Wednesday, January 31, 2007

PostSecret Back in the News

Post Secret Card
This is not one of my secrets.

A lot of you are already familiar with this, but Frank Warren and his blog/art project, PostSecret [some adult themes and language] is in the news again -- he's got a new book out (his second third collection of secrets).

The concept of PostSecret is pretty straightforward: People write one of their secrets onto a postcard and send it to Frank, who posts the notable ones on his blog every Sunday. I blogged about it last January, when I went to an PostSecret exhibition in DC.

It's very powerful and very popular (at one point, PostSecret was #3 in the Technorati Top 100 Blogs, though he seems to have dropped all the way down to... 12.)

If you look at his blog, though, you note that he's made the choice not to do archives -- in fact, the entire blog is pretty much one page that he updates, replacing the previous week's content.

Anyway, it's still one of my regular reads.
See my entry from the exhibition for more photos, and go to PostSecret.com for the current batch.

Thanks -- Joe

Super Bowl Myths

Hi folks -- MSNBC has an article today rounding up 10 Super Bowl myths that usually resurface around this time of year.

Actually, they're not all false, so check out the article if you want to get the real deal on guacamole consumption, mass toilet flushing, "one billion TV viewers" (hint: that goes for the Academy Awards, too), car accidents, calls to Gamblers Anonymous, and a couple more Super Bowl factoids.

Notable by its absence, though, is the grandmomma of all Super Bowl Myths: That domestic violence against women rises 40% on Super Bowl Sunday.

This one is demonstrably and completely false; it started in 1993 out of misquotes, misattributions, and misunderstood (or just plain made-up statistics), and took on a life of its own.

The Straight Dope covered this in 2000, and Snopes.com (one of the definitive online sources of info for hoaxes, chain letters, and urban legends) has an article about this that was updated in 2005.

Domestic violence is an important topic, so it's super-important that people not be distracted by misinformation. When it comes to domestic violence, Super Bowl Sunday is pretty much the same -- this is, just as bad as -- any other day.

Thanks -- Joe

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

Drop the Lute: This Is The Police!

The Police
The Police

OK, so I don't play music critic that much, but I caught this on the BBC News Web site (it's all over the place now): 'Police to reunite for Grammy gig:'
"The Police are to reunite and perform at the Grammy Awards next month - more than 20 years after the release of their last album."
Yes, The Police [Wikipedia link --  their entry was being updated with the reunion gig info even as I was reading it]: Sting, Stewart Copeland, and Andy Summers, are going to be the lead act at the GRAMMY Awards on February 11.

(Unfortunately for you Henry Padovani fans, I doubt that their original guitarist will be performing.)

Now, this is pretty exciting, for those of us who remember Sting when he rocked -- you know, before he started doing Jaguar commercials, got all Soft Adult Contemporary, and started playing the lute.

Some lingering questions being asked in the big ole sphere o' blogs:

* TV Squad asks, "Now...what song should they play to open the telecast?" (Me, I say Synchronicity I and II.)

* Will there be a reunion tour? A lot of folks want one. Most people assume so. TixGirl Ames rounds up some of the current news and rumors (and dares her mom to try and stop her, now that she's not 13 this time around.)

* Will they get into a fight onstage? (Well, I'm asking it, anyway.)

Looking around at individual blogs written by regular people, a lot of the blog entries consist of "OMG," followed by excerpts of the press release, which isn't that interesting after you see a few dozen of them. See for yourself -- try some blog searches on Technorati and Sphere for "police grammy."

Here in AOL Journals, Mockingbird1730 adds to the general acclaim, but also adds her admiration of the Sumners' lasting marriage. (One note to all: In case you hadn't heard, that whole "7 hours of tantric sex"-thing was a joke gone wild. As the man himself says, "In fact it's more like four hours of begging, then a movie and then dinner.")

As for my part, that means I'm definitely going to watch the Grammy telecast this year. (Or at least, the opening performance.)

Are you going to be watching? What's your favorite Police song? What other band reunion would you want to see? Have no idea who The Police are? Leave a comment and let us know, or make a blog entry of your own, tag it with "police reunion" and leave a link here.

Thanks -- Joe

Tuesday BlogPlugs

Here are a few more blogplugs, coming from bloggers who have added the tag "" to entries that they want to get front of other people.

* Raven in RebukeTheWorld talks about life-changing events she calls "toymakers", and wants to hear about the "toys" you carry, both good and bad.

* Deb reminds us about her Food Challenge, and primes the pump with a Seven-Layer Dip Recipe

* Ceilisundancer in Random Threads plugs another Journal from Amy, a mom whose middle son, Sam, has ADHD -- check out My Journey With Sam.

If you want to plug an entry of yours, just add the tag "" to your entry; if you want to plug someone else's blog entry, just do a short entry of your own describing and linking to their blog, and use the blogplugs tag in your entry.

To see what other people have tagged , just click the tag, which should take you to a Technorati blog search showing you everything else that uses that tag. (The search seems to be acting a little funny right now; it says there are 7 entries tagged, but it's only showing me 5. Not sure what's going on there right now.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tags:

Blog Photo Shoot: Stop, in the Name of Light!

Hi folks -- couldn't let this week's Blog Photo Shoot go by this time (even though I'm currently without a functioning [update: oops, camera]).

Why? Look at the theme:
"Snap a picture of a really interesting lamp or light fixture. It doesn't have to be in your home, although it's nice if it is. Note that for this Photo Shoot I am explicitly excluding holiday lights and decorations; we already did that. These lights should be ones that you'd see on a non-holiday."
Well, shoot, that's easy -- I already used it in my "Tagged on Five Things" entry in December:

Journals Editor Joe's LED Hand sign

It is, of course, an orange LED pedestrian "Don't Walk" signal that I bought from an online surplus site and mounted in a picture frame. It current hangs on the wall in my dining room.

Thanks -- Joe

Monday, January 29, 2007

My Fellow Americans, Let's Do the Time Warp Now

Hi folks -- here's a leftover from last Wednesday:

People Connection promo screen shot

Now, in addition to this blog and the AOL Blogs main page, I also do some of the blog promotions on the People Connection Main Screen.

