Friday Blogplugs

Hey folks,

I hope everyone had
a safe holiday and spent time with family (and friends). I
visited my relatives in New Jersey and have been intermittently getting
work done, fighting a cold and snacking.

Before
I get into the blogplugs, we wanted to share our condolences for two
very special Journalers who passed away this month. Kim fought Breast
Cancer and blogged at "I shaved my legs for this?," passed away on December 26, 2007. Lahoma, who struggled with Myeloid Leukemia, blogged at "Lahoma's Laments,"
passed away on Christmas. Our hearts are with their family and friends
-- please feel welcome to stop by their Journals and share your
condolences. 

* Sugar reminds us that Kwanza kicked off on the 26th which is focuses on life, unity and culture. 

* Jimmy shared a parody of the "Twas the Night Before Christmas" poem.

* Dana posted an inspiring video for our military members who couldn't be home during the holidays. 
---

Thanks folks for the Friday Blogplugs. Just wanted to let you know that a lot of us will be out of the office until after the New Year ... so hang tight. If you'd like, send your Guest Editor submissions to JournalsEditor@aol.com and we'll review them for next week.

Have a exceptionally safe and enjoyable weekend. See you next year. ;-)

~ Joseph

Tags: blogplugs, aol journals, featured, tagging

Scalzicentric Guest Editor Picks, December 21, 2007

Hi,
AOL J-Land! We're Carly, Karen and Steven, and we're all fans of AOL
Journals'
original "Blogfather", John Scalzi.   For over
four years he's been dispensing interesting links, blogging tips, fun
photos,
news, humor and inspiration over on By
The Way, under contract with AOL. We've been right
there
reading his entries, sometimes as many as five in one day. Now that's
value!
(Actually Karen didn't discover By the Way until May
2004,
but you get the idea.)

Scalzi's contract with AOL is
ending
on December 31st, which will free him up to write more of his
award-winning
science fiction, and his non-fiction books as well. The prospect of
losing his
daily presence on By the Way makes us sad, but we
know it's
probably for the best.  So we decided to pay tribute to
everything
he's done for AOL Journalers and the blogging community as a whole.
We've
started a new AOL Journal, ScalziCelebration,
to collect your tributes, reminiscences, favorite Weekend Assignment
entries,
favorite Monday Photo Shoots, favorite Ficlet by John Scalzi, and any
other Scalzi-centric
material you'd like to celebrate. Please help us thank our Blogfather,
and send
him on his way knowing how much he's been appreciated. Okay?
Okay!

Scalzi's contributions to the blogosphere go
well
beyond By the Way, of course, both in terms of his
own words
and pictures and in what he's inspired in others. We'd therefore like
to
recommend the following:

Monday Photo
Shoots

For years now John Scalzi's
By The
Way and the Monday Photo Shoot have brought
together
photographers on
AOL Blogs and throughout the web. Here are just a few of the
photographers we've
witnessed sharing their photos with the Monday Photo
Shoots.

Nancy of Nancyluvspix
joined in for "Blooms
and Blossoms." Benu4444 shared a wonderful shot for "Me
and My Camera." Joe Loong was covering for John that week so
we
got to see Joe
and his camera too! Betty had trouble with the Monday Photo
Shoot
topic of "Feet
or Cats" but she came up with a winning combination. Kristine
Scalzi, John's wife, got the picture for the Monday Photo Shoot topic
of
"Grab
Bag."

Nancy - Nancyluvspix: "Blooms
and Blossoms."

Benu4444 -
Creativity--Bits and Pieces: "Me
and My Camera."

Betty - My Day,
My Interests Photo Blog: "Feet
or Cats"

If you want to see more, visit the
archives of By The
Way and look for the Monday Photo Shoot topics. Wonderful
photography
and exceptional photographers each!

Weekend
Assignments

Every Thursday,
John Scalzi
inspires us to share our opinions, life experiences and creativity, by
offering
us a Weekend Assignment. Currently, we are working on the 196th
edition! Some
folks came to play once or twice, but others became repeat devoted
participants,
such as Wil, author of the blog, Daily Snooze and
Dawn, who
journals at Carpe Diem - Seize The Day!


Wil
- Daily
Snooze


Dawn - Carpe
Diem - Seize The
Day

Beyond By
the Way

Please
check ScalziCelebration for many more links and
surprises.
For example, we haven't even mention Flat Scalzi yet, or certain
faithful readers (hi, Monponsett!) who leave funny and insightful
comments on most By the Way
entries.

As
for Scalzi himself, he's not disappearing from the Internet. 
Oh, no!
His existing blog entries will remain on By the Way
(where
he hopes to stop by from time to time, "as a civilian") and on the
Ficlets
Blog,
which features his Book Tour Diary and a number of author interviews.
He's also
written a handful of great Ficlets, the ultimate in ultrashort,
interactive
fiction.  And if you like your Scalzi fresh (and who
doesn't?), you
can get your daily serving over on his personal blog, (The)
Whatever, where he's been blogging since
1998.

John Scalzi et al.:
Ficlets
Blog

John Scalzi: Whatever

Thanks, John! And thanks, J-Land and
Magic
Smoke!

Carly, Karen and
Steven

(Photo:
"John Scalzi on Tour" by Karen Funk
Blocher)

Tags: Scalzi, Weekend
Assignment, Monday Photo
Shoot, Tributes,
Guest
Editor

Friday Blogplugs and more...

Hey
folks,

A quiet Friday at the office, as people are
taking time off for the holidays! 'Tis the season and not surprisingly
that is the theme of blogplugs this week. Here are some featured blogplugs
to enjoy:

* Frank and Mary
on their shared Giving
Tree blog, have reached out to the blogging community to help
families in need. At this time of year, they need all the help they can
get.

