Saddam Hussein Hanged -- World, Blogosphere Reacts

So, the news reports that just before dawn, Iraq local time, Saddam Hussein was hanged; you can check out some of the coverage: AOL News | BBC News | CNN | Fox News | MSNBC

It will be interesting to see what the reaction from the big ole sphere o' blogs is going to be, and how it compares (quantitatively) to other big stories from this year.

Click the links below to see blog searches for the term "Saddam Hussein" from a few different blog search engines: Blogpulse | Feedster | Sphere | Technorati

Anyway, perhaps this completes the "famous people's deaths trifecta" (James Brown/Gerald Ford/Saddam Hussein).

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: saddam hussein, current events

Double-Checking Your Alerts Settings

Hi folks -- Jimmy, who blogs over at The Stupidsheet Guy, wrote in with a suggestion for people about Journals Alerts:

If you're not getting New Entry or Comment Added Alerts e-mailed to you, and we're not experiencing any widespread Alerts problems, you might want to check your Alerts settings. I'll explain why in a moment -- here's what you do:

1. Go to http://alerts.aol.com/ and click My Alerts in the top navigation bar.
   
   
2. You should see a list of your current Alert subscriptions. For the Alerts you want to be getting, make sure the button in the Status column says "On", and that there's a little icon in each of the delivery methods you want to get -- AIM (Instant Delivery),  E-mail, and Device (pagers and cell phones):

   

   In my example above, you can see that I get an e-mail notification for my Comment Added Alert, as well as for the New Entry Alert for John Panzer's Abstractioneer blog --the little envelope icon means that e-mail delivery is turned on.
   
   However, I won't get any e-mail notifications for those other Alerts you see, which don't have the envelope.
   
   
3. To change any of the settings on an Alert, click the "Edit" icon next to it (the blue pencil -- at least, I think it's a pencil), which will take you to the Edit screen for that Alert:

   

   Just check the delivery methods you want, and uncheck the ones you don't.
   
   (Tip: Clicking the AIM icon in Step 2 will pop up a similar settings box.)
   

The Alerts behavior changed a release or so ago -- people didn't understand the way Alerts delivery used to "cascade" -- if you were online, you'd get the Instant Delivery; if you weren't online, it would get e-mailed to you (and you might also have gotten an e-mail "archive" delivery.)

Apparently, some people had been signing up for an Alerts Instant Delivery, not knowing they would also get e-mail. They wondered where this weird e-mail was coming from, and they thought it was spam. So the behavior was changed so that Alerts didn't automatically "cascade."

Even with the new Alerts system, the Journals Alerts defaults should still be for Instant Delivery and E-mail delivery turned on, so just check that your settings are still the way you want them.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, aol alerts, journals alerts, journals tips

This Is Not a Blog. Oh, Wait, Yes It Is.

Hi folks -- check out this article (link via digg) called "Stop calling everything blogs!"

I will agree with the subject of the article, though its substance... frankly, while the misuse of the term "blog" has been a pet peeve of mine for a while, I don't think I'm as angry about it as the author. Also, his argument... well, it's just not very good.

I'm also not going to get into a whole long boring and pedantic discussion about what makes a blog. It's just as well, since in recent years, a lot of what used to be regular Web sites have added features that make them look and act a lot more like blogs, even if they're technically not.

At its most basic, a blog is just a type of Web page where the new stuff gets published to the top. That's pretty much it.

You've heard me say before that I think blogs that don't accept comments aren't really blogs, that they're just kind of "bloggy" -- there are a few other features you expect from blogs, so the bloggiest of blogs have archives, accept comments, link off to other blogs and have feeds that readers can subscribe to, etc.

Everything else about a blog is fair game -- what it looks like, how frequently it updates, what it writes about, how many people contribute to it.

You can have spam blogs, group blogs, shill blogs, cat blogs, porn blogs, good blogs and bad blogs. (And oh yes, there are plenty of bad blogs. "Bad," though, is a personal judgment -- the only judgment that matters is your own.)

Like I said, when you start adding bloggy features to Web pages (comments, feeds) and Web page features to blogs (multimedia, galleries), you get an overused buzzword: "Convergence."

Which means you don't care (and it really doesn't matter) what it is, just how people use it.

That's probably the most important defining characteristic of blogs right now: How you use them.

Anyway, there's a list of blog norms and "best practices" that's as long as your arm (be transparent and responsive, give credit, etc.) and will change depending on whose arm it is, so that's all I'll say about it...

...except it still bugs me how MySpace misuses the term "blogs" -- what we would call a blog entry, MySpace users call a blog: "Check out my latest blog." Ugh. Drives me nuts. (Arrrr.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: blogging, social media, bloggy, myspace, what is a blog

Loot Shooting, Blogging Lawyers, James Brown & More

Hi folks -- I hope everyone had a great holiday. Also, happy Boxing Day and Kwanzaa.

I'm back at the office, and judging by appearances, I seem to be just about the only person here (which seems kind of wasteful, keeping the whole campus open just for me), but I don't mind.

In fact, I enjoy working the week between Christmas and New Year's, because it's dead time -- no one bothers you, and you can actually get stuff done.

Of course, I never seem to be able to do as much as I plan, and some of the stuff includes stuff like "Clean off desk", but it's all worth a check box on the To Do list.

(Looking back, apparently, I say this every year.)

Here's some other stuff:

* First, my contribution to blogger John's "Shoot The Loot" Monday Photo Shoot -- it's the latest addition to the top of my monitor:

See the cat on the red pillow? It was a stocking stuffer from my mom -- the medallion it's holding guarantees that wealth is heading my way.