For the Wednesday after the State of the Union address, I focused on political blogs, linking to The Stump (the AOL Elections Blog), DailyKos (a lefty/moonbat blog), and Little Green Footballs (a righty/wingnut blog).

Naturally (if you're me), this was the perfect opportunity to quote a few bits of lyrics to Time Warp, from the movie The Rocky Horror Picture Show. (And I don't even like The Rocky Horror Picture Show.)

So I did.

And I'm probably the only person who noticed, too.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday, January 26, 2007

Blogging for Dollars (College Edition)

This one comes courtesy of political gossip blog Wonkette, which in a shocking turn of events, does not require a dirty words warning on the link: "Get a Scholarship For Your Dumb Political Blog!"

Scholarships Around the US has an annual $2,000 Political Blogging Scholarship for full-time college students; here's what they say:
"Scholarship Requirements:
  • Your blog must contain unique and interesting information about political issues, current events, opinions, etc. No spam bloggers please!!!
  • U.S. citizen;
  • 3.0 GPA;
  • Currently attending  full-time in post-secondary education; and
  • If you win, you must be willing to allow us to list your name and blog on this page. We want to be able to say we knew you before you became awell educated, rich, and famous blogging legend."
In their "no spam" request, you'll note that they use bold text, three exclamation marks and "please," so that will undoubtedly deter any spammers or griefers.

Submissions are due by Sunday, Feb. 4th, and there's a public voting phase (gee, that should go well... that's two overly-cynical remarks from me in a row, I'd better stop).

See their site for details.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday BlogPlugs

Hi folks -- as I mentioned a few days ago, here are a couple of quick blogplugs for blog entries you want to get in front of other people (they can be yours or someone else's):

* Deb in Kitchen Chatter has a recipe for a sub that weighs six pounds and feeds eight; she also has a Food Challenge for the Big Game (known by everyone who has a content deal with the NFL as the S*p*r B*wl), where you can send in your best football party recipes.

* Over in Random Threads, Ceilisundancer plugs a few Robert Burns-themed entries in Guido's  NorthernTrip blog (Scottish poet Robert Burns would have celebrated his 248th birthday on Thursday)

If you have an entry you want to plug, drop me a line, and also tag your entry with .

I probably won't be able to summarize and feature everything that gets tagged, but the beauty of tags is that just by clicking on the tag, it'll show you a blog search of everything else that uses the tag. So you don't have to wait for me.

Thanks -- Joe

Tags:

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Like You Needed Another Reason Not to Trust Politicians

Hi folks -- via the Express -- according to a George Washington University survey on Congress and blogs [PDF File], 75 percent of Congressmembers with blogs say that they actually write their own blog entries. Shyeah. Others are also skeptical.

Not to say that members of Congress aren't involved at some level in the blog postings that go up under their names. It could be generating ideas, or suggesting directions, or maybe giving final approvals. But I think that authoring every single entry that goes up is stretching it.

I mean really, they do have that whole time-consuming business of governance, pandering to special interests and fundraising. That's a lot to fit in.

I would tell you more about the survey, except I, um, haven't read it yet.

Also, in a quick followup to my entry on the State of the Union Tag Cloud, Al Tompkins follows up with an interactive video of Tuesday's address by MSNBC, with a tag cloud that updates as the president is speaking. It's pretty neat.

Thanks -- Joe

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Become a Tech Expert in 20 Minutes, Plus Comment Tracking

Hi folks -- this one's a little more for the folks interested in the tech and internet industries, so if you're not, skip to the bottom, where I give examples of a few useful comment tracking services.

I've been moving around in this whole social media/community/Internet/Web space for a long while now, so I like to think I have a good idea of what's going on (especially since we saw a lot of the same behaviors the first time around in the Web 1.0/dotcom bubble).

Just by working in the industry, you absorb stuff: News comes to you via e-mail newsletters or informal discussions with colleagues, etc. -- you have to know what's going on, with your company, your competitors, and the industry and world at large.

If you're a dabbler or casual fan of tech, it can be kind of overwhelming. Here's an item from Silicon Valley tech gossip blog Valleywag on Monday: 'Get all the tech news you need (in 20 minutes a day)' (link via del.icio.us via popurls.com)

Yes, you too can be a tech expert, simply by following a few Web sites and skimming the news stories and commentary on a regular basis. The Valleywag list includes themselves (obviously), Engadget, News.com, GigaOM, etc.

Somewhat surprisingly, they leave off TechCrunch, which is pretty influential (and whose proprietor, Michael Arrington, tends to get into somewhat amusing spats with folks on a regular basis [link via Stephanie]).

My own personal list differs a bit, but as long as you pick a few good sources, you'll find that in the blogosphere, and especially the tech blogosphere, everybody ends up circling around the same topics.

People may specialize in different things  (technology mashups, search engines, venture capital, malicious gossip, etc.), or look at items with a particular perspective (business, privacy, social media), but the big stuff gets around to everyone.

Why
would you want to keep track of this stuff? Personally, I think it's more useful than, say, following weekend box office grosses or finding the current status of Brangelina, since you can learn about interesting new services you can try. (Some of them may actually be useful.)

It's actually kind of paradoxical (and in my case, more than a little distressing), because you find that the more you know, the more you realize that there's just so much more going on out there.

Comment Tracking Services
_________________________________

For example, here are two sites I'm aware of where you can track comments that you post in other people's blogs (as well as other places that take comments, like public photo galleries):

Commentful and coComment. [1/25 update: Stephanie says coComment doesn't work with AOL Journals. Commentful should work, though. -- Joe]

The way comment tracking services work, is you register with them, then when you leave a comment in someone's blog entry, you add that entry to your watchlist (via either an extension you install if you're using the Firefox Web browser, or a bookmarklet if you're not).

Then, when you check your watchlist, you can see if there are comments that have been added after yours.