* Sugar gives her take on
the reason
for the season!

* HeavenlyBama has an
entry
dedicated to our troops who won't be home for
Christmas.

* Sugar would like you to post an entry
about your favorite Christmas
carol and tag it, so others could
visit.

* Krissy asks 
"If you had to be one of the following, for 8 hours a day, during the
week before Christmas, which
would you
choose?"

Now for a little change of
pace..

* Jimmy asks "Why
is Al Sharpton not happy
?"

* Valphish has a very
sad
story about Jessica an 18 year old, who committed suicide.
She belongs to the National Suicide Prevention
Network.

* Luvrte66 encourages you to let your
self-confidence
show

---

Thanks folks for this
week's Friday (evening) blogplugs. Joe Manna will be back with next
weeks blogplugs.  Don't
forget that you can browse all the blogplugs on Technorati any
time!

---

After Guido's excellent guest editor picks last week
(thanks Guido), we have this week, 3 guest editors (mavarin, sepintx,
ondinemonet) paying tribute to John Scalzi.

For those of you who do not know John
Scalzi, he is a blogger, writer and  photographer
extraordinare. He has been with Journals since its beginning. He was
our "Joe Loong" before Joe Loong got here. The Journals team and JLand
will certainly miss his contributions. Our best wishes to John on his
writing endeavors.

If you
would like to become a guest editor please drop us an email at
journalseditor@aol.com

---

Finally, the Journals team would like to
wish all our users and readers a very Merry Christmas and
Happy Holidays. We thank you for all your support and
participation. It is your contributions that has made JLand such a
wonderful
community.

~ Vish and the Journals
team

Tags: blogplugs,
aol
journals, featured, christmas,
scalzi

Journals Update: Regarding Comment Alerts and Commenter E-Mail Addresses

Hi, folks.

Thanks for the feedback you sent us about the new Comment Alerts and the Commenter E-Mail Addresses (which debuted in the R15 release of Journals). The Journals team is aware that it has caused an inconvenience for some Journals users.

The team received several comments
from passionate Journalers who found the Comment Alerts feature to be a
nuisance when disruptive users -- commonly referred to as "trolls" --
post comments and the subscribers are e-mailed a copy of that comment.
While the feature offers compelling benefits, it can be a pain when
someone leaves distasteful comments on your blog.

In addition, many of you didn't like
the idea of having your e-mail address easily available when posting
comments. A number of you have cited that they've even seen more Spam
in their inbox. I'm not sure if that is just a coincidence, but it's
totally a valid concern. Fighting spam is a pain, and we shouldn't make
their jobs any easier (by providing a link to your e-mail address.) To
manage your junk mail settings on AOL, please visit AOL Keyword:
SpamControls.

In response to your feedback, the Journals team limited the commenter e-mail address feature to be visible only for Journal owners who are signed in. We
discussed the value these features provide for you. The team has
disabled the e-mail links in comments for readers (but will remain for
Journals owners). This update will be effective this evening, when the
servers are updated with this change.

We need your help!
To
help us gather some insight on what you think about these features,
please vote in this poll and share your thoughts in the comments below.
This feedback will help us in the next changes for AOL Journals.

You may also share your thoughts in the comments below or write to us at JournalsEditor@aol.com. The Journals team appreciates your thoughts (and patience) about this.

~ Joseph

Tags: AOL Journals, Feedback, Features, Comment Alerts, E-Mail, R15

Guest Editor's Picks 14 December 2007

(above
image courtesy www.blackwell-compass.com)

Hello,
 

My name is Guido, and I write the journal Northern Trip.

I have agreed to start off this first batch of editor's
picks.

I started the blog in 2004, as an on-line
diary to my trip round Northern Scotland. After I settled down in the
small town of Stornoway, Isle of Lewis, the emphasis shifted to
involvement
with J-land through the VIVI awards (to give them their due) and more
permanently following the death of Pamela Hilger (his1desire), who
passed away
on Easter Sunday 2006.  


At the moment, my blog is subtitled “A view of the
world
from a small island; a view of the island for the world”. I live in the
Isle of
Lewis, off northwestern Scotland,
and I portray its wild weather and stunning scenery, as well as the
small-town politics
you get in a community of 20,000. Anything occurring on the Scottish
mainland
(40 miles or 3 hours away by ferry) will also feature. This varies
between
Donald Trump and his ridiculous golf resort on the coast of
Aberdeenshire
to emergencies at sea.  


Enough about me – on to my picks.


I found it extremely
difficult, but I’ve selected one blog out of a handful of categories,
with the
purpose of highlighting both individual blog and the category. I’ve
tried to
stick to six, as that was the original number of Guest Editor’s
Picks.   


Family Life

Footprints
in the Sand
Linda writes an interesting journal, on
which I admittedly
rarely comment. It is a good example of the ups and downs of family
life, and
the events around her home. She has three sons, succinctly referred to
as Son1,
Son2 and Son3 in decreasing order of age. The oldest is starting out in
adult
life, whilst the youngest is in primary school. There are quite a few
blogs
like that on AOL. As I am based in Europe, and I have
not visited the USA,
it gives me an interesting insight into family life in
America.   


Tagging

This
and that and hockey
To my mind, Donna is among the
best taggers in J-land. A tag
is a graphic with someone’s name on it. A snag ispurely a graphic,
that can be
‘snagged’ using the right-click-save-as feature. Yes, others do equally
creditable work as well. However, I never cease to be amazed at the
intricacies
of these small works of art. When I try anything on Photoshop, I
usually end up
climbing the walls in despair. I suppose I don’t have the patience, or
perhaps
the artistic inclination. Donna was recently commissioned to design a
company
Christmas card, acclaim richly deserved. Apart from tagging, Donna
blogs about
the fortunes or otherwise of her favourite icehockey team.  


