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
Friday, January 5, 2007
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
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:
Thanks --
Joe
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
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:
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
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
As Interesting as Watching Water Boil ... in Space!
Hi folks -- so, I know that space and science topics are more blogger John's thing, but I figured that since he's on the road, I would step up.
Besides, it's pretty cool: What boiling water looks like in microgravity (what you or I would call "Zero-G"):
As I said, it's pretty cool. The article is also 6 years old; since it was originally published September 7, 2001, one might understand if it was overlooked due to subsequent events.
Besides, like the old NBC summer rerun slogan -- "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"
(Link via Digg.)
Thanks -- Joe
Besides, it's pretty cool: What boiling water looks like in microgravity (what you or I would call "Zero-G"):
As I said, it's pretty cool. The article is also 6 years old; since it was originally published September 7, 2001, one might understand if it was overlooked due to subsequent events.
Besides, like the old NBC summer rerun slogan -- "If you haven't seen it, it's new to you!"
(Link via Digg.)
Thanks -- Joe
Tuesday, January 2, 2007
Hello, 2007 and Goodbye, President Ford
Hi folks -- we're back; hope you all had a Happy New Year celebration.
As I whine pretty much every year, I never get as much done over the X-Mas/New Year's break as I think I will (both personally and professionally) -- it's a given.
Now, even though we're in the DC Metro area, we're just under 30 miles from DC, pretty far from the center of all the ceremonies honoring the late President Ford.
DC-focused blogs DCist and MetroBlogging DC have some first-person accounts of the procession. If you have your own, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your entry.
Out here at HQ, the flags are flying at half-staff:
Autoblog Green says we have another reason to thank President Ford -- in additional to the whole "healing the nation after Watergate" thing, he also pushed for national legislation allowing right-turn-on-red.
Thanks -- Joe
As I whine pretty much every year, I never get as much done over the X-Mas/New Year's break as I think I will (both personally and professionally) -- it's a given.
Now, even though we're in the DC Metro area, we're just under 30 miles from DC, pretty far from the center of all the ceremonies honoring the late President Ford.
DC-focused blogs DCist and MetroBlogging DC have some first-person accounts of the procession. If you have your own, feel free to leave a comment with a link to your entry.
Out here at HQ, the flags are flying at half-staff:
Autoblog Green says we have another reason to thank President Ford -- in additional to the whole "healing the nation after Watergate" thing, he also pushed for national legislation allowing right-turn-on-red.
Thanks -- Joe
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