"You Two! We're at the end of the universe, eh. Right at the edge of knowledge itself. And you're busy... blogging!"
— The Doctor, Utopia
For those of you reading this blog via the feed you've probably received a bunch of old posts this morning. This is a result of fixing some invalid code in my template forcing a republication of the whole blog. These republished posts are then considered "new" by your aggregator. I believe this mini-project is done. You may now resume your regular feed reading.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 8:33 AM
0 Comments
This morning I'm in Scottsbluff, NE teaching 11 area librarians how to blog. Of course, nine of them are sitting in the back row. Only two brave souls are sitting in the front row.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 11:10 AM
1 Comments
I've noticed lately that when I publish a new post sometimes the publishing happens quickly, sometimes very slowly. The difference seemed to be in whether I included labels (categories) with the post. (For example, when creating a post with BlogThis! you can't add labels so posts are published quickly. When posting via Blogger, I add labels and things publish slowly.) Well, the image at the right (shrunk since it's huge,) "explains" the problem. Whenever you publish a new post with a label, whether one label or a dozen, Blogger republishes every page for every label you've ever used. So, in this example, I wrote a new post with one label, "blogosphere", yet several hundred files were created, and SFTP'd to my server. All that should have been published are the four files: the post's page, the main page, the archive page, and the page for the one label I used.
I'll be submitting this to Blogger and will follow up here with any response I receive.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 9:19 AM
0 Comments
Hello from blogging session #2 at the Omaha Public Library.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 2:18 PM
0 Comments
On Friday I was honored to attend and present at the Lincoln City Library's In-Service day. I haven't had a faster or more fun Arbor Day in my life. I was great to meet so many librarians from my new home town and to see how excited you were about all the new technologies I was presenting. At one point during my Flickr presentation someone asked for more specific examples of how to use Flickr in a library. Well, here's one. Use Flickr to post a slideshow of an event on the library's blog/Web site.
Labels: blogger, flickr, librarians, lincoln, presentations
posted by Michael @ 9:28 AM
0 Comments
And this morning 13 more Nebraska librarians are writing their first posts to their new Blogger blogs. No mutiny in sight.
Labels: blogger, blogosphere, nebraska
posted by Michael @ 10:14 AM
2 Comments
Labels: apple, blogger, cil2007, flickr, ipod, microsoft, rss, second life, treo, video, youtube
posted by Michael @ 10:12 AM
0 Comments
posted by Michael @ 8:54 AM
0 Comments
Index of gopher://gopher.quux.org/
The funny part is that Blogger gave me a bit of trouble when I tried creating this post.
posted by Michael @ 7:50 AM
1 Comments
For those that have old-school Blogger blogs and are looking for some information on the hows and whys of moving to the new version (you'll have to do it soon) here's a short PPT that provides the information you're looking for.
Labels: blogger, ppt, slideshare
posted by Michael @ 8:59 AM
0 Comments
Those of you that read the feed you won't have noticed this but I've got a new design for the blog and the rest of the site. The blog's been converted and the rest of the site is coming along. Stop by, check it out, and let me know what you think. (Yes, I got the template somewhere else and then modified it a bit. I needed a change but was too tired to design something from scratch.)
posted by Michael @ 9:22 PM
6 Comments
I generally follow my own advice when it comes to creating somewhat memorable passwords. I have a phrase that I abbreviate to create the base of my passwords then I add a few additional characters based on the system I'm creating the password for. With this system, if I'm unable to remember the specific password I've used to log into a particular site, I can probably guess the correct one within one or two attempts.
However, in the past few days I've been forced to "integrate" two of my log-ins with the site's parent company: Yahoo! in the case of Flickr, and Google in the case of Blogger. I already had log-ins for both Yahoo! and Google but those passwords reflected those services. Now my Yahoo! password is my Flickr password and my GMail password is my Blogger password. My system is now broken as those passwords don't follow my rules.
Maybe I'm complaining a bit too much but I do find it bothersome. Anyone else?