(This raises the question: If -- I mean, when -- I strike it rich, will I keep blogging? The answer: Yes. However, I'll be paying someone to do it for me.)

* Next, here's a blog-related story that I bring back from Nuevo Jersey. I will convey it in Christmas-song parody format:

You better watch out,
you better not cry.
You better not pout,
I'm telling you why:
The lawyers are starting to blog.

Corporate America has been taking to blogging, and the law profession is no different: Lawyers who blog get to talk about the law, interact with their peers and policymakers, and, oh yeah, get in front of potential clients.

As long as they're not violating attorney-client privilege, I say, why not?

With regards to the question of whether blogging activities should count towards billable hours -- maybe you'd better ask a lawyer about that.

* I Guess We're Going to Be Hearing a Lot More "Christmas in the Ghetto" from now on: Finally, the blogosphere talked a lot about the passing of James Brown on Christmas Day (link points to a Technorati search of entries tagged with "James Brown").

If you blog your own remembrance of the hardest working man in show business, tag it with "James Brown" so you can also be seen in the mix.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: monday photo shoot, james brown, blogging lawyers, corporate blogging, tagging

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and Safe Travels

Hi folks -- okay, that's all I've got lined up for this week. Well, first, check out this close-up of some of the ornaments on the tree in the lobby:

If you look closely, you can kind of see me and my camera reflected in the gold ornament.

Now, having Christmas occur on a Monday doesn't feel quite right to me, somehow, but what are you gonna do?

Oh, and keeping in the spirit of blogger John's call for holiday blog greetings and my suggestions on a "journalsholiday2006" tag, do a holiday blog entry when you get a chance. It is, of course, a great excuse to show your blog to gathered family and friends...

Merry Christmas and happy holidays and safe travels to everyone on the go.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, journalsholiday2006, holiday blogging

Journals R10 Patch Successfully Installed

Hi folks -- here's a followup on some of the open issues from the Journals R10 install from earlier in the week. The team installed a patch early this morning that should fix the following issues:

* RSS Feeds should be working properly now (there was a problem with Journals RSS feeds after R10 -- Atom feeds, however, continued to work properly). If you subscribe to people's Journals feeds in a feedreader you'll know what I'm talking about; if not, don't worry about it.

* Comment Counts should also be working right now -- before, you might have seen a lag in the comment count after new comments were posted.

* IE 7.0 Last Comment Deletion: IE 7.0 users who try to delete the last comment in an entry won't run into an error any more.

* Entry Double-Posting: We'd seen some sporadic double-posting of entries.

Also, the Alerts folks have uploaded a new build to their servers, so New Entry and Comment Added alerts should be fixed.

There's still an open issue with removing readers from private Journals, which was a problem from before R10; we'll let you know when it's fixed.

Lastly, as a reminder -- the Journals beta is split off from production, so don't post to it unless you just want to play around and test -- posts you make to beta won't show up in your production Journal. Also, if you see any links to your beta Journal, you probably want to change them to point to your production journal (so just take "beta." off the front of the URL).

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, aol journals status, journals r10, journals beta

Self-Congratulations, Ugh-Cee and Candorville

Okay, so I wanted to blog about this a few days ago, but I didn't get around to it. So now I'm, like, the last blogger in the world to mention it, and it's been done to death, six different ways from Sunday -- Time Magazine's 2006 Person of the Year is ... You.

Specifically, it's about user-generated content -- stuff that regular people create and share. This covers everything from blogs, message boards, photos, video -- even comments.

The magazine cover was a cute/clever/gag me reflective mylar mirror thing, though I would imagine that you all (bloggers and blog readers) are more "you" than the standard Time reader. So give yourselves a pat on the back, as well as a self-congratualtory blog entry (if you haven't already).

"UGC" is a very hot buzzword right now. Actually, I think the term itself is kind of ugly (How would you pronounce it -- "Ugh-Cee"? I'm going to start propagating that idea and see if it goes viral...), but it's better than "CGC", which is "Consumer-Generated Content" and sounds awfully cold and bloodless.

(Incidentally, I personally feel that doing a group or thing as Person of the Year -- The American Soldier, The Computer, etc -- is kind of a cop-out. Plus, it used to be the most-influential person, though people look at it as an award or distinction, which seems to have influenced previous picks.)

In a related-note, Darrin Bell, who pens one of my daily-read comics, Candorville and is himself a blogger, explicitly references some UGC in his storyline this week -- it seems that a couple of film students acted out one of his strips in live action and put it on YouTube:

Naturally, it got back to Mr. Bell, so he blogged about it in his personal blog and is addressing it in the strip. It's got a very "infinity of mirrors" thing going for it.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: person of the year, time magazine, ugc, candorville, darrin bell, ugh-cee

Show Off Your Your Holiday Entries

Hi folks -- first, here's a shot of the Christmas tree in the lobby, just before the toy squad swooped in to delivery the collected toys to deserving kids (they were collecting toys under each of the trees on campus):

Since Christmas is quickly approaching, I wanted to do something to highlight holiday Journals content, and in the process show folks one way you can use tags (which went into production in US Journals with the R10 release):

1. Write an entry (or pick an existing one) about Christmas, Hannukah, Kwanzaa, or the winter holiday of your choice. You can take any angle on it you want, just tie it back to the holidays somehow.


2. Tag your entry with this tag:
   
   journalsholiday2006
   
   (If you're not sure how to add a tag to your Journal entry, check out my earlier entry on using tags.  Non-US Journalers can copy and paste that hyperlinked tag if they don't feel like typing the HTML by hand.)


3. I'm not sure exactly how we'll feature responses, but you can click the tag link at any time (which does a tag search for all other blog entries that share that tag) to see what other people have done.
   
