Hi folks -- I just snapped
a few pics of folks around the office. Folks in costume, that is.
Check
out the accompanying gallery of some of the folks I occupy space
with.
In other news, J-Lander
Teresa has started up a Journals
trick-or-treat frenzy -- see her blog for
details.
Next up, because I am lazy, I swung by
Weblogs, Inc. to
look for some Halloween links in the
network:
* Engadget is running a
Halloween
Costume Contest (with tech-themed submissions and fabulous
techy prizes, of course)
* Slashfood
has the Top 5 (or should that be bottom 5?) Worst
Halloween candies. Their list is way off,
in my opinion, but it's a starting point for discussion -- you can
follow up by browsing this Fark
thread on the worst trick-or-treat loot people ever
got.
* TV Squad tells us
Halloween shut-ins what's
on TV tonight
Looking
elsewhere, if you just can't get enough about what those crazy New
Yorkers (you know, those folks who wear black year-round) are doing,
Gawker has party pics from a movie-gangs-themed
party (think "The Warriors" and "A Clockwork
Orange.")
Also, since Halloween is ripe and rife
with urban legends, here is Snopes.com's list of
Halloween
Urban Myths & Legends.
Lastly,
like many people, I am still eagerly awaiting the Ween 2005
cartoon over at HomestarRunner.com;
while you're waiting, you can check out the 2004 and
2003
versions. Also, if you don't know what the heck any of that means,
well, check out their Welcome
Message.
Thanks -- Joe
Monday, October 31, 2005
Scary Blog Stories (Corporate Version)
Happy Halloween, everyone!
I wanted to share a
scary blog story for you, which came out last week
in Forbes
magazine.
It's not a scary story in the
traditional sense (though I might post it to Scalzi's
Halloween assignment anyway).
It goes a
little something like this:
Once upon a
time,
there was a corporation. It was a nice little publicly-traded
corporation, one that was well-positioned in the market, with a sound
business model, good brand recognition and a robust line of products
and/or services.
All the people liked the little
publicly-traded
corporation, which also generated good shareholder value and had
strong
prospects for sustained growth over the middle-to-long
term.
One day, and for no apparent
reason (or because of something that happened to the nice
little publicly-traded corporation that was not its
fault, according to the nice little publicly-traded
corporation's nice public relations people), a mob
of angry bloggers, dressed in ragged pajamas and other scary outfits,
rose up with a great hue and
cry,
and as if as one, yelled out:
"Little publicly-traded corporation! We
don't like you!!! In fact, we hate you and we will
make it our mission to
spread mean, slanderous, hateful, untrue things about you and your
robust line of products and/or services! We will stalk and
harass
anyone who comes to defend you!
(The scary bloggers liked using lots of exclamation points.)
"Plus, we will be so loud and there will be
so many of
us, that our words will spread wide throughout the land and the
mainstream media, and no one will listen to your nice public relations
people!
"And if that's not enough, our mean words will show up ahead of yours
in major search engines! (Which were accomplices to
the mean, angry bloggers, although in a nonliable way.)
"Finally, our nasty lies will keep showing up, even
after we lose interest and move on to our next victim and there's
nothing you can do about it!"
And
it was true: There was nothing the nice little publicly-traded
corporation could do about it.
The
End.
This is my take on the Forbes
article, which was entitled 'Attack
of the Blogs' (free registration or BugMeNot.com
required).
It's a scaremongering article about how
an online lynch mob (actual
phrase) of bloggers will smear you and take down your company. (The
phrase reminds me of Al Gore's "digital
brownshirts" remark, only the Forbes article strikes me as a
tad more hysterical.)
Now,
first off, keep in mind, I work for a company that has a long
tradition
and abundance of Web sites (way, way before blogs) dedicated to
chronicling how much we suck. Some criticisms were fair, some less so,
and our reactions have ranged from things we've done well and things
we've done poorly, so we're still learning and making mistakes,
too.
Also, since "the blogosphere" is so big and
wide-ranging (20
million strong,
by one count), it's always risky to generalize anything about bloggers
-- it's a lazy shortcut to fall back on (which I,
admittedly, have used).
Back to the article: BoingBoing
was there commenting early in the fray; they also link to the
always-insightful Dan
Gillmor.
Suffice to say, reactions I've
seen have been generally negative, though I haven't
seen any mobs with pitchforks and torches yet (not even digital
ones.)
At some level, the article is so
over the top, I'm wondering if some bloggers just
think Forbes is trolling (or at least, generating
controversy to sell magazines -- after all, didn't they just do a Best Blogs of the Web
this summer?)
In any case, it's so
overheated that it's ripe for skewering; here's a
parody
rant on the printing press from the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
and here's satire from the
QandO blog.
Anyway, a more
level-headed view of how companies should manage their
relationship with the blogosphere depends on really taking that word
seriously: Relationship.
To fall back on a big marketing phrase that's going around and around
and around: "Markets
are conversations." (That link is from another Forbes article
-- go figure -- by James Surowiecki, the author of 'The
Wisdom of Crowds')
For companies, this
means understanding that consumers (even those who are bloggers) are
not the enemy, and are in fact worth listening
to.
Companies
like when people say nice things about their company; the tricky part
is not minding when people say not-nice things about their company --
it shows that those people care -- then knowing
what to do to make things right.
It's a concept that
comes up when corporate-types discuss how to take advantage of brand
blogs, or the unofficial and unaffiliated blogs that fans or
critics of a company write.
However,
to really "get it", companies can't look at blogs and the blogosphere
as something that can exploited. Like many things, the more
you
put into something, the more you get out of it.
This
can be a
little off-putting for companies, because it involves transparency and
authenticity. (I'm reminded of the joke/quote, attributed to different
people: "Sincerity? If you can fake it, you've got it
made.")
It
also means giving up a measure of control, though control in this
context is kind of a myth -- people are talking, and they're talking
whether you're involved or not.
So what do you use
instead of control and spin?
Why,
truth, of
course.
This goes for PR types, too. Here's an
article on media training by PR-type
and blogger David Parmet (whom I also know from a past
life).
Anyway,
there are a lot of examples being passed around of good ways and bad
ways that companies have reacted to the attention of the blogosphere.
Here are a few of them -- you can judge for yourself what falls into
which category.
* The Kryptonite
lock controversy from 2004
* The iPod's dirty
little secret video (about at-the-time nonreplaceable
batteries) from 2003
Also, a fairly current version
involves defective
Sony chips in a lot of digital cameras -- a digital camera enthusiast's
board put 2 and 2 together -- we'll see how this one shakes
out.
Take a look and see what you think. Also, don't forget to brush your
teeth! Thanks. -- Joe
I wanted to share a
scary blog story for you, which came out last week
in Forbes
magazine.
It's not a scary story in the
traditional sense (though I might post it to Scalzi's
Halloween assignment anyway).
It goes a
little something like this:
Once upon a
time,
there was a corporation. It was a nice little publicly-traded
corporation, one that was well-positioned in the market, with a sound
business model, good brand recognition and a robust line of products
and/or services.
All the people liked the little
publicly-traded
corporation, which also generated good shareholder value and had
strong
prospects for sustained growth over the middle-to-long
term.
One day, and for no apparent
reason (or because of something that happened to the nice
little publicly-traded corporation that was not its
fault, according to the nice little publicly-traded
corporation's nice public relations people), a mob
of angry bloggers, dressed in ragged pajamas and other scary outfits,
rose up with a great hue and
cry,
and as if as one, yelled out:
"Little publicly-traded corporation! We
don't like you!!! In fact, we hate you and we will
make it our mission to
spread mean, slanderous, hateful, untrue things about you and your
robust line of products and/or services! We will stalk and
harass
anyone who comes to defend you!
(The scary bloggers liked using lots of exclamation points.)
"Plus, we will be so loud and there will be
so many of
us, that our words will spread wide throughout the land and the
mainstream media, and no one will listen to your nice public relations
people!
"And if that's not enough, our mean words will show up ahead of yours
in major search engines! (Which were accomplices to
the mean, angry bloggers, although in a nonliable way.)
"Finally, our nasty lies will keep showing up, even
after we lose interest and move on to our next victim and there's
nothing you can do about it!"
And
it was true: There was nothing the nice little publicly-traded
corporation could do about it.
The
End.
This is my take on the Forbes
article, which was entitled 'Attack
of the Blogs' (free registration or BugMeNot.com
required).
It's a scaremongering article about how
an online lynch mob (actual
phrase) of bloggers will smear you and take down your company. (The
phrase reminds me of Al Gore's "digital
brownshirts" remark, only the Forbes article strikes me as a
tad more hysterical.)
Now,
first off, keep in mind, I work for a company that has a long
tradition
and abundance of Web sites (way, way before blogs) dedicated to
chronicling how much we suck. Some criticisms were fair, some less so,
and our reactions have ranged from things we've done well and things
we've done poorly, so we're still learning and making mistakes,
too.
Also, since "the blogosphere" is so big and
wide-ranging (20
million strong,
by one count), it's always risky to generalize anything about bloggers
-- it's a lazy shortcut to fall back on (which I,
admittedly, have used).
Back to the article: BoingBoing
was there commenting early in the fray; they also link to the
always-insightful Dan
Gillmor.
Suffice to say, reactions I've
seen have been generally negative, though I haven't
seen any mobs with pitchforks and torches yet (not even digital
ones.)
At some level, the article is so
over the top, I'm wondering if some bloggers just
think Forbes is trolling (or at least, generating
controversy to sell magazines -- after all, didn't they just do a Best Blogs of the Web
this summer?)
In any case, it's so
overheated that it's ripe for skewering; here's a
parody
rant on the printing press from the Electronic Frontier Foundation,
and here's satire from the
QandO blog.
Anyway, a more
level-headed view of how companies should manage their
relationship with the blogosphere depends on really taking that word
seriously: Relationship.
To fall back on a big marketing phrase that's going around and around
and around: "Markets
are conversations." (That link is from another Forbes article
-- go figure -- by James Surowiecki, the author of 'The
Wisdom of Crowds')
For companies, this
means understanding that consumers (even those who are bloggers) are
not the enemy, and are in fact worth listening
to.
Companies
like when people say nice things about their company; the tricky part
is not minding when people say not-nice things about their company --
it shows that those people care -- then knowing
what to do to make things right.
It's a concept that
comes up when corporate-types discuss how to take advantage of brand
blogs, or the unofficial and unaffiliated blogs that fans or
critics of a company write.
However,
to really "get it", companies can't look at blogs and the blogosphere
as something that can exploited. Like many things, the more
you
put into something, the more you get out of it.
This
can be a
little off-putting for companies, because it involves transparency and
authenticity. (I'm reminded of the joke/quote, attributed to different
people: "Sincerity? If you can fake it, you've got it
made.")
It
also means giving up a measure of control, though control in this
context is kind of a myth -- people are talking, and they're talking
whether you're involved or not.
So what do you use
instead of control and spin?
Why,
truth, of
course.
This goes for PR types, too. Here's an
article on media training by PR-type
and blogger David Parmet (whom I also know from a past
life).
Anyway,
there are a lot of examples being passed around of good ways and bad
ways that companies have reacted to the attention of the blogosphere.