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 9:47 AM
0 Comments
This evening I went to delete a spam comment from one of my blogs and I was finally forced to upgrade all of my blogs to the "New Blogger". Everything seems to be working and I do notice that there are a few differences in the interface between blogs hosted on blogspot and those hosted on third-party servers (such as this one). I'll post more on this in the next few days.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 8:38 PM
0 Comments
Use Blog Slurper to turn your blog into a printed book. (Something I'll actually investigate once it supports Blogger.)
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 2:37 PM
1 Comments
I'm in the Eastern Iowa Airport (Cedar Rapids, IA) using the free WiFi to get caught up from this four day trip to Iowa City, IA for two days of BCR workshops and an afternoon speaking to the staff of the Iowa City Public Library about the Social Web as part of their in-service day. Today went well and everyone enjoyed it including myself. The previous two days however, if it could go wrong it did. Cases in point:
Needless to say it's been a long week and I need a few solid nights of sleep before getting back to the office on Monday and updating the material for those classes before teaching them again in January.
posted by Michael @ 5:10 PM
0 Comments
Steve Lawson, Colorado College & Emilee Satterwhite, Mesa County Public Library
Labels: apple, blogger, colorado, itunes, rss, video, wikipedia, wikis
posted by Michael @ 3:40 PM
0 Comments
When I tell students in my blog and RSS workshops that I have set up a number of "ego feeds" (feeds that search on my name and blog address so I can read what others are saying about me) I usually receive some titters from the crowd. But, in all honesty, this is the only way I'll ever know how what I've published online is being received and (re)used. In this case, a Bloglines citation search on my blog's URL that led me to this PBS blog post shown to the right.
The post is a long one about how people are rude when it comes to cell phone use in today's society. Something I do agree with. In it are comments from many others about when and where cell phone use is appropriate. In about the middle of the post someone writes "And in the worst-of-the-worst category, don’t use a cell phone... While in the library." Next to this text is a copy of a recent photo I took in Wichita, KS of a sign from Friends University that states "Please turn off cell phones in the library".
The use of my photo is a mostly legitimate one as it follows most of the rules of the Creative Commons license I assign to all of my photos: Attribution (I'm given credit at the end of the post), Noncommercial (It's a PBS blog, we're cool there), and Share Alike (Well, they don't exactly pass along this license, but they don't specifically change the license either. A link to the photo on flickr would have done this but instead they linked to my blog. Eh, close enough for me.) However, this not where my complaint lies.
Where I have a problem is that the use of my photo implies (to me, let me know if it doesn't to you) that I agree with the statement that the photo is illustrating. Those of you who know me (or at least read my blog) know that I'm not in agreement with policies that ban cell phones from libraries. I agree with banning bad behavior, which may or may not involve a cell phone, but not with banning the technology because people are rude. Sure, ban them in theaters since talking has been banned. But unless you're banning talking from your library, there's no logical reason to ban cell phones.
Don't get me wrong, I'm flattered that a blogger at PBS felt my photo worthy of inclusion, and I don't want this post to cause the blogger to feel that the photo should be removed. The point of this post is two-fold. First, to point out to readers of the PBS post that I do not agree with the comments made in association with my photograph. Second, to remind people that do follow my advice to post their photos to flickr and let others use them, that once you do so, you will loose some control over your work and need to be able to live with that.
posted by Michael @ 10:03 AM
5 Comments
BCR (MPOW) launched its new Web site this morning and the recently launched BCReview is now a blog powered by Blogger. Be sure to check it out and send any comments that you may have on the new look.
posted by Michael @ 9:42 AM
0 Comments
In my RSS workshop I explain to my students that there are multiple versions of RSS available for them to use, never mind that fact that there's also ATOM which everyone lumps in with RSS since it accomplishes the same exact thing but with a built in stylesheet. I make the case that you use ATOM if your blog is created with Blogger because that's what Blogger generates. If you're podcasting, use RSS 2.0 since it supports the required 
Contact
Blogroll
Feed
<enclosure> element. Beyond that, don't worry about which version the software you're using generates since it doesn't matter to the user as long as it's working. So, why of why, would a site offer multiple links to their feed and specify which language and version each link goes to?