   We're the only folks using that tag right now, but anyone who has a blog who wants to participate -- not just AOL Journalers -- can use the tag.

I'm kind of curious to see how Journalers use tags; like I've said, they're really useful, so this is just one example to get people to try them out.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, journalsholiday2006, tagging

Tagged on Five Things, Plus More Tag Talk

Okay, I don't do these very often, but Journals Product Manager Stephanie tagged me in her blog entry, and you want to keep your Product Manager happy, so here goes: My contribution to the The "Five Things Your Don't Know About Me" meme. (A meme is an idea that spreads, as if it has a life of its own.)

I'm going to discuss the other kind of tagging, too, but first, the five things, so I don't get the meme police called on me and I get beat up by some 15-year-old girl (as Stephanie suggested might happen):

Five Things You Don't Know About Me:

1. Those LED pedestrian crossing signals? I have one in my house. Got it from an online surplus place:
   
   
   


2. I've been eating a lot of tater tots lately. It just kind of happened.


3. The first CD I ever bought? The Soundtrack From Twin Peaks. It came in a cardboard longbox. (Remember how those were going to destroy the environment?) I didn't even have a CD player at the time.


4. I have a black thumb -- every plant I've ever owned has died in brutal fashion, most quickly, though some have died slow, lingering deaths.


5. I used to be able to drive a manual shift. I can't any more.

I think that technically fulfills the requirements of the meme. Oh, I have to tag 5 other people: I tag Susie, Corey, the folks at AIM BuddyBlog, David and the AOL Photo Team. Come play and/or suffer with the rest of us.

Now, about the other kind of tagging, the ability to tag entries that went live with R10.

The How: See my previous entry, which is in major need of revision, yet still tells you the basic mechanics on how to tag your entries.

The Why: Why tag your entries? This "Five Things" meme is a perfect example. By tagging my entry with a specific tag (say "five things" or "five things meme"), I associate that label with this entry. That means, in this particular case, the tag will say to blog search engine Technorati -- "Hey, this here entry is about something called "five things""

Then, when you do a tag search (which also happens when you click on the tag), it will show you other blog entries that have also been tagged "five things."

You can pick tags that are really common so that your stuff will show up when other people do general blog searches (like pets, dogs, funny), or you can use really specific tags that will probably only be used by you or your friends (six-pack picks).

Here's another example. Over in my AIM Pages Team blog, I participated in Day of the Ninja, which was Dec. 5:

The folks who created Day of the Ninja asked that folks who participated in the fun tag their blog entries, photos, videos, etc. with the tag "ninjaday2006", so that people could easily find other people who did silly ninja things.

These are just some examples of how you can use tagging. On the flip side, there are also different ways to expose tags. For example, like many other sites that use tags, AOL Pictures has a Tag Cloud that shows some of the more popular tags being used by AOL Pictures users (the bigger the word, the more popular the tag):

Each one of those words is a clickable hyperlink; clicking a link will show you photos that use that tag.

Anyway, play around and come up with your own uses for tags. The thing about tags is that as long as they work they way you want them to work, there's really no wrong way to use them.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: five things, five things meme, aol journals, tagging, journals r10, meme police

Journals R10 Install Successful (Plus, the beta/prod divorce)

Hi folks -- as I mentioned last night, the R10 install went live early this morning. It went pretty smoothly -- here are some open issues:

* Alerts: Some people are seeing problems with New Entry Alerts. Comment Added Alerts seem to be okay. The Journals team is checking with the Alerts team for a fix.

* Comments: The displayed comment count doesn't refresh immediately upon getting new comments. Also, using IE 7.0 to delete the last comment in an entry throws a Javascript error.

* Beta Journals: There are some problems with the Journals beta database (Beta database. Beta database. Beta database. Say it out loud), so the beta is not available right now.

Also, Ops tells me that when beta does come back up, posts that you make on beta Journals won't show up on Production anymore (the beta and production databases have been split), so don't use the beta for publishing anymore.

This is important, so I'll say it again: The Journals Beta and Production databases have divorced. It was an amicable split, and here's the custody agreement: the Beta database is for testing, and the Production database is for publishing.

* Removing Readers From Private Journals: This one is not strictly related to the install, since we were seeing problems with it prior to install -- removing individual readers from Private Journals doesn't seem to be working at this time. "Remove All" readers, as well adding readers, still works.

The team is working on all these issues.

Now, here's what the R10 install got us:

• Basic Comment Pagination: When viewing an entry, the first 5 comments will show. The rest will display after you hit "show all comments." Again, this is primarily to prevent high-traffic entries with lots of comments from crashing Journals.


• Tagging in Production: Tagging, which had been in beta since, oh, April, is finally live. You can read my explanation from back then, which still holds up pretty well, though I'll need to do a new entry explaining how you can use it.


• Public Journals List Pages for INTL: International (non-US) Journalers now have public list pages -- for example, if "OhCanadaOurTrueandNativeLandEh" were a real Journaler, going to:
  

  journals.aol.ca/OhCanadaOurTrueandNativeLandEh

  would show me all of his or her's available Journals (public Journals and private Journals of which I was an allowed reader)


• Friendly Entry URLs for INTL: Non-US Journalers also have the friendlier (though longer) URLs, which incorporate the date of the entry and the title of the entry


• HTML (Including Images) in Alerts: Implemented by accident, this is now supported as a feature, so you will be able to see images and formatted HTML text in Alerts (subject to previous character limits)

That should be it on the visible stuff. As always, there were some back-end tweaks and performance enhancements.