Here are a few of them -- you can judge for yourself what falls into
which category.
* The Kryptonite
lock controversy from 2004
* The iPod's dirty
little secret video (about at-the-time nonreplaceable
batteries) from 2003
Also, a fairly current version
involves defective
Sony chips in a lot of digital cameras -- a digital camera enthusiast's
board put 2 and 2 together -- we'll see how this one shakes
out.
Take a look and see what you think. Also, don't forget to brush your
teeth! Thanks. -- Joe
Friday, October 28, 2005
Costume Panic!
Hi folks, before I wanted to pack it in for the day, I just wanted to share a few costume links with you.
Now, if you waited until the last minute and the naughty nurse outfit you wanted is sold out, and you don't want to get stuck with a nasty dollar store mask (link PG for a few rough words), you still have a whole weekend to throw a costume together.
Now, granted, you're not going to be able to create a prize-winning paparazzi, Jenga or Doc Octopus costume (unlike the incredible creations of Rob from Cockeyed.com), but all is not lost.
My own local rag, the Washington Post (or WaPo, as the very lazy or self-consciously hip call it) has an article on cool & quick costumes you can make with a sheet (and some other stuff -- free registration usually required, but I think you can see that story without it.)
Then again, if you give up, you can always dress up the pets.
Me, I'm just going to hide at home with the lights off.
Have a good weekend everyone. -- Joe
Now, if you waited until the last minute and the naughty nurse outfit you wanted is sold out, and you don't want to get stuck with a nasty dollar store mask (link PG for a few rough words), you still have a whole weekend to throw a costume together.
Now, granted, you're not going to be able to create a prize-winning paparazzi, Jenga or Doc Octopus costume (unlike the incredible creations of Rob from Cockeyed.com), but all is not lost.
My own local rag, the Washington Post (or WaPo, as the very lazy or self-consciously hip call it) has an article on cool & quick costumes you can make with a sheet (and some other stuff -- free registration usually required, but I think you can see that story without it.)
Then again, if you give up, you can always dress up the pets.
Me, I'm just going to hide at home with the lights off.
Have a good weekend everyone. -- Joe
How to Lose Unwanted Inches From Your Blog
So earlier today, Journaler Dee asked me about a
problem she was having with her blog, Dear
Diary. Something she had put in one of her recent entries was
breaking the layout of her Journal, causing it to become too
wide.
Now, "too wide" is a subjective
thing, but in most cases, if you have a horizontal scroll
bar (so you have to scroll from side to side in order to see
the content on the page), then your page is probably too
wide.
In most cases, it's because of a
photo is wider than the page layout and/or browser
window will allow.
In other cases, a really
long URL or other unbroken line of text
will cause do it.
I took at look at Dee's blog, and
saw that in one
of her entries, there was a long string of non-breaking
spaces at the end of one of the lines. [Update: Nonbreaking spaces are spaces that by definition won't break to the next line, so they keep going and going. This can push out the edge of a page area. If you look in HTML view, nonbreaking spaces look like this: ]
She took the spaces
out, and her Journal returned to its normal
width.
If you ever have a problem where your Journal
gets extra wide when you don't want it to,
try the following:
* Look at your
most recent entries, or think back to when you
started seeing the problem, and look at the entries you posted or
edited around that time.
* Check the width
of the photos;
the non-scrolling maximum will depend on the number of columns you use
for your Journal; for a three-column Journal (that is, 2 sidebars and
a
center column), a safe maximum is 550 pixels (remember that your
readers may not have monitors as wide or resolutions as high as
yours).
* If it's not the photos, it will have to be
the text. Scroll all the way to the right of the
page and look for anything that sticks out.
* If
nothing is immediately obvious, it might be extra spaces at
the end of a line.
In the edit window of your blog's entry, click and drag the text with
your mouse and look for extra spaces at the end of a line. (You can
also check the HTML view -- change the pull-down menu in the
formatting
tool bar from "Text" to "HTML" to see the HTML
tags.)
* Just added: If all else fails, try looking at the HTML source code
for the entire page. You can do this typically (using Internet Explorer
on Windows) by right-clicking on a blank area of the the blog page
that's too wide, and choosing "View Source." This will show you all the text and HTML tags that makes up your page.
Even if you don't understand it, you can usually see what's making your
page too wide -- just scroll all the way to the right, and scroll down
until you see characters. Then, look around for some of the
accompanying text so you can figure out what section it's in, so you
can go back and change it.
Hope this helps. -- Joe
problem she was having with her blog, Dear
Diary. Something she had put in one of her recent entries was
breaking the layout of her Journal, causing it to become too
wide.
Now, "too wide" is a subjective
thing, but in most cases, if you have a horizontal scroll
bar (so you have to scroll from side to side in order to see
the content on the page), then your page is probably too
wide.
In most cases, it's because of a
photo is wider than the page layout and/or browser
window will allow.
In other cases, a really
long URL or other unbroken line of text
will cause do it.
I took at look at Dee's blog, and
saw that in one
of her entries, there was a long string of non-breaking
spaces at the end of one of the lines. [Update: Nonbreaking spaces are spaces that by definition won't break to the next line, so they keep going and going. This can push out the edge of a page area. If you look in HTML view, nonbreaking spaces look like this: ]
She took the spaces
out, and her Journal returned to its normal
width.
If you ever have a problem where your Journal
gets extra wide when you don't want it to,
try the following:
* Look at your
most recent entries, or think back to when you
started seeing the problem, and look at the entries you posted or
edited around that time.
* Check the width
of the photos;
the non-scrolling maximum will depend on the number of columns you use
for your Journal; for a three-column Journal (that is, 2 sidebars and
a
center column), a safe maximum is 550 pixels (remember that your
readers may not have monitors as wide or resolutions as high as
yours).
* If it's not the photos, it will have to be
the text. Scroll all the way to the right of the
page and look for anything that sticks out.
* If
nothing is immediately obvious, it might be extra spaces at
the end of a line.
In the edit window of your blog's entry, click and drag the text with
your mouse and look for extra spaces at the end of a line. (You can
also check the HTML view -- change the pull-down menu in the
formatting
tool bar from "Text" to "HTML" to see the HTML
tags.)
* Just added: If all else fails, try looking at the HTML source code
for the entire page. You can do this typically (using Internet Explorer
on Windows) by right-clicking on a blank area of the the blog page
that's too wide, and choosing "View Source." This will show you all the text and HTML tags that makes up your page.
Even if you don't understand it, you can usually see what's making your
page too wide -- just scroll all the way to the right, and scroll down
until you see characters. Then, look around for some of the
accompanying text so you can figure out what section it's in, so you
can go back and change it.
Hope this helps. -- Joe
New Guest Editor's Picks for 10/28
Hi everybody. As posted in the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:
* Paranormal Magazine
* RRRGroup
* Why Be Normal, When You Can Be Paranormal!
* My Way
* Ghost in My Life
* Eastern Paranormal
Gabreael has gone with a Paranormal theme, which fits in with the season, seeing as how everyone has ghosts on the mind this time of year.
I've got a few more updates pending, so please stay tuned. Thanks -- Joe
Tag: Guest Editor's Picks
* Paranormal Magazine
* RRRGroup
* Why Be Normal, When You Can Be Paranormal!
* My Way
* Ghost in My Life
* Eastern Paranormal
Gabreael has gone with a Paranormal theme, which fits in with the season, seeing as how everyone has ghosts on the mind this time of year.
I've got a few more updates pending, so please stay tuned. Thanks -- Joe
Tag: Guest Editor's Picks
You Are Here: The Gallery of Bloggers
Hi folks...as I previously blogged, the blogger version of "The Face Wall" is up live now on the AOL Blogs main page:
There are other versions on other People Connection pages (like the Message Boards page) and there will be more, but this one is blog-focused.
The official name right now for all these is The Face Wall, though I call this one the "Gallery of Bloggers" (or GOB).
It's pretty straightforward; it uses Flash, and we've got two rotations of 8 photos running currently -- just use the arrows to go back and forth.
When you click on a face, the photo will expand and display a link to the person's profile, and whatever blog information they submitted.
It will also show if you're online or not.
The initial thumbnails are a little jaggy, because of image compression -- they're working on that.
Right now, you'll see lot of familiar J-Landers, as well as some new
faces. Not everyone featured is going to have a blog, but hey, readers and commenters are people too, right?
If you want to submit your own photo, just click the "Submit Your Photo" link and follow the instructions.
The update schedule will depend largely on how many useable submissions the team gets; it could be weekly, biweekly, or some other interval.
As
noted, I'm not directly involved with the selection of the photos, so
it doesn't matter if you've been featured before somewhere else or not.
Thanks to Chris and the rest of the team for getting this up.
Enjoy! -- Joe
There are other versions on other People Connection pages (like the Message Boards page) and there will be more, but this one is blog-focused.
The official name right now for all these is The Face Wall, though I call this one the "Gallery of Bloggers" (or GOB).
It's pretty straightforward; it uses Flash, and we've got two rotations of 8 photos running currently -- just use the arrows to go back and forth.
When you click on a face, the photo will expand and display a link to the person's profile, and whatever blog information they submitted.
It will also show if you're online or not.
The initial thumbnails are a little jaggy, because of image compression -- they're working on that.
Right now, you'll see lot of familiar J-Landers, as well as some new
faces. Not everyone featured is going to have a blog, but hey, readers and commenters are people too, right?
If you want to submit your own photo, just click the "Submit Your Photo" link and follow the instructions.
The update schedule will depend largely on how many useable submissions the team gets; it could be weekly, biweekly, or some other interval.
As
noted, I'm not directly involved with the selection of the photos, so
it doesn't matter if you've been featured before somewhere else or not.
Thanks to Chris and the rest of the team for getting this up.
Enjoy! -- Joe
Thursday, October 27, 2005
How NOT To Add Photos
[June 2006 Update: So, the AOL Pictures team went in and implemented permalinks, so this entry is pretty much moot. See my entry on how you can use AOL Pictures permalinks to put big pictures in your blog.]
Hi folks...here's a question that I get pretty regularly: "I
put some photos in my Journal, and now they're gone! Where'd they go? I
hate you: You suck!" (The last part is usually implied, if
not explicitly stated.)
The usual reason that this
happens involves doing something with AOL Pictures (neé YGP) that
you're not supposed to do, in the sense that the
product folks never thought people would try to do this, so they didn't
plan for it.
Now, let me stress that it's
not your fault, it's our fault because we
don't tell you that you're not supposed to use the product this way, so
you do it and it works -- for a little bit.
Here's
what happens:
1. A Journaler uploads a
photo to their AOL Pictures album and they
want to put that photo in their Journal (either in their "All About Me"
area or in an entry), but they don't want the AOL
Pictures border or frame around the picture.
2. So, what they do is look at the picture displayed in their
album, then they right-click and hit "Copy Image
Location":
The
URL will be long and ugly and it will look something
like this:
http://shutter03.pictures.aol.com/data/pictures/02/003/6B/45/DB/9B/KA...