Health

I
shaved my legs for this?
Kim was diagnosed with
breast cancer more than a year ago, a
diagnosis which turned her life upside down. She tackled the challenge
with
typical and commendable spirit, although the treatment was less than
successful. Weeks after completing the initial course, the cancer was
back – in
other places. Cancer treatment is physically and mentally exhausting,
but I
never ceased to be amazed at Kim’s gusto in confronting the
difficulties she
found herself facing. At present, she has not put in an entry for
several
weeks, leaving me (and many with me) concerned over the state of
affairs. I highlight Kim’s blog to serve as an example to the
unfortunate many who are in a similar plight, not just cancer but also
chronic
ill health. Although good spirits do not demonstrably improve chances
of
surviving cancer or ameliorating your condition, it does make it easier
to bear
that particular burden. The tags in my sidebar refer to several others,
battling cancer and ill health.

Poetry and
writing

Life
in the Lakes
Jeanie came to my attention a year
ago, with stories of her
life in the Lake District of northern England.
She is an engaging writer, who deserves a broader platform,
particularly after
an entry earlier this week. I have to say that there is generally a
high
standard of writing across J-land, which has made the task of choosing
specific
journals doubly difficult. I also select Jeanie for the simple reason
that
she’s a Scot, who can empathise with what goes on in my neck of the
woods, some
300 miles to the north of her Lakeland
home.

Coping with
life

Raven’s
Lament
Indigo, a lady of nativeAmerican stock,
started journaling
exactly a year ago, and she has a story to tell. She went deaf three
years ago,
after combating decreasing hearing for many years. Apart from that, she
suffered horrendous abuse throughout her years, as a child and as an
adult.
Only now, partially through her writings, is she coming to terms with
that.
Indigo has a daughter, who, as a young adult, is wrenching loose from
her
mother. Some of Indigo’s writing make for difficult reading, but such
is life –
a rosebush, pretty to behold, but with hidden thorns. Many more deserve
mentioning
here for coping with similar problems.  


Animals

Life
on a Bison Farm
Again, a difficult choice in this
category.  Lisa started blogging back in March, and has
shared with us the ups and downs of a household full of pets and
household
animals. As the title of her blog says, she has bison on her farm,
which I find
most intriguing. Apart from that, I recently chatted to Lisa in the
Journals
Chatroom, while her webcam was on. A whirlwind of dogs, cats and other
creatures continually distracted her attention. She has shown genuine
compassion for her animals, and one of her Christmas presents consisted
of a
bulkload of catlitter.  


Overall category
Sugar
(sugarsweet056)

Sugar is a very all-round blogger, who fits in
virtually all
categories that I have highlighted above. She too is devoted to her
‘furrs’,
although her family tend to leave her to her own devices. Not very
good, as
Sugar has her own disabilities to cope with. Since her car gave up the
ghost,
she has been virtually housebound. Nonetheless, she has many a tale to
tell, as
shown in her list of blogs.

(Re)Introducing the Guest Editor tradition

Hi folks,

Happy Friday!!

We
have decided to revive the Weekly Guest Editor column, that Joe Loong
used to host.

We are pleased to have Guido be the guest editor this
week. He is one of our most passionate bloggers. You can find him at :

http://journals.aol.co.uk/pharmolo/NorthernTrip

Guido is very well connected in JLand and a wonderful person. Often you can also find him in the Journals Chatroom.

The next entry in this journal, has been sent to us by Guido.
Hope you enjoy his picks !

If you would like to become a guest editor please drop us an email at journalseditor@aol.com

Have a nice weekend,

---Malika & the Journals team.

Tags: AOL Journals, Guest Editor, blogplugs

Journals R15 Release Tonight Midnight EST (9PM PST)

Hey
folks,

We’ve got
some great news (at least we think so). AOL Journals will be updated to our 15th release (R15)! It will be
installed this evening, adding new features and a couple back-end
optimizations for Journalers. These features were the result of your helpful
feedback that everyone provided in our comments or in our team’s
mailbox.



Updated Comment and Entry Alerts
We’ve
improved
the Alerts feature on Journals so you can subscribe both to a Journal's
Entry Alerts and/or
Comment Alerts. This allows you to receive notification (via e-mail or
service pop-up on AOL or AIM) when an entry is posted or when
someone comments on an entry.



We’d like to let you know that users who have already subscribed for Entry Alerts
on a Journal will continue to receive their Alerts. The same holds true for Owners
who subscribed to their Comment Alerts will continue to receive Comment Alerts.



Alerts are especially useful for Shared Journals where you have multiple
writers to a Journal. So when one writer adds an entry, the other writers or
readers can subscribe to get an Entry Alert. In addition, for popular Journals that
you read, you can now also subscribe to Comment Alerts. Take for example if I
write an entry on Magic Smoke, fellow J-Landers comment on it, you can get an alert
for those comments!



You can subscribe to these alerts by clicking on the Alerts link located along the top of the Journal. It displays links for Entry Alerts and Comment Alerts.

To manage
your individual Alerts (or remove them), you can set your preferences at AOL Alerts.



Commenter E-Mail Addresses
Many of you
have asked for the ability to e-mail the people who add comments to your blog. You
will be able to quickly send an e-mail to your Buddies regarding their comment. You
will notice a link next to the commenter’s screen name. Justclick it and send them
an e-mail.

Link to Magic Smoke

We added
a link to our blog on the top of Journals so you can keep track of
announcements and other Journals related news. The link is on US, UK, Canada and Latino Journals.


