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GoogleZon – closer than we think?

Some of the hot news today contains references to Amazon’s plans to offer selling books by the page and Google’s release yesteraday of some of its public domain books into its common search database. The article Amazon.com To Sell Books By the Page, While Google Launches Online Book Search in Information Week is typical.

If you’ve seen EPIC 2015 then you’ve heard about GoogelZon, the joining of Google with Amazon. When i show the video in class, that part always gets a laugh. This news makes it seem more likely to me.

2005 11 04 ernie About the Internet and the Web Comments (0) Permalink

More about writing for the Web

A List Apart: Articles: Attack of the Zombie Copy – another good article from “A List Apart” about writing for the Web.

At least one of their previous articles on writing was included in the collection of resources I put together in Writing for the Web

2005 10 26 ernie Teaching Comments (0) Permalink

Vigil tonight! 6:30 PM Hurkamp Park

Vigil tonight, 6:30 PM, at Hurkamp Park in Fredericksburg will mark the 2,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq –
“A candlelight vigil commemorating the 2,000 reported American military deaths in Iraq will be held at Fredericksburg’s Hurkamp Park tonight.

The vigil at William and Prince Edward streets will be one of about 400 events organized nationwide in conjunction with the American Friends Service Committee, a national Quaker organization.” – from an article in today’s Free Lance-Star

2005 10 26 ernie Commentary Comments (0) Permalink

CNET’s views of the news

CNET that venerable source of news and reviews has some interesting ways to display information related to a news story. These are

  • The Big Picture
  • Related Stories
  • What’s Hot
  • Latest Headlines

They’re all really nice ways to use some technology to put a news story into a context that you choose – in the case of The Big Picture View, or in the context of what the editor’s choose as in the case of the other choices.

2005 10 23 ernie Commentary Comments (0) Permalink

Writing Sensible Email Messages

A good article about writing email that helps get the job done. 43 Folders | Writing sensible email messages

Here’s a list of advantages and limitations of email that I use in my classes.

Effective communication please!

Tagged
2005 09 20 ernie About the Internet and the Web Comments (0) Permalink

opinions of news aggregators


I’ve been reading Welcome to Blogosphere: An Executive Blogger’s Guide that I mentioned in my post on Blog guides, tips, & tutorials.

News aggregators are discussed and a few are mentioned. Here are my opinions on the ones mentioned there.

Newsgator Focus on the use of blogs in business environments, and the ‘big name’ blogs. Definitely attractive to some one who wants to use blogs for a news resource, and to track what’s being said. A bit too heavyweight for my tastes and uses. It comes with a Web-based interface and can work wit Outlook Express.(That was the give away for me that the product was not for me, and most appropriate for people who use what comes with their computer, rather than looking for better tools.) A free version is available and fee-based versions (the ubiquitous “pro” version) can be had as well.

FeedReader. A very nice desktop based news aggregator. You download an open-source and free executable that installs FeedReader on your computer system. It is clean, and easy to work with. It comes populated with popular RSS feeds and it’s not too hard to add your own. An on-screen pop-up lets you know when new items arrive. It seems pretty nice, but being rooted on one computer is a drawback.

Bloglines I use this daily and like it lots! It’s Web-based so I can access my feeds from anywhere by supplying a browser with a URL and then a user name and password. It’s easy to create a blog-roll, organize your feeds, and add new feeds. You can install software on a computer that lets you know when new info is available through the RSS/Atom feeds in your list feeds. A very nice product. AskJeeves owns it.

Aggreg8 This, like FeedReader, needs to be downloaded and installed on a computer system. This is supposed to run as an extension to Mozilla. I tried to install it, but it wouldn’t work.

FeedDemon Trial version is available, but otherwise you need to pay to use it.