(trimmed because it's making the page too wide; it's that long) -- it's a direct link to the photo of a duct that's in one of my
albums. (Note that this link will stop working after
a while -- could be days, weeks or months, but it will eventually stop
working)
3. Then, having copied the photo's
URL, they will go to create or edit their Journal entry, hit
the little camera button
in the formatting toolbar (which is for adding images to your blog,
without the border -- all you need is to paste in the photo's
location), and paste in the photo's URL that they
copied:
4.
Success! Until the image disappears later on, that
is.
The problem with inserting
photos in this way is that the image location URLs for the photos in
your albums aren't permanent, static URLs; they can
change over time as files are migrated, new servers are added, etc.
The photos will still be in your album, they'll just have a
different address, and because the address changed,
it will disappear from your
blog.
Why does this happen? I
think it's because it's a legacy architecture, which
is to say that it was designed that way -- it works fine if you're just
using it to share photo albums, but it doesn't work
so good if you're trying to use it for hosting
images in your Web page or blog -- it just wasn't designed
for it.
Obviously, we want the AOL Pictures and
Journals products to play nice together, so we're
going to try to find ways to fix this experience, involving proxies or
pointers or guys with clipboards or something.
This just in: Check out this entry on the AOL Pictures blog about permalinks -- that sounds about like what we want.
In
the meantime, what you should do to ensure that this doesn't
happen to you?
The best
way is to upload your photo to your FTP
space using the File
Manager (check out my tutorial
on using File Manager), copy the image
location after you've uploaded it to your FTP space,
and paste it in using the camera button
method (#3 above).
Hope this all makes
sense. Also, you might want to check out the AOL Pictures
blog, which is AOL Pictures
- Tips & Tricks.
Thanks, talk to
you later. -- Joe
Hi folks...here's a question that I get pretty regularly: "I
put some photos in my Journal, and now they're gone! Where'd they go? I
hate you: You suck!" (The last part is usually implied, if
not explicitly stated.)
The usual reason that this
happens involves doing something with AOL Pictures (neé YGP) that
you're not supposed to do, in the sense that the
product folks never thought people would try to do this, so they didn't
plan for it.
Now, let me stress that it's
not your fault, it's our fault because we
don't tell you that you're not supposed to use the product this way, so
you do it and it works -- for a little bit.
Here's
what happens:
1. A Journaler uploads a
photo to their AOL Pictures album and they
want to put that photo in their Journal (either in their "All About Me"
area or in an entry), but they don't want the AOL
Pictures border or frame around the picture.
2. So, what they do is look at the picture displayed in their
album, then they right-click and hit "Copy Image
Location":
The
URL will be long and ugly and it will look something
like this:
http://shutter03.pictures.aol.com/data/pictures/02/003/6B/45/DB/9B/KA...
(trimmed because it's making the page too wide; it's that long) -- it's a direct link to the photo of a duct that's in one of my
albums. (Note that this link will stop working after
a while -- could be days, weeks or months, but it will eventually stop
working)
3. Then, having copied the photo's
URL, they will go to create or edit their Journal entry, hit
the little camera button
in the formatting toolbar (which is for adding images to your blog,
without the border -- all you need is to paste in the photo's
location), and paste in the photo's URL that they
copied:
4.
Success! Until the image disappears later on, that
is.
The problem with inserting
photos in this way is that the image location URLs for the photos in
your albums aren't permanent, static URLs; they can
change over time as files are migrated, new servers are added, etc.
The photos will still be in your album, they'll just have a
different address, and because the address changed,
it will disappear from your
blog.
Why does this happen? I
think it's because it's a legacy architecture, which
is to say that it was designed that way -- it works fine if you're just
using it to share photo albums, but it doesn't work
so good if you're trying to use it for hosting
images in your Web page or blog -- it just wasn't designed
for it.
Obviously, we want the AOL Pictures and
Journals products to play nice together, so we're
going to try to find ways to fix this experience, involving proxies or
pointers or guys with clipboards or something.
This just in: Check out this entry on the AOL Pictures blog about permalinks -- that sounds about like what we want.
In
the meantime, what you should do to ensure that this doesn't
happen to you?
The best
way is to upload your photo to your FTP
space using the File
Manager (check out my tutorial
on using File Manager), copy the image
location after you've uploaded it to your FTP space,
and paste it in using the camera button
method (#3 above).
Hope this all makes
sense. Also, you might want to check out the AOL Pictures
blog, which is AOL Pictures
- Tips & Tricks.
Thanks, talk to
you later. -- Joe
Wednesday, October 26, 2005
More Places "They" Say You Can't Blog
This story came out on Monday, though it hit Slashdot
today, so people are still talking about it: It's an article about how
the principal of a Catholic high
school in Sparta, N.J., told his students that they had to
take
down their blogs and Myspace.com profiles or face
suspension.
The ostensible reason
is to protect students from sexual
predators and other baddies who might exploit the personal
information kids post online.
A laudible goal, no doubt, but come on: A blanket
ban on blogging outside of school?
Extreme, and unworkable (or have you not dealt with any
teenagers recently?)
In a similar vein, Wired News
ran a story about how more employers are blocking
people from reading blogs
at work, ostensibly (there's that word again) to keep employees from
posting proprietary info on boards and blogs, among other
reasons.
One of those other reasons is the fear of
lost productivity. AdAge
(registration required) has a new study out about how U.S. workers will
waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs
-- you can read a Andy
Lark's writeup of the report.
On
the face of, it might not seem unreasonable. After all, you might not
want your office drones frittering away their
valuable work hours on gossip
blogs or sports blogs or
whatever.
The problem with blanket bans is that they
can also filter out the stuff that's actually
useful.
Now, granted, I work in
the industry, so it's only natural for me to be reading blogs at work
-- it's part of my job.
But blogs are a tool, and they're a tool that companies can use for
information sharing (see my post on Internal
Blogging).
Plus, no matter where you work, there are blogs talking about your
company, competitors and industry, written by people who use your
products or services or do thethings that you
do.
Check out Shel
Holtz's thoughts on this (blogged, course) and the Catholic
school blog ban.
In my own uninformed
opinion,
blanket bans on blogging or blog-reading just can't last, any more
than
bans on websurfing, IM, e-mail or listening to music (on headphones,
at
a reasonable volume) lasted.
Given enough time, they're just going to be too
widespread and too useful for companies
to
block entirely, and the more agile companies are going to figure out
how to
adapt these technologies (with restrictions or guidelines) for their
own purposes. Thanks. -- Joe
today, so people are still talking about it: It's an article about how
the principal of a Catholic high
school in Sparta, N.J., told his students that they had to
take
down their blogs and Myspace.com profiles or face
suspension.
The ostensible reason
is to protect students from sexual
predators and other baddies who might exploit the personal
information kids post online.
A laudible goal, no doubt, but come on: A blanket
ban on blogging outside of school?
Extreme, and unworkable (or have you not dealt with any
teenagers recently?)
In a similar vein, Wired News
ran a story about how more employers are blocking
people from reading blogs
at work, ostensibly (there's that word again) to keep employees from
posting proprietary info on boards and blogs, among other
reasons.
One of those other reasons is the fear of
lost productivity. AdAge
(registration required) has a new study out about how U.S. workers will
waste the equivalent of 551,000 years reading blogs
-- you can read a Andy
Lark's writeup of the report.
On
the face of, it might not seem unreasonable. After all, you might not
want your office drones frittering away their
valuable work hours on gossip
blogs or sports blogs or
whatever.
The problem with blanket bans is that they
can also filter out the stuff that's actually
useful.
Now, granted, I work in
the industry, so it's only natural for me to be reading blogs at work
-- it's part of my job.
But blogs are a tool, and they're a tool that companies can use for
information sharing (see my post on Internal
Blogging).
Plus, no matter where you work, there are blogs talking about your
company, competitors and industry, written by people who use your
products or services or do thethings that you
do.
Check out Shel
Holtz's thoughts on this (blogged, course) and the Catholic
school blog ban.
In my own uninformed
opinion,
blanket bans on blogging or blog-reading just can't last, any more
than
bans on websurfing, IM, e-mail or listening to music (on headphones,
at
a reasonable volume) lasted.
Given enough time, they're just going to be too
widespread and too useful for companies
to
block entirely, and the more agile companies are going to figure out
how to
adapt these technologies (with restrictions or guidelines) for their
own purposes. Thanks. -- Joe
Alerts Font Size Status
Hi folks...I was talking with one of the Alerts folks about the font size problem in the new Alerts templates.
He thinks that the smaller font is being caused by some CSS and font tags conflicts somewhere between the Alerts template, and the Journals information that is being fed into that template.
The previous body text in the comment and entry Alerts looked to be Arial 10 point font. The new style looks about Arial 8 point, which I agree is too small.
I will let you know when they think they can get a fix in.
Thanks. -- Joe
He thinks that the smaller font is being caused by some CSS and font tags conflicts somewhere between the Alerts template, and the Journals information that is being fed into that template.
The previous body text in the comment and entry Alerts looked to be Arial 10 point font. The new style looks about Arial 8 point, which I agree is too small.
I will let you know when they think they can get a fix in.
Thanks. -- Joe
This Is Only a Drill
I should have known something was up when I saw one of the facilities guys walk by wearing a coat and earplugs.
Ten
seconds later there was an ear-splitting buzzer and strobes going off
-- our annual fire drill, of which we'd gotten notice earlier in the
week.
I put in my own earplugs (fool me once, and all that), and went outside. I brought my jacket and my camera:
I think I have a smudge on the lens (again).
Oh, and I saw that Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc. wrote in his blog this morning that he was visiting the AOL campus today.
I just hope he wasn't in the middle of a presentation or something when the alarm went off. -- Joe
Ten
seconds later there was an ear-splitting buzzer and strobes going off
-- our annual fire drill, of which we'd gotten notice earlier in the
week.
I put in my own earplugs (fool me once, and all that), and went outside. I brought my jacket and my camera:
One of AOL's parking lots during the fire drill.
I think I have a smudge on the lens (again).
Oh, and I saw that Jason Calacanis, CEO of Weblogs, Inc. wrote in his blog this morning that he was visiting the AOL campus today.
I just hope he wasn't in the middle of a presentation or something when the alarm went off. -- Joe
RESOLVED: Flakiness at Keyword: FTP
Hi folks...I'm getting reports (which I've been able to confirm) that folks
are seeing an error when they try to upload files at Keyword: FTP. [Update: 3:26pm: The FTP folks say that uploading via Keyword: FTP is fixed now. Thanks -- Joe]
I've alerted the appropriate people; in the meantime, this would be the perfect time to try out the new Web-based File Manager: http://hometown.aol.com/_fm, which is a lot easier to use and can be used with any Web browser.
You can check out the tutorial I did: How
To: Use the Web File Manager (to Add Big Pictures to Your
Blog)
Just about
the only reason to use the older FTP is that the Web-based file manager can
only upload files smaller than 500K, so if you have to upload files
bigger than that (like reaaaaaally big pictures, or media files like
mp3s or movies), you'll need to keep using the Keyword: FTP.
Please note that FTP problems are not a cynical ploy to try to get you to use File Manager. Thanks -- Joe
are seeing an error when they try to upload files at Keyword: FTP. [Update: 3:26pm: The FTP folks say that uploading via Keyword: FTP is fixed now. Thanks -- Joe]
I've alerted the appropriate people; in the meantime, this would be the perfect time to try out the new Web-based File Manager: http://hometown.aol.com/_fm, which is a lot easier to use and can be used with any Web browser.