The effect is a lot like taking a lot of scattered blog comments threads, and turning them into a kind of personal message board -- it really helps to close the conversational loop, especially for blogs that you might not visit on a regular basis, because you can see what you said, and if anyone posted after you (it's not necessarily going to be a response to your comment, but it might be.)

If you try it with AOL Journals, make sure you use the entry's direct permalink URL when you add to the watchlist (I haven't tried adding a Journal's main page -- not sure what would happen there.)

Thanks -- Joe

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

The State of the Union Is... Bloggy

As of this writing, the 2007 State of the Union Address is about an hour away. Personally, I haven't decided if I'm going to watch it live or catch the episode of '24' that I taped yesterday. Here are few bloggy State of the Union links:

* The Wall Street Journal highlights a neat Presidential speeches tag cloud -- tags are labels that people use for content (like blog entries or photos). A tag cloud is a way to visualize information that shows you what the popular tags are: The bigger a word is, the more frequently it's used.

Anyway, blogger Chirag Mehta took the text of a whole bunch of presidential speeches (including all of the State of the Union addresses), and put them in tag cloud format, showing the top 100 words in each speech (after stripping out too-common words like "the" and "and"):

State of the Union Tag Cloud
Tag cloud from the first SOTU address by George Washington in 1790.

The slider at the top lets you move foward and back in time.

State of the Union Tag Cloud
Tag cloud from George W. Bush's 2006 SOTU address.

Unlike many tag clouds, the color of the word also carries some information -- brighter colors show newer words; darker colors are older words. It's a neat way to convey several different dimensions of information at a glance.

* Over at The Stump (the AOL News Elections Blog), they'll be blogging the speech and its aftermath (outside of actual elections, this is kind of like the Super Bowl for political types).

* Since the DC area is sucha political-type town, it's not surprising that there are actual State of the Union viewing parties.

* And of course, there are plenty of varieties of State of the Union drinking games, such as Wonkette's version [strong language warning, par for the course]

* On a somewhat local note, the Democratic response will be given by Virginia Senator Jim Webb, who as it happens, has an unofficial MySpace profile, in addition to his mostly-placeholder official Web site.

Happy viewing! -- Joe

A Couple of Quick Blog Plugs

Hi folks -- here are a couple of quick plugs for some stuff that you folks are doing in the AOL Journals space:
  • Kate reminds us that she's keeping an A-Z index of Journalers.
  • Paul has a fresh edition of CarnivAOL up, where bloggers get to highlight some of their own favorite (sorry, favourite) posts -- check it out.
  • Sam started blogging this month is blogging over at Samsays -- he says his journal "...is meant basically for my own use in event of losing my memory when getting old." It's still pretty interesting -- stop by and say hi.
Do you want to be plugged? Of course you do. If you have an entry that you want to plug (either yours or someone else's), send it to me and I'll try to do an entry like this a few times a week. Please be gentle (like, don't try to plug each and every one of your blog entries).

One thing that will also help me if you try tagging your own pluggable entries with the tag

A tag is kind of like a label for your entries, and helps categorize your entries in different kinds of blog searches. Clicking on a tag link will take you to a search that shows you other entries that use the same tag.


Thanks -- Joe

Monday, January 22, 2007

The Great Winter Storm of Naught-7

Hi folks -- here in the DC area, we're digging out from the Great Winter Storm of Naught-7, where we got up to two whole inches of snow and ice yesterday.

There is a lot of ice out on the roads, though, so I saw my share of cars facing the wrong way and off the shoulder and such.

I would try to get you some pictures of campus, except my camera kind of died. I have an older one in my desk, the battery of which lasts for 15 whole minutes at a time, so that may be my fallback.

In the meantime, I'm looking at some workarounds that involve group participation, which I will get to this afternoon.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday, January 19, 2007

If You're Gonna Goof Off at Work, Don't Blog About It

Hi folks -- got a couple of bloggy stories to wrap up the week:

Not a Good Idea:
Okay, this technically isn't a blogging story (since it sounds like it involves a paper diary and word processing program), but it should be: Emmalee Bauer, a 25-year-old hotel worker in Des Moines, Iowa, was fired for keeping a 300-page journal detailing everything she did to avoid work.

Ms. Bauer was reportedly told to stop writing in her personal paper diary at work, so she did: She just (allegedly) switched to typing them up on her computer.

Apparently, tippy-typing on her computer made her look like she was doing, you know, work:
"'This typing thing seems to be doing the trick," she wrote. "It just looks like I am hard at work on something very important."'
Darn it, she's giving away all my best secrets. It worked up until the point when her bosses found out about it.

They didn't like it very much.

The article includes other quotes from her journal (including references to killing time playing Elf Bowling). It's a pretty good read.

Also, during her state hearing where she requested unemployment benefits (denied), she used the "everyone else was doing it" defense, which traditionally ranks up there with "that's not mine, I was holding it for someone else" defense in effectiveness.

The article also states:
"In the journal, Bauer speculated that her writings might someday be published even though they dealt largely with the minutiae of her daily life such as rearranging the furniture at home, doing the dishes and planning for a tattoo on her lower back."
So she sounds like she's definitely cut out to be a blogger.

(link via Obscurestore)

Art Imitates Life:
Do we really have to say this? Please don't lick stop signs when it's really cold out. At least, not if you don't want to have to hear the phrase, "He lost some skin from his tongue."

As the article says, there was no word if the kid was triple-dog dared. (Another Obscurestore link)

This Is as Political as I Get on a Friday Afternoon:
If you've been seeing recent e-mails and blog entries about political bloggers with over 500 readers having to be treated as lobbyists, by needing to register their blogs: Don't even worry about it -- the provision was defeated. Please go about your business.

Have a great weekend everyone!

Thanks -- Joe

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Choose One: Cats or Cheese?

Hi folks -- in his latest Weekend Assignment, blogger John asks us to choose between cats and cheese (one stays, and the other is banished from Earth).

For illustrative purposes, he provides a photo:

Blogger John's cat with two slices of American Cheese

You might remember that this is the same cat which he taped bacon to, so all we need to work in there are some scrambled eggs, and we'll have a tasty breakfast sandwich.