Please let me and Stephanie know if you run into additional problems. Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, r10, tagging, journals alerts, journals beta

Reminder: Journals R10 Install is Coming, 12/19 4AM ET

Okay folks -- I'm trying to get you all into the habit of checking first with Journals Product Manager Stephanie (in her BamBam blog) and (to a slightly lesser extent) Journals Project Manager Leona (in her Leona's Daily Notes blog) when it comes to pure product updates like scheduled maintenance, post-outage reports, and other Journals product announcements, but I wanted to make sure you all saw this.

Journals release R10, which is currently on beta, is scheduled to be installed to production, Tuesday, Dec. 19, starting at the usual install window of 4AM ET. Journals may be down during this time; we should be back up and running by 7AM ET.

The primary changes you'll see in R10 include:

* Tagging, the ability to label your posts with tags that will help link you to other blog entries that use similar tags, will finally be installed to production. It's been available in beta for a while, and I'm particularly interested to see how you folks use tags once they're available from the regular Journals site.

* Displayed Comments: One of the contributing causes to our earlier traffic-related outages was high traffic to Journals that had lots of comments. To combat this, we're introducing very basic pagination, where the direct link to an entry will show the 5 most recent comments, then all comments will be available one more click down.

* Whitelist Additions: There have been some additions and fixes to the whitelist of allowed functionality in Journals -- we'll be doing some demo entries when the updates are in (you can see Stephanie's previous R10 entries about Motionbox videos and SpringWidgets widgets).

That's pretty much the user-facing changes in R10. We'll talk more about it tomorrow after a successful install.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, r10, aol journals status, aol journals installs

Fix Problems Hearing Music in Blog Entries Using IE 7.0

Hi folks -- so here's a follow-up on an item from Friday -- we had a bunch of you who were reporting problems hearing music embedded in blog entries. (If you don't want the backstory, skip to the end of this entry.)

You'd been putting music in your blogs following tutorials like OneStrangeCat's -- you need to upload the file and use a special tag that only works with Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser (which the AOL software also uses).

The strange thing was that up until a few weeks ago, you were able to hear embedded music. The something changed, and you couldn't.

Now, one thing that's changed recently is that Microsoft has started sending out nagging messages to get people to upgrade their Web browsers from Internet Explorer 6.0 to IE 7.0.

As more people started doing this, we started getting more complaints. I figured there was a connection, but some of the testers here were able to hear the music with IE 7.0. I thought it was a false lead, but the timing was still too much to be a coincidence for me. So I did some sleuthing.

The embedded music trick you're using involves the DYNSRC, or Dynamic Source HTML tag. I did a little Web searching and eventually found this Web message board thread, talking about DYNSRC, background music and the IE 7.0 beta.

According to those folks, the default IE 7.0 browser settings stopped background music (that used the DYNSRC tag) from playing.

I asked a few folks using IE 7.0 to try the settings change they suggest, and it worked. So here's how you fix the problem:

1. In IE 7.0, Click the "Tools" menu, then select "Internet Options."

2. Click the "Security" tab.

3. Click the "Custom Level" button.

4. Scroll through the list until you find an item that says something like "Display Video and Animation on webpage that does not use external media player" -- it will probably say "disable."

5. If it says disable, change it to "enable," then hit "OK" and restart your Internet Explorer browser.

That should fix the problem. Sorry it took so long to figure out. (I blame Bill Gates. Maybe Steve Ballmer.)

Now, there are other ways to get background music to play (including the BGSOUND attribute), but most of them are hacky and like I keep saying, we need to find easier ways to let you do this.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, embedded music, IE 7, internet explorer, dynsrc

Blogging in December: Paging Al Fresco ...

This can't possibly be right, can it?

76 degrees F in the middle-Atlantic region, a week away from Christmas? And yet, it is. Here I am, toiling away in one of the courtyards on campus:

I actually can do work outside; the wireless signal is pretty strong and I had a fully charged battery, though it was a little too windy to try it for more than a few minutes as a stunt.

Get a few updates up later today. Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, aol campus, dulles, weather

Blogging: It's All Downhill From Here?

So here was another bloggy story reported in BBC News yesterday:

"Blogging 'set to peak next year.'"

"The blogging phenomenon is set to peak in 2007, according to technology predictions by analysts Gartner.

The analysts said that during the middle of next year the number of blogs will level out at about 100 million.

The firm has said that 200 million people have already stopped writing their blogs."

The story (which is pretty short) goes on to say:

"Gartner analyst Daryl Plummer said the reason for the levelling off in blogging was due to the fact that most people who would ever start a web blog had already done so.

He said those who loved blogging were committed to keeping it up, while others had become bored and moved on."

In a followup story today, "Blogging Headed for the Slow Lane, Suggests Report,"TechNewsWorld (link via Digg) looks to blog search and tracking site Technorati's last State of the Blogosphere report for corroborating evidence. There's been a slowdown in the rate of growth of blogs (including a decline in the number of spam blogs, which is a good thing), though more importantly, posting volume has leveled off.

Why the slowing of blog creation and posting? Growth to date has been pretty phenomenal -- at various points over the past year or so, there were different numbers -- a new blog created every minute, a new post every second, etc.

Here's one angle: looking at people's motivations:

"The number of people who thought they could just start blogging and suddenly become rich and famous as a result has peaked, because that's not how it works," B.L. Ochman, avid blogger and president of WhatsNextOnline, told TechNewsWorld. "But the blog as a form of communication is here to stay."

I think there's some truth in there. Without the people, a blog is just a funny looking Web site.

The article then goes on to quibble about definitions -- if I start a blog,
post a few times, then abandon it after 10 days, was I ever a blogger? That bit, I think, starts to miss the point.