Take the image in this post as a perfect example. I was surfing through the SciFi.com Tech blog and noticed that they offer four versions of their feed. One is ATOM, two are RSS (versions 1.0 and 2.0) and the fourth is "RSD" which, to be honest, I've never heard of before? (According to Wikipedia it's "Really Simple Discovery" which I've now read about and still don't understand. Anyone want to help me on this one?)
I subscribe to over 300 feeds, teach people how to use and create feeds, and wrote a book on the subject and I'm not sure which one I should choose... O.k. I generally default to the highest number available in situation such as these, therefore I'd choose the RSS 2.0 version, but I'll be damned if I could explain exactly why should someone ask me.
As it is there's a move afoot to stop using the terms RSS and ATOM when it comes to presenting this technology to users (look at IE7 and you'll see what I'm talking about, the word RSS doesn't appear anywhere,) and just stick to the term "feed". KISS: Keep It Simple Stupid. Take a look at your blog/site. Are you offering more than one version of the exact same feed? If so, I'd strongly suggest you think about getting rid of all but one of them. Your users will thank you.
posted by Michael @ 8:02 PM
0 Comments
Everyone in the room is now writing their first post in the blogging workshop. As usual we're using Blogger to do this.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 11:19 AM
0 Comments
In having my students create their first blogs today using Blogger, one of them managed to create an account in the new "Beta" version of Blogger. It look different and works a bit differently too. (I did notice that "password protected" blogs is one of the new features.) You can use it but not with an existing account. To play with it you'll need to sign up for a new Google Account.
The down side to all this is that my Blogs & RSS book is slated to come out in October. Knowing my luck, this beta version will become the liver version just about the same time thus making all my screenshots and instructions out of date and inaccurate.
posted by Michael @ 12:12 AM
1 Comments
Most of my long-time readers will be familiar with my opinion of filters. Well, for the past two days I've been teaching workshops in a computer lab for a local school district. Being a school lab, I was subject to the district's filtering system. Luckily, I was given the password to get around it, which worked most of the time, but the level of filtering astounded me. I was teaching blogging and RSS and Blogger was blocked. So was Flickr. (This made showing my blog interesting as the text would appear but the images, hosted on Flickr, would not be loaded.) Even my e-mail was blocked since lishost.org was considered a blockable "forum" which not even my use of the secret password would let me get through the filter. whatsmyipaddress.com was blocked, yet whatismyipaddress.com was not. (Go figure.) As one librarian said at lunch today, "let's teach highway safety buy closing the highways".
posted by Michael @ 11:00 PM
0 Comments
I'm currently having my students write their first blog post using Blogger. I'm getting a few blank stares.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 11:15 AM
0 Comments
The first list is coded with <ul> and displays the bullets as expected. The second list is coded with <ol> and displays the nubmers one through four as expected, but only in Firefox. IE is not displaying the nubmers. The really odd part is that it only seems to be happening in my Blogger posts, but not with test files sitting on my hard drive. I've repeated this on multiple computers and would appreciate someone confirming this problem. If you have a solution and/or explaination I'd love to hear it.
UPDATE: As you can see, the CSS edit suggested by Steve in the comments fixed the problem. Thanks Steve!
posted by Michael @ 12:13 PM
2 Comments
I was planning on writing a clarifying follow-up post anyway, but this recent comment pushed me to make it now instead of later this week.
"Might I suggest you get on the Pronunciation 2.0 bandwagon with the rest of us 21st century libraians?[sic]"
Considering this comment was made anonymously I'm not sure how seriously to take it. The "pronunciation 2.0" part makes me laugh (I'm assuming a certain level of sarcasam in such a label,) but the anonymous nature of the comment and the rest of the comment's content makes me think this individual is seriously suggesting that I give up caring. Well, that leads me to what I was going to clarify anyway...