I haven't weighed in on a Weekend Assignment for a while, but I'm going to have to break my silence for this one. If it came down to cats or cheese, I would have to choose to keep...

Cheese!

It's not that I dislike cats. I like cats (even though I'm mildly allergic).

And, frankly, I don't even like cheese that much. But, I've never had a cat, whereas I do have cheese fairly regularly. So I am going to have to stick with cheese.

I'm also amusing myself trying to come up with circumstances that would require us to choose between cats and cheese, but I'm unable to think of anything that doesn't involve ALF at some level.

Thanks -- Joe

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Quick Win: Private Journals Fix

Hi folks -- here's a quick little win. (One of my rules for corporate bloggers is always blog your successes. Even the little ones. Make that especially the little ones.) Remember that problem we had last month, with Journalers unable to delete readers from their private Journals? It seems to be working again.

If you've got a private Journal, please try it and let me know if you still have problems deleting readers.

I'm not sure when it was fixed -- I probably just missed it. But I'll take what I can get.

Also, this one is more of a "duh" on my part than anything else -- if
you need to download the AOL software again, you can go to http://downloads.channel.aol.com/.

However, the AOL 9.0 they have listed is AOL 9.0 VR, which is the AOL that's compatible with the upcoming Microsoft operating system, Vista.

Not being a very good reader, I assumed that it was Vista-only, so I went through a whole rigamarole of trying to find the previous verison, AOL 9.0 Security Edition.

I finally got it, but then I re-read the downloads page and saw that the AOL 9.0 VR release "...works with the Microsoft® Windows Vista® and other Windows operating systems..."  Not believing I could still be that dumb, I read the system requirements, and yes, it says AOL 9.0 VR does work with Windows XP. Oops.

So, anyway, keep that in mind if you need to re-download the AOL software. Learn from my mistakes.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday, January 12, 2007

Mines: Do Not Jar

Hi folks -- so, this photo here is in the spirit of blogger John's Weekend Assignment, but it doesn't quite fit the bill (I just realized I had posted a string of entries without any pictures, so I wanted to break up the monotony):

I took two of the signs adorning my cube and put them together. I used a 200x150 version of this photo for the Weekend Assignment promo on the Journals main page.

Monday is a holiday to honor the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., so I'll check back in with you on Tuesday. Have a great weekend.

Thanks -- Joe

AOL Pictures & AOL Photo: What's the Difference?

Here are two more AOL photo-related plugs:

* First, at the AOL Pictures blog, the team talks a little more about the new WooHoo features, including examples of the "Sliding Blocks" and "Ken Burns" styles (I used the Ken Burns style in my own WooHoo example)

* Next, the photo editors over at the AOL Photo Talk blog are looking for your holiday pictures -- it's for the latest edition of Fotofestivus, which is a chance for you to show off your pictures on a theme.

Normally, they come up with a theme, then ask folks to go out and shoot photos based on that theme (similar to John's Monday Photo Shoots). This time around, since the theme is "holidays," you're welcome to use photos that you've already taken from this past holiday (or any holiday past, for that matter).

So here's your chance to show off your holiday photos, as well as mix it up with some of the AOL Photo Editors.

***************

Now, for our purposes here, there's a difference between "AOL Pictures" and "AOL Photos."

It's kind of an organizational thing; AOL Pictures is the name of the product found over at pictures.aol.com -- you know, the one that used to be called "You've Got Pictures."

AOL Photo, on the other hand, is the team of Photo Editors that help programming groups add photos to stories and pages.
They also create some of the programming features that live under the "AOL Pictures" name, like all of the AOL Visions stuff, the Pictures of the Week galleries and more.

The Photo Editors work with photos from the wires and various photo services. In addition, in some cases, they'll go out and shoot their own stuff.

AOL Pictures = Product. AOL Photos = Photo Editors. At least, that's the way it is right now.

Thanks -- Joe

Would an Airplane on a Conveyor Crash in the Potomac?

Hi folks -- got an airplane-story trifecta here. The first two involve crashes, so if you're afraid of flying, maybe you should just skip to the end.

1. Air Florida Flight 90
First, saw this article in today's Washington Post (my local fishwrap): "A Crash's Improbable Impact" -- it's about the crash of Air Florida Flight 90, which occurred 25 years ago tomorrow.

Shortly after takeoff from Washington National Airport (now Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport), Flight 90 crashed into the 14th Street Bridge, killing 73 on-board and 4 motorists; 5 passengers survived after being pulled from the icy Potomac River (you may recall the images). One additional passenger, Arland D. Williams, drowned after passing a lifeline to other survivors.

It led to sweeping changes in airline safety procedures, cockpit culture and more -- check out the article. The democratization of the cockpit, and the demonstrated value in listening to all your team members, is especially interesting to me.

2. The Gimli Glider
In another, much cooler airline story with a happier ending, there's the Gimli Glider incident of 1983, when the crew of an Air Canada 767 with 61 passengers on board ran completely out of fuel.

As fate would have it, the captain of the flight had extensive experience piloting gliders, so he was able to set it down on a closed airport that had been converted into a race track.

What's also cool is, even after sustaining some damage (the nose landing gear didn't lock), the plane was repaired and is still in service. (Story link via Digg yesterday.)

3. Planes Spinning Their Wheels?
Finally, Salon's "Ask the Pilot" column today begs for mercy on the "Airplane on a conveyor belt" brain teaser that he brought up last week.

This one has been floating around on the Interwebs for a while. Depending on your point of view, it's a little counter-intuitive, but more importantly, the problem changes radically depending on the wording. It asks this:
If you put a jet plane on a conveyor belt [the exact wording of speed of the conveyor belt is what changes the question], will it take off?
The answer is "Yes", but I will get to that in a second.

I think I first saw it on Kottke.org at the beginning of 2006; it hit the Web in a big way after a Straight Dope article covered it, including  9 pages of discussion in their message boards.

As these things do, it disappeared out of view, re-emerging after NYT writer David Pogue blogged about it in December, which is where Salon's guy found it (boingboing also helped reinfect us with it).