You can check out the tutorial I did: How
To: Use the Web File Manager (to Add Big Pictures to Your
Blog)
Just about
the only reason to use the older FTP is that the Web-based file manager can
only upload files smaller than 500K, so if you have to upload files
bigger than that (like reaaaaaally big pictures, or media files like
mp3s or movies), you'll need to keep using the Keyword: FTP.
Please note that FTP problems are not a cynical ploy to try to get you to use File Manager. Thanks -- Joe
Found: "Missing" Private Journal Readers & More
Hi folks; to follow up on the Private Journals problem from last night (where some of the readers of your Private Journal may have disappeared); the tech folks restored the primary rostering database, so your missing readers should be back on the list.
If this is not the case, or you're still having problems viewing or commenting on Private Journals, please let me know.
FYI, the tech folks will probably have to do more work on the rostering stuff, so you may see other weirdness.
Thanks for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.
In other news, I have passed your comments about the smaller font size in Alerts to the Alerts team. And speaking of Alerts, I have given the Alerts folks some specific examples of comment alerts non-deliveries
that I've recently experienced (complete with full headers and
timestamps and all that good stuff), so hopefully, that will give them
more info to work with on chasing down our comment alerts gremlins.
Thanks -- Joe
If this is not the case, or you're still having problems viewing or commenting on Private Journals, please let me know.
FYI, the tech folks will probably have to do more work on the rostering stuff, so you may see other weirdness.
Thanks for your patience and sorry for the inconvenience.
In other news, I have passed your comments about the smaller font size in Alerts to the Alerts team. And speaking of Alerts, I have given the Alerts folks some specific examples of comment alerts non-deliveries
that I've recently experienced (complete with full headers and
timestamps and all that good stuff), so hopefully, that will give them
more info to work with on chasing down our comment alerts gremlins.
Thanks -- Joe
Tuesday, October 25, 2005
A Completely Specious Look at Your Blog's Value
My
blog
is worth $88,068.24.
How
much is your blog worth?
See the
widget above? I got it from the Business Opportunities
Weblog, which was linked in from a bunch of places today. It
says that this here Magic Smoke blog is worth a cool 88
large.
How'd they determine that number?
Let's back up a step.
As you
recall, about two weeks ago, AOL announced that it was buying Weblogs, Inc., a blog
content network of about 80 blogs, including Engadget, Slashfood and Luxist.
I hadn't talked about it here to date because there's not going to be
a
lot that really impacts the regular Journaler. (You'll probably start
seeing more contextual content links to blogs in the Weblogs, Inc.
network, but that's about it.)
(Incidently, I'm
going to keep referring to it as the Weblogs, Inc. network, because
there's another company called Weblogs [no Inc.], and they
got bought by VeriSign
shortly after the Weblogs, Inc. deal. The two companies do completely different things.)
Anyway, the price that
AOL paid was reported in the press as anywhere from $20 to $40
million (don't ask me, because I don't know).
Using those numbers as a baseline, an intrepid blogger,
Tristan Louis,
counted the number of links to each blog as listed by Technorati, then crunched
some numbers to figure out the value
of the deal on a per-link basis.
For example,
if the acquisition price was $25 million dollars, and there were
44,276
links pointing to all the blogs in the Weblogs, Inc. Network, then the
price per link was $564.64.
Skip forward to now,
when blogger Dane
Carlson took the info that Mr. Louis did, and created a
widget
that looks at the number of links to your blog, then assigns a dollar
value to your blog based on the per-link value from the Weblogs, Inc.
deal, and outputs it in HTML code that you can paste into your
blog.
As I said in the header, it's a completely
specious
way of assigning a dollar value to your blog, but it is kind of fun. --
Joe
'But I Don't Like Spam!'
Hi folks. Got a few developments going on in the big ole blogosphere that you might be interested in.
Over the weekend, there was a slightly explosive growth of the number of Splogs
(or Spam Blogs) -- blogs specifically created to link to certain Web
sites in order to pump up the position of those Web sites in search
results, particularly Google's.
The way Google works is based on link relevance
-- there's a lot of formulae and voodoo around it, but basically, the
more people point to you, the more of an authority you're seen as on
certain things and the higher you show up in searches on those things.
Well, the spammers have taken advantage of how easy it
is to create blogs, by automating it so that they can pump out
thousands of spam blogs that point to a particular Web page, in the
hopes of raising that page's relevance.
Of prime concern right now is a combination of Blogger & Blogspot (blog creation and hosting services, both owned by Google, in an ironic twist, to abuse the definition of irony).
Google has responded by implementing CAPTCHAs
in their blog creation process (they're the squiggly graphics that are
hard enough to read by humans, and almost impossible for computers to
read).
Like all things spam, it's a constant battle between
spam and spam countermeasures. CAPTCHAs are not foolproof; in addition
to causing problems for the vision-impaired or anyone who's ever found
themselves wondering if that squiggly thing was an "S" or a "5", there
are ways to circumvent them.
In addition, you have to be
veeeerrrry careful before you start deleting blogs (believe me, we've
found this out the hard way); I know for certain that I've seen some
splogs here in J-Land, but in cases where the spammer isn't
machine-gunning hundreds or thousands of splogs at a time, it can be a
lot less clear-cut.
There's some salty, vaguely ham-flavored food for thought. Thanks -- Joe
Over the weekend, there was a slightly explosive growth of the number of Splogs
(or Spam Blogs) -- blogs specifically created to link to certain Web
sites in order to pump up the position of those Web sites in search
results, particularly Google's.
The way Google works is based on link relevance
-- there's a lot of formulae and voodoo around it, but basically, the
more people point to you, the more of an authority you're seen as on
certain things and the higher you show up in searches on those things.
Well, the spammers have taken advantage of how easy it
is to create blogs, by automating it so that they can pump out
thousands of spam blogs that point to a particular Web page, in the
hopes of raising that page's relevance.
Of prime concern right now is a combination of Blogger & Blogspot (blog creation and hosting services, both owned by Google, in an ironic twist, to abuse the definition of irony).
Google has responded by implementing CAPTCHAs
in their blog creation process (they're the squiggly graphics that are
hard enough to read by humans, and almost impossible for computers to
read).
Like all things spam, it's a constant battle between
spam and spam countermeasures. CAPTCHAs are not foolproof; in addition
to causing problems for the vision-impaired or anyone who's ever found
themselves wondering if that squiggly thing was an "S" or a "5", there
are ways to circumvent them.
In addition, you have to be
veeeerrrry careful before you start deleting blogs (believe me, we've
found this out the hard way); I know for certain that I've seen some
splogs here in J-Land, but in cases where the spammer isn't
machine-gunning hundreds or thousands of splogs at a time, it can be a
lot less clear-cut.
There's some salty, vaguely ham-flavored food for thought. Thanks -- Joe
Private Journals Rostering Problems
Hi folks...I just got word that the devs found a problem with the "rostering database"
(the database that controls who can and can't read your private
journal); they shut down the rostering database briefly in order to "failover" to a healthy database, which effectively made private Journals inaccessible to non-owners for a little bit.
Private Journals should be back up, though I note that my own
private journal seems to be missing some readers, and I've gotten some
reports of similar things happening to other Private Journals owners.
I have made the ops folks aware of this and will keep you informed here.
Update, 9pm ET: The tech folks will be restoring the rostering
database that was having problems earlier. This won't happen, most
likely, until tomorrow. I will keep you updated; sorry for the
inconvenience.
Thanks -- Joe
(the database that controls who can and can't read your private
journal); they shut down the rostering database briefly in order to "failover" to a healthy database, which effectively made private Journals inaccessible to non-owners for a little bit.
Private Journals should be back up, though I note that my own
private journal seems to be missing some readers, and I've gotten some
reports of similar things happening to other Private Journals owners.
I have made the ops folks aware of this and will keep you informed here.
Update, 9pm ET: The tech folks will be restoring the rostering
database that was having problems earlier. This won't happen, most
likely, until tomorrow. I will keep you updated; sorry for the
inconvenience.
Thanks -- Joe
Having Journals Problems? Please Let Us Know
Hi folks -- I've gotten a few reports of people getting the "Journals
Not Available" blue screen -- I'm not sure at this point whether it's
limited to Private Journals or not, so your information can help our
tech folks figure out what kind of problem it is.
As always, if you're experiencing problems
with your AOL Journal or AIM Blog, please let me know by sending an
e-mail to journalseditor@aol.com
Please include as much detail as you can -- what you were doing when
you had the problem; the address of the Journal; whether it was a
public or private Journal; and what Web browser or version of AOL
you're using.
I know a lot of folks still don't know about this blog, so I would
appreciate it if you can let them know they can come here if they have
problems (blog problems, that is).
Thanks -- Joe
Not Available" blue screen -- I'm not sure at this point whether it's
limited to Private Journals or not, so your information can help our
tech folks figure out what kind of problem it is.
As always, if you're experiencing problems
with your AOL Journal or AIM Blog, please let me know by sending an
e-mail to journalseditor@aol.com
Please include as much detail as you can -- what you were doing when
you had the problem; the address of the Journal; whether it was a
public or private Journal; and what Web browser or version of AOL
you're using.
I know a lot of folks still don't know about this blog, so I would
appreciate it if you can let them know they can come here if they have
problems (blog problems, that is).
Thanks -- Joe
Friday, October 21, 2005
A Little Color to Close Out the Week
Hi folks...since it was so grey out today (or so they tell me), I just wanted to post a few bits of color before I head out.
The first bit of color was from a...well, it's not a pastry. I guess it could be a confection. Anyway, it's a variation of a Rice Krispie treat, except without any Rice Krispies in it:
As far as I could tell, it had Cap'n Crunch, Boo Berries, Choco Puffs,
and Fruit Loops. The taste was rather...interesting. But I saw it
under the glass and had to try one.
(Apologies for the poor lighting; I think I need to rig a diffuser.)
The other bit of color is a knickknack on my desk. There was a study released this week
that said if you have candy around but can't see it, you're going to
eat less of it (something to consider especially this time of year):
This is a regular bottle that I filled with Nerds and then topped with
Everlasting Gobstoppers, two fine Willy Wonka candy products that I
call "sugar-coated sugar."
Even though it sits prominently in my field of view, at this point,
it's just decorative. That's because it's full. The second I start
dipping into it, all bets are off.
Anyway, that should be it for this week. We'll be covering some more substantive matters next week. Have a good weekend. -- Joe
The first bit of color was from a...well, it's not a pastry. I guess it could be a confection. Anyway, it's a variation of a Rice Krispie treat, except without any Rice Krispies in it:
As far as I could tell, it had Cap'n Crunch, Boo Berries, Choco Puffs,
and Fruit Loops. The taste was rather...interesting. But I saw it
under the glass and had to try one.
(Apologies for the poor lighting; I think I need to rig a diffuser.)
The other bit of color is a knickknack on my desk. There was a study released this week
that said if you have candy around but can't see it, you're going to
eat less of it (something to consider especially this time of year):
This is a regular bottle that I filled with Nerds and then topped with
Everlasting Gobstoppers, two fine Willy Wonka candy products that I
call "sugar-coated sugar."
