparison between 3 big engines, Google, Yahoo and Ask Jeeves. See also Clusty.com for search across many other engines.

Google has lots and lots of advanced features that you probably don't remember at any given time. Check out Soople and XtraGoogle for interfaces that will make those features easy to use.

Don't forget specialty search engines like: A9.com to search inside Amazon.com books (then check them out from the library or buy them from Powell's), OneLook.com to search lots and lots of specialty dictionaries and Wikiwax for auto-complete search of Wikipedia, brainstorming style. Or Blinkx.com and Podscope for audio and video search. There are lots and lots of specialty search engines out there. If you'd like help finding some for a particular field, send me an email.

Don't search only when you remember to! Search 24-7 by subscribing to the RSS feed for your search in engines that offer this essential service. Make sure you put your search terms in quotes as needed, select - or not to exclude the junk results you can see when first constructing your search. When I begin researching a subject for any length of time, the first thing I'll do is set up searches to RSS so that I don't miss any breaking news on the subject right up to the moment I'm done. I've written about search to RSS here.

Don't go looking for things more than once, use a social bookmarking tool to save what you find the first time. Describe it with tags that will help you, or other people, find it quickly again later. I recommend Furl.net because it saves a cached copy of each page you bookmark and searches the full text of pages in addition to the tags.

Tags can be searched across lots of different platforms over at TagCentral.net. Think of tags as subject headings, applied by users and usually only one word long. TagCentral makes using RSS for tag searching easy.

If search is a subject of interest, I've bookmarked articles and services that are search related in my Furl archive here. That link organizes them according to my rating system, with the best sites at the top.

Technorati Tags: search, tutorial, tips, metasearch, tag_search, RSS, persistent_search, Google, nptech

Client Feedback from the African American Environmentalist Association

2005-09-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

One of the organizations I've been doing some work for is The African American Environmentalist Association, based in D.C. I helped them spruce up their blogs, installing a variety of new tools and services to maximize usability and ease of conversation, and taught them how to use a few tools they knew about but didn't know how to implement yet.

The group's director just sent me some very nice feedback and I thought I'd share it with you.

You have been great. I don't have the time to go out and learn about what's new out there and how to use it, so your compact help and information have been very useful. I'm so glad you're out there, thanks for the education.
-Norris McDonald, Director of The African American Environmental Association.

If you're interested in seeing what I can do for your organization, drop me a line. Blogs are just part of what I help people with, see the introduction to concepts in the sidebar of this site to see what else I can help you learn how to implement for your work.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, training, consulting, blogs, environmental, african-american, AAEA, African-American_Environmentalist_Association, Norris_McDonald

The Empire Expands: Podshow Starts Acquisitions!

2005-09-06T16:56:00.000-07:00

How's this for interesting news that the world of podcasting is taking off. After receiving a large sum of venture capital last month, Adam Curry's PodShow Network has acquired it's first company. I was shocked, they bought Podcast Alley! With their excellent line-up of shows, and their awesome Podsafe Music Network, adding the super directory and online community of Podcast Alley makes them a real podcasting powerhouse. I am very excited to see what they do in the coming months. Loading their pages is taking forever this afternoon, presumably because of the buzz. We'll see how well they scale up to a large number of users. They have boatloads of money, but if money was all it took, then Technorati would load in a hurry.

Read full coverage over at the SiliconBeat blog.

Technorati Tags: podshow, podcasts, web2.0

Podcasts to Threaten Big Media, Big Media Columnist Says

2005-09-06T16:24:00.000-07:00

PCMag columnist and industry analyst John Dvorak wrote the following today:

There is no doubt in my mind that podcasting is not only here to stay but will also shortly threaten established media broadcast systems. It's not so much that they will all be destroyed by homebrew networks, but podcasts will be taking away just enough listeners to be a major concern.