Like I said, the plane takes off. Like many people, originally, I thought it wouldn't. The question should really be: Can a plane on a treadmill move forward? If it can move forward, it can get air moving over the wings, which would mean it would be able to get off the ground.

Since a plane gets its forward thrust from its engines (the wheels are just there to keep the plane from grinding a groove into the runway), it doesn't matter if the plane is taking off from a stationary runway, a treadmill, a sea of ball bearings, a frozen lake, water or anything else.

The thing that gets people is they immediately think of cars on dynometers (those big rollers when you go for an emissions test), or themselves on treadmills.

Anyway, even if people get bogged down into discussions of frictionless bearings and static coefficients of friction (which you can get plenty of in the Straight Dope discussion), it's more demonstrative of the importance of proper writing.

Thanks -- Joe

Thursday, January 11, 2007

A Scattershot Look at User-Created Content

Here's an item from UK paper The Independent from last week, entitled, "2007: Don't just watch, blog!" (link via Netscape).

The article is pretty a scattershot roundup of social media in 2006 (with a focus on UK events), with some speculation about the future of citizen content creators -- regular folks creating content.

Only, they're still not really "regular" folks right now -- while social media has made a lot of inroads, we're still pretty heavily concentrated on an elite cadre of  highly-motivated people (feel free to applaud yourselves); young people who are growing up with this (and crave the attention, anyway); as well as other, but still tech-savvy, people.

The question remains -- will people keep using social profiles like MySpace or AIM Pages, or blogs, or wikis, or podcasts, or will we shift to other venues? It's hard to say.

Like I said, the article is kind of all over the place, so I'm having a hard time trying to blog a narrative around it.

Suffice it to say, as bloggers (and to a lesser extent, commenters, and to an even lesser, but still important extent, readers), we're all still participating in this big movement.

Even if you don't care about big movements and just do it to tell your friends about your day. So, kudos.

Thanks -- Joe

The AOL Pictures Team on the New Features

Hi folks -- as I mentioned on Monday, the folks from the AOL Pictures team rolled out a few enhancements this week. They include:
  • "New comment" indicators on photos (and on the main page)
  • Improved upload experience -- caption your photos as they upload
  • Picture properties, including details about the camera and resolution
  • More international language support
  • And more to come.
Go check out their blog entry about it, and get Alerted when the AOL Pictures blog updates.

Thanks -- Joe

Wednesday, January 10, 2007

7:45pm: Blogged About Lifelogging

NPR's On the Media has a transcript from an interview last week [link via Obscurestore] with Gordon Bell. He's a senior researcher for Microsoft who's trying to blog about... everything.

The generic term for this is "lifelogging" (Microsoft's name for the project is "MyLifeBits", presumably for the dual meaning of "bits" -- pieces of stuff, as well as the technical term for the smallest pieces of computer data, ones and zeroes).

It's a pretty intense concept: It means recording everything you possibly can about your life -- phone calls, e-mails, napkin notes, visited Web sites... even, in this case, wearing a camera around your neck that automatically snaps a pic every minute.

Think of it as blogging, only nuclear-powered.

In the pre-computer days, when we collected stuff from our everyday lives, most of it was just pocket junk: ticket stubs, train schedules, receipts; anything with a short useful lifespan.

Sometimes, they became materials for collages or souvenirs for scrapbooks.

Wait long enough, though, and historians start calling it ephemera.

Anyway, do too much of it, and people call you a packrat; if you're a packrat long enough, maybe eventually you'll be a compulsive "hoarder", with a house filled with junk.

With data, though, it's different, since data storage is relatively cheap, as opposed to buying a new house when your current one fills up with stuff.

How useful would lifelogging be, assuming you're not some sociologist from the future? It's hard to say, but it's a thought experiment that raises some interesting questions.

For example, even assuming this recording happens in the background (because if you had to consciously stop and record everything, you'd never be able to do anything), how would you find what you need from that mass of data?

It's hard to say "this is important data," when "importance" is relative. If you have a grease fire, knowing where you put the saucepan lid is vitally important knowledge. So maybe looking at lifelogging helps us improve the way we search and find information. (That's just an example.)

Anyway, reading about lifelogging reminded me of the things:

* When the Pentagon talks about trying  something like this, it's seen as sinister

* Who else does stuff like this? Why, the Unabomber:
"He wrote about everything. He wrote about what he had for lunch on May 5, 1979, where he got the food, how he prepared it and what did it taste like," [retired FBI Special Agent Max] Noel said.
I'm out of observations, so I will wrap this up with a relevant Steven Wright joke:

"I have a map of the United States, life size. 1 mile equals 1 mile. It's a bitch to fold it."

Thanks -- Joe

StephanieBamBam Talks About the Next Journals Releases

In her latest entry, Journals Product Manager Stephanie discusses the next Journals releases; go check out her entry (and subscribe to her blog's New Entry Alert); in a nutshell:
  • Release 11 (or R11) is currently scheduled for some time in February '07. It's going to be a relatively small release; this is because we're saving our powder for...
  • Blogs 2.0, which will try to get AOL blogging features up to speed with the rest of the universe (in competitive terms, this is called "parity"); it may be a rolling release in 2007; check in with Stephanie for more details and product requests, etc.
Thanks -- Joe

Send Lawyers, Guns, Hockey Players and Video Store Clerks

Hi folks -- a couple of quick hits today:

* Following up on my entry on lawyers blogging, here's a Washington Post article featuring another blogging lawyer, with a twist: Adam Tiffen, a buttoned-down, self-described "nice Jewish boy" and DC lawyer, spent a year in Iraq deployed with the Maryland National Guard in Saba al-Bor, a town outside of Baghdad.

During his deployment, he kept a milblog, The Replacements [strong language] detailing his experiences -- check it out.

* Also of local interest: Ted Leonsis, AOL notable and Washington Capitals owner, talks about how the Caps have embraced bloggers, including giving a dozen bloggers press credentials, and generally encouraging and supporting the local sports blogging community.