Even though it sits prominently in my field of view, at this point,
it's just decorative. That's because it's full. The second I start
dipping into it, all bets are off.
Anyway, that should be it for this week. We'll be covering some more substantive matters next week. Have a good weekend. -- Joe
Wiiiilmaaaa!
Is anyone else experiencing hurricane fatigue? And it's not like I'm
even going to be directly affected, unlike the poor souls in the
Yucatan Peninsula right now, or folks in Florida who are expecting
Wilma to hit around Monday.
By now, we're all old hands at wrapping up blog links around hurricanes and other natural disasters:
* Here's the Wikipedia entry on the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season
* Over at the Poynter Institute, Al's Morning Meeting has great Wilma resources, including some live Webcams and TV feeds from Florida
* Casting a political perspective on Wilma, the Babaulu Blog (found from Instapundit) takes a contrarian view to Cuba's hurricane preparations
* The AOL News folks have created another Citizen Journalism Photoblog for Wilma; there's nothing posted yet, though if you do get photos, you can send them in via this submission form (which wisely advises potential photogs to "be careful during and in the immediate aftermath of the storm.")
Anyway, all my hopes and wishes to everyone in the storm's path -- get out of the way and stay safe. -- Joe
even going to be directly affected, unlike the poor souls in the
Yucatan Peninsula right now, or folks in Florida who are expecting
Wilma to hit around Monday.
By now, we're all old hands at wrapping up blog links around hurricanes and other natural disasters:
* Here's the Wikipedia entry on the 2005 Atlantic Hurricane Season
* Over at the Poynter Institute, Al's Morning Meeting has great Wilma resources, including some live Webcams and TV feeds from Florida
* Casting a political perspective on Wilma, the Babaulu Blog (found from Instapundit) takes a contrarian view to Cuba's hurricane preparations
* The AOL News folks have created another Citizen Journalism Photoblog for Wilma; there's nothing posted yet, though if you do get photos, you can send them in via this submission form (which wisely advises potential photogs to "be careful during and in the immediate aftermath of the storm.")
Anyway, all my hopes and wishes to everyone in the storm's path -- get out of the way and stay safe. -- Joe
New Guest Editor's Picks for 10/21
Hi everybody. As posted in the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:
* Halloween Cookbook
* Talking to Myself
* Fantasy Football
* Arielle's Red Sox Blog
* Thoughts of a Marine
* CarnivAOL
Laura started off with a fall theme, though she also tried to push the envelope and find some new stuff out there.
In other news, we're still getting a lot of reports of comment alert non-delivery; it's in the hands of the Alerts tech team and they're working on it; I will let you know when I hear more.
I've got a couple more entries coming up before I go today; I'll get those up in a bit.
Oh, and don't forget -- if you want your shot at being featured in the upcoming Gallery of Bloggers module, head on over to the submission form -- they tell me we have a good bunch already, but this is going to be an ongoing feature, so we can always use more.
Thanks -- Joe
* Halloween Cookbook
* Talking to Myself
* Fantasy Football
* Arielle's Red Sox Blog
* Thoughts of a Marine
* CarnivAOL
Laura started off with a fall theme, though she also tried to push the envelope and find some new stuff out there.
In other news, we're still getting a lot of reports of comment alert non-delivery; it's in the hands of the Alerts tech team and they're working on it; I will let you know when I hear more.
I've got a couple more entries coming up before I go today; I'll get those up in a bit.
Oh, and don't forget -- if you want your shot at being featured in the upcoming Gallery of Bloggers module, head on over to the submission form -- they tell me we have a good bunch already, but this is going to be an ongoing feature, so we can always use more.
Thanks -- Joe
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Dark Blogs (Internal Blogging)
Suw Charman (bio
| blog
-- she uses a funky spelling of Sue) just finished leading an
interesting discussion on companies using blogs (and other social
media
tools, like wikis) as internal communications tools.
("Knowledge
management" is the associated buzzword, and apparently "KM" is the
acronym. I had not heard of it until yesterday.)
(As
an aside,
I'm not cut out to do liveblogging -- I blog at a more deliberate
pace.
I'm editing what I typed earlier, since we've moved on, so please
excuse any verb tense mismatches.)
First
off, while the
talk was geared to companies, a lot of the lessons can be extended to
any group, like a club, hobby group or team -- any kind of persistant
gathering that uses shared knowledge.
"Dark Blogs"
is Suw's term
(internal blogs is more commonly used) -- it refers to blogs that are
hidden from the blogosphere at large because they're private or
password-protected, because they're meant for a specific
audience.
The primary advantage to sharing
information with a blog, group blog, or wiki, is the
persistance of information:
The new stuff (or the latest edit, in the case of a wiki) is on top,
but all the older stuff is archived, accessible and directly
linkable. It's stuff you can do if you save all your e-mails
and
documents, for example, only it's accessible to the entire group and
easy to update, annotate and search.
This is important to companies and their
institutional knowledge.
Companies like shared knowledge, so things don't grind to a halt when
someone goes on vacation. (The worst-case variation of this is usually
goes "God forbid, if so-and-so got hit by a
bus.")
To use Suw's words, this preserves
the chain of communications -- you can see how ideas
originate and develop. You get context.
Plus, you get to learn from your past mistakes (or at least see them),
and see what worked or didn't work in the
past.
Other
advantages to internal blogs are that you can have multiple authors
doing their thing without worrying that people are stepping on each
other's toes; people can provide feedback by adding comments; you can
use feedreaders or other tools to view the data; and generally
speaking, ease of publishing.
The other advantages are
less clear-cut
to me since they involve behaviors that grow out specific different
delivery mechanisms (e.g. reading an e-mail that's pushed to your
mailbox vs. filtering out blog posts to get to the relevant stuff) and
access controls and stuff like that. But it's easy to see the primary
win -- extending and preserving a group
conversation.
Anyway, if you're interested, here's a
case
study of internal blogging at a European pharmaceutical
company, referenced in the talk (I haven't had a chance to read it
yet.)
(Oddly
enough, we don't do an incredible amount of internal blogging at AOL;
there are some wikis out there, but we could be doing
more.)
Thanks --
Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
| blog
-- she uses a funky spelling of Sue) just finished leading an
interesting discussion on companies using blogs (and other social
media
tools, like wikis) as internal communications tools.
("Knowledge
management" is the associated buzzword, and apparently "KM" is the
acronym. I had not heard of it until yesterday.)
(As
an aside,
I'm not cut out to do liveblogging -- I blog at a more deliberate
pace.
I'm editing what I typed earlier, since we've moved on, so please
excuse any verb tense mismatches.)
First
off, while the
talk was geared to companies, a lot of the lessons can be extended to
any group, like a club, hobby group or team -- any kind of persistant
gathering that uses shared knowledge.
"Dark Blogs"
is Suw's term
(internal blogs is more commonly used) -- it refers to blogs that are
hidden from the blogosphere at large because they're private or
password-protected, because they're meant for a specific
audience.
The primary advantage to sharing
information with a blog, group blog, or wiki, is the
persistance of information:
The new stuff (or the latest edit, in the case of a wiki) is on top,
but all the older stuff is archived, accessible and directly
linkable. It's stuff you can do if you save all your e-mails
and
documents, for example, only it's accessible to the entire group and
easy to update, annotate and search.
This is important to companies and their
institutional knowledge.
Companies like shared knowledge, so things don't grind to a halt when
someone goes on vacation. (The worst-case variation of this is usually
goes "God forbid, if so-and-so got hit by a
bus.")
To use Suw's words, this preserves
the chain of communications -- you can see how ideas
originate and develop. You get context.
Plus, you get to learn from your past mistakes (or at least see them),
and see what worked or didn't work in the
past.
Other
advantages to internal blogs are that you can have multiple authors
doing their thing without worrying that people are stepping on each
other's toes; people can provide feedback by adding comments; you can
use feedreaders or other tools to view the data; and generally
speaking, ease of publishing.
The other advantages are
less clear-cut
to me since they involve behaviors that grow out specific different
delivery mechanisms (e.g. reading an e-mail that's pushed to your
mailbox vs. filtering out blog posts to get to the relevant stuff) and
access controls and stuff like that. But it's easy to see the primary
win -- extending and preserving a group
conversation.
Anyway, if you're interested, here's a
case
study of internal blogging at a European pharmaceutical
company, referenced in the talk (I haven't had a chance to read it
yet.)
(Oddly
enough, we don't do an incredible amount of internal blogging at AOL;
there are some wikis out there, but we could be doing
more.)
Thanks --
Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
What Blogging Isn't (Featuring the World's Worst Blog)
David Weinberger, co-author of 'The Cluetrain Manifesto' is giving the keynote right now. Just on the screen was his example of The World's Worst Blog.
It's pretty bad. The amazing thing to me isn't how bad it is -- it's that someone thought that it was a good idea.
[Update: The World's Worst Blog was finally retired a few weeks
after this entry was originally posted. Since you can't see it, here
are some of the reasons why it was the World's Worst Blog:
* It wasn't actually a blog. Their whole site was a big Flash mess.
They had a section that was called a blog, but it just had some dated
entries. There were no comments, no external links, no interaction with
readers and visitors. It was clear that some marketing folks wanted to
cash in on a hot term, "blogging" they read about somewhere, without
understanding the implications.
* The "blog's" entries were obviously some marketing committee's
creation, describing the psychotic behavior the author purportedly did
to acquire that particular brand of gum. In the comments to the entry in BusinessWeek's BlogSpotting blog,
some posters suggested the name "flogs", to describe fake blogs set up
to shill for a product. This violates one of the cardinal rules of
blogging, authenticity.
* The primary interaction on the "blog" was a "game" (sorry for all the
quotes, but you'll see why I used them in a second) that consisted of
having the user click and hold their mouse button over a particular
spot on the screen. It was the online version of one of those "keep one
hand on the car" contest, only without the payoff of a car at the end.
* Now, I agree that people were piling on a little -- it wasn't really
that big of a deal -- there's a lot of stupid marketing out there, and
if people were talking about the site, that's something right there. It
was just kind of annoying to bloggers to see someone slap a label of
"blog" on something that obviously wasn't, just to get a little cachet
from it.]
There are a few lessons that can be taken from this -- obviously, not
all subject matter might be suitable for blogging. Then again,
marketers are a pretty creative bunch -- if they can position their
products as representative of a specific lifestyle, maybe they can
build a blog (or something interesting to the blog world) around that.
From the BlogOn conference, an
example mentioned was from the TAG Body Spray people (or was it Axe?) -- they are
essentially selling deodorant, but their TV commericals and online
presence are all about an aspirational lifestyle -- they say, if you use our spray deodorant, you'll pick up girls.
Not sure where the hook for gum is, but there's got to be something better than what they had.]
Thanks -- Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
It's pretty bad. The amazing thing to me isn't how bad it is -- it's that someone thought that it was a good idea.
[Update: The World's Worst Blog was finally retired a few weeks
after this entry was originally posted. Since you can't see it, here
are some of the reasons why it was the World's Worst Blog:
* It wasn't actually a blog. Their whole site was a big Flash mess.