Enhanced Site Map
Lastly, we
improved our site map, which helps search engines figure out which blogs to index
first. This means that your Journal entries may be indexed into popular search
engines (like Google or Yahoo) quicker with these recent enhancements. The only side affect
from this change is you might notice more people visit your Journal. ;-)

Please let us know if you see any issues or have any feedback in the comments
below or write to JournalsEditor@aol.com. Thanks, everyone!



---Malika (and the Journals team)

Tags: AOL Journals, Update, R15, Features, Feedback, Alerts, Comments,

Friday Evening Blogplugs

Hey folks,

Friday snuck up on me fairly quick this week. You know today is Friday and here are some featured blogplugs to enjoy:

* Frank and Mary on their shared Giving Tree blog, have reached out to the blogging community to help a family in need.

* maribm56 shares a montage featuring photos of trains.

* Beth finds it hard to hold a grudge from her personal experience.

* Sugar reminds us that today is Pear Harbor day.

* Penny was excited to put up her Christmas decorations and wants to know how you plan on celebrating the holidays this month.
---

Thanks folks for the Friday (evening)
blogplugs. I also wanted to let you know that I won't be able to do
blogplugs next week as I'll be out of the office. Don't
forget that you can browse all the blogplugs on Technorati any time!

Have safe weekend folks!

~ Joseph

Tags: blogplugs, aol journals, featured, tagging

Dude, Where's My Blog? (and some Blogplugs, too)

Hey folks,

I wanted to let you know that we're aware of the issues with the People Connection Blogs
page. Right now, it isn't displaying your Journals. Both the Journals
and the People Connection teams are working on fixing this glitch.

In the meantime, you can always access (and manage) your Journals by going to the following URL:

http://journals.aol.com/screenname

Replace
"screenname" with your screen name and you'll be able to manage your
blogs from there. Thanks for your patience as we fix the blogs page.
--

Alas, it's Friday and I've got some great blogplugs for everyone to enjoy:

* Krissy celebrated that her husband was discharged from the hospital yesterday. 

* Specialadyfink is in the Christmas spirit with a Christmas story told on her blog with pictures and all.

* Sugar advises against giving pets as gifts for the holidays and she has a poem, too.

* Beth reflected on the traits from her parents and had some thoughts about characteristics we inherent from our parents. 

* Barbara introduced her little sister into J-Land. (Her sister's blog is here.)

* Ceilisundancer wrote about what she did on Thanksgiving, the pursuit of the perfect Christmas cards and wished peace for everyone even during war.

* Donna let us know about her traditions this past Thanksgiving, a few pictures and she earned a $100 gift card from her employer.
---

Thanks folks, I think I've got some
unique Journalers in there. That concludes this week's blogplugs. Don't
forget, you can browse all the blogplugs on Technorati any time!

Have relaxing weekend folks! (I know I need it...)

~ Joseph and Malika

Tags: blogplugs, aol journals, featured, tagging

Happy Thanksgiving!

Hi folks,

From the Journals team, we'd like to wish everyone a very Happy Thanksgiving!

May
you always have much for which to be thankful. Wishing you every joy
that is Thanksgiving. Hope you have a great time with your friends and
family and with lots of goodies!

A reminder that we'll skip
Blogplugs this Friday, because of the holiday. (But that's no excuse
for not tagging your favorite entries with blogplugs!)

I
was trying to find some Thankgiving-related pictures, but remembered
that our Journals users are pretty creative. Here are a few pictures
that stood out:

"Thankful" by Sugar Shack:

"Give Thanks" from Cab's Creations:

"It's Turkey Time!" by Sugar Shack (again!):

Have a safe and enjoyable (and long) weekend. Feel free to spam share your Thanksgiving blog entries in our comments!

Thanks,                                         
---Malika and Joseph

Tags: AOL Journals, Thanksgiving

Journals Chat unavailable for 30 mins on Monday, Nov. 19th, 2007 at 10 AM EST

Hi folks,

The AIM Chat team will be installing updates to production, this morning - 
Monday, Nov. 19th 2007 at 10 AM EST. 

A 30 minute outage is expected. During the installation, "Journals Chat" will not be available.

Sorry for the inconvenience and late notice.  See you in the chat room once the installation completes :-)

Thanks,

---Malika

Tags: Journals Chat, AIM chat

Friday Blogplugs

Hey folks,

Earlier this week, the Journals team installed the R14 release
which added some pretty nice features, including the ability for
multiple writers to share a Journal. We'll show you how to use this
feature, look forward to it later this week.

It's Friday and I've got some fresh blogplugs for everyone to enjoy:

* Jimmy taunts me with his Miami sunshine, at a comfortable 72F. (Today's high temperature was 46F.)

* Beth has shares six pictures of a gathering of birds and a few sunsets.

* Specialadyfink shared her opinion about the option to add writers to her Journal. She later followed up and created a Journal that everyone can contribute to.

* Ellie said goodbye to her son, who headed out for military duty and finishes with a nice story written from a soldier's daughter.

* Krissy affirms that orange cranberry sauce is an instant Thanksgiving hit.

* Sugar warns
not to put out a kitchen fire with water. She includes a link to a video explaining why. Holiday cooking is right around the corner, this video makes a very
timely arrival.
---

That concludes this week's blogplugs. Don't forget, you can browse all the blogplugs on Technorati any time!

Have safe weekend folks!

~ Joseph

Tags: blogplugs, aol journals, featured, tagging

Journals R14 Release tonight, Midnight EST (9PM PST)

Hi folks,

Great news, the Journals R14 release will be installed tonight.