Ted's always been pretty active and public with his support of online community and incorporating it into his sports ventures (ranging from participating in online chats, message boards, and even, yes, answering his e-mail), so this is strictly in character for him.

(Link via The Express -- it's another Post link, since it's their free, commuter-targeted daily)

* Via Wonkette (so, naturally, strong language warning applies): political pundit Tucker Carlson has a run-in with a blogging video store clerk. Guess who loses his job over it? (Three guesses, and the first two don't count.)

Thanks -- Joe

Monday, January 8, 2007

I'm a Blogger and I'm Not Afraid to Admit It

Here are a couple of leftovers from last week (remember, the sooner you start falling behind, the quicker you can start catching up), which I belately found had a theme of sorts. Well, except for the first item, which I just thought was funny:

* A New Take on Citizen Journalism: Wanted -- citizen journalist to cover court case. Must have experience as a sex-worker. Bonus: The gig doesn't pay anything. Ahh, those wacky Canucks...

* Ceci n'est pas une blog -- News of the Weird's Chuck Shepard wants you to know that his daily update Web page is not a blog (scroll to "housekeeping"). Despite that whole "living on a blogspot.com address" thing. And the RSS feed and the archives (which say "Blog Archives"). Look, see: No comments. Can't be a blog. Nope.

Some people are still afraid of the whole "blog" nomenclature and what it represents to them. Don't ask me why.

In extreme cases, these blog refuseniks will have a Web page that they update daily (or more frequently). They may even take feedback or comments of sorts. They just don't have the other useful things, like built-in searchable archives, feeds and alerts.

So they'll basically have all the hassle (daily publishing) and none of the benefits.

I would call out the person I'm thinking of, but his "not a blog" is on hiatus for now. (GeneWeingarten
GeneWeingartenGeneWeingarten)

I'm not sure what's worse -- someone who has a blog and refuses to call it a blog, or someone who doesn't have a blog, but says they do.

(The "Ceci n'est pas une blog" is a high-falutin' reference to this here René Magritte painting.)

* In a self-negating blog entry, commentator Adam Felber says, "Blogs suck. You should never,ever trust anything you read on a blog. Not even this."

He makes a number of points, including one that says bloggers, especially political bloggers, love talking about themselves, and that the blogosphere as a whole is pretty much useless because it's full of crap.

If you think this made a few folks nice and frothy, you should have seen...

* "Have something to say? I don't care": L.A. Times columnist Joel Stein said he didn't care what his readers thought, and that he didn't want to hear from them. It was pretty much a W.C. Fields-esque "Go away kid, ya bother me."

I saw the item via Metafilter, and in the discussion thread, they didn't have particularly nice things to say about Mr. Stein.

Of course, Mr. Stein is a humor columist, so perhaps one should have read it in the spirit in which it was offered. Not to say he's necessarily a good humorist; not being too familiar with his work, I was still asking "Is this guy for real?" before puffing myself up with righteous anger. But at least I did some checking before I opened my mouth.

So yes, I do feel superior to all those folks who fell for it. Nyah.

Anyway, to be clear:
* This is a blog.
* I am a blogger. (Among other things.)

Thanks -- Joe

Playing With New Features in AOL Pictures and woohoo

Hi folks -- hope you had a good weekend.

Here's a trifling little post with a picture of the clouds this morning:

Taken from the roof of the parking deck at AOL HQ.

I uploaded the photo to my AOL Pictures public gallery -- looking at AOL Pictures, I notice they've rolled out a few enhancements, including comment counts for individual pictures (in the gallery view).

In addition, Will from the Pictures team says that they've also launched an updated version of the woohoo slideshow thingy, with a few new styles of photo layouts; here's a quick and dirty woohoo; I chose to feature photos in my public gallery tagged "aol" (there are only 4 right now -- I have to go and tag my older photos), and I'm using the "Ken Burns" style:


I think the slow pan across the strangulation photo is particularly effective.

I will have to keep playing around; some of the new styles look more suitable if you have lots of photos in a given set; this one here probably works best for relatively small numbers of photos.

Now that Hamid is back from vacation, look for some updates and explanations on all of these things and more in the AOL Pictures blog.

Thanks -- Joe

Friday, January 5, 2007

Blog Fight! Blog Fight!

Journals Editor Joe getting choked by Journals Product Manager Stephanie

First, I want to make it clear that Journals Product Manager Stephanie is strangling me for purely illustrative purposes only.

Wired News had a feature on Tuesday entitled "Best Blogfights of 2006" that looks at some of the rollicking punch-ups that occured last year among some of the "A-List bloggers" out there.

If you follow the Internet and social media industry, you'll see that:
  • There are a lot of strong personalities involved -- you don't really see very many shy, wilting entrepeneurs
  • The names of a lot of these folks are pretty much interchangeable with the companies that they create, run, spin-off, sell, etc. Consequently, there's a lot of mixing of people's personal business with their business business
  • The overall community of these online movers and shakers is relatively small, fairly mobile and extremely incestuous
Combined with the immediate, uncensored and public nature of blogging, it can make for some interesting conflicts. Remember, "blogging is conversation," and gossip and screaming matches are conversation (although potentially much louder and more annoying).

It can be tedious, yet at the same time, it can be fascinating.

Anyway, see the Wired article for some of the more notable A-List blogfights of last year. You'll note that former Weblogs, Inc and Netscape honcho Jason Calacanis made the list for his clash with Digg co-creator Kevin Rose.

I would actually characterize that one as more of a product competition than a blog fight. (Not to say that Jason hasn't had his share of blog feuds -- I'd get into the details, except I'm no gossip [*cough*] and most regular folks don't give a hoot, anyway.)

Update: The Blog Herald has a nice take on this issue. For the A-listers, big loud blogfights can also serve to draw attention to what a company is doing -- and they say any publicity is good publicity.

The mixing of business and pleasure is only one reason why blogfights can get so nasty. The 37signals blog did an entry rounding up some thoughts on the topic: "Why do blog comments seem to bring out the worst in people so often?"

