Thoughts on Ye Olde Colour Theory

So I was reading through a Metafilter thread on animal testing that diverged wildly, briefly, to a discussion of Web page design and color theory.

In the thread, a poster linked to this Web page (the authors are Canucks, so they use British-style spellings throughout), which is a little oldish but a good read on how different combinations of background and text colors affect readability. Here's a quote:

"Yellow and black is the highest contrast color combination, but contrast is not the same as readability. There is a trade-off between contrast and readability: too little contrast makes things hard to read, but too much contrast creates so much vibration that it diminishes readability."

Makes your eyes hurt, don't it?

The article goes on about other color combinations, many rooted in old computer terminal displays such as:
Amber on Black -- I kind of like this, I've used terminals with this combo

Green on Black -- the authors like this, though I think it's horrible

Red on Black -- and of course, red on black, which you will see on some vampyric Web pages, which kind of makes sense, since it makes my eyes bleed.

Personally, I'm a traditionalist and stick with good old black text on a white background.

When it comes to selecting color combinations for your blog, there's a lot of psychology and personal preference involved, so do what looks good to you, though it's always nice to get a little background on what works and doesn't work for others.

Thanks -- Joe

2/28 Brief Journals Outage Cleared

Hi all -- as I posted in the Journals Message Boards (whenever there's a Journals outage, you should always check the Journals board -- it's where I post information during outages, since this here blog is also affected when we have problems): We had a brief Journals outage this afternoon, starting at about 4:08 PM ET. It's fixed now.

The problem lasted about 5 minutes -- during this time, all entries "disappeared" off of our Journals, leaving only the page you see when you first create a Journal.

While it's cringe-inducing and a little scary, I was fairly confident that the Journals team didn't actually delete several million Journals entries in the space of a few seconds, so I figured they just got misplaced temporarily.

Entries are back now. Sorry for the scare and any inconvenience.

I will update this here entry as we get more information from the tech folks.  Thanks -- Joe


[Update, 3/1: So, word on the street is that the admins were doing some work on the Journals database yesterday; during the course of this, they switched ("failed over") to the replicate database, but there was a network problem, which caused the entries to disappear from your blogs. They immediately switched back to the primary. The problem was caused, discovered and fixed in the space of a few minutes, during which time you may have gotten a scare, but hopefully no damage was done. Thanks -- Joe]

Release 4 Is Coming!

Hi folks -- Journals Product Manager Susan just added an entry in her blog with the official word -- Journals Release 4 (R4) will be installed 3/1 from 4-6AM ET. Journals will be down during that time.

You can get the full details of what we're getting with the install in her entry; besides a bunch of infrastructure stuff on the back end that you won't see, the main things you will see include:

* A fix to Alerts
* Moving the Journals help resources in with the rest of Help
* An overhaul of the Journals Feed subscription area, which will make it easier for you to subscribe to other people's Journals feeds, as well as make it easier for people with  feedreaders to subscribe to your Journal.
* A first crack at IFRAME implementation

Once we clear R4, the Journals dev team can start working on the next release, which will have a lot more stuff that you'll be able to sink your teeth into.

Now go check out Susan's entry!

Thanks -- Joe

Blogging Advice From the A-Listers

Hi folks -- so I was checking out the blog of a fiend of mine this morning (as you can see, I'm a little behind today), when I came across a not-completely-unrantlike entry of his with his thoughts on How to Be a More Effective Blogger.

In this entry, he was agreeing with blogger Miss Rogue, who had blogged a piece decrying the current trend of "A-List" bloggers who blog their advice to the little bloggers of the blogosphere, gracing them (okay, us) with their rules on how to be more effective bloggers.

Rules? For blogging? Come on, once you get past "try not to look like a total illiterate" and "share the link love with people who link to you," there really shouldn't be that much in the way of rules (well, besides the Golden Rule, but that goes for everything).

Anyway, if you don't pay attention to such things, A-List bloggers are the ones at the top of the blog food chain -- they're Serious Bloggers, in the Technorati Top 100, speaking at conferences and being interviewed on TV magazine shows. You know, the kind of people who actually care who wins a Bloggie award.

Like I've said to a bunch of people who've had the misfortune to hear me, we bloggers exist in a curious and unique historical position, in that blogging is mature enough so that it's very (maybe overly?) influential, but still new enough that it's not yet ubiquitious.

As a result, that means there that a lot of egotistical A-List bloggers with an overinflated sense of their importance to society, doing a lot of navel-gazing and spraining their arms patting each other on the back.

Since I don't travel in those rarified circles, I can sit back in my comfy chair and agree with those who say:

* Blog for yourself, not for other people.
* Try not to worry about it too much.
* Don't take blogging too seriously.

Anyway, if you want to see how the other half lives, check out some of the links and commenters in Miss Rogue's entry, and see for yourself.

Oh, and if you want to get technical, I had been scanning through the new
entries of a bunch of my friends's blogs, in a folder I have set up on
my Mac's feedreader program (NetNewsire Lite; it's freeware if you're interested and you use Mac OSX 10.2.8 or higher).

Thanks -- Joe

Followup on Private Journals Rostering

Hi folks -- I just wanted to follow up on the Private Journals Rostering problem from earlier in the week. In short, the main issue was fixed; however, people who created new Private Journals during the time it was being fixed may still be seeing a problem.

Here's what happened (all this is info from our admins, by the way, I don't actually know this stuff): All of our databases have a primary side and a replicate side; the replicate side is kind of like a backup -- the primary and replicate usually live in different data centers, and production traffic points to one at a time.