I will admit that I'm fighting a loosing battle, nor any battle at all really, since I'm not necessarily trying to correct anyone (i.e. telling them to stop mispronouncing the word) but do not mispronounce it myself thereby encouraging the practice. The big issue for me is that I'm a trainer & teacher and I believe that one of the core roles of a teacher is to provide accurate information. If someone wants to take the accurate information and do something else with it, that's out of my hands once they leave the room. So, in my blogging workshops, I tell my students that it's correctly pronounced "we blog" and then continue informing them that most people pronounce it "web log" anyway. (Mostly since, as the commenter pointed out, many have "have never in my life heard 'wee blog' and honestly it just sounds silly.") I then continue to use the word "blog" and its derivatives and say neither "we blog" or "web log" the rest of the class. Nor do I ever correct anyone during class. (Maybe I should but then I'd be fighting that battle I'll never win.)
What caused my rant was my listening to the first group of ALA Library 2.0 program podcasts in which the instructors kept saying "web log" over and over again. (I'm only listening to the podcasts so I have no additional comments regarding the other complaints that have been made about the program as a whole.)
I've always said that I do what I do because I want to know "how" and "why" things work, which has led me to the firm belief that understanding the "hows" and "whys" of something along with the story of where something came from makes everyone better able to understand how to use that something to its fullest potential. As part of that, I believe that I must as an instructor, provide accurate information, even if "everyone else" is doing it another way.
If that puts me in the minority, so be it. (I'm used to it.) But being in the minority is rarely a good reason to change when the facts back you up.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 2:26 PM
5 Comments
Folks, it's pronounced "wee blog" not "web log". First, just think about it. If the word was pronounced "web log" then why would it ever be shortened to "blog". Second, and probably more importantly, ask the guy who came up with the concept.
"Suddenly a community sprang up. It was easy to read all of the weblogs on Cameron's list, and most interested people did. Peter Merholz announced in early 1999 that he was going to pronounce it "wee-blog" and inevitably this was shortened to "blog" with the weblog editor referred to as a "blogger."
— "Weblogs: A History and Perspective" by Rebecca Blood, September 7, 2000 as published in we've got blog Perseus Publishing, 2002.
Even better, I found a blog entry from Mr. Merholz that backs this up!
As such, it's weird to experience how my love of words and wordplay has actually made an impact. Sometime in April or May of 1999 (I can't say for sure when I exactly did it), I posted, in the sidebar of my homepage:
"For What It's Worth I've decided to pronounce the word "weblog" as wee'- blog. Or "blog" for short."
I didn't think much of it. I was just being silly, shifting the syllabic break one letter to the left. I started using the word in my posts, and some folks, when emailing me, would use it, too. I enjoyed it's crudeness, it's dissonance...
I realize that I might be fighting a loosing battle here but it's just like Greg Schwartz ranting about when people use the term podcast to describe plain ol' downloadable audio content. (In fact, hearing "web log" over and over in the ALA Library 2.0 podcast that Greg was complaining that led me to write this post.)
Additionally, and least importantly, pronouncing it correctly is what makes the title of my blogging workshop funny. ("I blog, you blog, weblog!") Usually one person in the room gets it without explanation. Everyone else gets it about 10 minutes into the class, once I've explained it.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 4:17 PM
7 Comments
The day two assignment for my online blogs workshop is to create a blog using Blogger. Here's the results. (Obviously some are thinking that their work is for the long-term while others are not.)
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 9:55 AM
0 Comments
My only problem with using Blogger as my blogger platform is the fact that offline blogging is not as eash as it should be. Typically my options have been to use notepad and manually add the markup or use Word and clean out all the extra markup if gives me. Well, I've found a better solution, and it's something I've mentioned before: Performancing for Firefox.
posted by Michael @ 11:14 AM
1 Comments
posted by Michael @ 8:50 AM
0 Comments
I've been tagged...