They had a section that was called a blog, but it just had some dated
entries. There were no comments, no external links, no interaction with
readers and visitors. It was clear that some marketing folks wanted to
cash in on a hot term, "blogging" they read about somewhere, without
understanding the implications.
* The "blog's" entries were obviously some marketing committee's
creation, describing the psychotic behavior the author purportedly did
to acquire that particular brand of gum. In the comments to the entry in BusinessWeek's BlogSpotting blog,
some posters suggested the name "flogs", to describe fake blogs set up
to shill for a product. This violates one of the cardinal rules of
blogging, authenticity.
* The primary interaction on the "blog" was a "game" (sorry for all the
quotes, but you'll see why I used them in a second) that consisted of
having the user click and hold their mouse button over a particular
spot on the screen. It was the online version of one of those "keep one
hand on the car" contest, only without the payoff of a car at the end.
* Now, I agree that people were piling on a little -- it wasn't really
that big of a deal -- there's a lot of stupid marketing out there, and
if people were talking about the site, that's something right there. It
was just kind of annoying to bloggers to see someone slap a label of
"blog" on something that obviously wasn't, just to get a little cachet
from it.]
There are a few lessons that can be taken from this -- obviously, not
all subject matter might be suitable for blogging. Then again,
marketers are a pretty creative bunch -- if they can position their
products as representative of a specific lifestyle, maybe they can
build a blog (or something interesting to the blog world) around that.
From the BlogOn conference, an
example mentioned was from the TAG Body Spray people (or was it Axe?) -- they are
essentially selling deodorant, but their TV commericals and online
presence are all about an aspirational lifestyle -- they say, if you use our spray deodorant, you'll pick up girls.
Not sure where the hook for gum is, but there's got to be something better than what they had.]
Thanks -- Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
Day 2 at BlogOn
Morning, folks.
Day 2 of the BlogOn Conference. We're just starting, so I've got nothing to report yet, except to say that because of the venue, they insist on starting each day with "Copacabana."
Just thought I'd share that.
Thanks -- Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
Day 2 of the BlogOn Conference. We're just starting, so I've got nothing to report yet, except to say that because of the venue, they insist on starting each day with "Copacabana."
Just thought I'd share that.
Thanks -- Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
Monday, October 17, 2005
Corporations Trying to "Get" Blogging
The afternoon session of BlogOn has been interestingly...well, it's been interestingly two-sided.
The focus here is very much from the corporate point
of view; it's all about what companies should be doing with blogging
and social media in general, ranging from how to use blogs to actively
engage customers, to how to do damage control when a blogger
slams your company.
Suffice it to say, it's not at all like the focus on citizen journalism at the We Media conference a few weeks back.
For starters, there are a lot more public relations folks here.
Anyway, there are folks who get it, and folks who...don't.
Naturally, I like to think I fall into the "get it"camp
(in case you forgot, I'm a corporate blogger), but this is all still
evolving and I'm sure I'll hear about it if you think I
could do a better job. (That's one of the beauties of the blogosphere;
because of comments and criticism, it is, to some degree,
self-correcting.)
Anyway, on the one side, we had a viewpoint from the McDonalds corporation, which is veeery
gingerly getting into the blog space -- they're just getting started on
using blogs as a tool to communicate internally -- forget about trying
to do consumer-facing blogs.
I kind of felt bad for the speaker, Steve Wilson,
because he sounds like he's working really hard to change an
entrenched, old-school corporate culture. But it was kind of funny.
I was more surprised to hear CBS's Gil Schwartz; he was funny and engaging, but at some fundamental level, I just don't think he gets blogging.
On
the other side, there have been a bunch of folks advocating that
companies get fully engaged with blogs and other social media to talk
to customers, including Shel Israel (here's his blog),
a PR guy who says (I'm paraphrasing) that PR folks who don't adapt to
the blogosphere and social media should prepare for new careers in food
service.
I guess that's a new variation of "publish or perish."
Anyway,
there's tons and tons more stuff I could be writing about corporate
blogging or citizen journalism, but I don't know if this is interesting to you folks. (I haven't
even begun with the buzzwords.) Let me know in the comments. Thanks --
Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
The focus here is very much from the corporate point
of view; it's all about what companies should be doing with blogging
and social media in general, ranging from how to use blogs to actively
engage customers, to how to do damage control when a blogger
slams your company.
Suffice it to say, it's not at all like the focus on citizen journalism at the We Media conference a few weeks back.
For starters, there are a lot more public relations folks here.
Anyway, there are folks who get it, and folks who...don't.
Naturally, I like to think I fall into the "get it"camp
(in case you forgot, I'm a corporate blogger), but this is all still
evolving and I'm sure I'll hear about it if you think I
could do a better job. (That's one of the beauties of the blogosphere;
because of comments and criticism, it is, to some degree,
self-correcting.)
Anyway, on the one side, we had a viewpoint from the McDonalds corporation, which is veeery
gingerly getting into the blog space -- they're just getting started on
using blogs as a tool to communicate internally -- forget about trying
to do consumer-facing blogs.
I kind of felt bad for the speaker, Steve Wilson,
because he sounds like he's working really hard to change an
entrenched, old-school corporate culture. But it was kind of funny.
I was more surprised to hear CBS's Gil Schwartz; he was funny and engaging, but at some fundamental level, I just don't think he gets blogging.
On
the other side, there have been a bunch of folks advocating that
companies get fully engaged with blogs and other social media to talk
to customers, including Shel Israel (here's his blog),
a PR guy who says (I'm paraphrasing) that PR folks who don't adapt to
the blogosphere and social media should prepare for new careers in food
service.
I guess that's a new variation of "publish or perish."
Anyway,
there's tons and tons more stuff I could be writing about corporate
blogging or citizen journalism, but I don't know if this is interesting to you folks. (I haven't
even begun with the buzzwords.) Let me know in the comments. Thanks --
Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
Knock It Off, You're Scaring the Fish
Okay folks, I'm going to say this once: Be nice (or at least civil) to each other in the Message Boards and in your Journals about other Journalers. We are aware of the sideshow going on in the Bar & Grill. That is a member-managed
realm, which means that it is yours to screw up, which some of you are
apparently hell-bent on doing. One thread has already been hidden, and
trust me, you're not going to like it if Mommy and Daddy have to keep
doing it. ("Don't make me stop this car!")
"But wait," you say. "It's not me causing trouble. It's the other guy. I'm the victim here!"
Okay,
now you know that, officially, I can't take sides in these little
squabbles. But here's a little secret between you, me and the wall: I
agree with you completely. You're the wronged party; I'm on your side. I'm actually talking about the other guy.
You know, that one. But for the sake of maintaining an atmosphere of
civility, I'm asking you to swallow your pride and take one for the
team.
Here's what I'm asking:
1. Accept that you're just not going to get along with some people, or that some people are going to try to get a rise out of you.
2. Make full use of the Notify AOL, ignore and block tools. Know them. Use them. Love them.
3. Accept the fact that you're not going to get the last word. (One never does in these things.) Declare victory and go home.
4. If you're still having problems, any questions about message boards should be directed to AOLPeopleMGR@aol.com. Don't be surprised if they tell you to follow the advice I've already given you, though.
We're
still at war, tens of thousands of people have died recently in
earthquakes, floods and landslides, and there are millions of people
who go to bed hungry every night. Please try to keep some perspective
about your online flame wars. Better yet, keep some perspective, then
donate to Network for Good. Thanks. -- Joe
realm, which means that it is yours to screw up, which some of you are
apparently hell-bent on doing. One thread has already been hidden, and
trust me, you're not going to like it if Mommy and Daddy have to keep
doing it. ("Don't make me stop this car!")
"But wait," you say. "It's not me causing trouble. It's the other guy. I'm the victim here!"
Okay,
now you know that, officially, I can't take sides in these little
squabbles. But here's a little secret between you, me and the wall: I
agree with you completely. You're the wronged party; I'm on your side. I'm actually talking about the other guy.
You know, that one. But for the sake of maintaining an atmosphere of
civility, I'm asking you to swallow your pride and take one for the
team.
Here's what I'm asking:
1. Accept that you're just not going to get along with some people, or that some people are going to try to get a rise out of you.
2. Make full use of the Notify AOL, ignore and block tools. Know them. Use them. Love them.
3. Accept the fact that you're not going to get the last word. (One never does in these things.) Declare victory and go home.
4. If you're still having problems, any questions about message boards should be directed to AOLPeopleMGR@aol.com. Don't be surprised if they tell you to follow the advice I've already given you, though.
We're
still at war, tens of thousands of people have died recently in
earthquakes, floods and landslides, and there are millions of people
who go to bed hungry every night. Please try to keep some perspective
about your online flame wars. Better yet, keep some perspective, then
donate to Network for Good. Thanks. -- Joe
At the Copa...Copacabana...
...the hottest place west of Montana (or something like that).
Hi folks. I'm at another blog conference right now (we bloggers do so love talking about blogging), so I'm blogging right now from the floor of the Copa, for the BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit.
(The wireless network is pretty flaky right now -- I guess a few
hundred bloggers with laptops will do that to your connection -- but
they're working on it.)
This conference is primarily for
businesses who want to use blogging (and social media overall) to
communicate to, well, you all, so it's another one of those things
that's pretty corporate-wonky (as opposed to academic-wonky, or "chin-stroking" as I just heard) and full of buzzwords.
If
you'd like to follow along and get inside the heads of people who are
trying to use blogs to sell stuff to you, you can follow along the event blog, or see the Webcast and other stuff,
so you sound like you're in the know, without having to pay an
outrageous conference fee. (Hrm, why am I here again?) Thanks --
Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
Hi folks. I'm at another blog conference right now (we bloggers do so love talking about blogging), so I'm blogging right now from the floor of the Copa, for the BlogOn 2005 Social Media Summit.
(The wireless network is pretty flaky right now -- I guess a few
hundred bloggers with laptops will do that to your connection -- but
they're working on it.)
This conference is primarily for
businesses who want to use blogging (and social media overall) to
communicate to, well, you all, so it's another one of those things
that's pretty corporate-wonky (as opposed to academic-wonky, or "chin-stroking" as I just heard) and full of buzzwords.
If
you'd like to follow along and get inside the heads of people who are
trying to use blogs to sell stuff to you, you can follow along the event blog, or see the Webcast and other stuff,
so you sound like you're in the know, without having to pay an
outrageous conference fee. (Hrm, why am I here again?) Thanks --
Joe.
Technorati tag: BlogOn2005
Friday, October 14, 2005
Journalers in the News
Okay folks, for my last item of the day, I would be remiss if I didn't
close out by acknowledging that it was a big media week
for some of our very own AOL
Journalers.
We opened up the week with Jamie, Sports Bloggers
Live host and self-proclaimed Mister
Irrelevant, and his Monday appearance on ESPN's Cold Pizza. You can see
his
writeup here. (I thought he did
great.)
Wednesday, as Our
Maximum Scalzi mentioned, the Washington Post did a
story following up on the AOL Blog
Trends Survey from last month, taking an angle of blogging
as therapy. The story also prominently featured J-Landers
Judi
and Pamela,
so kudos to them both.