If there's a problem with the primary side, they can switch over to the replicate side, which should be identical. This is known as a failover.

In our case, one of the indexes for the primary side of the rostering database was corrupted. (Rostering is the process by which we can tell who can or can't do something, such as who is allowed to read your private Journal).

The index was still okay on the replicate side, so they failed-over to the replicate side, which fixed the problem.

Now, if you created your Private Journal after the index got corrupted but before the failover fixed things, you might still be having a problem trying to manage your Private Journal's roster.

This shouldn't affect very many people; for those it does, the best thing to do would probably be to recreate your entries in a new Private Journal, which you can delete and recreate if you want to keep the name. I realize it's kind of a pain, though presumably you would only have a couple of entries to cut and paste.

The tech folks are taking a look to see what happened to corrupt the primary side's index in the first place, to try to keep this from happening again.

Hope some of this was useful info. Thanks -- Joe

Blogging Naked

Okay, so that was one of those grabby headlines meant to get your attention (I feel so cheap), but it actually does tie into the topic at hand.

There's a new book out about how blogs are changing companies's relationships with customers, which as you might guess, is a topic near and dear to my heart.

The book is called 'Naked Conversations', and it's written by blog personalities Robert Scoble (who is a 'Technical Evangelist' for Microsoft) and PR blogger Shel Israel (I blogged about seeing him speak at a conference back in October).

I haven't read the book yet (it's on my list -- it's a pretty long list), though you can get a sense of some of the topics by reading the book's blog -- also, over at WashingtonPost.com, there was a live chat event today with both authors, so you can check out the transcript.

The chat is a pretty good primer on why it's good for companies to blog, and how companies should blog -- it also has some generally good advice on getting your blog noticed (yes, corporate bloggers are also known to whine "But nobody's reading my blog!"), how to interact with people, and how to not get fired when you're blogging about your company.

(On a side note, I will be self-indulgent and say: What's this? The Microsoft technology evangelist is using Wordpress for his blog [http://scobleizer.wordpress.com], not MSN Spaces for his blog? Shock! Horror! Or maybe it really is about the blog and not the blog platform...)

In other blog news, there's a good column over by BBC News Technology Columnist Bill Thompson: it's all about how the blogosphere has shifted the boundary between public and private. In his particular case, he attended an event on Media and Business at Cambridge and blogged about it, without realizing that the house rules were in effect , which meant the event was not for attribution (that is, everything was off-the-record, which is meant to help encourage candor and the free-flow of ideas).

Granted, he may be a well-known technology writer with a regular readership, but his general point is that you can't stop the bloggers -- instead of trying to control the flow of information, it may be better to participate in it.

This is a common refrain among bloggers -- in the 'Naked' chat, Robert Scoble says:

"But, truth is, people are probably already saying something bad about your company. If you don't answer them, that can be used against you in the marketplace by competitors, or by journalists, or by other bloggers (as we've seen in several instances)."

Anyway, just some more navel-gazing about the big ole sphere o' blogs.

Thanks -- Joe

New Guest Editor's Picks for 2/24

Hi everybody. As posted to the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Our Guest Editor this week is Jackie, who hails from Kentucky. She's got three kids, a husband who's just back from Iraq and her own top six blog picks:

 * Sweeping the Cobwebs of My Mind
 * My Thoughts in My World
 * Emily's Purple Pages
 * Heartfelt Expressions 2
 * Everything Laura
 * A 'Pickle' for Your Thoughts ...

Don't forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor, send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com. Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

We've got a lot of stuff coming up -- should be an interesting week next week (but then again, aren't they all?)

I've got a couple more things I'd like to blog today -- will get those up shortly.

Thanks -- Joe

Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

A Mighty Ring of Onion

Hi folks -- I'm working on this week's Guest Editor's picks and a few other blog entries; I will get those up later this afternoon.

In the meantime, here's something I encountered as I was eating my lunch -- a mighty Ring of Onion that is no doubt imbued with special powers:

As you can see, there is a handle in the middle. Not only does this increase dipping ease, but I have not yet ruled out the possibility that it can be used as some sort of batter-dipped buckler or shield.

At rest. See how it resembles a heraldic bend sinister; also the international "No" symbol (a.k.a. the Ghostbusters symbol).

Lastly, in this orientation, it resembles the Greek letter Theta.

I am still trying to determine what mystical powers this Ring of Onion possesses -- I will let you know if I come to any conclusions. Thanks -- Joe

A Webmail Annoyance Conquered

Hi folks -- now, this is not, strictly speaking, an AOL Journals tip; it's just something I "discovered" (though in retrospect, I guess it was kind of obvious) that will make my life a tiny little bit less annoying, so I thought I'd share it.

As I've mentioned before, I have to check e-mail for several screen names (often simultaneously), so I use AOL Webmail (it might be AOL Mail on the Web, I can never keep up with the names) alongside my regular AOL client.

One thing that bugged me about Webmail, though, was the annoyingly short session timeout -- it would sign you off and make you retype your password if you were inactive for... well, I wasn't quite sure, but it was too short.

The session timeout, by the way, is a security feature, to prevent people from using your e-mail account if you forget to sign out. It's more important if you're in a public place or shared computer, like a library or cybercafe, but it's less useful if you're the only person using your computer.

Now, I've been using Webmail ever since it came out -- I've just been using it a lot more ever since I became Journals Editor last year. And all during that time, I've been retyping my password every time I timed out.