His column goes on to discuss how fully many people give up listening to commercial radio once they start listening to podcasts. I know I loathe the times I get stuck with nothing but a radio dial in front of me, and I listen to podcast all day long. There is a simply unfathomable variety of wonderful podcasts out there already - niche broadcasting, on demand, time and place shifted and free of the constraints of commercial media. It's great.

Three good places to find podcasts you might be interested in are: podcast directories like Podcast Alley and Podcast Pickle, podcast search engines like Blinkx.com and via other peoples' recommendations - like my Furl archive of podcasts downloaded and podcasts to listen to.

Podcasting is a high-value content channel, I really believe it is. In my opinion, the percentage of podcasts that are worth listening to is much higher than the percentage of blogs worth reading. Mostly because it does take time and energy to make podcasts, more than it does to make a bad blog. But the possibilities for the medium are endless. I highly encourage people to, at the very least, try listening to some podcasts for the first time.

Found via Steve Rubel's MicroPersuasion.

Technorati Tags: podcasts, podcasting, web2.0, broadcast, media

A Check-List of Blog Bells and Whistles

2005-09-06T05:24:00.000-07:00

Why have a blog if you don't gussy it up for maximum usability, promotion power and participation in the conversations that make up the blogosphere? Below is a list of some of my favorite options for advanced blog features, often add-ons that respond to the needs blogger discover they have that aren't supported by their blogging software. In other cases, third party service providers can provide superior functionality.

This post was inspired by one at Suzzane Falter-Barnes' Painless Self Promotion blog, about a consultancy called the Blog Squad who are helping her upgrade her blog. After reading their excellant suggestions, I realized I have a few more myself. So here's a list of add-ons I chose between when advising on the creation or upgrade of a blog.

Technorati Tag bookmarklet. Drop this puppy in your browser's toolbar and save yourself lots of time and help people find your site by tagging each article appropriately.
Feedburner RSS feed. These folks are on the forefront of RSS feed creation. They do a great job and are always pushing the envelope.
One-click RSS buttons, for the major RSS reader programs. Here's a story about creating these buttons for someone, with the code to do it.
Pingoat to tell all the major blog search engines and other parties of interest that you have updated your site and they should come back and index your content again. Key concept, and Pingoat is doing a very good job.
One-click bookmark links for each article via Furl.net and Del.icio.us. The world of social bookmarking is very important, and I think that participation in it is a good means of promotion and increasing your usefulness. Here's my write up on the one-click links.
FeedDigest spliced syndication and side-bar displays of any RSS feeds of interest to you. Here's a post about these tools being put into action to create an alert system for an organization's supporters.
Reputation tracking. You have got to be notified right away whenever anyone is linking to you. Here's how I do that for clients and for myself.
Haloscan commenting and trackbacks. Attractive, reliable, very low cost. Much better than what this blog software includes. Here's my write up when I initially installed this system on my site.
StatCounter, a site traffic monitor that's easy to install and use. It's very useful and has both free and paid levels.
Talkr feed, or blog text turned to MP3 sound files and delivered via RSS. Very simple, good for accesibility, and sometimes very handy for me when I want to go for a walk and get away from the computer but still want to listen to what someone is writing about. My write up on Talkr is here.
E-Mail subscription service. Some people use it, some people don't. I have far more readers by RSS than I do by email, but I still think it's an important option. Here's my write up on adding this service from a company called Bloglet, but thanks to the discussion over at Falter-Barnes' site I'll be checking out Feedblitz.

There are other concepts and tools out there, but these are the ones I think are best developed and the ones I am most familiar with. I am sure this is only the begining, and the future of blog-centric web applications will look very different from the present. But regardless, I want to get what I can out of them now as well as getting an early understanding of the tools before they get too packaged by the big computer guys.

These are the kinds of things I consider when deciding how to advise in the creation of a client's blog. I hope this list is of use to some of you. Feel free to leave other suggestions in case I'm missing anything.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, blogs, consulting, blog_design, wishlist, applications, RSS, nptech

A Story About New Tools Used Together

2005-08-31T18:37:00.000-07:00

Will Richardson, who blogs at Weblogg-ed - The Read/Write Web, has posted an interesting story about how an individual educator could use RSS, social bookmarking, blogs and podcasts in his everyday morning routine. It's an interesting way to describe how smoothly all these tools work together. If you read it you can imagine what the particular applications and details would be like in your life and work.