Other lists of aggregators are
RSS Info at blogines
List of News Aggregators at Wikipedia
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2005 08 11 ernie About the Internet and the Web Comments (0) Permalink

developer-hosted blog software

Looking at the Wikipedia entry for Weblog software today. It contains a list of “developer-hosted” blog software. I’m going to make some comments about each here. This is part of some research I’ve been doing lookimg into the types of blogging software that would be appropriate for my students to use as part of the course The Internet: Informaiton, Issues, and Technology, CPSC 104, offered at the University of Mary Washington.

Developer-hosted

Software services operated by the developer, requiring no software installation for the weblog author

2005 08 10 ernie About the Internet and the Web Comments (0) Permalink

Blog, Understanding the Information Reformation that’s Changing Your World

Hugh Hewitt a successful commentator and blogger put this book together in 2004-2005 to explain the relation of blogs to main steam media (MSM) and to advise readers about the need to create and manage blogs. The book is a quick read and informative regardless of whether the reader is familiar with the effect and nature of blogs.

I don’t agree with his political beliefs and preferences, he lacks an appreciation of and doesn’t demonstrate an understanding of the underlying technology, and he writes Internet with a lower case i (even when including quotations where it is properly written with an upper case I), but you can’t argue with his points of views developed through substantial experience and influence. Here are some memorable quotes:

“The old information monopoly has an enormous ability to decide where and when news would be “news.” That gatekeeping function is gone, and blogs have rushed in to decide for themselves what matters. The episodes detailed earlier were the first few rounds of conflict between MSM and bloggers. What is coming soon — perhaps even in the summer of 2005 — are clashes between competing blog camps. The perfect interblog storm is brewing and will break when the next Supreme Court nominee is sent from the White House to the presidency.” (Isn’t this a typo? Shouldn’t that last word be Congress?)

“If you are a leader , then you ought to be blogging, and the folks you lead ought to be reading that blog.”

“The key rules of blogging success and significance are these:

  • Post often
  • Link freely
  • Be generous in praise and attribution
  • Don’t be long-winded too often, if at all. Brevity is the soul of blogging when you are getting started
  • Paragraphs are your friend
  • Profanity loses audiences
  • Avoid feuds and flame wars
  • At least at the start, skip the comments sections. You end up with the problems of nuts if you are any good
  • Keep the title short and easy to remember so that it is easy to recall and type into the space at the top of the page.

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2005 07 20 ernie Books Comments (0) Permalink

Blogosphere demographics

A friend & colleague at Mary Washington sent me an email today that asked about the demographics of the blogosphere. It contained the following quote:

” … referred me to an article stating that bloggers are overwhelmingly white and male and implied that therefore one needs to be careful about assigning students to read blogs.”

I was astounded to read that part about being careful about assigning students to read blogs, because of the possible majority position of the authors. I guess I missed a lot these past few years. If it were true, that the majority were written by white males, would that really be a problem? Can’t people select the opinions they agree with? Can’t teachers select a collection of readings that present a balanced viewpoint?

In any case, the majority of reports on blog writers state that a slim majority of the authors are male. There was one report in March that said that a large majority of bloggers are white males, but it seems this is a self-selecting/self-reporting survey of political blogs. Results from a self-reporting/ self-selecting survey of blog readers/writers with a political slant by Chris Bowers – March 22, 2005. All the reports I could find were about blogs primarily in the U.S.

Here are the others I read:

Pew Internet & American Life Project: Blogosphere – January 2005

The Blogging Geyser seems top be the most recent and pertinent part of Blog Studies by Perseus. – April 2005

God -blog Demographics 2005 Part 1 – a report on blogs of people with that special connection.

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2005 06 20 ernie About the Internet and the Web Comments (0) Permalink

More Safe Blogging

On April 11 I put an entry in this blog about EFF’s “How to Blog Safely (About Work or Anything Else)”

They’ve published another good guide:
EFF: Legal Guide for Bloggers

Like all journalists and publishers, bloggers sometimes publish information that other people don’t want published. You might, for example, publish something that someone considers defamatory, republish an AP news story that’s under copyright, or write a lengthy piece detailing the alleged crimes of a candidate for public office.

2005 06 14 ernie About the Internet and the Web Comments (0) Permalink