Finally, this morning, as the Webmail screen was staring me in the face, I realized that I hadn't checked the Webmail settings in a long time, and that maybe there was a preference for the session timeout. So I clicked the Settings button (1).

Lo and behold, after you click the Security Controls tab (2), there's a pull-down menu that lets you set your session inactivity signoff interval; your choices are 30 minutes, 2 hours, 8 hours, and 24 hours (3):

Of course, I'd been set at 30 minutes, which is the default. I bumped up the interval to 8 hours, which should be a lot less annoying.

To make the moral of the story fungible: If something doesn't work the way you want it to, always check the settings to see if it's something you can adjust. Sometimes you can, sometimes you can't and sometimes you'll find something else you didn't know you could adjust that might be useful -- it never hurts to check.

Thanks -- Joe

Blogger John Boing-Boinged

Hi folks -- "beloved AOL moderator" John Scalzi's book, The Ghost Brigades, made an appearance on Boing Boing today -- Boing Boing, by most accounts, is currently the number one blog in the entire big ole sphere o' blogs, so congratulations to blogger John on more exposure, which leads to more book sales, which leads to... ponies for everybody! Thanks -- Joe

A Better Way to Search Journals

Hi folks -- so, last week I was talking with Journals Product Manger Susan about the state of AOL Journals Search.

Now, I'm not a big fan of the current Journals/Hometown search -- it works okay if you're searching for a Journal by a specific screen name (I do this a lot, since a lot of silly people write me without giving their blog's address), but it's pretty hit or miss when it comes to keyword searches.

The Journals team is looking at a couple of different options for replacing the current Journals search with something better in the near- to mid-term, so stay tuned.

In the meantime, here's a way to get a much better Journals search experience -- which even includes a better way to search the content of your own Journal.

In case you'd forgotten, AOL Search is powered by Google, so what I'm going to show you works for the regular Google search, though because I'm a loyal company man, I am going to use AOL Search as my example.

All you have to do is use the AOL Search Advanced Search form:

We do a pretty good job of hiding it, don't you think? The direct URL is http://aolsearch.aol.com/aol/advanced

When you go to that address, you will see the Advanced Search form (excerpted below):

Advanced Search gives you a bunch of options to narrow and filter your Search results. (If you know the search syntax, you can do all of these by typing commands into the search box, but we'll get to that later.)

What we're interested in is at the very bottom, which I circled in red: The item that says "ONLY for this domain:"

This field lets you restrict your search results to a specific Web address, or a portion of a Web address. This is very,very useful.

For example, say I want to search only AOL Journals. In that case, I would type my search term (say, cow-orker), then type journals.aol.com into the box next to "ONLY for this domain:",  since journals.aol.com is part of every AOL Journals address. Here are the results for that search.

But wait, there's more!

Say I want to search only my own AOL Journals. Assuming I have a few Journals under my screen name, I would type the portion of the Web address that includes my screen name, journals.aol.com/journalseditor (check out the results).

I can go farther... if I want to search only one Journal, I would just have to type the rest of the Journal's address -- in my case, it would be journals.aol.com/journalseditor/magicsmoke (here are the results, though they're the same as before in this example.)

So, in the picture above (see the parts circled in red), I am searching for the word cow-orker only in Web sites that have journals.aol.com/journalseditor in their address.

Here are the search results for that query, so you can see it works.

(If you like, you can skip the form entirely; the advanced search syntax for the site-restricted search is:

site:journals.aol.com/journalseditor cow-orker

If you paste that into the AOL Search box, you will get the same thing as using the Advanced Search form (note there's no space between the site: and the address); a search on the term cow-orker, restricted to Web sites with journals.aol.com/journalseditor in the address.)

You can also bookmark the search in your Favorite Places, or keep it as one of your Saved Searches, so you can quickly access it instead of retyping everything.

Anyway, you can play around with the search and the search URLs and see how you like it. It's very handy if you're looking for something on a specific Web site; I use it all the time.

Don't forget, you can find out what's going on with AOL Search in their official blog, All About AOL Search.

Thanks -- Joe

[Update: Okay, I was trying to get too cute with cow-orker, since that search as shown also pulls up co-worker and coworker -- it's ignoring the dash. If you want to search only on cow-orker, enclose it in quotes: "cow-orker" -- Joe]

Long Entries Or Short Entries?

Here's a question I've been grappling with lately, and I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject:

* When you blog, do you prefer doing fewer, longer entries or more, shorter entries?

* How about when you read someone one's blog? Is your answer the same, or different?

Personally, when I blog, I like doing longer entries, since it lets me flex my writing chops. Most of what I do in my day-to-day work is in e-mail and IMs -- it's all short and to the point, and there's not a lot of time for clever wordplay or skillfully turned phrases.

Granted, writing shorter pieces is usually more challenging than running long, since you have to be clear, concise and focused -- you have to be more ruthless in what you cut versus what you keep.

The thing about longer entries is that you have more room to roam. You can examine other viewpoints, go off on tangents and come back, link off to related items, provide background information and the like.

Of course, sometimes you just want to say "Hey, check out this link," which is fine, too. But I like writing the longer posts, myself.

Now, when it comes to reading entries -- it largely depends on the skill of the writer, although I don't like entries where, like, every other word is a hyperlink off to somewhere. Say something original, darn you!

Anyway, how about you all?

Thanks -- Joe

Private Journals Rostering Update

Hi folks -- hope you had a good President's Day holiday. I just got an update from some of the tech folks about the Private Journals problems some people were having (that I blogged about yesterday).