Lastly, cow-orker [sic] and
SBL crony Erin got a very
nice write-up in the blog and print edition of the Philadelphia
Enquirer for her Iggles blog, The Year
of the Bird.
Congratulations to all for a Jorb Well
Done.
Talk to you later. -- Joe
close out by acknowledging that it was a big media week
for some of our very own AOL
Journalers.
We opened up the week with Jamie, Sports Bloggers
Live host and self-proclaimed Mister
Irrelevant, and his Monday appearance on ESPN's Cold Pizza. You can see
his
writeup here. (I thought he did
great.)
Wednesday, as Our
Maximum Scalzi mentioned, the Washington Post did a
story following up on the AOL Blog
Trends Survey from last month, taking an angle of blogging
as therapy. The story also prominently featured J-Landers
Judi
and Pamela,
so kudos to them both.
Lastly, cow-orker [sic] and
SBL crony Erin got a very
nice write-up in the blog and print edition of the Philadelphia
Enquirer for her Iggles blog, The Year
of the Bird.
Congratulations to all for a Jorb Well
Done.
Talk to you later. -- Joe
Your Face Here
Hi folks...if you've visited the Message Boards main page recently, you might have noticed something different at the top of the page:
This is our long-awaited Gallery module. We'll be rolling out a couple of them, each one tailored to the screen it lives on.
(Since you're pretty smart people, I think you can see where this is going.)
We're in the process of building out a Gallery for the Journals main page, so if you'd like to see your face in the gallery, and maybe send a few new visitors to your blog, head over to this here
You'll
be asked to provide some info and a photo; you'll also be asked to
select one of your blogs from a drop-down menu (it's not a free-form
entry field, you'll need to pick one of your existing Journals, or
leave, create one and come back).
You'll also have the option of entering one of your favorite blogs or other Web page you read.
This
little bit of programming is separate from everything else that we're
doing with featuring people's blogs, so don't worry if you've been
featured somewhere before.
Also, I'm not going to be picking the
photos, so if you think that I have some sort of secret grudge against
you that keeps you off the main page, well, here's your chance to do an
end-run around me.
Have fun and good luck. -- Joe
This is our long-awaited Gallery module. We'll be rolling out a couple of them, each one tailored to the screen it lives on.
(Since you're pretty smart people, I think you can see where this is going.)
We're in the process of building out a Gallery for the Journals main page, so if you'd like to see your face in the gallery, and maybe send a few new visitors to your blog, head over to this here
You'll
be asked to provide some info and a photo; you'll also be asked to
select one of your blogs from a drop-down menu (it's not a free-form
entry field, you'll need to pick one of your existing Journals, or
leave, create one and come back).
You'll also have the option of entering one of your favorite blogs or other Web page you read.
This
little bit of programming is separate from everything else that we're
doing with featuring people's blogs, so don't worry if you've been
featured somewhere before.
Also, I'm not going to be picking the
photos, so if you think that I have some sort of secret grudge against
you that keeps you off the main page, well, here's your chance to do an
end-run around me.
Have fun and good luck. -- Joe
New Guest Editor's Picks for 10/14
Hi everybody. As posted in the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:
* Rant-O-Rama Diner
* So Much More
* These Are the Days of Our Lives...
* HAH!
* Jackie's Quirky Musings
* Better Than Kicking the Dog
Omar is no stranger to the photo spot on the Journals main page, since he was one of my Editor's Picks back in May. He chose a theme (of sorts) of bloggers who are "Quirky Blurts": Quirky is self-explanatory, and the Blurts comes from the fact that they're not afraid to say the first thing that pops into their heads. (Not that they have more than one head. Per person.)
On an administrative note, apologies to
Denielle and 
Jodi, our two most recent Guest Editors, for a little slip-up: I forgot to change one of the main page links to the Guest Editor's blog from the prior week, so some folks who hit that link went to Jodi's Journal when they should have been going to Denielle's.
I've got a few more updates I need to make today, so I will post them to separate entries. Thanks. -- Joe
Tag: Guest Editor's Picks
* Rant-O-Rama Diner
* So Much More
* These Are the Days of Our Lives...
* HAH!
* Jackie's Quirky Musings
* Better Than Kicking the Dog
Omar is no stranger to the photo spot on the Journals main page, since he was one of my Editor's Picks back in May. He chose a theme (of sorts) of bloggers who are "Quirky Blurts": Quirky is self-explanatory, and the Blurts comes from the fact that they're not afraid to say the first thing that pops into their heads. (Not that they have more than one head. Per person.)
On an administrative note, apologies to
Denielle and Jodi, our two most recent Guest Editors, for a little slip-up: I forgot to change one of the main page links to the Guest Editor's blog from the prior week, so some folks who hit that link went to Jodi's Journal when they should have been going to Denielle's.I've got a few more updates I need to make today, so I will post them to separate entries. Thanks. -- Joe
Tag: Guest Editor's Picks
Sunday, October 9, 2005
Blogging to Help Others
Hi folks -- quick update because, after all, the blog world never
sleeps...
We've got a few "Stans" in the news -- as
you know, South Asia got hit pretty hard Saturday by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that was centered
near the Kashmir region, affecting Pakistan, India, and
Afghanistan.
The death toll is feared at 20,000 and
rising as reports come in. Below are some blog info and help resource
links:
* South Asia
Quake Help Blog - A quake news and resource group
blog. It's a good place to find local resources and info (like Metroblogging
Lahore and Karachi). It's done by the folks
who did the Southeast Asian Earthquake and Tsunami Blog (SEA
EAT)
* Pakistan Earthquake
2005 - Another disaster and relief info blog set up
in the wake of the earthquake.
* As always, BBC News
has strong, ongoing coverage, including reporters'
first person accounts and reader reactions to the
disaster.
* Here is blogger Kathryn Cramer's entry about her CommunityWalk site for the earthquake; a
CommunityWalk is a kind of community Web
site (sort of like a group blog or wiki) that's built around Google Maps
imagery, where people can add their own notes and
photos.
* Disasterpedia is a
self-proclaimed "one-stop info shop" on natural disasters of all sorts;
they also feature their Top Ten Myths of Disaster
Relief.
* The International Federation
of the Red Cross has information, as well as their
donation page.
They
also have information on our other "Stan" item: Hurricane Stan didn't
affect the U.S. very much, but it hit Central America pretty hard,
causing flooding and landslides and making a lot of people
homeless.
As always, you can go to: to
find the charity or humanitarian organization of your choice if you'd like to help out.
Talk to you later. -- Joe
sleeps...
We've got a few "Stans" in the news -- as
you know, South Asia got hit pretty hard Saturday by a 7.7 magnitude earthquake that was centered
near the Kashmir region, affecting Pakistan, India, and
Afghanistan.
The death toll is feared at 20,000 and
rising as reports come in. Below are some blog info and help resource
links:
* South Asia
Quake Help Blog - A quake news and resource group
blog. It's a good place to find local resources and info (like Metroblogging
Lahore and Karachi). It's done by the folks
who did the Southeast Asian Earthquake and Tsunami Blog (SEA
EAT)
* Pakistan Earthquake
2005 - Another disaster and relief info blog set up
in the wake of the earthquake.
* As always, BBC News
has strong, ongoing coverage, including reporters'
first person accounts and reader reactions to the
disaster.
* Here is blogger Kathryn Cramer's entry about her CommunityWalk site for the earthquake; a
CommunityWalk is a kind of community Web
site (sort of like a group blog or wiki) that's built around Google Maps
imagery, where people can add their own notes and
photos.
* Disasterpedia is a
self-proclaimed "one-stop info shop" on natural disasters of all sorts;
they also feature their Top Ten Myths of Disaster
Relief.
* The International Federation
of the Red Cross has information, as well as their
donation page.
They
also have information on our other "Stan" item: Hurricane Stan didn't
affect the U.S. very much, but it hit Central America pretty hard,
causing flooding and landslides and making a lot of people
homeless.
As always, you can go to: to
find the charity or humanitarian organization of your choice if you'd like to help out.
Talk to you later. -- Joe
Friday, October 7, 2005
Adding Online Presence to Your Blog
Okay, so it was announced today
that bloggers of all sorts tell people visiting their blogs if they're
online or not, just by adding one line of HTML code to their blogs.
This is called AIM Presence (it works for AOL,
too).
Previously, there were ways to tell your
blog's visitors that you were online, but they were a little roundabout
(or kludgy).
Now, all you
have to do is go to the AIM Presence page, http://www.aim.com/presence/main.adp, and
follow the instructions (they're pretty good, which I can say even though I
didn't write them).
Here's how you add the AIM Presence indicator to your AOL Journal or
AIM Blog:
1. First, complete the registration
form on the AIM Presence Web page.
2.
When you've completed registration, you'll get a screen that includes
the HTML code you'll want to add to your "All About Me" section.
Select
this with your mouse and hit Control-C (or right-click) to copy
it:
3.
Go to your Journal's "All About Me" section, and click Edit; when you
get to the Edit screen, you should see contents of your About Me
section. By default, it will show the Text view; you
want to grab that pulldown and select
HTML:
4.
This will change your pretty About Me text view to the not-so-pretty
HTML code view.
5.
Paste the HTML code you copied in step 2 into your About Me box. I put
mine at the end:
6.
Hit Save; you should see a little gif that will light up if you're
online (it will show a little note if you're "away",
etc):
That's
online presence. You can also add words around the little icon. When people
click the icon whenyou're online, it will open up an AIM IM window to
you.
Please note:
I haven't tested this all the way through, but if you're blocking
people on your Buddy List, it's not going to work. Please see the AIM
Presence FAQ for more information about known issues, privacy
questions, help and more (feel free to skip the really technical parts).
Also
note:
If you're uncomfortable with letting people know you're online by
reading your blog, don't worry -- you don't have to do
anything.
Anyway, that's it for now. It's 10/7;
coincidentally, in Police 10-Codes,
10/7 is "Out of Service", so I am going to go out of commission now
and
blog some more later. Thanks and have a great weekend. -- Joe
that bloggers of all sorts tell people visiting their blogs if they're
online or not, just by adding one line of HTML code to their blogs.
This is called AIM Presence (it works for AOL,
too).
Previously, there were ways to tell your
blog's visitors that you were online, but they were a little roundabout
(or kludgy).
Now, all you
have to do is go to the AIM Presence page, http://www.aim.com/presence/main.adp, and
follow the instructions (they're pretty good, which I can say even though I
didn't write them).
Here's how you add the AIM Presence indicator to your AOL Journal or
AIM Blog:
1. First, complete the registration
form on the AIM Presence Web page.
2.
When you've completed registration, you'll get a screen that includes
the HTML code you'll want to add to your "All About Me" section.
Select
this with your mouse and hit Control-C (or right-click) to copy
it:
3.
Go to your Journal's "All About Me" section, and click Edit; when you
get to the Edit screen, you should see contents of your About Me
section. By default, it will show the Text view; you
want to grab that pulldown and select
HTML:
4.
This will change your pretty About Me text view to the not-so-pretty
HTML code view.
5.
Paste the HTML code you copied in step 2 into your About Me box. I put
mine at the end:
6.
Hit Save; you should see a little gif that will light up if you're
online (it will show a little note if you're "away",
etc):
That's
online presence. You can also add words around the little icon. When people
click the icon whenyou're online, it will open up an AIM IM window to
you.