We have added new features and made a few changes :

• Shared Journals - You
  can now have your buddies add entries to your Public or Private
  Journal. You control who can view/write to your Journal. Look for
  the Add/Manage Writers
  link on the Main page or the Edit Journal
  page. With this shared blogging feature, you can create miniature
  communities
  (such as blog on weight loss or a fantasy football). Writers can add
  pictures/videos/polls just like the owner. This feature has been asked
  for quite a bit, and it's finally here!
  

• Journals Chat - We have created a
  chat room for J-Landers. Click on the Journals Chat
  link
  on the Main page to enter the chat room. In
  addition to text chat, the chat room supports audio and video chat.
  (Right now, the link will only appear on US, Canada and Latino
  Journals.)

• Entry Pagination -
  Ability to paginate entries from main page and
  other pages without having to go to the Archives page. If you have more
  than 10 entries on your blog, you will see the
  "Older Entries" or "Newer Entries" link at the bottom of your page.
  This feature will allow your readers to more easily navigate your older
  entries.
  

• Other changes
  
  
• New Search header with an additional option to search the Web.
  
  
• New colors for buttons -- green, blue and tan/orange.
  
• New AOL Journals logo on all pages.
  
  
• New look to the Atom/RSS Feed Reader.
• Banner advertisements on France, Germany and UK AOL Journals.
  

There
may be brief outages during the install period, but we're not expecting
any significant downtime. It should only last for 30 minutes or so.

Please let us know if you see any issues or have any feedback in the comments below or write to JournalsEditor@aol.com. Thanks, everyone!

---Malika

[Update 11/15] - The Journals team brought back the disclaimer text below the advertisement on all Journals. It was an oversight during the design stage, and the team would like to thank everyone for their patience and understanding. Also, UK Journalers should now have the Journals Chat link on their blogs.
~ Joseph

Tags: Journals R14 release, Entry pagination, shared blogging, aol journals, r14, chat

Friday Blogplugs

Hey folks,

This week's blogplugs are in! I'd like to feature awesome blog entries from people who aren't frequently featured here. So, if you want tell your other Journalers that for really outstanding entries, to add the tag "blogplugs" to them!

* Pharmolo let us know some stupid laws in the UK. (Whatever you do, don't die in the Houses of Parliment!)

* Sugarsweet056 informs us that November is Lung Cancer Awareness Month, and has a very graphic video to go along with it. She also reminded everyone that last Saturday was the end of Daylight Saving Time.

* Kathi let us know about a benefit concert for our veterans of America's  armed forces which will be held in Washington D.C. this weekend.

* Ellie took a few moments to let us know what her current events are in her life.

* Hohumzzz23 has a really boring blog, and doesn't have any blogplugs.

* Krissy reports that it's snowing in Central PA. (Already?!) 
---

That concludes this week's blogplugs. Don't forget that you can browse all the blogplugs on Technorati any time!

Have an awesome weekend folks!

~ Joseph

Tags: blogplugs

Intermittent Issues with AOL Pictures

Hi folks,

A few of you let us know about the inability to "Add Albums." We observed issues with AOL Pictures, too.

It seems to happen randomly. They had a minor problem with their servers on Tuesday and it was supposed to be fixed yesterday. Please try again and let me know if you still see issues uploading your pictures this way. 

Tomorrow is Friday, don't forget to tag your best entries with blogplugs.

Have a good evening,

---Malika

[Update 11/18] - The AOL Pictures team have fixed the problem, and now "pictures.aim.com" correctly points to "pictures.aol.com". Please let me know if you are seeing issues with "Add Album" using your AIM account. Thanks for your patience.

---Malika

Tags: AOL Journals, Status, AOL Pictures

Friday Blogplugs

Hey folks,

Sorry for the lack of blogplugs last Friday, we'll try to get them out more frequently. Today's blogplugs will be a double-dose of blogplugage:

* Sugarsweet056 wished her readers a Happy Halloween with a greeting card and also shared three Halloweeen recipes for Journalers. (It's not too late, is it?)

* Jimmy is going to his local pub (might sing a couple karaoke songs) and shared his thoughts on attorneys and politicians with a satirical picture.

* Krissy scavenged for autumn photos, and posted two of them in response to Val's scavenger hunt.

* Schoolgal040 took a sick day from work, and describes what she did.

* deshelestraci reminisces about her favorite family traditions and wants to know what are your family traditions (like holidays, cultural, or seasonal).

* Beth gave her opinion on E-mail and general communication tips, and concludes with the fact she loves e-mail.
---

That concludes this week's blogplugs. Don't forget, you can browse all the blogplugs on Technorati any time!

Have a great weekend folks!

~ Joseph

Tags: blogplugs

Following Up on Your Concerns

Hi Folks, it's Malika again.

I'm having a good day so far -- thanks for asking, Krissy. 

I'll try to address the issues expressed in the comments to my Happy Halloween entry below:

* Krissy -
We've worked with the other user who was having issues with her albums
on AOL Pictures. Joseph Manna helped her look into it and it works now!
(We reset her IE7, as described here.)

As far as the Comic Sans font not working, I tested it out on my test blog, and it seems to work for me. Please clear your cache and try again and let me know if it doesn't work for you.

Animated images aren't
supported by AOL Pictures, Flickr, nor most other image hosting sites.
When you upload pictures to your Journal, they get saved on AOL
Pictures. Animation worked if you uploaded pictures to your FTP Space
on Hometown from the AOL client available at AOL Keyword: FTP.

If you're using a Web browser to access Journals, then use the Hometown File Manager and upload your animated image files there and get the link to that picture. I have uploaded one for testing purposes, here.