It looks like there was a problem with the rostering database -- rostering is just a term for the process that lets you specify who's on the "guest list" for a given application, in this case, your private Journal.

The DBAs (database administrators) for the rostering database have.. well, I'm not sure exactly what they did. Here is the exact quote:

"The CR database has been failed over; one of the indexes on the primary side is
being rebuilt. Of the journals I was able to see a problem with before, they
appear ok now; can you ask if anyone is still having rostering problems?"

Helpful, isn't it? Anyway, the second sentence I understand: If you were having problems with your private Journal, can you please let me know whether it's better, the same, or worse now?

Thanks -- Joe

Private Journals Rostering Problems?

Hi folks -- a few of you have written in to let me know about some problems you've been having with managing your private Journals, where people on your roster, who should be able to read your blog, can't.

I don't know if this is a new problem or a recurrence of the rostering problem we'd seen last month -- I will have to let Product Manager Susan and the rest of the team know so they can work on it.

There is a workaround that has helped some people in the past -- if you don't want to make your private Journal public (after all, it is private), try removing all the readers from your roster, then add them back again. This has worked for some people.

I know, it's inconvenient, which is why you should consider it a temporary workaround until we can figure out why it's happened.

As a reminder, if you're want to report a problem with your own private Journal (either by leaving a comment or sending me an e-mail), please be sure to include the Web address of your private Journal. Because it's private, it won't show up in Journals search, so I can't find it unless you tell me where it is.

Thanks -- Joe

New Guest Editor's Picks for 2/17

Hi everybody. As posted to the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Our Guest Editor this week is Jody (whom you may know better as "Dorn.") Her hobbies include blackpowder hunting and photography. On the side, she also raises dust bunnies and kids. Her Journal is Dust Bunny Club of North America; stop by and check out her top six blog picks:

* A Penny for My Thoughts [Mature Content]
* Dock Lines
* Bee's Shutter
* Lost in My Own Thoughts
* We Support You
* Here, There and Everywhere

Don't forget, if you want your own chance at being a Guest Editor, send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com. Please don't forget to include a link to your blog.

Another reminder, if you have Journals feedback or problems to report, send it along to me and I will communicate it to the Journals team, including Product Manager Susan.

I've got a few more things I want to write about today. (I may even get to some of them.) Oh, and don't forget that Monday is the President's Day holiday, so enjoy your 3-day weekend (that is, if you're fortunate enough to have one).

Thanks -- Joe

Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

The Good, and the Bad and Ugly

Here's an item from Washington Post 'Unconventional Wisdom' columnist Richard Morin; he's written about a study conducted by a pair of economists who posit that ugly people are more likely to commit crime.

Researches interviewed 15,000 high school students and rated them in appearance on a five-point scale. (Presumably they kept these ratings to themselves, although can't you just see a panel of interviewers standing up and yelling at some hapless high-schooler, in Simon Cowell-esque fashion, "You're Very Unattractive!"?)

They then followed up with the students 8 years later, and found a small but significant trend of the more-homely of the bunch being less-law-abiding, at least when it came to seven different types of crime.

So, while we can still hate the pretty people for making more money and generally being perceived as being smarter and more successful in life, at least we can take comfort in the fact that they will be less likely to burglarize our hovels.

Today's column has a few other interesting tidbits, like the differences in how men and women tally sexual partners, plus the effect of post-its on questionnaires, so check it out.

You'll have to excuse me now, as it's lunchtime and I have to go knock over a convenience store.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday Morning Update

Hi folks -- sorry I haven't posted in a couple of days. We will resume our regularly scheduled programming shortly. In the meantime, here are a few items:

* Commenting in one of my older entries on how you can use the Web and blogs to find bargains, Sumdumguy mentions a Web site, www.motherofalldeals.com, that aggregates some of the other deal sites I'd mentioned.

* Our snow from Sunday has just about disappeared.

The new Guest Editor picks will go up a little later this afternoon, and I will try to get in a couple of the longer blog entries that have been collecting dust on my shelf.

Thanks -- Joe

Blogging the Torino Games

Hi folks -- so yesterday, we had another celebrity appearance on campus: Men's figure skating champ Michael Weiss stopped by to do an appearance on the Sports Bloggers Live Internet radio show (and podcast):

Photo courtesy of Michael Weiss

Michael is a three-time U.S. National Champion, two-time World Bronze Medalist, and two-time Olympian. He grew up (and still lives) in the DC metro area, and he's blogging the Winter Olympics for the Sports Bloggers Live team. Here's his Journal:

Michael Weiss on Turin

Naturally, I managed to get a few photos.

First, here's Michael with the Sports Bloggers Live crüe:

That's Michael on the left, with fellow sports bloggers Jamie (Mr. Irrelevant himself); Kevin of The Lush Factor; Chris of Saved By the Blog; and Erin of The Year of the Bird.

Also, guys, I know it's ultimately my fault because I took the photo, but for future reference: It's customary to put the celebrity guest in the middle.

Here, we see Michael with Noelle; Noelle's been blogging The Road to Torino, and she will also be heading over to Turin in a few days to do some liveblogging of the games.

If you'll notice, Noelle is wearing official 2006 Winter Olympics Team USA apparel; she claims it was purely coincidental.

Here's another shot of Noelle:

The screen name that she uses for her blog is torinoelle, which you'll note is a clever mashup of "Torino" and "Noelle" that also produces "Torino Elle", which probably doesn't make proper grammatical sense but I still think is cool. So kudos on a clever screen name.