Please note:
I haven't tested this all the way through, but if you're blocking
people on your Buddy List, it's not going to work. Please see the AIM
Presence FAQ for more information about known issues, privacy
questions, help and more (feel free to skip the really technical parts).
Also
note:
If you're uncomfortable with letting people know you're online by
reading your blog, don't worry -- you don't have to do
anything.
Anyway, that's it for now. It's 10/7;
coincidentally, in Police 10-Codes,
10/7 is "Out of Service", so I am going to go out of commission now
and
blog some more later. Thanks and have a great weekend. -- Joe
Status on Alerts, Counters & Search
Heya folks -- okay, so here's where we stand so
far:
* Comment Alerts: The
tech team installed a fix this morning, so the problem of sporadic
comment alert non-delivery should hopefully be fixed. (If it isn't,
I'm
sure you will tell me about it...)
The tech folks believe the problem was caused by a problem with the
Alerts whitelist. As
I think I've mentioned before, a whitelist is a roster of machines
that
it's okay for another machine to "talk" to.
This is done for security
purposes, and to make sure that dedicated machines are only used for
what they're supposed to be used for. If all the Journals
machines
can't talk properly to all the Alerts machines, some comment alerts
getting
dropped is a possible outcome.
As mentioned, if you're still not getting all your comment alerts,
please let me know.
* Hit Counters: A fix was put in to try to make hit
counters more robust. As Ian explained
it earlier: "When the hit counter is being updated very
rapidly, the file will
attempt to overwrite itself while it is already overwriting itself.
This is a write-lock, and the file blows
up." (Incidentally, I like his explanation.)
The solution that was implemented was to separate the reading part
from
the writing part, which should theoretically make it harder for the
counters to blow up. Also, if your counter does break, you still have
the option of adjusting
the count manually.
* Journals Search: Journals Search is acting...more
normal. Looking at the search
results for JournalsEditor,
I see that it's not picking up my older entries. I will have to check
with the tech folks to see if the Search index will catch up, or if we
need to do more work.
Please let me know via comments or e-mail if you're continuing to have
any AOL Journals or AIM Blogs-related problems...and I would
appreciate
it if you can pass the word to other Journalers that
this here blog is
meant as a resource for you all, so please stop by.
Thanks -- Joe
far:
* Comment Alerts: The
tech team installed a fix this morning, so the problem of sporadic
comment alert non-delivery should hopefully be fixed. (If it isn't,
I'm
sure you will tell me about it...)
The tech folks believe the problem was caused by a problem with the
Alerts whitelist. As
I think I've mentioned before, a whitelist is a roster of machines
that
it's okay for another machine to "talk" to.
This is done for security
purposes, and to make sure that dedicated machines are only used for
what they're supposed to be used for. If all the Journals
machines
can't talk properly to all the Alerts machines, some comment alerts
getting
dropped is a possible outcome.
As mentioned, if you're still not getting all your comment alerts,
please let me know.
* Hit Counters: A fix was put in to try to make hit
counters more robust. As Ian explained
it earlier: "When the hit counter is being updated very
rapidly, the file will
attempt to overwrite itself while it is already overwriting itself.
This is a write-lock, and the file blows
up." (Incidentally, I like his explanation.)
The solution that was implemented was to separate the reading part
from
the writing part, which should theoretically make it harder for the
counters to blow up. Also, if your counter does break, you still have
the option of adjusting
the count manually.
* Journals Search: Journals Search is acting...more
normal. Looking at the search
results for JournalsEditor,
I see that it's not picking up my older entries. I will have to check
with the tech folks to see if the Search index will catch up, or if we
need to do more work.
Please let me know via comments or e-mail if you're continuing to have
any AOL Journals or AIM Blogs-related problems...and I would
appreciate
it if you can pass the word to other Journalers that
this here blog is
meant as a resource for you all, so please stop by.
Thanks -- Joe
New Guest Editor's Picks for 10/7
Hi everybody. As posted in the Journals Message Board, our new
Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:
Our
Guest Editor this week is Denielle, a genuine Jersey
girl who does computer stuff for Uncle Sam and is also a part-time EMT.
Her featured blog is This Is
Me, and you can see Denielle's top blog picks in her blog
entry:
* My Big
Fat Geek Life
* Rita's
Journal
* Cubby's
Rants and Raves
* The
StupidSheet Guy
* Gettin'
By in Life...
* Holding
On & Letting Go
Denielle is
sticking with home state favorites, choosing a theme of New
Jersey Journals -- bloggers who have ties to the Garden
State. (I have some experience with New Jersey, so let me say this:
No one calls it "Joisey" (except New Yorkers), and
"What exit?" isn't a joke, it's a useful
navigational inquiry.
In
other news, I have some updates on stuff regarding counters, alerts,
AIM presence, and a book report on my trip to New York, which I will
get to in separate entries. Thanks. -- Joe
Tag: Guest Editor's Picks
Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:
Our
Guest Editor this week is Denielle, a genuine Jersey
girl who does computer stuff for Uncle Sam and is also a part-time EMT.
Her featured blog is This Is
Me, and you can see Denielle's top blog picks in her blog
entry:
* My Big
Fat Geek Life
* Rita's
Journal
* Cubby's
Rants and Raves
* The
StupidSheet Guy
* Gettin'
By in Life...
* Holding
On & Letting Go
Denielle is
sticking with home state favorites, choosing a theme of New
Jersey Journals -- bloggers who have ties to the Garden
State. (I have some experience with New Jersey, so let me say this:
No one calls it "Joisey" (except New Yorkers), and
"What exit?" isn't a joke, it's a useful
navigational inquiry.
In
other news, I have some updates on stuff regarding counters, alerts,
AIM presence, and a book report on my trip to New York, which I will
get to in separate entries. Thanks. -- Joe
Tag: Guest Editor's Picks
Thursday, October 6, 2005
Status Update, 10/6 -- Search, Comments and Counters
Hi folks...looks like the previously referenced Journals Search problem is fixed now; please let me know in the comments below if you're still having problems.
Also, regarding the problem of sporadic comment alerts; the tech
team is pretty sure they know what the problem is -- looks like
something on the Journals side isn't playing nice with the Alerts system; they need to wait for an install window in
order to make the fix, so I will keep you posted.
This just in -- Ian says that the Hometown folks have put in a
fix where your hit counters should be more stable. It involves adding a backup
file to the mix so we avoid the dreaded write-lock problem
that's the root of most of the counter trouble.
It should be pretty
invisible to you, though it may affect the procedure if you want
to change your counter tally -- I will do a more extensive write-up
when I get the details.
In the meantime, if you find yourself
having counter resets or other counter problems after this fix, please
let me know.
Thanks. -- Joe
Also, regarding the problem of sporadic comment alerts; the tech
team is pretty sure they know what the problem is -- looks like
something on the Journals side isn't playing nice with the Alerts system; they need to wait for an install window in
order to make the fix, so I will keep you posted.
This just in -- Ian says that the Hometown folks have put in a
fix where your hit counters should be more stable. It involves adding a backup
file to the mix so we avoid the dreaded write-lock problem
that's the root of most of the counter trouble.
It should be pretty
invisible to you, though it may affect the procedure if you want
to change your counter tally -- I will do a more extensive write-up
when I get the details.
In the meantime, if you find yourself
having counter resets or other counter problems after this fix, please
let me know.
Thanks. -- Joe
Wednesday, October 5, 2005
Back to Business
Hi folks...I'm back from the citizen journalism conference. Interesting
stuff, I will try to talk about some of the more relevant parts
tomorrow (or so).
In other news, it looks like we're having a bit of a problem with Journals Search
-- this morning, it wasn't returning results properly (it was missing a
lot of stuff, especially if you were searching by screen name). I
just tried it again now; it looks like there's a fix in but it hasn't
propagated all the way through (or something) -- if you get results
that are a lot fewer than expected, try hitting refresh and see if that
helps.
Thanks. -- Joe
stuff, I will try to talk about some of the more relevant parts
tomorrow (or so).
In other news, it looks like we're having a bit of a problem with Journals Search
-- this morning, it wasn't returning results properly (it was missing a
lot of stuff, especially if you were searching by screen name). I
just tried it again now; it looks like there's a fix in but it hasn't
propagated all the way through (or something) -- if you get results
that are a lot fewer than expected, try hitting refresh and see if that
helps.
Thanks. -- Joe
They're Blogging We Media
Here's a big "duh" on my part -- the conference folks are blogging the event, so you can follow along in the We Media blog,
which means you'll get a better write-up of the issues being discussed
than my fumble-fingered efforts, and that I can pay attention,
guilt-free. -- Joe
which means you'll get a better write-up of the issues being discussed
than my fumble-fingered efforts, and that I can pay attention,
guilt-free. -- Joe
Blogging on Citizen Journalism, Live and Direct
Right now, I'm in a conference room at the Associated Press in NYC,
surrounded by bloggers, journalists, academics and people of all types
who share a common interest in blogs and citizen journalism.
I guess this is a somewhat gratuitous post (after all, I have to
justify lugging my laptop here), since I'm trying to pay attention,
which sort of precludes trying to put together a coherent blog entry; I
will try to do a
proper
after-action report later.
At the moment, I'm listening to a panel of traditional media
types
(NPR, CBS, AP, BBC) talking about how they're trying to
manage
relationships with readers and news consumers in a more open media
environment.
Current buzzwords include: Convergence; Architecture of
Particpation; Enabling a Better-Informed Society; Contribution
Culture.
If you're interested in some of the background driving this discussion,
you can check out a think paper here (it's 66 pages long and a
bit wonky, but it's an interesting read if you're into that sort of
thing). -- Joe
surrounded by bloggers, journalists, academics and people of all types
who share a common interest in blogs and citizen journalism.
I guess this is a somewhat gratuitous post (after all, I have to
justify lugging my laptop here), since I'm trying to pay attention,
which sort of precludes trying to put together a coherent blog entry; I
will try to do a
proper
after-action report later.
At the moment, I'm listening to a panel of traditional media
types
(NPR, CBS, AP, BBC) talking about how they're trying to
manage
relationships with readers and news consumers in a more open media
environment.
Current buzzwords include: Convergence; Architecture of
Particpation; Enabling a Better-Informed Society; Contribution
Culture.
If you're interested in some of the background driving this discussion,
you can check out a think paper here (it's 66 pages long and a
bit wonky, but it's an interesting read if you're into that sort of
thing). -- Joe
Tuesday, October 4, 2005
Quick Tuesday Update
Hi folks...apologies for the delay in posting. I'm in New York right
now, for a conference on blogging and citizen journalism, which should be
pretty interesting; I will fill you in when I get back (it's gonna be pretty
packed tomorrow, so I don't know what kind of updates I'll be able to squeeze
in).
Speaking of updates, if you're still having problems
with receiving your comment alerts, please let me
know, either via an e-mail to me or in the comments
below.
I know the comment alert delivery problem is of
extra interest right now because of a particularly
virulent porn comment spammer out there (which is why I need to know if you're
still having non-delivery problems); I will talk more about what we're doing on
the comment spam front later on.
Thanks. -- Joe
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)