Blogging is just a tool for communication. It's kind of like driving -- everybody drives, but not that many of us are full-time drivers. We drive when we need to get where we're going.

Or think of it another way -- maybe you don't have a full-on blog. But if you just share photos online, and the newest ones show up first, and those photos have captions and descriptions, and visitors can leave comments on the photos, and there's archives, search and even a feed.

That photo service is starting to look an awful lot like a blog.

And what about people who consume blogs, boards and other social media? Maybe they comment, or maybe they just lurk. Either way, they're still participating.

Maybe in the future, a blogger will be a person who blogs full time, all the time, and everybody else will just be kind of "bloggy."

At the very basic, individual level, it really doesn't matter that much how many total bloggers there are. All that matters is that you have enough folks to talk to in your immediate sphere of influence.

(Well, I guess on the macro level, there also has to be enough interest, attention and money in social media to sustain the companies that make all the services that people use.)

Anyway, just some parting thoughts for a Friday. Happy Hanukkah, too. -- Joe

Tags: blogging, blogging motivations, social media, bloggy

Vive la AOL France Journals

I almost forgot -- I mentioned yesterday that AOL FR (France) Journals weren't getting New Entry or Comment Added Alerts.

Working together, the Journals & Alerts teams figured it out -- some of the servers weren't talking to each other properly. This has been fixed, so AOL FR bloggers should be getting their Alerts normally.

I realize that, since I don't speak, read or write French, this particular entry will probably be of limited use to the affected users, but I never want to miss an opportunity to talk about when something gets fixed.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: AOL Journals, AOL Journals Status, AOL FR, AOL France, AOL France Journals, AOL Alerts

Having Problems With Embedded Music Playing?

[Update: Okay -- I have a working theory on what's happening, with a possible fix -- this only applies to people who have Internet Explorer 7.0 -- what I think happened is that the default settings for IE 7.0 cause the embedded music to not play; for IE 7.0 users, try this out:

1. In IE 7.0, Click the "Tools" menu, then select "Internet Options."
2. Click the "Security" tab.
3. Click the "Custom Level" button.
4. Scroll through the list until you find an item that says something like "Display Video and Animation on webpage that does not use external media player" -- see if it says enable or disable.
5. If it says disable, click "enable" and see if that does anything. You might need to restart your Internet Explorer.

Let me know in the comments if this works for you, and I'll post a fresh followup entry sometime later on. -- Joe]

Hi folks -- a bunch of you have written in to tell me that you've been having problems hearing music embedded in Journal entries.

I thought I had an explanation for the problem, but I was wrong. So I need your help.

Now, the way you're getting music in your Journals involves uploading a music file to your FTP or other online storage space, then pointing to it using an HTML tag trick.

OneStrangeCat has a tutorial, as well as some other folks.

Here's an example of HTML that should work (the filename is a placeholder -- this is a non-functional example):

<P><IMG height=1 width=1 loop=infinite DYNSRC="http://members.aol.com/journalseditor/[SOME-FILE-NAME.mp3]" autostart="true">

<br>Click to Play <A href="http://hometown.aol.com/journalseditor/[SOME-FILE-NAME.mp3]">[SOME-FILE-NAME.mp3]</A></P>

The DYNSRC tag is what makes it work -- it stands for Dynamic Source, and it says to your Web browser, "Pull in and play some dynamic content." It can be audio or video, and you just point to its location online.

Also note that autostart is set to "true," so it will play in the background invisibly (which, to be honest, drives me nuts, especially when I have a bunch of windows open and can't figure out where the sound is coming from).

(The rest of that HTML is just a hyperlink to the actual file.)

Now, there's two things you need to know about the DYNSRC tag:

1. It only -- ONLY -- works in Microsoft Internet Explorer (which includes the browser in your AOL software). It doesn't work in Netscape, Firefox, or any other browser. That's because it's a proprietary, IE-only tag that Microsoft implemented.

2. People who care about HTML standards say "Don't use it." That's because it's not standards compliant, and it doesn't work with all browsers. When you start having special tags that only work in certain browsers, things start spiraling out of control (we saw some of this when IE and Netscape were competing for the market).

I know most of you guys are using IE and you don't care about HTML standards -- you just want to hear the music. Which is fine.

Now, I'd thought that since we just started getting reports recently, and that since more and more people are upgrading to Internet Explorer 7.0, that maybe IE 7.0 dropped support for the dynsrc tag.

I asked the guys out in California to do some testing, and I was wrong -- IE 7.0 still supports the dynsrc tag.

So, I need your help. I need your examples of blog entries in the wild where embedded music playback isn't working for you, so we can take a look. I also ask you to supply the following info, and take the following steps:

1. What's the direct link URL to entry where the music is embedded? (If you put it in your All About Me section, let me know.)
   
   
2. What Web browser (with version number) are you using? To find this out:
   A. Click Start > Programs > Internet Explorer. This will open up the standalone IE browser.
   
   B. In the Help menu in the top menu bar, click "About Internet Explorer" and tell me the version number. It'll be something like "Version: 6.0.2900.xpsp_sp2..." -- we just need the front part of that.
   
   
3. Since your standalone IE will already be open -- if you visit the blog entry using the standalone Internet Explorer, do you hear the music?
   
   
4. If you try going directly to the music file by pasting the URL in your browser window, does it open up a helper program and play?
   
   
5. If the music file isn't in your AOL FTP or Hometown space, but is stored somewhere else online, does it work?
   
   
6. Are you having any other problems browsing the Web or hearing music/sounds on your computer?
   

It would probably be best if you send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor with the info above -- it would be a lot for a comment (and it will really help us figure things out.)