Finally, unlike my outing at the PostSecret exhibition, this time I did remember to ask someone to take a picture of me with Michael:

On a photo note, the original was really overexposed -- I fixed it to the extent of my limited abilities, but it still looks washed out. (As previously mentioned, I will blog about some basic photo editing techniques and resources in a future entry.)

Lastly, I could have pretty easily added the photos as an AOL Pictures gallery (which typically works well for a sequence of photos), but since it was only four pictures, I decided to just keep them in the entry of the blog. When I do this, I typically pick a width of 450 pixels, which seems to work well with the 3-column layout.

Here are my instructions on how to use File Manager to add photos to your blog (like I did here.)

Anyway, if you're a fan of the Winter Olympics, don't forget to check out Michael Weiss on Turin and The Road to Torino, and listen to Michael's segment from Monday's show.

Thanks -- Joe

P.S. I was originally going to title this entry "A Blogger of Olympic Proportions", but tales of the IOC putting the beatdown on people who abuse (in their view) the term "Olympic" make me nervous -- they might send some of those skiers with guns after me. Talk about a chilling effect on speech.

I Am Told It's Valentine's Day

Hi folks -- they tell me it's Valentine's Day today, so Happy Valentine's Day.

Look, see? Red text. Bold, red text. So I'm not ignoring Valentine's Day.

My friends and... compatriots in Community have a Valentine's Day special, and blogger John Scalzi has his blog take on things, so go check that out.

Writing about stuff that is specifically not Valentine's Day would be an example of counterprogramming, though I can't say that I'm particularly motivated to do that either, so I will just continue my regular blogging.

Speaking of which, go check out Product Manager Susan's latest entry on Journals status upcoming features; some of her items are in direct response to some of your comments and questions, so check it out.

Thanks -- Joe

About My Cow-Orkers

Sigh.

Okay, folks, let's put this to rest:

When I find it necessary to write the word "co-worker", I substitute "cow-orker" whenever I can. It's one of my writing conventions. A singular style,
if you will. I've been using it for at least the last decade. It's one
of my endearing qualities.  (Or not.)

If you like playing with words (and you're kind of a geek), you'll find a lot of humor in intentional typos like this. Man's laughter instead of manslaughter and such.

Now, I don't think it actually started out as a typo for me -- I just like writing it. It makes me laugh. Just say it out loud. See? Instant hilarity.

This reminds me of another convention that I don't get to use nearly as often -- one of my IRC friends used to hang around with some shady 3l33t haxx0r types -- one of their language quirks was using "donut" instead of "don't." So naturally, he passed it along to us, and it grew to include can't and won't (canut and wonut), though donut is still the most common form among my people. Because, you know, it's fun to say donut, since donuts are fun.

Oddly enough, "ainut" never caught on.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags: cow-orker, cow orker

Ted's Blog, Thoughts Stemming From

Hi folks -- so, as many of you know, AOL Vice Chairman, Washington
Capitals owner, and all 'round interesting fellow
Ted Leonsis opened up his Ted's Take
blog to the world on Thursday; it's at http://ted.aol.com:

One
thing you'll notice right off the bat (other than his big grinning
SuperBuddy icon art) -- it's not an AOL Journal.


You might ask, "Joe, you do programming for the
AOL Journals
product. That's your job. Doesn't this make you
angry/upset/scared/foamy?"

You
might be surprised (though frankly, I'm a little surprised at some of
the people who are surprised) to hear that the answer is: No,
it doesn't bother me in the least.

Here's
why.

As part of my role as a programming guy for AOL
blogs, I've given a few talks to groups inside AOL to try to
encourage them to blog. One of the first things I
tell people is that the AOL Journals product is, at its heart, a
personal blogging platform. It has some plusses and
some minuses -- it's really easy to set up and use,
but it just don't do certain things some bloggers might need right
now. 

If AOL Editors choose to use it --
we hope they will, there are many
who do, and some of them are doing some neat stuff with it --
I and the Journals team will do everything we can to support them.


However, if AOL Journals isn't the right product
for them, when it comes down to it, I would rather they blog using
third-party software rather than not blog at all.


I was talking to cow-orker and NetGirl
blogger Stephanie, who reminded me of
something folks might be missing: How cool is it that Ted is actually
out here with his blog? These are his words, he's not just talking
about stuffy "official" AOL stuff, and he's been updating it just about
every day (heck, even I have trouble doing
that).

It's not about the
software.

Even more shockingly, I
say the same thing to "regular" bloggers and Journalers. If the AOL
Journals product isn't right for you because it doesn't do A, B or C;
well, I will work with the product guys to try to get it added in an
upcoming release. If we can't do it or the timing doesn't work for you,
you should probably try another product and see how that
goes.

Now, obviously, we want to keep
improving the AOL Journals product to make it
more competitive with other blog products; Product
Manager Susan will have a lot more to say on upcoming
releases, because we've got some cool stuff planned
for AOL Journals in 2006.

Looking at Ted's
blog specifically -- early on, we had some conversations with some of
Ted's team to talk about his blog; they had some specific requirements
that the AOL Journals platform wasn't going to get within their
timeframe.  For example, one of those requirements was for
more control over the look and layout of the blog; AOL Journals is
going to get this in the spring with custom skins,
but we're not ready yet.

So, they went with a
custom implementation that exists to serve one
customer: Ted. (You can see what he wrote on this subject here: Why Not AOL
Journals?)

Would I like AOL Journals to
have some of the features that Ted's blog has? You
betcha. You have to understand, though, that there's a big
difference between the work you do to build and maintain a product that
supports one user, versus one that's used by thousands or
millions.