Then on the Journals "Add Entry" page,  click on the "Add Image" button and go to the "URL" tab.
Copy this link and "Add Image". Save the entry and you should see the animated image.
I
know that the File Manager link on Hometown has an older look and feel.
There are some new AOL Products currently in Alpha that will be
offering this capability. We're looking for an alternate (better)
solution, and when I know, I'll let you know, too.

* astoriasand  -
Your Alerts issue was just bad timing. The Alerts team investigated the
issue, and the reason your friends did not getthe alert was because
the Alerts server was being restarted at that very time.

* rap4143 - You can add up to a maximum of 50 journal links. You have one more to go ;-)

* plittle  -
Joseph and I would like to update the About Me section some day soon!
Its been on our mind since a few days now! Thanks for pointing it out.

I'd like to thank everyone for their comments! I enjoy reading your comments. Have a wonderful evening, everyone.

--Malika

Tags: issues, animation, hometown

Happy Halloween to all!

Hi Folks,

Happy Halloween to all of you from the Journals team!
Hope you had a spooky, scary fun-filled one!

We have a new release planned for next week..details will follow later.
Stay tuned!

Also for this friday... don't forgot to tag your best entry with blogplugs so it can be featured.
I am sorry we could not get to the blogplugs last friday, I will make sure they happen this friday  :-)
                                             
Have a good evening,

Malika



                                                    

Tags: Halloween, blogplugs, new release

Friday Blogplugs

Hey folks,

This week's roundup of Blogplugs is brought to you by Joseph Manna. I know I'm not as awesome as Joe, but I sat next to him as he tirelessly checked other Journalers' blogs to highlight the best of the best within the AOL Journals community.

Before I get into this week's blogplugs, I'm confident that I speak for all of us in saying that we greatly appreciated all the work that Joe Loong dedicated to helping people. He did an excellent job at keeping us informed about Journals, Hometown and AOL FTP. You can find him blogging on his personal blog, Dumb Things I Have Done Lately.

There was only a small handful of blogplugs this week:

* Sugar who has some tasty recipes and tips for packing school lunches, shared her thoughts about Joe's absence. She also let us know that Oct. 15 was Pregnancy & Infant Loss Remembrance Day.

* Jimmy rings in Hump Day with some history, a collection of photos from his pal Nancy and a joke.

* Paul shares ten of his favorite movies from his Top 100 list of movies.

* Dawn submitted her lolcat image to Icanhascheezburger and it was accepted and she wants folks to vote on it. [Insider's note: What is a lolcat?]

 

Mini-Tutorial: Tagging on AOL Journals

Below the editor where you wrote your blog entry, there's a text field where you can type words that describe your entry. It's called tagging, and helps blog search engines like Technorati find your blog. Tag it with blogplugs (and other descriptive phrases). Here's what it looks like for this entry as I wrote it:

I hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable weekend.

~ Joseph

Tags: blogplugs, aol journals, featured, tagging

Yay, Missing Entries are Back!

Hi folks,

The AOL Journals team has some good news. The team recovered all the missing entries and comments on your blogs. (In case you didn't know, some time ago, there was a problem with the databases which resulted in missing entries.)

In
case you added an entry in the last couple of days, you could possibly
see the entry twice. If you see your entries twice, you can delete the
additional one, but you will lose the comments that it had.
(Personally, I'd keep both, but it's up to you.)

During
the outage, there were a few new Journals that were created. The team
reports they are now in the process of restoring the newly-created
Journals and expect they should all be added by tomorrow.

Also, tomorrow Joseph Manna will be featuring Blogplugs for the Journals community, so don't forgot to tag your best entry with blogplugs so it can be featured.

The
AOL Journals team appreciates your patience and support. We will work
on getting some tutorials and other suggestions out for you. If you
want learn how to do something with AOL Journals, drop the team a line
by writing to JournalsEditor@aol.com and I'll pass the word to the team.

Thanks --- Malika and Joseph

Update: 10/19/2007 8:05 PM -- The Journals team confirms that all the new  Journals created during the 10/16 outage have been restored successfully.

Tags: aol, journals, status, info, databases, aoljournals, new journals restored

Wednesday without our Editor.....

Hi folks,


I am Malika from the left coast, an engineer on the journals team.


We are all disappointed and sad as you are.

"Magicsmoke" is not the same without Joe.


I don't think anyone of us can fit into Joe's shoes, however I would
like to assure you that the journals team promises to be there for you.


While  management is working things out, a few of us decided to keep Joe's spirit going.

We will keep you informed on any upcoming releases, new features, downtime etc.

I hope you continue to write to us like you did to Joe, and we will continue to respond to your concerns, queries and issues.


Here is an update on the missing entries:

Journals database folks are currently working on it and because of the
huge amount of work involved, they are hoping to restore all those
missing entries by tomorrow. I will keep you posted on their progress.


Thanks --- Malika

Tags: aol journals

Twofer Tuesday: Missing Entries And Missing Editor

Hi folks -- sorry for the delay in posting this. As many of you have reported, entries that were posted yesterday (Monday, 10/15), have vanished. I asked the Journals database folks about it, and here's what happened:

* There were problems with the database host last night.
* The database was "failed over" to the replicate database
* However, apparently the replicate database has had trouble replicating for a few days, so some posts didn't make it back to production
* They "failed over" back to the original database host, and the DB ops are trying to find a way to restore the missing entries.

I will ask that the team keep everybody updated on status.

However (and this is part two of the twofer Tuesday), I won't be able to give you those updates,  since I'm no longer going to be Journals Editor. As you may have heard, AOL laid off a bunch of people today, and I'm one of them. So after about two-and-a-half years and just under 1,000 entries in this blog, I will be leaving you.