One of the key points Richardson makes in his story is that these new tools save you time and don't require a huge investment of energy to use. Maybe others would be interested in writing up a brief narrative about how they integrate said tools in their daily practice.

Technorati Tags: web2.0, narrative, new_tools, RSS, SBMS, podcasts, education, integration

Group Emails in GMail

2005-08-31T02:32:00.000-07:00

Friends who use GMail may not know about a workaround you can use to create a group email. Check it out at Lifehacker, a pretty interesting blog.

If you don't know about GMail, it's Google's free web-based email service and it's the industry standard right now. All other email services, including Hotmail and Yahoo, have been trying to catch up in awesomeness for the last year or so. GMail requires an invite to start an account, but everyone who has one gets 50 invites. So let me know if you'd like an invite.

Aggregators: The New Blogs

2005-08-30T19:12:00.000-07:00

A great article over on Global Voices Online discusses the use of many blogs pulled together to make one aggregated blog. It's a growing trend and a great way to get a robust idea of the state of the blogosphere in any given location. Let's hope the demographics are well distributed as far as who knows to join. Two examples beyond what the Global Voices article mention are Lefty Blogs and ORBlogs, an aggregation of Oregon blogs.

Technorati Tags: Aggregators,Blogs, Groups, Web2.0

Music 2.0: MashupTown via RSS

2005-08-29T11:11:00.000-07:00

I've been having lots of fun this morning listening to some tunes from MashupTown.com, a site hosting some of the best mash-ups around. If you are unfamiliar with mashups, they are new songs created by artfully mixing two or more previously recorded songs together. The end result can be lots of fun to listen to. My favorite one this morning is "Shout Out at the Magic Rocket Man" (link to blog post with link to file) - it's a collage of 4 different classic rock songs. It's great.

I discovered MashupTown via Adam Curry's Daily Source Code, which is a great podcast about podcasts. Curry loves Mashuptown and plays selections from the site nearly every episode. I decided today that I wanted to subscribe to the RSS feed from Mashuptown, to automatically receive new posts and audio files in my aggregator. The site didn't have the general feed link available, so I emailed them and asked for it. I also asked whether they'd like a code snippet for one-click subscribe buttons to the major aggregator services (like I have on my sidebar.) I got an affirmative reply, so hey Art - here's the code you can copy and paste into your site. Thanks so much for the great fun. I'm listening to Mashuptown Radio right now and am finding a few things I'm digging there too.

You'll have to forgive the run on html, off the side of the page. I think that's just how it goes, and it doesn't seem like a real big deal to me. I'll fix it when I find the time to learn how to, but I don't want to break the lines of code up.

I included a link to my explanation of RSS feeds, feel free to remove that if you'd like. Other readers can use this same template to make one-click subscribe buttons on their sites, just replace the Feedburner RSS URL here with your RSS feed URL. Let me know if anyone needs help with that.

<h2> Syndicated Feeds </h2><a href="http://marshallk.blogspot.com/2005/05/introduction-to-rss-syndication.html">(definition)</a>
<p><a href="http://addyourfeedURLhere" title="Subscribe to my feed"><img src="http://www.feedburner.com/fb/images/pub/flchklt.gif" alt="" style="border: 0pt none ;"></a>
<a href="http://add.my.yahoo.com/rss?url=http://addyourfeedURLhere"><img src="http://us.i1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/i/us/my/addtomyyahoo4.gif" alt="" style="border: 0pt none ;"></a>
<a href="http://www.bloglines.com/sub/http://addyourfeedURLhere">