I've also heard, secondhand, of some
grumbling from inside the company about Ted's
decision to not use an AOL product to blog with. Folks -- all that talk
about opening up to the Web? This is it. The point
of Web
2.0 isn't to try to force people into a silo ("You're now
breathing AOL Air™!") -- it's about building an experience that's going
to add value because it lets people plug in the
pieces that are useful to them, in the way they like.


You say you like AIM, Flickr, Google Maps, Moviefone, Fox News, LinkedIn and Digg? We shouldn't try to force
you into using something else -- we should be finding a way that makes
it easier for you to do all these things together, in the way that fits
in to your life.

To reiterate:
* No, I
don't mind that Ted isn't using AOL Journals.
* Yes, we're
going to keep improving and enhancing AOL Journals, so please stay
tuned for new stuff coming in 2006.
* Yes, by all means, try
other products and let us know where we need to improve our own.

* Yes, I'm all out of things to
say.

Thanks -- Joe

Digging Out...

Hi folks -- I'm still digging out this morning. Not from the snow: took care of that yesterday (and boy, was that fun), though though they still managed to close a bunch of the school systems around here today (as they tend to do).

No, I'm going through my pile of e-mails, undone tasks, unanswered questions and pending blog entries that have accumulated over the past few days/weeks. So I'll be posting some more interesting stuff soon. Hopefully.

In the meantime, here's a pic from Sunday -- in my area, we got between eight and ten inches late Saturday/early Sunday:

Hrm, that's one more item for the "pending blog topics" pile: Tips From a Hack on Treating Digital Photos for Your Blog.

Thanks -- Joe

Stick a Fork in Me

Okay folks, that's it for right now. I've got too many things left unblogged, so I may post over the weekend. Then again, we're getting a near-apocalyptic amount of snow forecast (up to 10 inches south and west of DC -- remember, they close schools around here for an inch or two), so I may not.

In the meantime, here is a picture from back lunch ways, featuring the plastic fork that broke apart in my mouth:

It was very much a taste explosion in my mouth, except without the taste part.

Have a good weekend, everybody. Thanks. -- Joe

Speaking Message Boards: New RSS Feeds

While I've got Message Boards on the mind -- remember how I keep saying how RSS feeds have the potential to make everyone's lives easier by making it Really Simple to subscribe to the content you're interested in? And how I said that RSS feeds aren't just for blogs?

Some of my cow-orkers over at the Community Member Experience Team blog have posted about how you can now subscribe to your favorite Message Boards's RSS feeds.

This is cool, because that means you're not limited to using My Boards anymore; you can use any RSS feedreader you like to keep tabs on your message board conversations.

Keep in mind; when we say "any", we mean any -- it's easiest, of course, if you want to add a board's feed to the My AOL feedreader, though it's nearly as easy to add it to your feedreader or customized home page of choice.

Right now, the feed just displays the titles of the posts, and of course, if you want to reply to a post, you will need to clickthrough to the message board. But it's still neat, and I'm sure it will only get more neat.

The CoMET folks have some other RSS resources and information, so check out their blog -- it's a great new resource for getting info about the other AOL Community products.

Thanks -- Joe

New Guest Editor's Picks for 2/10

Hi everybody. As posted to the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Our Guest Editor this week is Michael, a chiropractor who gets his blog's name from the TV cartoon, 'The Tick.' Stop by and see his top six blog picks:

* Losing It
* Ride Along With Me
* Living Life and Loving It
* Sugar, Spice and Everything Nice
* In the Shadow of the Iris
* Living With Chronic Pancreatitis

Michael's top six blog picks are all authored by women; I guess that makes him kind of a ladies' man...

As to The Tick quote that comprises Michael's blog's name: I don't speak your crazy moon language! SPOOOOON!!!

Ahem. Don't forget that if you want to take a shot at being a Guest Editor, send me an e-mail at JournalsEditor@aol.com with a link to your blog. (You'd be surprised how many people don't send me their blog address when they write in. Remember, I am very, very lazy.)

As noted, if you have your own Journals feedback, gripes, technical questions, etc. also feel free to send me e-mail. The hard questions, like the technical stuff, I kick over to Product Manager Susan, so it's all good.

Thanks -- Joe

Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

Friday Update

Hi folks; here's a quick update on stuff I'm working on -- the new Guest Editor's Picks are up live now on the Journals main page; I will get the full blog entry, AOL Journals Message Board post and Alert content later on today.

In other news, Scalzi notes that Journaler Tendernoggle is having a rough time since the recent passing of her husband, so please swing by Carlene's blog to offer your prayers and support.

Thanks -- Joe

Congratulations Are in Order

So, Mister Irrelevant himself, cow-orker and Sports Bloggers Live host Jamie Mottram just sent a triumphant note:

"AOL sports blogger -- www.quickslants.com -- and SBL regular Ty Hildenbrandt just won Fox Sports' "Next Great Sportswriter" contest and will now be an official contributor to FoxSports.com."

Check out Ty's FoxSports blog, and of course, his AOL Journal, Quick Slants.

This is quite possibly the biggest blog career move since that guy won that job last year blogging about the Dukes of Hazzard.

Thanks -- Joe

Step Back and Drop the Burrito

Maybe it's just because I'm a little hungry right now, but I thought this was an interesting blog.  I think I saw it linked from somewhere on Washingtonpost.com last week -- it's The Burrito Blog, and as you might expect, it's a blog all about reviewing burritos.