Even if we figure out this problem, we've got to find easier and better ways for you to embed music into your Journals -- there's no reason why you should have to jump through hoops to do it.

It may be something as simple adding some third-party music player services to the allowed whitelist, so if you know of any that you'd like to use, let us know.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, embedded music, dynsrc

"I Had a Porn Time Last Night, But I'm Chenzed Right Now"

Click to take the quiz on the BBC News Web site.

Okay, I hate ending a blogging day on a problem report, so here's an item from BBC News -- their midweek quiz features a 10-question quiz on teen slang (uses Flash).

From the quiz:

"Teenagers use just 20 words for a third of their speech, according to a new study by Lancaster University.

And their vocabulary is peppered with slang that can seem - to those old enough to vote and to drink legally - incomprehensible.

Test yourself on the slang used by the teens in the study."

Some of the words used in the quiz  (on which I got a 5. And that was on the second time, too) include:

• hollage


• confuzzled


• mcFittie


• flim


• gopping

The slang from Clockwork Orange made more sense; at least that was just Russian.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: teenages, slang, bbc news, midweek quiz, teen slang

Some Journals Issues Today

Hi all -- You know, I'm not sure if you guys are going easy on me just because I'm getting back in the saddle (unlikely), but I haven't gotten any complaint reports about the issues I'm going to talk about from today:

* This morning around 11AM ET, for a short period of time (I don't know how long exactly), some direct links to entries broke, giving the "Journals not available" error. This was quickly fixed.

* International New Entry/Comment Added Alerts: I know Alerts have been problematic at times (please let me know if you have specific Alert non-delivery or misdelivery problems); probably due to the beta install this morning, we started seeing Alerts problems for non-US locales.

Looks like some of the changes on the beta version of Journals didn't play nice with the production version of the code, so these changes were backed out. All locales, US and International, should be delivering Alerts properly right now.

...except for France. AOL FR seems to still be having some Alerts problems. I will forego any French jokes and just say that the Alerts and Journals teams are working on it.

* AOL Pictures Integration: AOL Pictures was having some problems this afternoon; since Journals uses some AOL Pictures functionality, that effectively means we also had some problems this afternoon.

It turns out that Pictures had a hung (hanged?) server; they kicked it and it should be okay now.

As is normally the case with AOL Pictures problems, even if your Pictures don't show up in your Journal, they still exist and can be accessed by going to pictures.aol.com; you can re-add them into your Journal if necessary.

Usually people start screaming when AOL Pictures has problems, so I'm hoping it didn't affect too many people (for example, I didn't see any problems with my photos.)

Now's also the perfect time to introduct the new Journals Project Manager out in California, Leona, since she's the one who hipped me to the Pictures problem.

Leona originally hails from Ireland; she's been in her Journals role for about a month, trying rein in rowdy developers and rowdier schedules.

Leona's been playing around with Journals over at Leona's Daily Notes (I've added it to the sidebar of the Magic Smoke main page) -- please stop by and say hi.

So, it's been a pretty busy day today.

I haven't even talked about the beta yet and heck, I still haven't had the chance to change the name and photo in the JournalsEditor All About Me and associated profiles. Get to all that tomorrow.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, journals alerts, journals beta, leona

Goodbye, JournalsEditor -- Hello, JournalsEditor

Hi everybody -- this is Joe,
coming at you from the land
of AIM Pages. I wanted to let you know that Editor
Jeff has moved on from his gig as Journals Editor. Here's a
message that he wanted to pass along to all of you:

"Today I join the ranks of Jon Miller, Jason
Calacanis and a number of other digital ditch-diggers whose names
history will ignore ... today is my last day at AOL.


I'm actually pretty excited about it. I came here
as a desperate freelance writer and furtive amateur blogger who may or
may not have dooced
himself -- and am leaving with polished, solid skills as a professional
blogger, content creator, and programming manager. I'm looking forward
to sharpening my writing outside of a corporate setting and going where
the day takes me for a while, and I know I'm going to end up somewhere
good.

For a few months, I've been standing at the
end of the diving board and terrified to jump. Now that the lifeguard's
blown the whistle, I can tell you that the free-fall feels fabulous.


I have learned so much here from so many incredible
people, and I really feel ready to hit that deep water where the wild
things swim.

My personal blog can be found at And I Am Not
Lying, For Real, and it's where my love lies. It's going to
get very awesome, very soon, and I encourage you folks to drop by next
time you've got some time to kill.

You guys have
been great ...

Lots of love,

Jeff
Simmermon"

Many thanks to Jeff for his hard work and
devotion to the Journals product and people, and best of luck. He'll be
missed.

As to the here and now, since I've stayed
fairly close to the Journals world, I'll be wearing both my AIM Pages
and AOL Journals blogging hats.

However, since I do
(inconveniently) require sleep, I'll be on a reduced content publishing
schedule for Magic Smoke and the Journals main
page, and may put things like the Guest Editor Picks on a
holiday break (or call up some other AOL Editors or previous Guest
Editors to help me out -- I haven't quite figured it out
yet.)

Also, Stephanie will be
your first stop for Journals product news, issues, status and fixesin
her blog, BamBam!
-- which is as it should be, since she's the Journals Product Manager,
and we usually just run to her for answers on all of the hard stuff
(and a lot of the easy stuff), anyway.

For example,
Stephanie gives us the scoop on the R10
Beta Install, which should go in on Thursday,
12/14.

In addition, other Journals team members will
be around to help talk about stuff, both in their own blogs and
here.