A lot of it has to do with anonymity and depersonalization -- people get bolder when they're dealing with someone from behind a screen (the phrase "Internet Tough Guy" comes to mind).

Of course, online flamewars are nothing new, and it may be that the ease of publishing and open nature of blog conversations just make it easier for other people to look in on flame-fests that were previously squirreled away in message boards, mailing lists, and chats.

Human nature is the overriding principle -- there's no greater impulse than a feeling of righteous indignation, and a lot of times, pride, the desire to get in the last word, or the need to "win" leads people to do things they wouldn't ordinarily.

And let us not forget the usual trolls and drama kings/queens -- people who thrive on stirring up trouble -- or the immature-behaving folks who just want to shout anonymous profanity in front of a wide audience.

Then again, you can't rule out mental illness -- blogger Jason Kottke posits that the unrepentant disruptor on the other end of the screen might actually be a sociopath or psychopath (link via Metafilter).

I try to avoid controversy in my own blogging, except when it's thrust upon me or I use less-than-stellar judgment. Maybe that makes me wishy-washy, I don't know.

Over at Netscape, Managing Editor and Lead Anchor C.K. Sample used his personal blog this week (there's that intersection of personal and business again) to respond to some of the more common flames and anti-social behaviors seen at social news and links sharing sites.

Is he shouting against the storm? Probably, but we all have to try. Remember, in the immortal words of the great philosopher and peacemaker, Jerry Springer:

"Take care of yourselves. And each other."

Have a great weekend, everyone.

Thanks -- Joe

The End of the 2006 Blog Slush Pile Purge

Hi folks; this is the third and final installment of my 2006 blog slush pile purge, where I quickly run through a whole bunch of links that might have made it as full blog entries last year, but didn't. (See part 1 and part 2):

August:

* Esquire's problem with the movie 'Snakes on a Plane' (via Metafilter)

* The New York Times had articles about two groups of people blogging -- politicians and the French, but those articles are now inaccessible.

* More on MySpace: The Wall St. Journal on moguls of new media (via Slashdot); Becoming a MySpace Hottie; "Fake" Friends and Ads in Social Networks; Stupid, Funny & Possibly Offensive: MySpace: The Movie

* "Five Things All Sane People Agree On About Blogs And Mainstream Journalism (So Can We Stop Talking About Them Now?)"

* I never did blog about the AOL Search Data Debacle (via Obscurestore.com) -- this is because I have enough headaches of my own.

* Trying to find genuine celebrities on MySpace

* Local Interest: Why is the Iwo Jima Memorial in Virginia?, and a depressing overheard conversation about the Gettysburg Address

* The Top 100 viewed wikipedia articles (link is for August 2006 data -- you can change the settings at the bottom of the page -- there are links to content with adult themes, though no actual porn, and it's pretty obvious) -- via digg

* Social freeloaders, Sturgeon's Law; Columnist John Dvorak takes a contrarian view on digg and utopian views on the wisdom of crowds

The Rest of 2006 (I moved off Journals in August -- I did keep tabs of some stuff for possible use in my AIM Pages blog):

* One of many virtual bubble-wrap popping sites

* The Most Obnoxious Font Color Combination I Can Think Of

* Bloggers on Vacation?

* A Japanese Falling Sand Game (uses Java, be careful, it could crash your browser -- also, it's in Japanese, but you can play around and get the drift of it) -- here's an updated version with English instructions

That's about it. Like I said, I carried over a bunch of topics that I do want to get to eventually, most of the sort that never really "expire", or ones that benefit from periodic revisiting.

That said, my pile of stuff that I haven't gotten around to blogging in 2007 is already piling up...

Is there anything you wanted to write about last year, but didn't? Let us know. Also, if you blog about how you go about writing a blog entry -- your creative process -- share with the rest of us by leaving a comment with a link below.

Thanks -- Joe

Thursday, January 4, 2007

Purging the 2006 Blog Slush Pile (Part 2)

As promised, here's part 2 of some of the stuff I didn't get to blog about in 2006. (See part 1 here). We're into the second quarter here:

April:

* Dan Gillmor in BBC News: "Why we are all reporters now"

* Hollaback NYC [Language Warning], fighting street harassment (via Village Voice article about "Little Brother" as in "Big Brother is watching you", except we're watching each other.)

* The launch of Blogging Stocks blog (see the CNN Money article and Jason Calacanis's entry about it.)

* Ugly Web Design That Works

* Blogs: Good or Evil?

* Web 2.0 Meets the Enterprise (companies starting to use social media -- there were a lot of these kinds of articles in 2006).

* Using Kittens for Authentication -- using pictures of animals to beat spammers; check his contact form (it's running a little slow) to see an example; someone else has a variation that's a bit more controversial, since it uses photos of hot chicks/guys (which is open to more interpretation)

* Three Links from Bob: The great, late Bob Wooldridge sent these to me: MappedUp, a blog feed aggregator that displays new blog entries on a map; a CSS Menu example; a Death Row blogger (he's not on Death Row for his blog, if you were worried).

May:

* Speakers at AOL: Influential blogger Om Malik, senior writer at Business 2.0 at the time, came to AOL to give a talk about blogs and Web 2.0. I was going to blog my notes. I failed.

Also in May, Alex Gibney, who wrote, directed and produced the documentary on Enron, 'Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room', talked about his movie.

June:

* This Space Intentionally Left Blank

July:

* Prominent blogger Robert Scoble quit as Microsoft's representative to the blogosphere (see his "exit interview" in Wired)

* A Brain Game (via Fark) -- here's why it works (when it works)

* Another "busted for blogging" type article (via Slashdot), and another one (via Mavarin)

* Feeds Summit: I was at an internal AOL Feeds summit, talking about feeds. Check out some different feed reading products, including My AOL, Protopage, NetVibes, and Pageflakes -- there are some cool drag-and-drop interfaces in there to play with, as well as the pure feed stuff.

* A Group Is Its Own Worst Enemy, from 2003 and sent to an mailing list I'm on. Slightly pointy-headed but a good read.