That's pretty much all there is to it. I could drag this out into a broader discussion of single-issue blogs versus general blogs, but there's no need to overcomplicate the burrito at this time.

Thanks -- Joe

Not Podfade Away?

Hi folks -- Wired News had an article yesterday entitled Podfading Takes Its Toll, about how even popular podcasts can fade out of existance just as quickly as they pop up.

If you're not familiar with the term, a podcast is an audio show that's "broadcast",  not over the airwaves, but distributed over the internet using RSS feeds.

You can subscribe to a podcast's feed and have it download automatically to your computer, and then have it also automatically load onto your MP3 player (the "pod" part of podcasting comes from iPod, since that's what helped popularize the format, though it's not exclusive to the iPod.)

As with blogs, there are all kinds of podcasts, with subject matter on anything the creators care to talk about, ranging from wine, sports, commentary tracks to TV shows, news, politics, and of course, music.

Many are done by regular folks, though more and more are professionally done -- there are networks of podcasters, and iTunes has a whole podcast directory.

The Wired article posits that podcasts are more vulnerable to being abandoned, simply because they require more work than blogging -- if you do a 15 minute podcast, you're going to be talking for 15 minutes, combined with all the time you need to do prep and then actually produce the thing, which can take many times that.

Generally speaking, that's also a problem I have with consuming audio or video podcasts -- time. While it's relatively easy to skim a whole bunch of blogs (especially if you're a fast reader), you can't really skim a podcast -- you kind of have to pay attention to the whole thing, which can especially be a problem if you're just browsing around trying to find something interesting.

I haven't dipped my foot into the podcasting waters yet (on the producing side, that is) -- I have a face for radio, a voice for print, and too much on my plate as it is. But just some food for thought.  Thanks -- Joe

I'm Still Here

Hi folks -- sorry I didn't post yesterday. Got a lot of stuff going on right now, as usual; some of it involves some new ways we've got to display blog feeds that I'm playing around with. Also, Product Manager Susan and I are also kicking up a fuss about hit counters to find out why things went wonky after a few months of blissfully quiet tallying.

In the meantime, if you want to update your counter manually, please check out my step-by-step instructions for using File Manager to fiddle with your hit coutner.

If you were able to change your counter after reading my article, as a favor to other people, please let me know how I can improve my instructions -- I know some people are having problems and I want to be as clear and easy-to-follow in that entry as I can.

In other news, we know some of our UK Journalers are having an ongoing problem with new entry Alerts displaying in the wrong template.

In AOL Alerts, there are three delivery methods -- Online, E-Mail, and Wireless Device.

For unknown reasons, some AOL UK Journals Entry alerts are going to the Wireless Device template, instead of the e-mail template. The Wireless template is only about 100 characters and has a  "Register wireless device" link, so it looks odd, but is not a spam, ad or scam.

It's an ongoing problem -- apparently it happens sometimes when the Alert content exceeds a certain length. The team is looking into it, though International stuff is usually extra tricky to deal with.

Lastly, I'm working on an entry right now talking about some political blogging issues; in the meantime, check out this Wired News article from yesterday on how to create your own phone ringtones (so you don't have to pay to download them).

Thanks -- Joe

New Guest Editor's Picks for 2/3

Hi everybody. As posted to the Journals Message Board, our new Guest Editor's Picks are up on the Journals Main Page:

Meet Guest Editor Shari-Ann, who's blogged her way through a series of unfortunate events and is still going strong. Check out her blog, Blog of a Mad, Black Woman and see her top six blog picks:

* saysomething
* You Are Now Entering the D.I.V.A.hood!
* Me
* No More Drama, No More Lies
* Gaia's Essence
* Diary of a Young Black Mother

In her All About Me area, Shari-Ann describes herself as "moderately attractive, silly, and short" and also says that she "analyzes everything to death", so check out her blog and see what she has to say.

Also, don't forget that if you want to take a shot at being a Guest Editor, send me an e-mail at screen name JournalsEditor with a link to your blog.

Thanks -- Joe

Tag: Guest Editor's Picks

Things I Did Not Know About Alerts (Plus, Feeds Stuff)

Hi folks -- I've got some information about Alerts that may be useful to some people.

* Alerts Turning Themselves Off? As you might recall, last week, I blogged about how I wasn't getting my comment alerts.

Well, after a day or two, I finally wised up and went to my Alerts Settings Page, http://alerts.aol.com/ -- to check my settings.

Lo and behold: In the section under "Status", it said OFF when it should have said ON.

That was kind of odd. Anyway, I clicked the check box next to the name of the Alert and clicked the Turn On button. (Also, if you want to check or change your Alert delivery methods, click the pencil in the "Edit" column.)

Now, why did my comment Alerts turn off? Things usually don't happen spontaneously for no reason, so I asked the Alerts folks what could have caused this. Here is what they came back with:

"There is one process in the Alerts system that runs daily and can turn off your alert delivery IF you hit the Spam button when you open the alert e-mail with one of the AOL mail programs. If so, the Alerts process might turn off the alert delivery automatically."

As it happens, I think I actually did accidentally mark one of my comment Alerts as spam around that time, so that may be the cause. Note that this may happen even if you go back into your spam folder and say "This Is Not Spam" on the Alert e-mail.

In any case, if you stop getting Alerts delivery all of a sudden, the first thing you should do is check your Alerts settings and make sure they're turned on.

* Maximum Number of Alerts: Now, here's another piece of info I didn't know until now -- I got word from the Alerts team that the maximum number of alerts allowable per user is 200, which includes all types of alerts. If you go over 200, you may run into problems.