Not to fret, though -- I'll be fine, and I've asked that someone (or some group of folks, most likely) pick up the mantle of Journals Editor and continue supporting and publicly communicating about the AOL Journals product. Until they sort that out, though, posting to Magic Smoke and responses to JournalsEditor@aol.com may fall off.

It's been great working with you over the years -- sorry I couldn't get a lot of what you folks were asking for. 

Best of luck to everyone.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday Blogplugs

Hi folks -- you know, the days feel about the same, but the weeks just fly on by. Here's another round of blogplugs, which are entries that people have sent to me or labeled with the tag blogplugs so that other people can find them:

* Guido talks about the best ways to handle trolls

* Paul gives us 10 more movies from his list of 100 that he really likes.

* Indigo talks about some of the method to her madness.

* Barbara would like you to see this entry by Ginger.

* Val told us that last Sunday was Respect Life Sunday.

* Sugar celebrated a blog birthday this week.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: blogplugs

Complete Superfluous Weather Report: 93 in October

Not for nothing, but according to the current weather reading, it's currently 93 degrees F. In Virginia. In October:

Yikes.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: screenshot, photos, weather

Friday Blogplugs

Hi folks -- time for anothere's another round of blogplugs, which are entries that people have sent to me or labeled with the tag blogplugs so that other people can find them:

* Beth posts news about an English band, The Godfathers (who I must admit I'm not familiar with).

* TixGirl Ames shares her pics and video from the So You Think You Can Dance live tour (I must also admit I did not know there was such a thing).

Indigo uses a childhood story to induce laughter (the best medicine).

* Christopher wants you to see his live webcam stream (though I still don't know why he doesn't have access to Web storage space).

* Lisa has an entry that she hopes will explain more about her life.

* Sugar shares a tag graphic, prayers and poetry in memory of Penny.

* Connie would like to invite you to a virtual Halloween party in her blog.

In other news, we should have some incremental Journals improvements in a install next week or so, which we'll talk about Monday (since we don't get Columbus Day off -- or Canadian Thanksgiving, for that matter).

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: blogplugs

Back Up Your AOL Journal With the Atom Publishing Protocol (Kinda-Sorta)

OK folks, this isn't going to be particularly useful unless you're a programmer. I hinted at this yesterday in my entry on the AOL Open Blogs API. (Which, as you recall, is like a set of programming hooks that let developers work with Journals data so they can combine it with data from other sources and create mashups. You can learn more about the Open Blogs API on the dev.aol.com site.)

Underneath all that is an implementation of the Atom Publishing Protocol, which has been out for a while, but we've never really talked about since it's not really of use to non-programmers, except for one thing -- you can (kinda-sorta) use it to back up your Journal.

I keep saying kinda-sorta because, unless some programmer writes an import/export utility, it's not really going to be super-useful to folks. However, I'll show you the potential value here, using this blog as an example:

1. My blog's URL is http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/

2. To view my blog's Atom feed, I stick "atom.xml" at the end:

http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/atom.xml

3. Now, as developer Miodrag says, "Atom is not for casual browsing - it's xml intended for programmatic processing ... this is only for programmers who want to build custom apps or mashups."

This means that, in the Internet Explorer Web browser, you'll see an ugly mess that's only meant to be read by machines, but it's an ugly mess that contains all the content of your Journal entries (but not your comments, All About me, or sidebar links):

This is the content of your blog entries, as seen by machine.

The .xml file is much more pleasant to look at in Firefox:

You can save this .xml file to your computer.

4. By default, you'll only see your 10 most recent blog entries. However, to see your older entries: specify a page number by adding ?page=2 at the end of your URL (don't forget the question mark):
http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke/atom.xml?page=2

Page 2, or the next 10 entries.

5. If you keep increasing the number (?page=3), you'll see the next 10 entries, and so on.

If you enter a number that's too high, you'll get an error message. (Right now, according to my Journals Public List page (http://journals.aol.com/journalseditor/), I have 958 entries; at 10 entries per page, that means I can go all the way up to ?page=96 (958 divided by 10 is 95 and change).

So What Do You Do With This?
Well, that's where the kinda-sorta comes in. Not only is going 10 entries at a time labor intensive and completely by hand, right now, we don't have a tool to import or export these XML files. (I'm hoping some developer will create one, but I have no idea if anyone will.) So you can't really do anything with it at this point,

So, like I said earlier, this isn't going to be useful to folks right now. But it's a sample of what people will be able to do, once programmers start playing around with the APIs and create mashups.

If you're a programmer who's interested in creating a mashup, check the AOL Open Blogs API site for more info and complete documentation.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol open blogs api, aol journals, atom publishing protocol

AOL Open Blogs API Released

The AOL Journals team and the AOL Developer Network are pleased to announce the release of the AOL Open Blogs API.

Unless you're a software developer (and I am not), this is probably not going to mean much to you at this particular moment. An API is an "Application Programming Interface," which is like a gateway in one application (in this case, Journals) that lets other applications do... stuff.

This typically results in a mashup application, which is basically when you take the functionality of two or more applications and use the API "hooks" to mash them together to do interesting things. (Popular types of mashups you may have used include map mashups, where people use the APIs of a mapping application, like Google Maps or Mapquest, to display restaurant reviews, real estate prices or crime reports on a map.)

Here's an example in the AOL Developer Network's Mashup Gallery, which features a bunch of different sample mashups using AOL's different APIs (note: this one is pretty raw and is primarily proof-of-concept; there's not much to look at, since there's no design or UI) -- the Buddy List Blogs application, which mashes up the AIM and Blog APIs to show you the blog feeds of all the AOL Journals belonging to folks in your Buddy List.

Journals Tech Manager Junaid also has a little bit more about the Open Blog API, and there's a brief writeup at the ProgrammableWeb Blog (which also has a primer on APIs and mashups in their FAQ.