There's a lot of blog and other social media
planning going on for 2007, and I'm involved in a lot of it. 
We're working on some interesting stuff. In the meantime, I'll need a
little time to get caught up on Journals issues, so please bear with
us.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, aol journals status, journals editor

Man-on-Manatee Action

If you're anything like me, you spend hours upon end thinking "gosh, the Internet sure is awesome. But WHY? WHY is the Internet so awesome?" then realize you've bought a bunch of T-shirts that are funny once or twice then not so much anymore.

Well, here's why the Internet is awesome this week:

A little over a week ago, Conan O'Brien ad-libbed a quick throwaway joke on 'Late Night,' referencing a fictional Webcam site called hornymanatee.com. From the New York Times:

There was only one problem: as of the taping of that show, which concluded at 6:30 p.m., no such site existed. Which presented an immediate quandary for NBC: If a viewer were somehow to acquire the license to use that Internet domain name, then put something inappropriate on the site, the network could potentially be held liable for appearing to promote it.

In a pre-emptive strike inspired as much by the regulations of the Federal Communications Commission as by the laws of comedy, NBC bought the license to hornymanatee.com, for $159, after the taping of the Dec. 4 show but before it was broadcast.

As of yesterday afternoon, the site had received over 3 million visits. If you go there now, you'll see photos of people posing in plush manatee costumes in a PG-rated mockery of low-rent Web porn.

Isn't it weird how thanks to online porn spam, everybody gets jokes like this? My mother thinks this is hilarious and I really, really doubt she'd have understood those references before 2004. God, I hope.

Hornymanatee.com also hosts a video from a recent 'Late Night' show of James Lipton reading fan-created poetry about aroused manatees, as well as fan-created horny manatee art.

I would like to reiterate that because this site is sponsored by NBC,all of its content is PG-rated, and  any problems it causes you are entirely your own. You may not want to view the site with children just to avoid a potentially weird conversation, but it's fine, I swear.

To recap: As a result of one ad-libbed, throwaway joke on late-night television, an online phenomenon has been created that's warped back into a lot more jokes and interactive fun between 'Late Night's staff and its audience. This is the cultural equivalent of a butterfly flapping its wings in Japan and triggering a hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean.

It's weird and insane and impossible to predict ... and in a couple weeks the whole thing will be over and a new meme will take its place.

If anything, this is a major example to TV studios that the Web is a viable medium. 3 million visitors in a week is stunning traffic to just fall into bass-ackwards -- that's some pretty awesome ad revenue there.

What if TV studios started partnering with people who created and promoted Web content based on their shows, instead of just suing them blind? They'd make a lot more money, amateur content creators would make a couple bucks for their efforts, and the world of entertainment would get a hell of a lot more interesting. This could be the first step.

Bloggie Awards, Now With AOL People

It's time again for the Bloggies, a blog awards ceremony that's been written about before here by my predecessor Joe. I tell you, if there's one thing that guy's got to learn, it's how to form his own opinions and stick to them.

I don't feel as strongly about the Bloggies as Joe does, but I don't think it's healthy to get overly excited about them. I'd probably feel differently if I had been nominated, or even stood a chance, though.

It's just that awards ceremonies of any kind are skewed towards the candidates that are already the most popular. You've got to be popular enough to be nominated, and the herd mentality tends to dominate when voting, too. Just like Senior Superlatives in high school or the Oscars. And don't even get me started on what an endless plastic sh*t parade the Grammys are, year in and year out.

Winning a Bloggie seems to me to be like winning the Mister Universe title. I mean, it's an honor to be chosen and all, but Earthlings kinda have the home-court advantage.

The blogosphere is so huge and growing exponentially every day -- and while all the nominees for the Bloggies are good, who's to say that they are really the best? There are a lot of blogs out here in the blogosphere, and even from down around the rear end of the long tail, I can tell you that some folks are getting the short shrift.

Now that I've thoroughly sucked the fun out of them for you, I still think you should check 'em out. There's bound to be some good blogs in there that you haven't heard of, and any chance to fill up the old RSS reader is a good chance.

And you can also see that a couple of AOL's own have been nominated this year!

Our very own Jamie Mottram has been nominated for 'Best Sports Blog,' for starters. I don't know a damn thing about sports, but I'll tell you this: Jamie Mottram has become a great friend of mine here at AOL, and he writes a hell of a blog, all topics aside. He also holds himself to impossibly high standards of hygeine and is devastatingly handsome according to several sources. Check out Mister Irrelevant, and give it a vote if you are so inclined.

Tom Osborne is an art director here at AOL. He designs all kinds of stuff -- the People Connection page is about to look a lot different, and he will be the one responsible for it. I think it'll be a good thing. After hours, he owns/edits/administrates Twangville, a blog about country, alt-country, folk ... pretty much any music that twangs. Check it out, vote for it, visit often.

What do you think of the Bloggies, or blogging awards in general? Who would you nominate if you could?

Guest Editor, Weekend of 12/08/06

Hi everybody... as posted to the
AOL Journals main page and the Message
Boards, here are the Guest Editor's Picks for December 8th, 2006:

Guest
Editor Tom is a Vietnam veteran and retired auto worker, and man, has
he got a lot of interests! He blogs at Old
Soldier Tom's Journal. Check out his weekend
blog picks:

* Sharon's
Blog
*
Everlasting
Light
* Michael's
Page
*
The Land of
Pure Gold
* Sgt. Hook: This
We'll Defend
* The
Gimp Parade: Going Native
* Plus, BONUS LINKS!

Check
out Tom's blog to see these picks as well as a few bonus links! Don't
forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor, or if you have a
blog you want us to see for a possible feature, send me an e-mail at
JournalsEditor@aol.com.
Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Have a
great weekend, everyone.