<img src="http://www.bloglines.com/images/sub_modern3.gif" alt="Subscribe with Bloglines" border="0">
</a>
<a href="http://www.newsgator.com/ngs/subscriber/subext.aspx?url=http://addyourfeedURLhere"><img src="http://www.newsgator.com/images/ngsub1.gif" alt="Subscribe in NewsGator Online" style="border: 0pt none ;"></a>
<a href="http://my.msn.com/addtomymsn.armx?id=rss&ut=http://addyourfeedURLhere&tt=CENTRALDIRECTORY&ru=http://rss.msn.com%27"><img src="http://sc.msn.com/c/rss/rss_mymsn.gif" alt="" style="border: 0pt none ;"></a>

Technorati Tags: mashups, mashuptown, audio, mp3, rss, oneclicksubscribe, subscriptions,

How much would you pay for free hosting?

2005-08-27T13:18:00.000-07:00

Humorous, there's an eBay auction running for a "free" invite to the free blog hosting over at Wordpress.com. That site provides free hosting for the excellent blog software you can find at Wordpress.org. The Wordpress blogging software is free, but users must pay for someone else to host their blog. Unless they get a free invite from Wordpress.com. In this case it's someone who has received an invite selling theirs to the highest bidder! So far it's at $35. I thought it interesting that most of the bidders had never made an eBay purchase before.

Funny stuff. Wikipedia has a nice entry about Wordpress.

Technorati Tags: wordpress, blogs, hosting, auctions, eBay, humor

BlogAlert System for Committee to Protect Bloggers

2005-08-25T15:14:00.000-07:00

Over at the site of The Committee To Protect Bloggers (CPB) there has been some discussion recently about creating a system for supporters to reblog key CPB articles about bloggers in danger of imprisonment, state interrogation, etc. That would amplify the calls for assistance for said blogger by creating a support network to spread the word - like what we in the U.S. call a phone-tree. The initial idea was to tag such items BlogAlert in the CPB blog, but I thought it might be nice to have a more automated option too.

What I did was create a new category in the CPB blog for articles to be filed under BlogAlert. I then found the unique RSS feed for that category (thanks to Julian Wolfson, Project Director at Civiblog.org, hosts of CPB and other social justice oriented organizations). I then ran that RSS feed through the awesome new tool FeedDigest to create a javascript code snippet. I formatted everything up as pretty as I could (subjective, I know) and put it the code snippet into my blog template. Now my readers will see any new BlogAlerts in a box in my sidebar - automatically. Nothing's been posted yet, so I've got the box in a quiet place, but I expect I'll move it somewhere more prominently once it gets active.

So...if you'd like to support the cause of free speech on the internet, the right of bloggers to be critical of their governments without being imprisoned or worse - then you too can grab the code snippet below and put it into your blog's template. Then voila, you and your readers will automatically get the headlines of any new BlogAlerts about bloggers in danger. Pretty cool, huh?

This principle can applied anywhere and presents a world of possibilities. Let me know if you'd like any help setting up something like this for your blog or website. You can syndicate search results, items you or others have given a certain tag, etc. etc. I think it's very exciting. So, with no further ado, below is the code snippet you can copy and paste into your blog to get the CPB BlogAlert box for your readers to see. Let me know if you have any troubles. I'll let you know if there are any further developments.

<fieldset style="padding:4px"><h2>Blog Alerts</h2><p>
<script type="text/javascript" src="http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/DUKSBUZMKE.js"><noscript><a href="http://app.feeddigest.com/digest3/DUKSBUZMKE.html">Click for "Blog Alert from CPB".</a> By <a href="http://www.feeddigest.com/">Feed Digest</a></noscript></script><p> <strong>via <a href="http://committeetoprotectbloggers.civiblog.org">The Committee to Protect Bloggers</a></strong></fieldset><a href="http://committeetoprotectbloggers.civiblog.org/blog/_archives/2005/8/26/1172112.html">
<em>Add BlogAlert to Your Site</em></a>

<p>

Technorati Tags: committeetoprotectbloggers, blogalert, rss, syndication, tagging, nptech, feed_digest, civiblog

Google Talk: Look Out Skype?