If you'd like more information about the AOL Blogs API, you can find the full documentation on the AOL Open Blogs API page.

Like I said, for non-coders, this is going to be of limited utility until programmers start working their magic and mashing things up.

However, one thing that may be of interest involves using the Atom Publishing Protocol to kinda-sorta back up your blog, which I know a lot of you folks are interested in (it's kinda-sorta because it'll be a bit unwieldy unless someone writes a utility to streamline it). I will blog it tomorrow after I confirm a few things.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: aol journals, api, open blogs api, mashups

A Journaler Passes

Hi folks -- Malika from the Journals team in California gave me a heads-up: Journaler Penny of Penny's Pieces of Ohio passed away on Monday.

Penny's friend Cathie was good enough to post a notice to the blog, and the number of comments that other Journalers left brought it to Malika's attention.

Condolences to all of Penny's friends and family.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday Blogplugs

Hi folks -- here's another round of blogplugs,
which are entries that people have sent to me or labeled with the tag
blogplugs so that other people can find them.


If you click the blogplugs
tag, it'll do a blog search (in this case, using blog search engine
Technorati) that
will show you everything tagged that
way.


Note that anyone -- including
spammers -- can use the tag,  so you have to watch out when looking
through the search listings. I note that this week we've got at least
two spammers in there using the blogplugs tag. (This is one reason
why
human editors will never be fully replaced.):



* Beth talks about the problem
with carbon offsets

* Tixgirl Ames blogs about a
launch
party for R&B'er Usher's new fragrance that brought out
Martha Stewart and others.


* Paul shows us 10
more movies out of 100 (that he likes)


* Sugar shows a collection
of graphic tags.


* Christopher talks about some
friend
drama.


* Kathi shows off a video
explaining the political blogosphere (from Uncle Jay Explains the
News)


Also, we should have a patch release with a few tweaks that goes in next week, so I'll talk about that when I have a better sense of the timing.

Have a good weekend, everyone.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: blogplugs

Jamie Sez: Don't Hotlink Images!

Hi folks -- so, I'm not sure if you're heard, but
Jamie Mottram, AOL blogger and one of the founding hosts of Sports
Bloggers Live, is leaving AOL to go do
blog stuff for Yahoo Sports. (I blogged a quick mention of it
over in Social
Media Mess.)


Best of luck, he will be missed, etc. etc. But that's not the point of this entry.


Because he is something of a big deal in sports
blogging circles, his career move got mentioned by a bunch of bloggers
(and Jamie was not shy about linking to them from his
entry).


A couple of them used a picture which was familiar to me:

Here it is -- it's a photo I'd used
last year in an entry about moods, and not coincidentally, it's on the first
page of image search results for Jamie Mottram:

Now, I don't have a problem with people using the picture. But I do
note that at least one of them is hotlinking
the picture, which means that they're just pointing to the URL where it
lives in my Hometown space (http://hometown.aol.com/Journals%20Editor/images/blogimages/042106-Jamie-Mottram-Chillin400x300.jpg), instead of hosting the photo on their own server. (I also don't care about this, but this is a teachable moment.)


Many folks who have bandwidth restrictions from their Web hosting
companies get mad when people hotlink their images, because they consider it
"stealing bandwidth." (For example, if the photo is 50K in size, and it gets seen
10,000 times, it means 500,000K [500 megabytes] of data was
transferred, which would count against the photo owner's monthly data
transfer quota. Depending on who your Web host is, you might have to
pay overage fees when you go over quota.


[Note: For services like AOL Journals, AOL Pictures, AOL Hometown, Flickr, Photobucket, etc. you
generally won't have to worry about overage fees, though really excessive data
transfers might result in some throttling access to your stuff until traffic dies down.]



Because of this, a lot of folks would prefer that people save the photo
to their computer and then upload it to their own photo host. That is,
they want you to "steal" their photo instead of "stealing" their
bandwidth, which I always find amusing (but then again, I've not been
stuck with any overage fees yet.)


Why do people hotlink images? Because they're lazy. I've done it myself
occassionally. But even if you're a heartless type with no regard for
any potential bandwidth costs of other poeple, there is one definite
reason to not hotlink images.


When you hotlink an image, you're basically saying to the Web page,
"Show the picture with this name that lives over
there." For example, my photo of Jamie is named
"042106-Jamie-Mottram-Chillin400x300.jpg" and it lives in the
"blogimages" subdirectory of the "images" directory in my Hometown
space. (I uploaded it using the Web-based
file manager).


Now, if you know someone is hotlinking your image, you can really mess
with them. Sure, you could delete the image, leaving them with a broken
image in their page, but that's no fun. However, if you replace the photo with any
other photo, but keep the same file name... since it's just a pointer,
the new  photo will show up in the page that's hotlinking to your
photo.


For example, I could do up a version of the photo with an obnoxious
text banner plastered across it ("THE OWNER OF THIS WEB SITE HAS
HERPES," "STOP STEALING THIS IMAGE," etc.)

Or I could replace the image
with something entirely new -- porn, something shocking or graphic,
etc. As long as I give it the same file name, it will show up in the
other guy's page.


Which is why you shouldn't hotlink photos.


Now, note, when you include a photo from your Hometown space (like I
explained
here), you're basically hotlinking from yourself, but it's
okay, since you generally trust yourself, right?

But any time you
hotlink an image from someone else, remember you're depending the image
owner's good grace, mercy or ignorance to prevent them from replacing
the image and displaying whatever they want in your
page.

So don't hotlink images. (And best of luck to Jamie.)


Thanks -- Joe

Tags: jamie mottram, sports blogging, hotlinking