* Would-Be Viral Advertising... busted after a day.

* Another blogging survey from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

* Wired said A lot of blog writing sucks.

* Busted for blogging, CIA edition -- I also had a story from an AOL Journaler, but I wasn't going to blog it without explicit permission, which I never got.

* An AOL Expressions Profiler Quiz

* Put on stereo headphones first, then try this link (explanation of Holophony. And it's actually a box of matches.)

* An interview with Fark founder Drew Curtis (strong language warning)

* Tutorials and more tutorials for GIMP, a free photo editing program

* E-mail: The e-mail you write is half as funny as you think it is and 7 Deadly Sins of E-Mail

* The risk of Pay-per-post blogging

I actually had a lot of carryover topics in July from earlier in the year; some of it will even be good in 2007 (once I revisit the topics and freshen the links, of course).

Will probably have one last slush pile purge entry tomorrow.

Thanks -- Joe

Journals Alerts Down, 10:57pm

Hi folks -- a few of you have written in to tell
me that Journals New Entry and Comment Added Alerts are down right now.
Don't know how widespread it is -- I've asked the Journals guys out
west to go track down the Alerts team and figure out whose side the
problem is on and fix it.

Update,
11:30pm:
The Alerts people restarted the servers -- Alerts
should be working again; they'll probably be trying to find out what
happened tomorrow. Sorry for the
inconvenience.

Update, 12:21am:
Malika, on the left coast, has been working with the Alerts
team on a problem where trying to add a new Journals alert to your
list of alerts isn't working right, facing up to a 20 minute delay.
Here's a workaround that may help in certain cases until this particular item gets fully
fixed:

"A good workaround that's sometimes helpful... When you don't see your alerts showing up, go to http://alerts.aol.com and hit "My Alerts"; when you see your list
of alerts, there's a "Status" column that has the green "On" button.
Click the On Button once, to turn it "Off" (red). Click it again to
turn it back On (back to green) -- This refreshes the system, and then you see the alerts showing up."


Thanks --
Joe  

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

Purging the 2006 Blog Slush Pile (Part 1)

Okay, so I'm doing a little housekeeping, moving files into my 2006 archive to get ready for the shiny new year that is 2007.

Now, in the course of a normal day, I run into a bunch of things that I might want to blog about, usually (but not always) because they're current events that have some sort of blogging angle to them, so I put them into draft files. They just start out as an URL and a title; if something has legs, I'll add descriptions, analysis, etc. and turn it into a full-fledged blog entry.

I usually end up with a lot more stuff than I can actually use. Something may not be as good of a story as I first thought, or maybe I just don't have time to write it up properly.

After a while, stuff can go stale, or have already been talked about enough that I don't have anything new to add. So it just drops out of sight.

 Sometimes I'll get to a "things I didn't get to write about this month" entry, but usually not.

Well, here's a dump of a bunch of things I didn't get to blog about last year, with minimal editorializing (I pulled out the broken links and completely irrelevant stuff) -- it's pretty random:

January
* Jason Kottke on Digg's Editorial Selection Model

* Company Blogging: CNET on Why companies monitor blogs; the McDonald's Blog (via Blogspotting); Why Companies Should Blog (via Marketing Begins at Home)

* Congress finds the value of blogs (via Slashdot)

* Removing earwax with a SuperSoaker (via Metafilter)

* How to BlogSafer if you live in an authoritarian regime (via Craig Newmark -- the Craig of Craigslist)

February
* "There is no blogosphere" -- A debate on whether blogging was the victim of overblown hype.  Some perspectives: The original article (via Poynter); "Twilight of the Blogs" (with some reaction from the Washington Post); "A Blogger is just a writer with a cooler name."

* Continuing: The Wall St. Journal weights in on the blogging is dead/no it isn't debate (via Slashdot)

* Why the user name "null" is a bad idea (also via slashdot) -- hint: it's the equivalent of having a license plate that says NO PLATE

March
* The TV Show 24: The JackTracker, tracking Jack Bauer's movements in 24 (via Dave Barry's blog); Jack Bauer's 24 Kill Count; 24 coverage in TVgasm and TV Squad; Jack Bauer's VCR.

So that's the first quarter. A random mix, yes? You should see the stuff I left out.

Should have a few more parts tomorrow.

Thanks -- Joe

Try Out a Blog Crawl

Over at Dust Bunny Club of North America, Journaler Dornbrau has a blogging activity you might want to take for a spin -- she calls it a Blog Crawl; it's similar to other types of group theme blogging activities (like carnivals, etc.), except... well, it has a graphic:

Blog Crawl

Dorn's inaugural Blog Crawl theme is Back to Nature -- interpret that as you will, and see her blog entry for full details. (Submit by January 25, 2007, and don't forget to use the tag.)

Now, over here at AOL Blogs High Command, we like this kind of user self-programming (or self-created activities -- whatever you want to call it), mostly because you guys do everything: coming up with the ideas, gathering the links, summarizing entries, etc., and it has been established that I am -- I mean, we are -- extraordinarily lazy.

All we have to do is highlight stuff that you're doing. (And oftentimes, even that is just icing -- a lot of these things are self-sustaining, even without any kind of linking. Though it usually doesn't hurt.)

Selecting and hand-posting links to this blog and the AOL Blogs main page is only a interim step -- it doesn't scale very well, especially as more people do stuff. (Though for right now, if you've got a group blogging activity you want to highlight, please send it to me and I'll see what I can do.)

Certain things, like blog memes (such as the Five Things tagging) take on a life of their own and spread virally, without any kind of intervention.

Other things, like Plittle's CarnivAOL, or my earlier Six-Pack Picks (which I may bring back in 2007) center around a single site and blogger to collect links and wrangle participants.

Tagging helps, as do feed display modules and other kinds of automation -- the AOL Blogs main page is due for a refresh this season, anyway, so we'll be exploring ways to better highlight things that you folks and other bloggers are doing.

Anyway, for the rest of this week, I'll be purging my 2006 blogging slush pile and some other stuff, so stay tuned.

Thanks -- Joe