YGP: A Tentative Hallelujah

Hey friends -- Stephanie BamBam's got some answers
regarding our recent problems with You've Got Pictures. Here's an excerpt, but
you should go read the
post
yourselves:

This problem is being fixed as I speak by restoring albums as they
existed as of December 2nd. Only the people effected will have their albums
restored - approximately 1% of you. You should see your pics again later this
afternoon.

For any
other questions, problems with YGP, please comment on the AOL Pictures Blog.

YGP, File Manager Blogs

It appears that You've Got
Pictures is back up and running. I don't know the details on the
problem, myself, but thought you'd all appreciate the news. The
AOL Pictures Team has a blog of their own as well
-- I strongly encourage you all to subscribe to their Alerts and check in when
you can. Check 'em out here: The AOL Pictures Blog

Additionally, Will Kern is now the
Product Manager for AOL Hometown, which includes
File Manager. He has a blog as well, where he can
more accurately field your questions and complaints about all things File
Manager. Check that out here: It's a Product
Thing


Finally, both of these blogs are linked in the right rail of
this very blog, Magic Smoke.

I'm sorry
that I don't have specific answers for you at this time myself.
However, these folks are in a much better position to understand and articulate
problems with their products.

Thanks -- Jeff

Update: James Kim's Body Found

**Update** James Kim's body has been found, according to CNN and other sources. From the CNN story:

The body of a San Francisco man who had walked into the Oregon wilderness to summon help for his stranded family was found Wednesday in a steep ravine where he had left clues for searchers.

Officials confirmed that James Kim, 35, an editor at the Web site CNET, had been found dead.

It's all over the news and all over the blogosphere:

CNet Senior Editor James Kim is still missing, but his family has been found alive. They burned tires for fuel, ate everything in the car and Mrs. Kim resorted to breastfeeding to keep her children alive. She was able to flag down a rescue crew by flapping an umbrella covered with reflective tape. As of this writing, Mr. Kim is still lost, last seen heading into the snowy wilderness to find help for his family.

Rescuers were able to use signals recently sent from cell phone towers in order to narrow the search area down in order to find the family and narrow the search for James Kim. People are searching for him on horseback, with dogs, on foot and from heat-seeking helicopters.

The coverage for this story is nothing short of incredible. At last look, the story was being followed by all the major news networks in addition to CNet itself. Here's a roundup of the news:

San Francisco Chronicle
CNet
NBC
AOL
ABC News
MSNBC News

Additonally, BoingBoing has been tracking the story, and related stories and blog posts are proliferating Digg and the blogosphere at large like crazy.

The thing is, people go missing all the time. And PLEASE don't get me wrong here -- this is a terrible tragedy, and I do sincerely hope that Mr. Kim is returned safely to his family as soon as possible.

But 2,300 people are reported missing every day, according to CourtTV's Crime Library. And not all missing persons cases garner this degree of media attention. Why is it that this one is? James Kim is certainly not a blond white girl, a group of people that seems to garner media attention for pretty much everything.

Not that you haven't guessed the reason already. James Kim's a senior editor at CNet, a tremendous resource for other tech media ... and now, tech media's looking out for one of their own. And by extension, the people who read and comment on tech media are passing the word along.

It doesn't seem fair at all ... and it's not. But on the other hand, a missing person is a missing person. And if a couple thousand blog posts can help bring a starving man out of the snow and back with his family, that's fine by me.

'You've Got Pictures' Problems

I've received a number of e-mails and
comments from you regarding problems with photos in your
Journals, specifically You've Got
Pictures photos.

From what I understand at the moment, YGP is
going through an upgrade and will be down until everything is
installed. Because Journals is dependent on YGP for photos, your Journals are
affected. However, once YGP is upgraded and up and running again,
your photos should come back.

Please accept
my apologies for this incovenience -- and thanks for your patience.

I Don't Care If You Don't Care About My Lunch

Blogging's cruelest stereotype is that it's a bunch of narcissists telling the world about their lunch. Stereotypes wouldn't be stereotypes if they weren't true enough to hurt a little, and this post is so stereotypical is HURTS:

My lunch today was freaking magical. There are no burritos in America like the burritos in California, and this one was no exception -- a fish, bean and rice concoction the size of an underweight infant, slathered in fresh guacamole.

I ate it on the beach at Santa Monica under warm California sun hanging low in a Prozac-blue sky. Turn the camera around, there's your Journals Editor himself:

That's all.

File Manager Problems? Read Stephanie!

Hey folks -- I'm in California right now,
arrived safe and sound and slightly jetlagged. Apart from being seated next to a
large, loud man who made lots of loud, crappy jokes to NOBODY AT ALL the trip
was pretty painless.

That said, you guys really need to check out Stephanie's post today,
particularly if you have been frustrated with our ongoing outages and
extra-especially if you are having File Manager
headaches. She's on the job and trying to help.
Go check it
out.

Guest Editor 12/01/06

Hi everybody... as posted to the
AOL Journals main page and the Message
Boards, here are the Guest Editor's Picks for December 1st, 2006:

When Guest Editor Paul isn't
managing CarnivAOL,
he's blogging about his life in Canada at Aurora Walking
Vacation. His picks this week are dedicated to emergency
rescue personnel -- they're all blogs by the people that that are there for us
when we really, really need some help. Check out his weekend
picks:

* Golf and Other Stuff
...

* Becoming a
Firefighter

* Dead
Investigations

* The Return
of
Kaseypalooza

* Thin Blue
Line

* From Behind the
Badge

Check out Paul's blog to see
these picks and a few bonus links to boot. Don't forget, if you want
your own chance at being a Guest Editor, or if you have a blog you want us to
see for a possible feature, send me ane-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com.
Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Have a
great weekend, everyone.