2005-08-25T14:16:00.000-07:00

So, Google just announced that they are offering a VOIP (voice over internet protocol) tool, for making free long distance voice communication over the internet, called Google Talk. It appears to be a direct attack on Skype's huge market dominance. (see Wikipedia on Skype) Contrary to the interests of all humanity, the two systems do not appear to be able to communicate with each other. Bummer. So, a quick survey of the discussion over at SkypeJournal brings us the following information.

Google Talk drops calls, has inferior sound quality and takes a long time to connect (sometimes 30+ minutes! Skype is almost instantaneous). None probably insurmountable problems, though, given Google's resources.
Skype has far more features, greater reliability, etc.
Google Talk works powerfully with GMail, but you also have to have a GMail account to use it!
And I'd like to add that I doubt Google Talk will see, encourage or perhaps even allow, the huge number of enthusiasts to become developers and other key parts of its community. Skype is seriously awesome.

Related: My Furl archive on topic of telephony.

Technorati Tags: GoogleTalk, Skype, interoperability, web2.0, nptech, VOIP

Adding Links for Furl this and save in Del.icio.us

2005-08-25T13:17:00.000-07:00

Inspired by the folks over at SkypeJournal, I've added links at the end of each post on this blog to save the article into your social bookmarking database (SBMS). It's pretty easy to do if you have access to your blog program's HTML/CSS template. At the bottom of this post is my version of the code I borrowed from SkypeJournal and inserted into my own site. I know this works with Blogger, the blog software I use, but the protocol might need to be adjusted a little if you are using something else. I'll bet you can figure it out, and if anyone wants any help - just let me know.

The ideas behind doing this here are two. First, it will make it easier for social bookmarkers to save and share the articles I write - more ease of use and better publicity. Second, I hope it will be another form of evangelism (if you will) for social bookmarking tools in general. Hence my "definition" link to my explanation of social bookmarking tools. Another option would be to link to Wikipedia's definition, though I think mine's better in some ways.

OK, so if you are in Blogger you should scroll down in your template until you get to the short part of the code that denotes the basics of each individual posts. The section I'm referring to ends with:

<p class="postmetadata">
<$BlogItemControl$>

Just below that, I added the following:


<br />Bookmark this post in <a href="http://www.furl.net/storeIt.jsp?t=<$BlogItemTitle$>&u=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>" target="_blank">Furl</a> or <a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<$BlogItemPermalinkUrl$>&title=<$BlogItemTitle$>" target="_blank">Del.icio.us</a>(<a href="http://digbig.com/4dxgg" target="_blank">definition</a>)<br />

If you try and use this and it gives you problems, let me know. I switched Furl before Del.icio.us because, though I agonize over this regularly these days, I really recommend Furl as the best SBMS (cached screen shots are hard to beat.)

In case you are curious how the code above was postable in a blog, without the blog software reading the code and trying to follow it - I copied and pasted the code from my template, then replaced just less-than signs with the ASCII for that symbol. That's " & # 60 ; " but without the spaces or quotes. Don't forget to be in the "edit HTML" mode when you put that ASCII in, too, if you are trying to post HTML code like this on your blog. Hopefully that won't complicate any one else's efforts to copy and paste this code snippet from here.

Users do need to be logged into their Del.icio.us or Furl accounts in order to use this, but that is what comes up the first time you click a link like this. If not logged in the first time, the links should work fine the second time users click them. One other thing I've discovered is that blog posts with quotes in them don't save properly to Furl using this method. Let me know of any other anomalies you discover.

Enjoy!

Related: My Furl archive on the topic of Social Bookmarking.

Technorati Tags: tagging, social_bookmarking, SBMS, Furl, Del.icio.us, Blogger, tips, evangelism, nptech, web2.0

A Wishlist for Web Applications

2005-08-24T16:11:00.000-07:00

I love Infoworld Magazine. It's a great look into what the corporate IT world is doing, often translatable into a non-profit and small business context. It's just plain fun for me to read. I know not everyone would enjoy it, though, so I thought I'd "translate" an recent article that highlights some of the changes being made to big, corporate software. I hope and wish that the creators of the software us little people use will include some of these same themes in their offerings.