Four jobs you have had in your life:
1. Internet Trainer
2. Writer
3. Bookseller
4. Clerk @ a Bed, Bath, & Beyond
Four movies you would watch over and over:
1. Labyrinth
2. Brotherhood of the Wolf
3. Chasing Amy
4. High Fedelity
Four places you have lived:
1. Rochester, NY
2. Albany, NY
3. Las Vegas, NV
4. Aurora, CO
Four TV shows you love to watch:
1. 24
2. Bones
3. Battlestar Galactica
4. Doctor Who
Four places you have been on vacation:
1. London, England
2. San Francisco, CA
3. St. Louis, MO
4. Phoenix, AZ
Four websites I visit daily
1. Bloglines
2. Blogger
3. del.icio.us
4. flickr
Four of my favorite foods:
1. Sushi
2. Cheesecake
3. Pizza
4. Garlic Nan
Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Anywhere but a Holiday Inn
2. Anywhere but a Holiday Inn
3. Anywhere but a Holiday Inn
4. Anywhere but a Holiday Inn
Four people I will tag thinking they will respond.....
1. I do these but I don’t pass them along…
2.
3.
4.
Four things I always carry with me
1. Pen
2. Treo 600
3. Wallet
4. Keys
Labels: blogger, del.icio.us, doctor who, rochester, sushi, treo
posted by Michael @ 11:37 PM
0 Comments
I was talking with some of the other speakers at Saturday's Spotlight on Your Career mini-conference when the concept of blogging conference presentations came up. One of the other speakers mentioned that she didn't like people blogging her presentations. When asked why, she gave the following two reasons:
My inital response was that on the first item, maybe she had a point. She is also an independent so she's giving these presentations to make money for herself and her business, not just for professional development and some extra cash.
On the second point I'm more hesitant to agree with her. As a conference blogger I feel I'm giving those that couldn't attend the conference a window on the events I attend. I'm not so sure that anyone has ever said, "Well, since there'll be bloggers there, I don't need to attend." Maybe in the future this will happen but I doubt that it will happen enough to noticeably reduce the number of attendees at a conference.
Anyone else want to chime in on this one and share their opinion?
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 9:50 AM
5 Comments
Chris Zammarelli has pronounced me a "B-list" blogger. All I need now are a guy and a couple of robots to add a running commentary to my posts.
Labels: blogger
posted by Michael @ 2:28 PM
0 Comments
I think I've finally found my dream blogging Firefox extension.
"Performancing for Firefox is a full featured blog editor that sits right within Firefox. Just hit F8 or click the little pencil icon at the bottom right to bring up the blog editor and easily post to your Wordpress, MovableType or Blogger blogs.
"Performancing for Firefox is for Firefox 1.5 and above only. We've made use of a number of cool new features within Firefox 1.5, so you'll need that version of Firefox to try it."
posted by Michael @ 7:52 AM
0 Comments
It seems that my idea to create my conference posts using OpenOffice in Linux (booting to Linux uses less battery power than booting to Windows) and then post them to blogger as MSWord files didn't work out at well as I'd hoped. Those of you using Firefox saw basically when I wanted. Those of you using IE saw some very funky code. Well, I've cleaned it all up and added the photos I had so everything should be hunky dorry now.
posted by Michael @ 11:43 AM
1 Comments
Shelly Walchak, Colorado Library Consortium (CLiC)
posted by Michael @ 5:06 PM
0 Comments
posted by Michael @ 4:08 PM
0 Comments
Spent most of the morning wondering around Fisherman's Wharf looking for souvenirs and postcards. After completing that successfully, off on a boat for a three hour cruise (luckily the weather didn't start getting rough, nor was the tiny ship tossed) to do some whale watching. We did spot a whale or two and there was a significant amount of tail wagging (by the whale, not us) but while we were too far away for my digital camera to do any god. This is the best shot I got.
The conference officially starts tomorrow and I've been told there's free WiFi in the conference halls. Providing it works as advertised, I should be posting regular updates during/after each session. For those of you reading along and at the conference be sure to drop me a line so we can meet up. My basic schedule (subject to change at any moment) is Monday: Track B, Tuesday: Track B, and Wednesday morning: B301 then D302. I'm also signed up for the Blogger dine-a-round on Tuesday night.
Oh! And I found JellyBabies in town. Levis & More: The British Store has two more packages ($5.50 for 215g) on the rack. They're located in the Portola Plaza Hotel plaza.
Labels: blogger