In the past, I'd known that some of you had 200 or more Alerts, but I didn't connect the dots until now. The workaround, of course, is to delete Alerts that may be inactive or otherwise unused, to keep your under the 200-Alert limit.

Now, honestly, when Iheard that some of you have over 200 Alerts, I thought you were kind of, well... crazy. Personally, between all of my e-mail accounts, I get dozens (sometimes hundreds) of e-mails every day, so the thought of trying to keep tabs of 200 Alerts on top of that makes me kind of dizzy. However, I know everyone has their own way of doing things the way they like, so who am I to judge?

I will, however, offer an alternative -- to keep track of a large number of Journals and blogs, I would recommend using a feedreader, which I think is a cleaner solution than getting lots of different alerts -- I will definitely be writing more about RSS feeds in coming entries, though in the meantime, you can see what I blogged before about using feedreaders to keep track of blogs and other Web pages that use feeds.

Don't let the jargon fool you -- feeds are just another way to subscribe to blogs and other content, and you can read them in a feedreader program, which is sort of what an e-mail program is to managing your e-mail.

Personally, I've tried a bunch of different feedreader programs; most of them are free, some of them are Web-based (which is convenient, since you can check your feeds no matter where you go), and most of them are "smart" enough that they can find the feed associated with any given URL; some I've tried include:

* Customizable Web Home Pages, like the My AOL Beta, My Yahoo! or the Google customized page.

* Web Feedreaders like Bloglines or NewsGator

* Standalone Feedreader Programs like NetNewsWire Lite, which is a freeware feedreader that works on Mac OSX.

There's a whole list of different feedreading programs and services available at http://www.atomenabled.org/everyone/atomenabled/index.php?c=5 -- we also link to this page in the popup window linked from the top of every AOL Journal, where it says Get the Feed (Atom/RSS):

For example, this what you'll see when you click the link at the top of my blog. (This is also how you can find out your Journal's feed address.)

I know there are more Alerts, Feeds, and other questions and problems out there; between Product Manager Susan and myself, we will try to keep you informed.

Thanks -- Joe

Highbrow Blogging?

Hi folks -- this was going to be part of a much longer entry about politics and blogging, but I wanted to get at least one entry out today, so I will carve it out. (I will do that longer entry about political blogging at a later time. I trust you'll be on the edge of your seat until then.)

Washington Post columnist and blogger Marc Fisher notes how one of the primary blogosphere reactions to Virginia governor Tim Kaine, who delivered the Democratic response to yesterday's State of the Union address, was, erm, pointed comments on Gov. Kaine's rather prominent eyebrows.

Who says political analysis is hard to understand?

Thanks -- Joe 

Cold Pizza 3.0

So, apparently, Mister Irrelevant himself, Sports Blogger Live Jamie Mottram, is making a habit of appearing on ESPN2's Cold Pizza: [Update: Check out Jamie's blog entry about it.]

Note that I don't deliberately try to take pictures of the screen while Jamie is making goofy faces -- I blame that that bugbear of digital cameras, shutter lag.

Now, backing up a step; Jamie didn't have to go up to New York (where the show broadcasts from) -- I didn't know this, but there's a broadcast studio setup over here (it's next to the petting zoo and across from the rocket sleds):

It's really small. That's a shot through the glass of the booth -- the colors of the background make it an interesting photo.

Here's another, wider shot of the studio:

I took a whole bunch of other pictures of the screen, but most of them came out pretty bad because I didn't steady the camera properly. Here's one of Jamie sharing screen time with co-host Dana Jacobson:

Can't you feel the chemistry there?

Anyway, a few AOL Journalers got onscreen mentions and screenshots, so congrats to Sportz Assassin and Seahawks Fans Notorious (you can see more links to the sites mentioned on-air).

Also, congrats to Jamie for yet another successful appearance (you can see my writeups of his previous forays here and here).

Thanks -- Joe

p.s. If you're wondering how I got those big, borderless photos into my blog, see my  step-by-step tutorial on how to add pictures to your blog.

Ignorance Is No Excuse

In a column that may seem eerily familiar to many of us, Wired.com columnist (and Brunching Shuttlecocks alum) Lore Sjöberg outlines several techniques to inject yourself into an online discussion... even if (or especially if) you don't have anything resembling an actual opinion on the topic.

His essay is entitled, "No Opinions? No Problem," and works for any topic that you might otherwise have to bluff your way through.

I for one, welcome our non-opinion-holding overlords. (Read the column to see what technique that was.)

Actually, that kind of reminds me of an article I have posted on my cubicle wall: Things to Say When You're Losing a Technical Argument:

It's an oldie (going back to 2001), but it's a goodie. It's especially useful if you're non-technical, like myself.

You'll also see another clipping next to it -- it's an article from the Wall Street Journal that I've been toting around since 1994, entitled "They Laughed When I Sat Down to Write."

It's all about how people can take tips from direct mail pitches (you know, junk mail -- the paper kind), to spice up their memos and other writing.

Unfortunately, it's only available online in the Wall St. Journal's paid archives, so you'll have to go to your local library if you want to read it (written by Phil Theibert in "Manager's Journal" column of the April 11, 1994 WSJ).

Just a few notes from my living archives.

Thanks -- Joe

Hello, February

Hi folks -- welcome to February. Since a bunch of you liked my last photo of the Hello Kitty calendar in my cubicle, here's another entry of no consequence, featuring this month's edition:

Apparently, February involves mountain climbing at or near Mount Rushmore.

Thanks -- Joe