"Apps Vendors Attack Midmarket" might not sound like a thriller of an article, but it covered some interesting developments in what's called ERP (enterprise resource planning) and CRM (customer relationship management) software. When I think of things like ERP and CRM, I think of software like Furl, Del.icio.us, Backpackit, Basecamp, GMail, Newsgator/Bloglines and Skype. These aren't literal translations, but I think they are used by smaller organizations to fulfill some of the same functions. Some of the changes the big guys are making are based on innovations from the above applications. Others indicate directions it would be nice to see those end-user applications include.

AJAX, an exciting programming method that ensures, as the Infoworld article points out, "transactions that might have taken five seconds are instantaneous." I believe that all of the above small-apps use AJAX already, except Furl. Wouldn't that be great? It was in small apps that AJAX was born (as far as I can tell), so I hope that older small apps like Furl will adopt it as well. The next version of Hotmail will use a lot of AJAX.
Integration with third-party programs. Skype is reportedly taking big steps to further this trend. It's a big part of what Del.icio.us is all about. Short of using Greasemonkey programming tricks, many other end-user web-apps can't easily be connected with each other. That's a real bummer, because the big guys are all about selling huge, multi-function application suites with everything but the kitchen sink integrated to swap data and work together. Those of us on the tail end of computing ideas still have to struggle to integrate our tools manually.
Data import. This is largely about swiping customers from your competitors, but it could also work as a compensation prize for the lack of integration in small web apps. One new software innovation allows you to put your Skype contacts into Outlook, and checks automatically whether any of your Outlook contacts have Skype user IDs. Why is it so hard for me transfer the whole batch of my Furl subscriptions into a single RSS feed to read in Newsgator? Does it have to be as difficult as it seems to put your Del.icio.us database into your Furl archive and vice versa? Perhaps widespread OPML adoption will resolve this issue in the nearish future.
Custom interfaces. Why not? There are lots of things I'd like to be able to change about the interface of the web apps I use, and so long as those who pay the bills using contextual advertising go ahead and lock-in the appearance of those ads, why not let me make major changes to the interface I interact with when using their tools? For example, I love Furl...but I sure wish I could borrow some ideas from Del.icio.us in the way it works for me.
Loads of new features. The Infoworld article says the CRM maker Salesnet
is coming out with 250 new features to celebrate it's 25th version! If it is truly a viable business model to offer free, web based applications to end-users and monetize on the clicks to contextual advertising (the dominant free app biz model out there, based on Google's) - shouldn't there be more new features coming out, faster? Some of the above small apps are good about this, like Skype (because people love it) and Del.icio.us (because people love it and it's easy to create plug-ins for), but some of them are awful. Neither Skype nor Del.icio.us use contextual advertising for revenue. Does that business model have enough steam behind it to motivate sufficient innovation? Maybe the search industry proves it's possible.

These seem to be some of the key trends in corporate computing right now. I think they are pretty interesting, and I'd really like to have access to them without working for a corporation with a huge budget. I don't need everything to be free, but I hope and wish that we'll see the small applications so many of us use continue to be on the cutting edge of application development. Scalability, or the ability to deal with your own popularity without your computer crashing or your bandwidth clogging, is one of several performance issues. But let's hope that small time players really can continue to offer powerful services based on innovation and collaboration - not just come up with great ideas that can only really be carried out well by the corporate computing world with all it's financial resources.

Related: On the bright side, check out Blinkx. They seem like a company that's really bringing a lot of things together and they've been really responsive to my emails over the last few days about problems. Check out this short audio interview about their awesome product.

Technorati Tags: web_apps, web2.0, Furl, del.icio.us, nptech, innovation, AJAX, integration, customization, newsgator, bloglines, contextual_advertising, Blinkx